Political Science Pedagogy: Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice

CRITICAL POLITICAL THEORY AND RADICAL PRACTICE
POLITICAL
SCIENCE
PEDAGOGY
A Critical, Radical
and Utopian Perspective
William W. Sokoloff
Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice
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William W. Sokoloff
Political Science
Pedagogy
A Critical, Radical and Utopian Perspective
William W. Sokoloff
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Edinburg, TX, USA
Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice

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Dedicated to John Anson Warner, a great friend, mentor and teacher
Preface
I worked with non-traditional students for five years at a satellite cam-

pus of Chapman University College (CUC). Most of my students were
in their thirties and they were going back to the university to earn a
bachelor’s degree while juggling work and family obligations. They had
high expectations of the instructors. The eighteen to twenty-two-year-
olds I taught at other universities made modest demands on me. The
CUC students were more demanding and expected me to teach them
how to complete the assignments. They wanted me to be precise about
my expectations. I had to model what I wanted them to do and I had to
explain how to do it. When I was not clear, they were honest and told
me. This caught me off guard. Up to this point in time, I had given little
thought to teaching. When I taught, I prepped, I showed up, I gave a
lecture, I answered a few questions, I held office hours and then I went
home. After all, I had an M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science. I was a
published scholar. I assumed that it was obvious what teaching meant.
Adult and non-traditional students challenged me to be a better
teacher. Through working with them, I learned my graduate education
had left out something foundational, namely, basic reflection on peda-
gogy and the skill set needed for effective teaching. I had a limited set of
activities (mostly based on lecture) that I believed constituted teaching.
Up to this point in time, I did not read a single book on pedagogy. Why
would I? No one else did, or so I thought. Nor did I encounter a single
person at an academic conference and as a colleague who read anything
vii
viii PREFACE
on teaching and learning. This oversight, namely, the failure to reflect on

teaching and learning, says a lot about the discipline of political science.
This led me to write this book on political science pedagogy. Ultimately,
I have my students at CUC to thank for helping me reinvent myself as
an educator. They put me on a path that made me realize that I not only
needed to reflect on teaching but that this experience and how I changed
in response might be valuable to others. I decided to write a book on
political science pedagogy to share what I have learned about teaching. I
also wanted to reflect on the discipline of political science from the van-
tage point of pedagogy and democratic citizenship.
My reading and research within and outside the discipline of political
science confirmed my hunch. The field of political science has paid insuf-
ficient attention to classroom instruction.1 Originally, political science
was a pedagogical practice that arose in response to the need for a broad
form of citizenship training.2 I discovered that the operationalization of
this imperative has little to do with democratic citizenship. When it does
direct its attention to pedagogy, the field does so in ways that are narrow
and perpetuate a status quo political orientation. This is no small matter.
The discipline has not been effective for preparing students for demo-
cratic citizenship in the context of authoritarian neoliberalism. Reflecting
on and rethinking the politics of pedagogy in the field of political sci-
ence is the point of this book. My goal is to articulate a general theory of
radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality. I want to rein-
vent political science pedagogy as a critical, radical and utopian practice.
Political science pedagogy should play a bigger role in the struggle to
make the world a better place.
Because I try to formulate a critical position on the discipline at least
as it pertains to pedagogy, this book is relevant for graduate students and
junior faculty. I hope that others find it useful as well. Even though I
am approaching political science pedagogy from the vantage point of a
1This has started to change as signaled in the creation in 2004 of the APSA Teaching and
Learning conference. However, this problem requires a broader conversation and a wider
variety of perspectives on pedagogy.
2According to Bernard Crick, “the discipline in general owes both its origins and its
unique size primarily to the idea that there was need in American society for the direct
teaching of the principles and the techniques of citizenship”; see Crick, The American
Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1959), p. xii.
PREFACE ix
political theorist, I hope this book appeals to scholars in the discipline

as a whole. I am certain that this book will not please everyone. If it
makes scholars and educators more reflective about teaching, I would be
pleased with this result. If it is true that, as Romand Coles states, “the
hyperactivity and professionalization of much radical political theory and
critical scholarship in many disciplines is becoming a vehicle for going
nowhere,” I hope this book points the reader in some promising new
directions for research and teaching.3 Learning hinges on the disruption
of entrenched assumptions and seeing something familiar in a new way.
This is what I try to do in this book.
Edinburg, USA William W. Sokoloff
3Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism: Radical and Ecological Democracy in Neoliberal
Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), p. 3.

