Toward an Embodied Critical Pedagogy of Discomfort as a Decolonizing Teaching Strategy

• In Event: Citizen-Scholars as Agentic Subjects in the University Curriculum Decolonising Initiative in South Africa

Abstract

This paper reports on the experiences of the authors in exploring a humanising critical pedagogy of discomfort to practice social justice through a series of lectures with a group of predominantly white South African graduate students. The primary focus of these lectures was on issues that dealt with race, privilege, and inequality. The paper reflects on the difficulties and challenges the authors faced in adopting this pedagogical approach. The theoretical framing of the paper is based on the ideas of Biesta (2013) who argues that education involves risk and is not always secure and predictable. By giving students a voice and allowing them to articulate their own personal narratives we concur with Biesta that education need not be risk-free, but that academics should push the boundaries in making education in South Africa riskier by challenging our students in the classroom. This is because over the years as lecturers we have attended many conferences and colloquia on decolonising the university landscape, where the argument has been that our curricula and pedagogical practices are too evasive about issues of race and racism. Biesta (2013) argues against teachers who see their role as making the learning process as smooth and enjoyable as possible, and who will not ask difficult questions and confront inconvenient truths or introduce complex knowledge in the hope that students will leave as satisfied customers. We then elaborate what we mean by a “critical pedagogy of discomfort” using the ideas of Bozalek, Carolissen, Leibowitz and Boler (2013), who argue that a critical pedagogy is a useful strategy to understand teaching and learning about difference. Bozalek et al. (2013: 3) write: “This pedagogy invites students to critique their deeply held assumptions, and to destabilise their views of themselves and their worlds”. These authors remind us that the process of learning can be painful and traumatic, but it is directed to the future as it gives participants an opportunity to revise previously held views and arrive at new understandings.
A qualitative approach was adopted for the data collection process, in which the researchers took on the role as participant observers. Journal recordings were used as the main source of data. Addressing the challenges and difficulties we faced, we then use the responses of the students to argue that a critical pedagogy of discomfort is not enough to counteract an education that promotes instrumentalisation and commodification of knowledge in order to cultivate social justice as a form of decolonisation. From this perspective, we argue for a shift towards an ‘embodied critical pedagogy of discomfort’ that takes into account an acute awareness (epistemological and ontological) of embodiment that can serve as a decolonising teaching strategy. With the student demand for a decolonised curriculum in South Africa this paper could make a significant scholarly contribution.
Biesta, G. J. J. 2013. The beautiful risk of education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Bozalek, V., Leibowitz, B., Carolissen, R. & Boler, M. (eds.). 2013. Discerning critical hope in educational practices. London and New York: Routledge.

Authors

• Sylvan Everton Blignaut, Nelson Mandela University

• Oscar Koopman, Cape Peninsula University of Technology