11.5.12

So far I like the book. I’ve been doing some readings outside of the assigned ones within the classes that I’m taking this semester. A lot of the times, it’s the reason why I feel I get so behind on the actual readings that I need to do. However, they mentioned many ideas and people that I have been reading up on, so I was surprised but glad.

I’ve read several articles on consciousness, critical race theory, latin@ critical theory, creation of knowledge, and I started reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Delgado Bernal is mentioned in the book as well, and she wrote one of my favorite articles. I’m not sure if that’s the one that they keep on referencing during the text because they put her under CT but in the article she leans more towards LatCrit.

Like other students have already stated, the book glides by every idea that they talk about and don’t give a full picture of what it is. Reading this book alone is not helping me completely understand the concepts that they mentioned, but I do like that they mention so many people that influenced the field. Because of this, it makes it seem like a starters’ guide for critically conscious research, which is what I think it is since I don’t think of myself as knowledgeable in the field. Mentioning those names and ideas gives a good look on what people to read and what types of issues to consider. This is the part of the book that I liked the best.

I hope that the book gives more detail in the following chapters because they’re no longer framing the history. If that’s not the case, then, I still want them to throw in a bunch of names, so I can look them up at a later time and see what they discuss.

Marxism to the Beginning of "Black" Thought

This book is most likely going to be my favorite one out of the three for the class, but it is still early. I am interested in Critical Theory and the different avenues of research. Over the first few chapters, the development of “Critically Conscious Research” stems from the growth of Marxism in the Western hemisphere to Race studies in America to Feminism and the implementation of these theories into educational practices.

Firstly, Marxism focuses on the individual within the society.  “They suggested that it is important that the world not “ignore the individuals and the world conditions which are the source o these ideas” (pg 16). This quote illustrates the theory’s perspective of how society is the main influence on individual ideologies. Supporters of this theory connected external influences to pathways of power such as politics, economical, and social status. This in turn was related to the notion that those in power created the “culturally” accepted norms or ideologies. However, Marxism did not take into consideration racial identities. These notions gave way to Critical Theory.

After Marxism, different theories emerged in which some expanded and alternative notions came into light.  Gramsci argued that the source of power came from the centers of intellect and education.  The places of learning instill ideas that are cultivated by those in power thus widening the range of society to accept the same ideologies. This is where Gramsci found society’s source of struggle, ideologies.  He argued that society can overturn commonly accepted ideas by working with the populations whom were not in power and in extension oppressed.

Another viewpoint of the oppressed began to surface at this time. Frantz Fanon, a multiracial individual, studied Marxist theorist decided to give his scholarship in order to “… humanize Black consciousness…” (pg 21). What is interesting to me (I would pick this out because I co-founded the first multiracial/biracial student organization on campus and I love learning about this) is that Fanon is multiracial [“African, Tamil, White/French” (pg 21)] but yet he is identifying as only black. Even the caption in the book emphasizes one side of the color spectrum by depicting “Frantz Fanon: A Black Response to Critical Theorizing” (pg 21). I understand that it may be in relation to the reaction of his audience or to how Fanon self reflected, but that shows how influential culturally identifying oneself can affect others. Also I thought it was interesting that the authors wrote about the reaction to Fanon’s work in that it was debatable because it did not take into consideration “Black women and non-blacks”.  There is barely equality today, hence Critical Theory and the different avenues that are still being implemented and expanded upon. I feel like his critics may have wanted to invalidate his work because there are many examples that do not include the entire human race.

These theories paved the way for Racial and Feminist Studies as well as the implementation of Critical Racial Theory pedagogy.

Interesting concepts but poor execution in On Critically Conscious Research

Overall, I liked the general tenor of today’s reading from On Critically Conscious Research, because I found myself agreeing with quite a lot of the main concepts within the chapters. For example, I appreciated the contention in the book that the West only “envisages itself” as somehow transcending race (33). Though this is a story we’re often told, I appreciated that the authors fought this contention, as it is clearly not based in reality. Even if we somehow were made to believe that our society was so (which it clearly is not), denying race as a critical issue would still be problematic, because it would be a denial of our history. That being said, I was not enthralled with the way this book went about making these broader points. The structure of the first three chapters was rather choppy; as Graham pointed out in his post, the book is quotation overkill to some degree. While I found some of the quotations and references meaningful, in particular the look at Du Bois (24) and Indigenous Theory (37-38), some of the other sections simply fell flat to me. The authors seem to want to cram a lot of quotations, references, and theories within the early portion of this book. However, I do not see how these concepts are being put within a larger framework. It just doesn’t work for me. If I wanted to study Freire, I think it would be better to read Freire; a brief one page history of Freire might be appropriate if it were contextualized within a larger framework of ideas. Here, however, this Freire section seems to serve no purpose other than simply to give a sort of cliff notes version of Freire’s history and ideas. My personal preference when it comes to this type of reading would be to look at a few authors in detail, so that I can get a better feel for how they fit within the history of a movement. However, in their quest to make the book as expansive as possible and include every different figure they find relevant, I believe the authors of this volume have done a disservice to readers. Instead of learning in depth about a few key points, I feel as if I learned a very small, discrete amount of information on far, far too many topics and ideas. Reading through this volume, I can’t help but feel that we are skating on the surface of many issues, but we’re not seeing any concept handled with a degree of depth or detail. For example, one area I really found interesting was the book’s concept of “whiteness,” especially how critical and race theories must stand “in relation to whiteness” (35). I probably would have enjoyed reading fifty pages about that concept, because I probably don’t entirely appreciate how oppressive the undercurrent of “whiteness” is within our culture, and I would rather like to see such an issue uncovered in detail. Unfortunately, the book only gave me a few brief thoughts on that issue before returning to its larger literature review structure. As we continue with this book, I sincerely hope that it can start focusing in on a few specific historical thinkers or general ideas in more depth.