Acknowledgements
I thank Clyde W. Barrow, Daniel Chomsky, Mark Kaswan, James Martel,

William Niemi, Nancy Love, Stephen Eric Bronner, Claire Snyder-
Hall, Bradley Macdonald, Jocelyn Boryczka, Kate Canada, Ruth Ann
Ragland, Mònica Clua-Losada, Nicholas Kiersey, Francisco Guajardo,
Erika Gonzalez, Jessica Lavariega Monforti, William Gordon, Daniel
O’Connor, Roberto de Souza, Judith Grant, Laurie Dodge, Mary
Caputi, Timothy W. Luke and Antonio Vázquez-Arroyo for conversa-
tions pertaining to this project and for comments on particular chap-
ters. Special thanks go out to my research assistants Jason Stratton,
Karina Guerrero, Alondra Martinez, Patricio Hernandez, Caitlin Alaniz
and Jillian Glantz. Finally, I thank Nicholas Xenos, Roberto Alejandro,
Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, James Der Derian, Andrew Parker and
Thomas Dumm.
There are others who influenced this project that I crossed paths with
in the distant past or that I have never met. I thank Megan Degenhart
for giving me a copy of bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as
the Practice of Freedom. bell hooks’ work on education, race relations,
patriarchy and masculinity encouraged me to rethink what it means to
be an intellectual. Henry A. Giroux’s work on the intersections between
pedagogy and utopian theorizing has been a source of inspiration for
this project. Peter McLaren’s work influenced my attempt to articu-
late a critical, radical and utopian perspective on political science peda-
gogy. The impact of Jacques Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster is also
xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
particularly important. Finally, Romand Coles’s concept of game-trans-

formative practices and Davina Cooper on everyday utopias has helped
me rethink core assumptions about academic work and political practice.
Several chapters of this project were presented at the American
Political Science Association, Western Political Science Association,
Southern Political Science Association, Caucus for a New Political
Science 50th Anniversary Conference and APSA Teaching and Learning
conferences. I thank the participants at these gatherings for help-
ful feedback and constructive criticism. I thank the Political Science
Department for travel support as well as the Dean and Provost’s offices.
I also acknowledge the support of Kristin Croyle, Jonikka Charlton, Ala
Qubbaj and Marie Mora. I thank colleagues, friends and the students at
Brandman University, California State University Long Beach, University
of California Irvine, University of California Riverside, University
of Southern California, Cerritos Community College, El Camino
Community College and at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Many years ago, I was lucky to have taken several political sci-
ence courses with John Anson Warner, a Lecturer at California State
University, Long Beach. He was an extraordinary teacher and encour-
aged me to go to graduate school. I changed my major to political sci-
ence as a result of his dynamic lectures and commitment to his students.
Dr. Warner changed the course of my life and he put me on the path
that made writing this book possible. I also thank Jacques Derrida and
Étienne Balibar, both for their kindness and fearless commitment to criti-
cal and radical scholarship.
I thank Stanley Gonzales in the Department of Criminal Justice at the
University of Texas Pan American (now UTRGV) for assistance with the
planning and logistics of the prison field trip. I also thank Warden Rios
and his staff at Lopez State Jail for the opportunity to visit the correc-
tional facility with my students as well as the fascinating tour. I thank
Stephen Eric Bronner for supporting this project and agreeing to include
it in his Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice series. He did a
fine job in identifying readers to evaluate and offer peer review feedback
on the manuscript. I hope Stephen sees the impact of our spirited con-
versations in the pages that follow. The editorial team at Palgrave was
professional and helped to move this project forward. My special thanks
go to Michelle Chen and John Stegner.
I thank my parents William J. and Nadja P. Sokoloff. They have sup-
ported me for five decades and did everything they could to help me as
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii
I struggled in graduate school and as I tried to secure academic employ-

ment. They never questioned my commitment to be an intellectual.
Finally, I thank my partner Kerry Daly Sokoloff, Frisco and Gus for their
love, encouragement and support.
Contents
1 Introduction: Political Science, Democratic

