What counts as radical scholarship these days?

[Antonio Garcia]

I have become more and more involved in the question of what counts as radical scholarship? Working along side Kris Holland, we have been pondering this issue for a while. We have not come to any substantial conclusion. My issue is really taking up how to be anti-hegemonic, or at least subscribing to this tenet in re-conceptualist curriculum theory and cultural studies, and still have a place in the academy. I really like Pinar's work as well as Grumet's because it hits on the key issue of what we want to know which is how can we be artists and academics? I subscribe to the french tradition of Barthes, Baudrillard, Derrida, Kristeva, etc.. who pose that the text is not complete, or as Lacan might assert there is always a lack of full communication of the senders thought and sentiment. Shouldn't my work be misunderstood and misinterpreted? Shouldn't there be some aesthetic question to the text, and I might add textuality of our field, that produces new lines of thought rather than incestuous reproduction of hegemony? Can the text become performative and resurrect the author from its postmortem repose as Foucault asserted? This resurrection being an "autopsy of the author" as well as an intimate affair. The problem seems too, as Hannah Arendt famously discussess "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution," that once we say something is radical or "this is it" then it begins its hegemonic gestation. The whole notion proposed by the critical theoretical work, with Henri Giroux especially, was that this "packaging" or having a "product" called radicalism should never be done as so. The fundamental tenet that makes our postmodern field what it is in respect to this criticalism is that it is always self-critiquing and reflecting on its situatedness and function in the current social, cultural, and historical situation. As you can see that this is weighing heavily on me as I'm applying for jobs and looking for a place that I can continue to navigate this terrain.

Any feedback on this issue would be great. Kris and I present at Bergamo and we're on the fence about how we will be perceived taking up this matter.

Panel presentation on the nature of curriculum theory
Title: “Welcome to the Intellectual Red Light District: Working from the Margins in Curriculum Theory.”
Panelist: Antonio Garcia and Kristopher Holland
Respondents: Rob Helfenbein and Bill Reynolds.

Curriculum theory asks you, as a prospective or practicing teacher, to consider your position as engaged with yourself and your students and colleagues in the construction of a public sphere, a public sphere not yet born, a future that cannot be discerned in, or even though from, the present.
-William Pinar (2004, p.37-38)

Curriculum theory moves when in multiplicities and lines of flight, not in dualisms or either/ors. Curriculum theory IS not this or that – defining it leads to this or that.
-William Reynolds & Julie Webber (2004, p. 2)

Overview
In the technocratic era of education fueled by standardization and corporate ideology stimulating hegemony in public schooling and higher education (Apple, 2004; Gabbard, 2008; Giroux, 1988), what place is there for free floating intellectualism and creativity? Are we in a post-reconceptualist era and if so what does that mean for young curriculum theorists and scholarship (Malewski, 2009)? How do we cope with “the nightmare that is the present” (Pinar, 2004, p. 5)? As we reflect on our path as curriculum theorists examining the current and future terrain of education, we are confronted with several important questions, but the simple one is “What is radical and why do we need radical intellectualism?” How are young scholars armed with intellectual wit, creativity, and repudiation for hegemonic propriety to create and participate in the future of curricular thought and history?

To be inside and outside a position at the same time – to occupy a territory while loitering skeptically on the boundary – is often where the most intensely creative ideas stem from.
–Terry Eagleton (2003, p. 40)

This panel focuses on the past, present, and future of curriculum theory and scholarship confronting the notion of “radical” intellectualism within the field. Panelists hope to illuminate their conceptions and pose critical questions for respondents in order to participate in a dialogic pedagogy resulting in constructive insights and critique. The three broad questions that will be reflected in the work of the panelist will be:

• What is the role of the intellectual and why (historical and current)?
• What will become of curriculum theory’s creativity and subjectivity?
• How can curriculum theorists/intellectuals work credibly and creatively in the technocratic era of hyper-hegemony?

The respondents who volunteered for this panel represent the field of cultural studies and curriculum theory. Their reflections on the panelists’ thoughts will hopefully pose interesting possibilities as well as plausible troubling possibilities. As rising academics in the field of cultural studies and curriculum theory it is important that the old rank mentor the new scholars and help them situate and locate radical intellectualism in the field.

