Critical theory: learning to say "it isn't cricket".
Over the holiday period I worked my way through Stephen D. Brookfield's The Power of Critical Theory: Liberating Adult Learning and Teaching, published by Jossey-Bass in 2005. (Simultaneously published in the UK under the title The Power of Critical Theory for Adult Learning and Teaching by Open University Press).Critical theory is like the game of cricket to a typical Canadian. Aspects are strangely familiar yet most of it is seriously baffling. Then the mere mention of Marx blows the bales off the stumps.
Brookfield finally made sense of it for me. Instead of using cricket analogies or oversimplifying and distorting it, he brilliantly interleaves a clear synthesis of hundreds of direct quotations from the works of Adorno, Althusser, Horkheimer, Fromme, Gramsci, Marcuse, Foucault and especially Habermas, amongst many others. Brookfield illuminates the overlapping yet distinct stances taken by each scholar. Whilst they may focus their critical lenses on economic policy and corporatisation, democratic decision-making, and gender and race relations, Brookfield argues that the emancipatory desire of critical theory obliges authentic, transformative adult learning.
Criticality and critical thinking are about "the ability of individuals to disengage themselves from the tacit assumptions of discursive practices and power relations in order to exert more control over their everyday lives" (Kincheloe, 2000, cited p. 12).
Ideology critique is the term used to describe "this kind of critical distancing from, and then oppositional re-engagement with, the dominant culture...it describes the ways in which people learn to recognise how uncritically accepted and unjust dominant ideologies are embedded in everyday situations and practices " (p. 13). For example, the new fast and furious Twenty20 format of cricket appears to normalise the brutality of batters and bowlers performing like machines. Like in the games of ancient Rome.
Critical theory is certainly about cognitive reflection, but it is more than that. "Ideologies are hard to detect since they are embedded in language, social habits, and cultural forms that combine to shape the way we think about the world. They appear as common sense, as givens, rather than as beliefs that are deliberately skewed to support the interests of a powerful minority" (p. 41). For example, must a game always promise spectacular entertainment to be enjoyed?
Hegemony is the willing consent of individuals to assimilate dominant ideologies (eg. "Twenty20 is good for cricket") even though they ultimately suffer for it. For example, a top-order batsman will agree to play Twenty20 for a quintillion dollars in denial that it may corrupt his skills and thus shorten his career in the traditional cricket format. But worse is that his freedom is curtailed because by playing multiple forms of the game in different countries, he sees his family back home much less. Also, with junior interest then declining in the traditional form of the game, which can take up to five days to play in all its complexity, it atrophies.
A crucial aspect of any critical theory is that it has to allow, even promote, critique of itself and adjust accordingly. On the one hand, it can't degrade to just an emotive response to victimisation. On the other hand it has to be vigilant of its own reification, of becoming an ideology set in concrete. That is what occurred to Marxism, the original critical theory we all claim to know something about (but probably don't), which framed its emancipatory stand as a class struggle that seems so archaic today, comrade. All the totalitarian and communist corruption and propaganda that followed had little to do with critical theory. The legacy is Marxiphobia: a mistaken belief that critical theory is a dangerous, fanatical, undemocratic threat.
In my circles I often hear comments about the persistent gaps and tensions between rich and poor, between north and south, between trades and professions, between volunteerism and entrepreneurship, between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, between new immigrant and established, between religious and secular, and between digitally literate and illiterate. We bristle at calling corporate staff "human resources" or "human capital" and question the apparent commodity value of a "learning seat" or a "learning object" to lift staff skills. We are sold "experiences" as commodities in boxes, airline destinations and telecommunications contracts. We smile upon the Slow Movement. Only cricket commentators unchained to commercial TV are scathing about Twenty20. Such recognitions of institutionalised debasement and distortion certainly fit within an analytical framework of critical theory. So what is there to fear?
Many may be surprised that strands of action research, enacted either as an academic methodology and as a participatory development approach by a lay community, have their philosophical roots in critical theory.
Brookfield sees adult learning tasks embedded in critical theory. He gives each of these tasks a whole chapter of explication prefaced by this introduction:
Critical theory is normatively grounded in a vision of a society in which people live collectively in ways that encourage the free exercise of creativity without foreclosing that of others. In such a society people see their individual well-being as integrally bound with that of the collective. They act toward each other with generosity and compassion and are ever alert to the presence of injustice, inequity and oppression. Creating such a society can be understood as entailing a series of learning tasks: learning to recognise and challenge ideology that attempts to portray the exploitation of the many by the few as a natural state of affairs, learning to uncover and counter hegemony, learning to unmask power, learning to pursue liberation, learning to reclaim reason, and learning to practice democracy (p. 39).Power is viewed as endemic, institutionalised and self-preserving. Our mission should be to learn to recognise it and where necessary and appropriate, counter it by making it visible and accountable. For example, spectators may believe that Twenty20 is devised in their interests, but the motivation is for the governing body (ICC) to "box" it into a two-hour prime time commercial TV slot for high advertising revenue. So commercial media is unmasked as a powerful stakeholder.
As I move forward in my research and study, it is the last task that interests me most. Brookfield suggests that a learning task about democracy "might be to explore how adults become aware of and learn to live with the contradictions of subscribing both to freedom and democracy (p. 64)." In other words, you're never without constraint when you need to get along with your neighbours. Another task might be to "investigate the general problem of how adults learn to live with the element of contingency inherent in the democratic process" (ibid). Some people just can't cope with indeterminacy. Lastly, Brookfield lists several learning tasks which effectively questions the capacity for critical thinking and analysis by citizens. He only offers a few suggestions, acknowledging his ongoing struggles to captivate graduate students about critical theory.
Saying that it isn't cricket means taking a stand against something that is counter to the fair and egalitarian spirit of the game. It takes conviction to think and act critically.
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