Augusto Rossatto, Cesar; Allen, Ricky Lee & Pruyn, Marc (Eds.) (2006) Reinventing Critical Pedagogy: Widening the Circle of Anti-Oppression Education. Reviewed by Eloise Tan, McGill University

Augusto Rossatto, Cesar; Allen, Ricky Lee & Pruyn, Marc (Eds.) (2006) Reinventing Critical Pedagogy: Widening the Circle of Anti-Oppression Education. NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Pp. ix + 258         ISBN 0-7425-3888-5 Reviewed by Eloise Tan McGill University December 4, 2008 Critical pedagogy is facing questions that challenge it to push its theory and praxis to new levels. This collection takes critical pedagogy to task and asks critical pedagogues how its theoretical base effectively deals with issues such as race within its community and class bias within its community. All of this is done in the effort to push the ideology to re-examine itself. The edited collection Reinventing Critical Pedagogy is joined by another recent edited collection by Kincheloe and McLaren (2007) Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? in taking stock of critical pedagogy’s current theoretical and practical frameworks and in identifying some of the key challenges that the discourse faces. In keeping with the self-reflexive practice of criticality, critical pedagogy has always been a field wherein scholars and practitioners have questioned and challenged critical pedagogy such as along lines of feminism in Luke and Gore’s edited collection (1992). This type of questioning and challenging has worked to move the discourse of critical pedagogy in its theoretical positioning and make it more relevant and inclusive to the marginalized communities whom it works to engage and empower. Reinventing Critical Pedagogy emerged out of a collaboration of scholars who attended the Second International Conference on Education, Labor, and Emancipation (SICELE) that was held jointly in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in 2004. The theme of the conference provides the focus for the edited collection which was to take critical pedagogy and “push [it] into areas where dialogue becomes difficult and a sense of unity in diversity becomes a question mark. For, in order to reinvent, one must critically reflect upon one’s own praxis, as well as the praxis of the community as a whole” (p. x). The collection comes through strong on its promise to push the limits of comfort within the critical pedagogy community, but it does so in a way that promotes, rather than shuts down, dialogue; this is no small feat. The closeness of the multiple authors’ experiences and conflicts bring the reader right into this space of being engaged in a discourse, wanting to speak out about limits of the discourse, and negotiating those positions with the fear of standing too far out of the discourse’s lines. The contributors to the collection encompass graduate students, scholars relatively new to the field, and scholars such as Peter McLaren who are long time advocates of critical (revolutionary, in McLaren’s case) pedagogy. The content of each contribution also varies from the theoretical, to quantitative and qualitative research analyses. In Allen’s chapter on The Race Problem in the Critical Pedagogy he poignantly reveals: Writing this chapter on the race problem in critical pedagogy makes me nervous because I fear what might happen when powerful critical pedagogy figures read it. As an assistant professor soon to be going up for tenure, I understand the importance of having influential allies; being a radical in academia can be a very tricky business. (p.3) Allen’s powerful opening chapter strikes a balance between personal narrative and critical review of the canon of critical pedagogy, specifically two chapters within Darder et al.’s 2003 The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2003). One of the author’s he critiques, Peter Mclaren, is also a contributor to Reinventing Critical Pedagogy. This type of personal and intimate self-reflection coupled with strong theoretical underpinnings characterizes the majority of chapters in the collection. The book is divided into three parts: Part I on race, ethnicity, and critical pedagogy, Part II on theoretical concerns, and Part III on applications, extensions, and empirical studies. It is interesting that while there is an entire section devoted to race and ethnicity, no special attention is paid to issues of sexuality, class, ability, or language in the collection. However this privileging of race and ethnicity for the collection may have served the purpose of shedding light on, as Allen remarks, the “elephant in the room” or the “dirty laundry,” namely, the race problem of critical pedagogy (p.4). Overall the three parts work well together, but although each individual piece in Part III is strong, the uniting theme of the final part is strained as it may not be entirely clear what the common thread is supposed to be among the pieces grouped in Part III’s Applications, Extensions, and Empirical Studies. Nevertheless each piece makes a strong contribution to the collection. Part I: Race, ethnicity, and critical pedagogy The five essays in this section offer hard hitting looks at the evolution of racism within the discourse of critical pedagogy, school communities, and in society at large using the example of the American prison system. The authors, like most of the collection, base their writing on the U.S. and focus on Latina/o, Chicana/o and, Black and African American representations and identities. It must be recognized, however, that Allen works to be inclusive by using Bonilla-Silva’s notion of the “collective Black” which extends the category of Black to non- Black groups that suffer similar racist treatment. The authors in this section problematize race in the post modern 21st century and work to dispel the binary myth of Black vs. White that is largely endemic to the U.S.. Bejarano’s rich ethnographic research presented in the chapter Latino Youths at the Crossroads of Sameness and Difference embodies this exploding of binaries as she works to deconstruct the myth that Mexicana/os and Chicana/os are homogeneous and are mutually exclusive categories for those that ascribe to either of them. In Bonilla-Silva and Embrick’s chapter on Racism Without Racists, they look at the evolution of racist rhetoric to show various strategies or