References
Apple, M. (2004). Curriculum and Ideology. New York: Routledge.
Eagleton, T. (2003). After theory. New York: Basic Books.
Gabbard, D. (2008). Knowledge and power in the global economy: The effects of school reform in a neoliberal/neoconservative age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Giroux, H. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Malewski, E. (2009). Curriculum Studies The Next Moment: Exploring Post-Reconceptualization. New York: Routledge.
Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Reynolds, W. & Webber, J. (2004). Expanding Curriculum Theory: Dis/positions and Lines of Flight. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

1. Antonio Garcia – Indiana University, “Aesthetic Prose and Academic Debauchery: Questioning my Place in Curriculum Theory?”
This paper presents beginning thoughts on radical scholarship in cultural studies and curriculum theory. In particular, how can I incorporate a radical sense of curriculum theory based in the French intellectual tradition (e.g. Althusser, Barthes, Baudrillard, Foucault, Rancière), incorporating Slavoj Žižek’s sexed up sociology and cultural critique via Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Terry Eagleton’s literary swagger. As a rising intellectual operating on the fringe of acceptability how do I maintain credibility inside and outside of the “radical circle?” How does one situate one’s self as a “post reconceptualist” (Malewski, 2009) that engages intellectually and pedagogically in a way that may be misperceived (as it should be according to Derrida’s notion of Différance), but is purposefully ‘offensively provocative’. If curriculum studies and reconceptualism are supposed to be counter-hegemonic (Apple, 2004; Giroux, 2001) then how are we to do so if we (in general) naively operate under the liberal co-option of “I want to be different like everyone else?” Therefore, I explore the possibilities as a new curriculum (reconceptualist) theorist who wants to forge his own mark in the discourses and ‘traditions’. By being a fringe intellectual scholar, one must operate nomadically across various disciplines, which many have done in curriculum theory often relying on cultural studies for guidance (e.g. Henry Giroux, Rob Helfenbein, Joe Klincheloe, and Peter McLaren).
In the era of technocracy (Giroux, 1988; Postman, 1992) we encounter what Jean Baudrillard might refer to as ‘hyper-hegemony’, that is, a hegemony that is more hegemonic than itself and layered infinitely. Though the goal of cultural studies and curriculum theory (by the reconceptualists) is counter-hegemonic movement in intellectualism and praxis (theories and action), I would note that there will always be hegemony, but we, as critical reflective intellectuals and practitioners, should always be cautious of the power and knowledge no matter which cultural, political, or social gestation it comes from. Thus, within the intellectual lies an unconscious autobiography supplementing the outside world for an articulated aesthetic in his/her own interior/arterial world. As “currere is an intensified engagement with daily life, not an ironic detachment from it” (Pinar, 2004, p. 37), we find ourselves reflecting aesthetically on writing as it “unfolds like a game (jeu) that invariably goes beyond its own rules and transgresses its limits” (Foucault, 1984, p.102). Writing and theorizing has little limitation except for the limitations that we accept. As a new curriculum theorist, I ask, “Can scholarship be innovative and questionable while being considered for nomination to certain ideological or disciplinary canons?” In sum, why and how is it radical to fuse the literary aesthetic, psychoanalytic sexualized idiom of Žižek, and proffering counter-hegemonic principles of cultural studies and curriculum theory? Additionally, how do I mediate and contend with the sharks in the fish bowl of academic standards? I’m left pondering how someone like Peter McLaren has established credibility and respect while engaging in border scholarship and fringe intellectualism.

“I continue to stray rather far from the frontiers to the acceptable. I seem always on a collision course with acceptability. I have remained outside the mainstream, in the margins, in the folds of legitimacy or even credibility by normative standards. I think radical intellectuals work better in the borderlands, between worlds” (McLaren, 1997, p.226).

References
Apple, M. (2004). Curriculum and Ideology. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1984). What is an Author? In Rainbow, O. (ed.), The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books.
Giroux, H. (2001). Theory and resistance in education. Towards a pedagogy for the opposition. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
______(1988). Teachers as intellectuals. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Malewski, E. (2009). Curriculum Studies The Next Moment: Exploring Post-Reconceptualization. New York: Routledge.
McLaren, P. (1997). Revolutionary multiculturalism. Boulder, CO: Perseus Books.
Pinar, W. (2004). What is Curriculum Theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books.

2. Kristopher Holland – Indiana University, “How to Write the Conceptual Art of Joseph Beuys? Curriculum Theorizing Beyond the Written Word”

The writer writes in a language and in a logic whose proper system, laws and life his discourse by definition cannot dominate absolutely. He uses them only by letting himself, after a fashion and up to a point, be governed by the system. And the reading must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he uses…a signifying structure that critical reading should produce.
- Jacques Derrida (1997, p. 158)