Citizenship and the Displacement of Pedagogy 1
2 Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice 27
3 Against the Socratic Method 51
4 Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas 69
5 Frantz Fanon’s Subversive Pedagogy 83
6 Teaching Political Theory ONLINE

at a “Hispanic Serving Institution” 111
7 Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution 129
8 Conclusion: Silence, Voice and Political Resistance

in the Classroom 153
xv
Abbreviations
ADC A Dying Colonialism, Frantz Fanon

AF Alienation and Freedom, Frantz Fanon
BSWM
Black Skins White Masks, Frantz Fanon
TAR Toward the African Revolution, Frantz Fanon
WE The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Political Science, Democratic

Citizenship and the Displacement
of Pedagogy
Abstract This chapter examines the relationship between political science,

pedagogy and democratic citizenship. Scholars in the field of political sci-
ence have struggled to grasp and articulate this relationship. I try to explain
why. I also present some of the dominant perspectives on the relationship
between pedagogy and democratic citizenship (e.g. liberal, conservative,
cosmopolitan and activist). Finally, I outline a critical, radical and utopian
perspective on political science pedagogy and democratic citizenship as an
alternative to standard ways of construing this relationship. My goal is to
disrupt the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and articulate a gen-
eral theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.
Like many other political scientists, I am interested in the relationship

between democracy and education. Unlike mainstream political scientists, I
interrogate pedagogy to reflect on political science as a disciplinary practice,
prospects for democratic citizenship and to expand our sense of political
possibility. The history of political science pedagogy is a history of neglect of
sustained reflection on teaching and learning.1 It is also a history of confu-
1 Consider the following quote: “Historically, as indicated by the documentary record of

APSA presidential addresses, APSA council and committee minutes and reports, and APSA-
sponsored journal articles, there has been very little concern about teaching in political
© The Author(s) 2020 1

W. W. Sokoloff, Political Science Pedagogy,
Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_1
2 W. W. SOKOLOFF
sion between conflicting goals, namely, the education and reproduction of

