Interfering with Capitalism's Spell: Peter McLaren's Revolutionary Liminality

Year 2006, Volume: 2 Issue: 3, 9 - 20, 01.12.2006

Samuel Day Fassbinder

Abstract

McLaren’s recent (post-2000) writings promote a form of agency called “revolutionary critical pedagogy,” and a type of agent, the “committed intellectual” . But one can find an earlier agent-type in McLaren’s (1986) Schooling as a Ritual Performance, the “liminal servant,” that explains how “critical pedagogy is secured by the most fecund of revolutionary talismans, critique” (2005a: 9). Borrowing from Theodor Adorno (1968), I suggest that McLaren’s recent writing uses aspects of the “liminal servant” for the purpose of interfering with the “spell” of capitalist social relations through “revolutionary critical pedagogy.” The beginning prologue examines “revolutionary liminality” in McLaren’s writing; the second part explains how his written discursive strategies (naming the culprit, suggesting icons, theorizing to unite the disaffected) work to act out “revolutionary liminality.”

References

• Adorno, T. W. (2001). “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?” (D. Redmond, Trans.) Retrieved June 6, 2006, from http://www.marx.org/reference/archive/adorno/1968/late-capitalism.htm. (Original work composed 1968)
• Agger, B. (1990). The Decline of Discourse. New York: Falmer Press.
• Anderson, J. L. (1997). Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Grove.
• Fassbinder, S. D. (2006, April 6). The 'Dirty Thirty's' Peter McLaren Reflects on the Crisis of Academic Freedom, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/fassbinder060406.html
• Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum.
• Kalfon, P. (1997) Che, Ernesto Guevara, Una Leyenda de Nuestro Siglo (Che, Ernesto Guevara, A Legend of Our Century). Barcelona: Plaza & Janes.
• McLaren, P. (1986). Schooling as a Ritual Performance. London: Routledge.
• McLaren, P. (2000). Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• McLaren, P. (2005a). Capitalists and Conquerors. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• McLaren, P. (2005b). Red Seminars. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.
• McLaren, P. (Ed.) (2006). Rage and Hope. New York: Peter Lang.
• McLaren, P. & Jaramillo, N. E. (2006). Critical Pedagogy, Latino/a Education, and the Politics of Class Struggle. Cultural Studies/ Critical Methodologies 6:1 , 73-93. Spring, J. (2006). Pedagogies Of Globalization: The Rise of the Educational Security State. Mahway, NJ: L. Erlbaum.
• Turner, V. (1969). The Ritual Process. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Notes
• i] See especially McLaren and Jaramillo (2006), "Critical Pedagogy, Latino/a Education, and the Politics
• of Class Struggle," Cultural Studies/ Critical Methodologies 6:1, pp. 73-93.
• ii] Fassbinder, S. (2006, 6 April). "The 'Dirty Thirty's' Peter McLaren Reflects on the Crisis of Academic
• Freedom," MRZine. Accessed 6 June 2006. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/fassbinder060406.html
• iii] Agger, B. (1990). "Academic Writing as Real Estate," The Decline of Discourse (pp. 122-147).
• iv] In the introduction to Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution, itself titled "Peter
• McLaren: The Poet Laureat of the Educational Left," Joe Kincheloe has already remarked at length on
• Peter's "fusion of reason and emotion" (x)