Recovery as resistance: bell hooks, engaged pedagogy, and Buddhist thought

ABSTRACT

How do we style ourselves and others as scholars in the field of critical education? What parts of ourselves and others do we regard as salient (or not) in our accounts? And what are the forces that underlie such decisions? In this article, I submit that secularisation is a persistent epistemic and ontological condition that shapes the study of key figures in critical education. Through a sketch of how eminent radical educator bell hooks is commonly represented in this field – and recovering the threads of Buddhist thought from her own corpus as a counterpoint – I consider how the secularising impulse may obscure some of her unique educational insights and produce racialising effects, specifically the whitewashing of her intellectual provenance.

KEYWORDS:

• hooks, bell
• secularism
• religion
• race
• whiteness
• Buddhism
• Thich Nhat Hanh

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. While this article deals primarily with the influence of Buddhism on her educational thought, it is important to register the important role that Christian spirituality as transmitted through the US black church, and embodied in figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., also play in her work (see Yancy & hooks, 2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Remy Low

Remy Y.S. Low is a lecturer in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. He is committed to cultivating culturally responsive educators who can work in diverse contexts. This informs his research in the history and philosophy of education, which flows in two broad directions. First, he critically examines the social, cultural, and religious factors that have shaped education in the present. Second, he explores ways of enhancing educator responsiveness through contemplative practices from different traditions (e.g. mindfulness, deep listening, reflective writing, process art, mind-body exercises). Remy is the author of a recently published book titled The Mind and Teachers in the Classroom: Exploring Definitions of Mindfulness (2021, Palgrave Pivot).