ruling elites, the education of working people for democratic citizenship,
building a common culture through education as a form of social glue,
assimilating new individuals into the body politic and the democratiza-
tion of colleges and universities.2 These competing goals signal important
shifts in society that impact political science as a discipline. Macro-political
and economic issues, competing pedagogical practices, political activism
on university campuses and the internal politics of the discipline itself are
also in play.
In my review of the literature pertaining to the emergence of political
science as a discipline, a common theme stands out. The more intensely
political scientists pursued science as a way to achieve disciplinary status,
power and societal legitimacy, the further removed from pedagogy and
politics they became. Because of this quest for power, political science as
science becomes increasingly obsessed with itself (e.g. searching for greater
methodological precision) so as to preserve its epistemological authority.
This quest displaces both politics and pedagogy. In this sense, political sci-
ence as a disciplinary practice obscures as much as it clarifies.3 The more
intensely it yearns for unmediated access to political reality via methodol-
ogy, the further removed it becomes from understanding anything at all.
Confusion between conflicting and contradictory pedagogical goals is
one problem. The perils involved with the pursuit of a science of politics is
another. There are other anomalies pertaining to political science as a disci-
pline. In the words of a prominent commentator, “one of the most salient
characteristics of many political scientists is that they are not interested in
politics.”4 At both conferences and in dominant journals, the discipline
positions itself as a conservative force and defines out of existence scholars
science.” See John Ishiyama, Marijke Breuning, and Linda Lopez, “A Century of Conti-
nuity and (Little) Change in the Undergraduate Political Science Curriculum,” American
Political Science Review 100 (November 2006): 660.
2 See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and
Culture, trans. Richard Nice (London, UK: Sage, 1977/2000).
3 I thank Kate Canada for a conversation pertaining to these issues.
4 Alan Bloom, “Political Science and the Undergraduate,” in Teaching Political Science:
The Professor and the Polity, ed. Vernon Van Dyke (1977), p. 120. Raymond Seidelman flags
the “increasing insulation of political science from the realities of politics, power and protest
in twentieth-century America,” in Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American
Crisis, 1884–1984 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. xix.
1 INTRODUCTION: POLITICAL SCIENCE, DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP … 3
who contest how the discipline has come to be defined and practiced.5
Whether this is the result of the “tendency to triviality” and the “method-
ological evasion of the political,” one of the least controversial gatherings
on the planet may turn out to be, oddly enough, a political science confer-
ence.6 The British historian Alfred Cobban claimed that political science
is a device for avoiding politics without achieving science.7 Nearly sixty
years later, publications in the dominant journals and what passes as sound
political science confirm Cobban’s perspective.
My goal in this book is to place contention and controversy at the center
of political science through critical reflection on the politics of pedagogy.
Exactly what I mean by the politics of pedagogy unfolds throughout this
book. Ultimately, this book is about thoughtful revolutionary possibilities
opened up by radical egalitarianism and how a lot of what is called political
science blocks and displaces this democratic project. To be more specific, I
argue for a politically engaged form of political science and pedagogy that
is critical, radical and utopian. My goal is to re-politicize political science via
radical pedagogy. In this regard, this book is grounded on radical egalitar-
ianism, critically interrogating knowledge and truth claims, and practicing
a bottom-up perspective that empowers groups that have been historically
marginalized in the political realm (e.g. poor people; women; people of
5 For an analysis of the discontent that lead to a call for a new mode of political science see
Clyde W. Barrow, “The Intellectual Origins of New Political Science,” New Political Science:
A Journal of Politics and Culture 30 (2008): 215–244. See also An End to Political Science:
The Caucus Papers, eds. Marvin Surkin and Alan Wolfe (New York: Basic Books, 1970). For
a more recent rebellion in political science see Perestroika! The Raucous Rebellion in Political
Science, ed. Kristin Renwick Monroe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
6 See Bernard Crick, The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1964), p. 173; Benjamin Barber, “The Politics of Political
Science: ‘Value Free’ Theory and the Wolin-Strauss Dust-Up of 1963,” American Political
Science Review 100 (November 2006): 541. According to Ollman, “political science is gov-
erned by five myths: (1) that it studies politics; (2) that it is scientific; (3) that it is possible to
study politics separated off from economics, sociology, psychology and history; (4) that the
state in our democratic capitalist society is politically neutral, i.e. available as a set of institu-
tions and mechanisms to whatever group wins the election; and (5) that political science, as a
discipline, advances the cause of democracy.” See Bertell Ollman, “What Is Political Science?
What Should It Be?” New Political Science 22:4 (2000): 553–562.
7 For Alfred A. Cobban, “The political scientist, in so far as he wishes to remain a scientist,
is limited to the study of techniques. A good deal of what is called political science, I must
confess, seems to me a device invented by academic persons for avoiding that dangerous
subject politics, without achieving science.” See Alfred A. Cobban, In Search of Humanity:
The Role of the Enlightenment in Modern History (New York: G. Braziller, 1960), p. 240.
4 W. W. SOKOLOFF
color; sexual and gender minorities). To this end, I affirm the uncondi-
tional openness of Walt Whitman:
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,