On Critically Conscious Research Ch. 1-3

So far I am really enjoying On Critically Conscious Research. I was drawn to the study of rhetoric as an undergraduate by rhetoric's main purpose as a tool to enact social change. Rhetoric is the effective use of persuasion that incorporates logos, ethos, and pathos to move the minds and hearts of the audience to action. By this definition, it can be applied to any issue that the rhetor wishes to create understanding of or empathy for, making it useful for any field of study or interdisciplinary work. Willis et al say that "the heart of critical theorizing is critical consciousness" which is an individual's awareness of his or her self and the external world, including other cultures and races (3). Critical consciousness involves examining social and cultural issues in a way that seeks to encourage universal justice and equality, making it the basis for ethical rhetoric and research.

Rhetoric encourages critical thinking skills by teaching rhetors how to examine an argument from different angles, search for logical fallacies, and answer any possible objections. By learning what rhetoric is and how it is used, people can gain a more objective view of the world and increase their critical consciousness. Therefore rhetoric is both a method for enhancing critical consciousness and a vehicle for practicing critical theory, with both aspects being interrelated and interactive.

Willis et al describe many different perspectives that critical theory is applied to, including aspects of race, gender, social class and language. These different perspectives often intersect and combine in different ways, creating a complex matrix of various viewpoints that critical theory researchers can and must take to study a related group of individuals. Critical theory encourages equality and understanding of all peoples, moving away from the Western, Euro-centric cultural norms that are so pervasive within the educational system of the United States.

While reading these chapters, I was reminded of an essay I read for another class last week,"Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon" by Raka Shome. She asserts that the rhetorical canon needs to be completely overhauled to include women and minorities, not by simply including their writings with those of White, European men, but by changing the way we view the entire canon. Shome also states that when women and minorities are brought into the existing canon, they are still the "other" in relation to White men, so their position within the rhetorical canon is unchanged. This principle can be broadened to include any canon of knowledge that is so heavily anchored in White Euro-centrism, so we must begin examining all cultures through the lens of critical theory and creating canons that reflect the postmodern, globalized world.

On Women and White People.

Not to state the obvious, but this book varies greatly from our others. I found myself wandering away from the text a bit, and i was a bit less captivated and felt the text was repetitive at times. It did have some useful guidelines, but it took a while for em to see them through what I widely viewed as a literature review.

The first chapter focuses on some of the people that laid the groundwork for critically conscious research. Much of it reiterated the things we have heard before, which is, capitalism and criticisms of such tend to overpower the issues concerning racism and sexism. But of course, we can't blame these scholars for not paying attention to women and ethnicities besides their own because it was just a product of the time...sure. Though I am not happy with this perception, it does prove that research is ever-evolving through history and that much of it is historically constructed. From this notion, we can expand our view on critically conscious research.

The second chapter ventures across the world to look at other scholars that opened the field of critically conscious research a bit more. We're reminded that the assertions we make about the world and things around us are informed by our cultures; and those meanings we make because of our culture are important and valuable to critically conscious research. The chapter ends emphasizing that we cannot ignore the oppressions of ethnicities (other than white) and the suppression of women.

The last chapter hones in on research that is attempting to get away from research from the past that focused on white males. All of the the different approaches mentioned in the chapter seem to agree on one thing, to be aware of the differences and power struggles in order to reach justice. It's not that we can take away the "white privilege" that has been engrained in us, but we can become critically aware of it in order to move away from it and its dominance. One of the many ways we can become active learners is through narrative and gaining perspective from narrative of other groups; which really ties in with Dr. Jackson's class this semester. To end, we need to draw from multiple sources, whether it be from women, other cultures and races, women of other ethnicites, etc. to challenge the traditional research that has been established.