tools that racist people employ in their daily discourse; the authors refer to these rhetorical and linguistic strategies as “race talk.” (p.26) Jones’s chapter on Violence, Discourse, and Dixieland uses a Foucaudian analysis to make meaning out of an event where her Black students who were members of an academic team were shot at while in a visiting town (no one was physically harmed). A noteworthy contribution is Jones’s discussion of “microborders,” in which she offers an alternative way of theorizing borders within the U.S (p.35). Also her ability to meld a Foucauldian analysis with the Africanist epistemology of Sankofa demonstrates the cross-disciplinary and cross-epistemological richness of critical pedagogy. Part II: Theoretical Concerns The collection moves naturally from the chapters in part I that were largely inspired by personal narratives to the type of theoretical re-thinking in part II. In this section the reader gets a variety of perspectives on the theoretical discourse of critical pedagogy. The chapters work well together and each brings a different focus to the theoretical debate on critical pedagogy. Opening with a strong chapter by well noted critical pedagogue McLaren, it is immediately clear that although this chapter centers on theoretical concerns, one of the most prevalent theoretical concerns of critical pedagogues is how to unite its theory with praxis. A useful chapter for newcomers to critical pedagogy is Cho’s chapter that offers a re-tracing of the history of American critical pedagogy in an effort to address whether or not critical pedagogy can still be an effective agent for social change in American schools. Ross and Vinson’s chapter is an effective accompaniment to Cho’s chapter, as they revisit the much tossed around buzz words "social justice" and deconstruct what social justice means for educators in critical pedagogy. Rossatto, one of the editors, contributes an extremely timely and relevant chapter on religion, liberation theology, and critical pedagogy, where he looks at the relationship between religion, education, and politics in the current American context. Part III: Applications, Extensions, and Empirical Studies As mentioned earlier in this review, I found this section to be full of strong individual chapters but lacking the coherence of a united section that is found in the previous two parts of the collection. The five chapters vary widely in focus from Lesser and Blake’s chapter on critical pedagogy and mathematics, Goodin’s chapter on environmental education, Jaramillo’s contribution on her research at a Hooters with waitresses and their customers, Lea’s interesting re-working of Freirean pedagogy and cultural literacies, and Tellez’s inspired accounts of a U.S. – Mexican border community’s experience of globalization from below. The two chapters by Lesser and Blake and by Goodin will probably be most useful for practitioners of critical pedagogy specializing as they tackle classroom experiences with curriculum as critical pedagogues. It may have been interesting and useful to educators to dedicate a whole chapter to "applications" such as those two chapters. Jaramillo and Lea’s two chapters both presented intriguing uses of critical pedagogy, yet the collection may have flowed easier if they were grouped in Part II of the book where they would have been joined by similar company. After reading through this inspiring collection, readers may ask themselves, "Is this a reinvention of critical pedagogy?" The fifteen chapters definitely do move critical pedagogy deeper into the practices of self-reflexivity for a discourse and into new theoretical internal challenges such as Cho’s chapter On Language of Possibility: Revisiting Critical pedagogy. However is this type of stretching and questioning truly a reinvention of critical pedagogy or is it taking some of the premises of critical pedagogy – that of criticality, self-reflexivity, and a politicized ontology – and executing them more rigorously than we in the field have been doing thus far? Another question we can ask of the book is whether it widens the circle of anti-oppression education as mentioned in the subtitle. Truly, the book deepens the existing circle of anti-oppression education, deepens because it takes the already prevalent issues of Black, Latina/o, and Chicana/o communities and looks at the nuances and fleshes these out in innovative ways. But is this widening the circle? Yes, there is a chapter on mathematics and one on environmental science pedagogy, which are not subjects traditionally associated with anti-oppression education. Yet as mentioned earlier in this review, the collection largely stays within the confines of what is traditionally represented as American concerns, glossing over non-Black populations, linguistic minorities other than Spanish, and issues of sexuality and heteronormism. Perhaps the readers would benefit in the future from seeing more of a variety of issues theorized within a more global context of critical pedagogy. It is important to remember that this collection was borne out of a conference located on the U.S. – Mexican border and justifiably focuses on issues that concern the area; a more global approach to critical pedagogy can be sought out elsewhere in the ever growing literature on critical pedagogy. Reinventing Critical Pedagogy is a welcome addition to this growing literature and is definitely worthwhile reading for both those who are new and who are seasoned in critical education. Overall it is a well thought out and inspired group of writings on critical pedagogy that are not afraid to face its own shortcomings in an effort to push the field’s boundaries. References Darder, A., Baltodano, M. & Torres, R. (Eds.) (2003) Critical pedagogy reader. New York: Routledge Farmer. Kincheloe, J. L. & Mclaren, P. (Eds.) (2007) Critical pedagogy: Where are we now? New York: Peter Lang . Luke, C. & Gore, J. (Eds.) (1992) Feminisms and critical pedagogy.London: Routledge. About the reviewer Eloise Tan is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University in Montreal. She is currently working on a dissertation based on her research with local filmmakers pursuing a participatory filmmaking project on hip hop and youth in Montreal. Her research interests include multicultural education, subculture and education, and media literacy.