The kept-woman, a sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.8
For Whitman, all people are invited irrespective of social condition, past
errors and previous condition of servitude: “There shall be no difference
between them and the rest.” He makes “appointments with all.” It is “for
the wicked just the same as the righteous.” As I shall demonstrate, the
door to political science has not been open to everyone. This book is my
attempt to open political science pedagogy to a more expansive, inclusive
and utopian future.
Political scientists are committed to democracy and to educating the
public. After all, democracy and education are reciprocally reinforcing prac-
tices.9 The quality of the former depends on the quantity of the latter. An
education can turn a self-absorbed private person into a democratic citizen
capable of recognizing and fighting for the public good. It is common to
hear political scientists talk about the educational role of the discipline in
abstract and conventional terms. These conversation, however, usually do
not include radical perspectives on pedagogy.10 The limitations of a narrow
8 Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass (1891–92),” in Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and
Collected Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982), p. 205.
9 For Dana Villa, “the importance of an informed citizenry to the success of democracy
is one of the most hackneyed of clichés. That does not prevent it from being true”; see
Dana Villa, Teachers of the People: Political Education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville and Mill
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 18.
10 An exception to this is Peter Bachrach and Douglas Bennett’s “Education in Political
Commitments,” in Teaching Political Science: The Professor and the Polity, ed. Vernon Van Dyke
(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1977). They state their chief concern as teachers
is to “help students formulate and develop their own [the student’s] political commitments”
(p. 37). See also Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and
the Future of America (New York: Basic Books, 1992). J. Peter Euben, Corrupting Youth:
Political Education, Democratic Culture and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1997). Debating Moral Education: Rethinking the Role of the Modern University, eds.
Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). Another excellent
example is Ange-Marie Hancock, Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the
Oppression Olympics (New York: Palgrave, 2011).
and conventional approach to pedagogy are compounded by the fact that

“contemporary academic culture is not merely indifferent to teaching,” as
Benjamin Barber claims, “it is actively hostile to it.”11
Allow me to refer to some examples and conceptions of pedagogy in the
field that illustrate the aforementioned problems. Stephen T. Leonard’s
“The Pedagogical Purposes of Political Science” is an insightful attempt to
chart the educational role of political science and democratic citizenship
but it also contains a number of blind spots.12 Written from a descriptive-
historical perspective, Leonard outlines the pedagogical missions of politi-
cal science but he does so in an entirely uncritical manner. He focuses on
the various aims of pedagogy (e.g. civic education; the training civil ser-
vants; and the reproduction of scholars) as opposed to asking the broader
philosophical questions pertaining to pedagogy itself. Under what condi-
tions does learning take place? How does one best educate another human
being? How do pedagogical practices connect to the broader political and
economic context? Whose voices are part of the conversation on pedagogy?
Leonard’s piece provides useful information about competing perspectives
pertaining to pedagogy but the neglect of these broader philosophical ques-
tions gives it a narrow focus.13 This diminishes its significance for critical
reflection on the interrelationship between democratic citizenship and ped-
agogy. A general theory of radical political theory pedagogy is needed today.
One that views pedagogy as the premier site for the production of skeptical,
innovative activist and intellectual citizens.
Another example that avoids these broader questions and explicitly
opposes the radical egalitarianism I applaud in Walt Whitman is Alan
Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, a book that promulgates an
elitist mode of pedagogy and seeks to protect the university as a space
for white male privilege. Specifically, the goal of this text is to decry the
advances made by women and ethnic minorities on university campuses in
11 See Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992), p. 196.

12 See Stephen T. Leonard, in Political Science in History: Research Programs and Political
Traditions, eds. James Farr, John S. Dryzek, and Stephen T. Leonard (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
13 Stephen T. Leonard’s historical account turn into a pessimistic one. He argues that “civic
education will fit only with great difficulty into a culture where institutional, departmental,
and individual self-promotion define academic success, honor, and recognition”; Stephen T.
Leonard, “‘Pure Futility and Waste’: Academic Political Science and Civic Education,” PS:
Political Science and Politics 32 (December 1999): 752.
6 W. W. SOKOLOFF
terms of changes to the curriculum (e.g. feminism, multiculturalism) and

