The “Hidden Injuries” of Critical Pedagogy

Abstract

This article serves as both a response to, and a critique of, Susan Gabel’s discussion on the theoretical limits of critical pedagogy. It begins by exploring the works of Hannah Arendt—in particular her concern with the ethical significance of “acts of recognition”—and their potential for reconstituting the theoretical premises of pedagogy. The paper also explores Arendt’s conceptual idea about the need for, and significance of, recognizing and responding both to oneself and others in the search for an ethical praxis. It thus opens up a potential theoretical space for responding to the ethical limits and theoretical impasses that are currently manifest in contemporary visions of pedagogy. At the level of critique, a central argument is that perhaps we need to work more diligently at a theoretical level to resolve the epistemological, ontological, and existential tensions residing at the center of critical pedagogy, rather than restrict our analysis to cultural critique alone. Such analyses are indeed important, but they may overemphasize the regulative elements of pedagogical language at the expense of taking up a novel ethical stance within pedagogy itself, of which “diverse ability” is only one representative. At the same time, the article attempts to identify the dangers and liberal traps one may encounter when working through the difficult problems of critical pedagogy and discusses the need to query our own concerns and desires as they are reconceptualized inside the frame of a pedagogical position.