Critically Conscious Blog Post

This week, we begin a new book, On Critically Conscious Research. This book so far has been markedly different from our previous readings. It is much more theoretical and philosophical. Rather than describing methods or laying out ways of research, this material looks at the underpinnings and motivations for critically conscious research.

The first chapter was “A Framework for Understanding Critically Conscious Language and Literacy Research.” It looked at three of the major early theorists who began the development of critical consciousness: Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Their theories, though lacking modern notions of gender and racial equality, laid the foundations of an understanding of critical awareness, social construction, ways of knowing, and power relationships that later critical theories react to and build upon.

The most important departure from Kant, Hegel, and Marx in the type of critical consciousness preferred by Willis et al is a focus on how critical consciousness is shaped and shapes marginalized groups, specifically women and people of color. Thus, in subsequent chapters, the authors present ideas from these groups to counteract a Anglicized and paternalized body of knowledge.

The second chapter of the readings is “A History of the Ideas Underpinning Critical Consciousness,” which starts by examining which groups took up the ideas of Kant, Hegel, and Marx and developed the ideas we know now as “critical consciousness” and “critical research.” The Frankfurt group (and it subsequent evolutions) was one the first bodies of scholars to examine this. The chapter then moves into race relations in the United States, which have led to racial contributions and corrections to existing ideas of critical consciousness. Since knowledge and knowing are socially and geographically shaped, the authors explicitly include contextualized ideas from writers, activists, and theorists of different races, genders, and locations in their historic time periods.

The final chapter in this week’s reading was “Critical Consciousness: Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy.” After moving through history, this chapter hovers around contemporary times and examines current ideas about how today’s society still faces challenges of overcoming class, race, and sexual oppression. Specifically, they look at three lenses, critical race theory, critical feminisms, and critical pedagogy to examine how language and literacy practices continue to shape, maintain, or disrupt existing power structures through education.

The authors focused for a bit on how Whiteness is perceived as a norm and this leads to all other races being judged against the (perception of) “acultural” White. One exception to White people who viewed themselves as acultural was a group of Irish who displayed the same sense of unique cultural pride and preservation as peoples of Color. I have heard of theories that make Irish people “non-White” because of their history of being colonized. It could be interesting to study this group in conjunction with Critical White Studies. Perhaps this colonized group had an easier time transitioning into the post-colonial world than other groups who do not appear White. (My own personal bias comes into play with my interest here, so it is possibly too tangential).

On Critically Conscious Research Reviews

I'd like to start out by saying that this book is a huge disappointment from the last one. So far the first forty-nine pages have been a windy literature review. In the words of a David Foster Wallace essay I read recently, “Hix's analysis of the players he does cover suffers from the scholarly anality that's so common to published dissertations, an obsession with the jots and tittle of making excruciatingly clear what he's saying and where he's going […] make the reader wish Hix's editor had helped him delete gestures that seem directed at thesis committees rather than paying customers” (141-142).

Of course, I have the same complaint with several of the books we've read in other classes, so no big deal. It's just, the more of this type of work I read, the more familiar I am with the oft-repeated sources, which makes the next literature review more repetition and thus more boring to read, ad nauseum.

The introductory chapter is overly emotional and broad, starting with the angle that Bad Things happen and they're so Unspeakably Bad we need to have Critical Theory to eff the ineffable. I found a few things from this first chapter to be of note. Specifically, on page three, “others aim to resurrect class as a central theme....” Has class not been a central theme since Marx? What am I missing here? Also, the critiques against Kant et al. for their (temporarily normative) opinions / leanings in regards to sexism and racism. Are there scholars who discount their thinking because of this? Does that invalidate any scholarly work older than 100 years, or just the stuff by people lucky enough to not put their views on the subjects into print? Would someone in a hundred years look at this work and consider it to be sexist / racist because even though it starts with a Crit Theory that's all-encompassing it continues only analyzing white men and then Americans of African descent primarily?

Loved the idea of Roots vs. Routes, highlight of book so far. Their take on Gramsci was much more understandable than Villanueva's, and this introduced me to Fanon for the first time. Their Freire explanation was not great. I was surprised to see Derrida and Foucault referred to as sociologists. Is that common? Wikipedia refers to both as philosophers. I found the connection between liberation theology and Marxism to be insightful.

Finally, the third chapter raised some good but inflated points. Colorblindness as a continuation of hegemony issued the most resonance in me. We've danced around that issue before, but I hadn't seen it put that succinctly. The short debate about American Indian studies, the nomenclature and the approach reminded me of Alexie's professor-student conflicts within Indian Killer. Finally, on page forty, the authors state that they recognize Feminism isn't a monolithic institution, but instead composed of many fragments. I'd be curious to know what large branch of critical theory (of any discipline) they consider to be monolithic in contrast – I doubt one exists.