The Dialogical Challenge of Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy

• In Event: Learning in the Age of Digital Reason: Reinventing Dialogue

Abstract

This presentation introduces the main problems with educational postmodernism, elaborates Peter McLaren’s return towards the Marxist-humanist trajectory, and addresses contemporary challenges to Marx’s dialectical thought (McLaren et al, 2008; McLaren, 2006). It analyses global changes in the structure of production, and juxtaposes the mass society shaped by one-way media such as television with the network society shaped by bi-directional communication powered by the Internet (McLaren and Rikowski, 2000; Carr, 2011; Nelson, 1991; Sigman, 2007). On that basis, the presentation brings the Marxist and Freirean approaches to dialogue into the age of the digital reason.
The presentation reveals critical potentials of ecopedagogy (Evans, 2012) at the intersections between education and information and communication technologies and analyses the main messages from Ivan Illich (Ilich, 1971; Illich, 1973; see also Fassbinder, 2008). It explores the main features of the emerging digital cultures, and links them to cybernetic capitalism. It examines contemporary dialogic approaches, identifies underlying values and ideologies, and links them to the divisions between the global South and the global North (Harvey, 1990; Kolhatkar, 2014).
The presentation looks into the relationships between information and power (Leech, 2012) and relates them to dialogue as a building block of the projects of collective research and collective intelligence. It explores algorithmic regulation through technological innovation, analyses various challenges pertaining to ‘big data’, and explores what it means to engage in dialogue in the age of the digital reason (Morozov, 2014). Finally, it provides a brief practical insight into the challenges and opportunities pertaining to dialogic knowledge development and dissemination using the example of author's dialogic research papers.

References
Carr, N. (2011). The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton.
Evans, T.L. (2012). Occupy Education: learning and living sustainability. New York: Peter Lang.
Fassbinder, S. (2008). Capitalist Discipline and Ecological Discipline, Green Theory and Praxis, 4(2), 87-101.
Harvey, D. (1990). The Condition of Postmodernity: an enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/20/rise-of-data-death-of-politics-evgeny-morozov¬algorithmic-regulation (accessed 14 July 2014).
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling Society. London: Marion Boyars.
Illich, I. (1973). Tools for Conviviality. London: Marion Boyars.
Kolhatkar, S. (2014). Orwell’s Dystopian Future is Amost Here: a conversation with Glenn Greenwald, Truthdig, 3 July. http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/orwells_dystopian_future_is_almost_here_a_conversation_20 140703 (accessed 14 July 2017).
Leech, G. (2012). Capitalism: a structural genocide. London: Zed Books.
McLaren, P. & Rikowski, G. (2000). Pedagogy for Revolution against Education for Capital: an e-dialogue on education in capitalism today, Cultural Logic, 4(1).

Author

• Peter L. McLaren, Chapman University