As an emerging scholar and practicing artist, I continually run up against the task of writing. This medium is the ‘default setting’ for theorizing and communication in the academy. By evoking Derrida above, I wish to radicalize the question of writing in the academy by asking, “Can educational experiences be communicated in a medium other than writing?” It seems the simple answer is yes, but as the conversation becomes complicated I question, “Can the academy open itself up to ‘read’ texts that radically differ in form from standard written texts (See Author, 2002; 2006 below)?” Specifically, do these types of texts, seen as radical departures from the academic system of scholarship (Bourdieu, 1988; Giroux, 2007; Weber, 2001), have a future in curriculum theorizing? How do people learn to read these texts? This paper explores the limits of conceptual art as curriculum theory and implicates a proposal for what curriculum theorizing beyond the written word might look like?
To unwrap the layers and test the limits of the questions posed above, I will examine the work and intellectual life of Joseph Beuys. Though he wrote very little, his art served as a representative discourse on its own and presents a radical perspective of what theory in conceptual art looks like. As a professor of art in Düsseldorf, Germany, his position was constantly being threatened by his radical scholarship and teaching (Godfrey, 1998; Ray, 2001) as well as coming under attack from those whose ideology and institutions he threatened by his activism and work (Ray, 2001). As a radical, he questioned the hidden curriculums of capitalism, the ‘Americanization’ of German culture, autobiography, and environmental destruction (Borer, 1997). He was marginalized by the academy and other hegemonic social/political groups, yet remained relentless in his vision to use art as a means of activism, expression, and social commentary.
After briefly examining the possibilities and challenges of Joseph Beuys’ work, I examine my own conceptual texts and the challenges of communicating them as a teacher. Here I use my autobiographical questions as I continue to navigate the form of discourse (writing) in the academy creatively. Questions that arise as I become more confident in my authorship relate to issues of ‘form’ rather than ‘content’. As a PhD candidate in art education and philosophy of education, can I present my scholarship in ways other than writing and still engage in constructive conversations about educational theory? When I present my scholarship in creative forms (See examples below), is it taken seriously? Thinking of the academic community at large, can one expect, like Beuys, to be able to present work as conceptual art and maintain a role as a serious intellectual? How do other academics perceive this work and where do I publish it, if it can be published at all? Can conceptual art be considered a style of philosophy or theorizing (Rorty, 1982; van Eck, McAllister & van de Vall, 1995) that could join the interdisciplinary nature of curriculum theorizing? Or is this form of scholarship too radical for curriculum theory to bring about ‘understanding, resistance and change’ (Pinar, 2004)?

In sum, I contend that conceptual art involves heightened viewer participation (Godfrey, 1998; Danto, 1998) in which meaning making happens in ways radically different than reading scholarly papers or attending lectures. But can the ‘interdisciplinary study of educational experience’, which William Pinar (Pinar, 2004 p.2) presents as a definition of curriculum theory, be expanded to include conceptual art? This would mean a radical expansion of the default setting of writing as its principle medium of theory (Irwin R. L & de Cosson, 2004) to infuse conceptual art as an input (point of experience), and an output ([re]presentation of the experience) of scholarship. Will this enliven the possibilities of theorizing education (Cole & Knowles, 2008) or is this move too radical?

Author. (2002) Right to Obsession / Du droit a l’Obsession [Derrida, My Derrida]

Author. (2006) The Habermas Machine

References
Borer, A. (1997).The Essential Joseph Beuys. Boston, MA: The MIT Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo Academicus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Cole, A.L., & Knowles, J. G. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative
Research. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications
Danto, A. (1998). After the End of Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Derrida, J. (1997). Of Grammotology. Corrected Edition. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Godfrey, T. (1998). Conceptual Art. London: Phaidon Press.
Giroux, H. (2007). The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-
Academic Complex. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Irwin R. L., & de Cosson Alex (Eds). (2004). A/R/Tography: Rendering Self
Through Arts-Based Living Inquiry. Vancouver, BC: Pacific Educational Press.
Pinar, W. (2004). What is Curriculum Theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ray, Gene. (2001). Joseph Beuys: Mapping the Legacy. D.A.P./Ringling Museum.
Rorty, R. (1982). Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: An Essay on Derrida in
Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
van Eck, C., McAllister, J. & van de Vall, R. (Eds.). (1995). The Question of Style in
Philosophy and the Arts. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Weber, S. (2001). Institution and Interpretation: Expanded Edition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

[solspiré]

Love this entry! Thank you. Wish I could attend your session at the conference! You list many of my fav writers. Do you know jan jogodzinski's work? If not, you'll love him. He knows Zizek personally. jan has a paper called "Unromancing the stone of resistance: In defence of a continued radical politics in visual cultural studies" JSTAE 23 (2003). To get a flavor of jan, see this editorial.

I like Daignault's notion of "thinking is the incarnation of curriculum as composition"; thus the liminal, once encountered, is curriculum. See this if you're interested. And re Peter... if you grow your hair long, wear a trench coat, and carry presen[ce/ts], you can cross the fringe border quite naturally!