to make the case for a return to the era of excellence and high standards
(e.g. the 1950s) where universities cultivated the classically educated gen-
tleman. As Bloom puts it, his text is a “meditation on the state of our souls,”
a rejection of relativism which “undermines education,” and a defense of
the authoritative teacher of “Great Books” as a way to ask the “permanent
questions.” Bloom seeks to snuff out feminism, the “enemy of the vitality
of classic texts.” He seeks to return us to the glorious age of the 1950s,
a time when a limited range of perspectives (e.g. European; white; male)
constituted the university curriculum.14 For him, the 1960s ruined every-
thing. It is surprising that such an anti-democratic statement on pedagogy
and citizenship would gain such a foothold in the U.S. and become a best
seller.
Another conservative statement on citizenship and pedagogy is The
Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders.15
In tracing the development of varying educational philosophies that influ-
enced the American founders, the authors claim that the crisis in education
today results from relativistic openness, a lack of moral grounding, and a
debunking of our own system.16 For them, what we need instead is an
appreciation of “Great Books” that awaken an anti-utopian awareness of
the “essential limitations on what may be expected from political life or
action.”17 Just like Bloom, they also construe education as the cultivation
of reverence for the American system, soul-craft, the discovery of a priori
foundations and a return to the laws of nature.18 Cloaked with the rhetoric
of erudition, a dogmatic authoritarianism lurks in this perspective. Peda-
gogy emerges as a clerical imperative and the celebration of the political
and economic status quo. The student memorizes what they are supposed
14 Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democ-
racy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987)‚
pp. 15, 34, 65, 252, 322.
15 Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle, The Learning of Liberty: The Educational
Ideas of the American Founders (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1993).
16 Pangle and Pangle, p. 287.
17 Pangle and Pangle, pp. 50–51.
18 For another conservative statement, see William J. Bennett, Our Children and Our Coun-
try: Improving America’s Schools and Affirming the Common Culture (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1988). See also Teaching in An Age of Ideology, eds. John von Heyking and Lee
Trepanier (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013).
to know about the “American dream” and the triumph of the West so they
become worthy of an “A” grade and salvation.
The liberal model of teaching, learning and citizenship is also an official
ideology of the political and economic status quo. It shares some but not
all of the goals and pedagogical practices of the fundamentalist approach
flagged above (e.g. need for political common ground/American creed as
a source of unity and stability; defense of private property; constitutional-
ism; and rule by elites/experts in a watered down version of representative
democracy).19 Originally, classical liberal thought was a form of radical
dissent theory grounded on the right to resist illegitimate usurpations of
power. It provided the philosophical principles that undermined the caste
system of the ancien régime. Over time, liberal theory became a defense
of private property and formal legal procedures for the resolution of con-
flict. For liberals, the state is neutral and promotes equality. Rights serve
as protections against excessive state power. Liberal political education is
minimalist (e.g. basic knowledge of how a bill becomes a law). Within the
framework of this liberal democratic system, public schools teach tolerance
and “help us negotiate our differences in the name of forging a public
life.”20
As critics have pointed out, liberalism lacks a robust theory of citizen-
ship and suffers from delusions of grandeur and historical amnesia.21 The
politics and content of liberal pedagogy is narrow and teaches students the
appropriate stance (e.g. acritical adoration) on free markets, private prop-
erty and representative democracy. Ignored is the historical record in terms
19 See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural

Society, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998). Schlesinger seeks “unifying ideals and a common
culture” (p. 24) and opposes the “cult of ethnicity.” See also E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural
Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987).
For a more critical narrative, see Domenico Losurdo, Liberalism: A Counter-History, trans.
Gregory Elliot (New York: Verso, 2014).
20 Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 6.
21 See Charles Mills W. Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs: A Critique of Racial Liberalism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). For Arthur Schlesinger, “the West has conceived
and acted upon ideals that expose and combat its own misdeeds. No other culture has built
self-criticism into the very fabric of its being.” There is something oxymoronic and delusional
about congratulating oneself for being a part of a culture that is the most self-critical. See
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), p. 132. See, finally, William J. Bennett, Our Children and
Our Country (1988), p. 198.
8 W. W. SOKOLOFF
of the treatment of marginalized groups (e.g. people of color; poor peo-

ple; women; immigrants; and other minorities) and the impact of countless
“exclusion clauses” in the definition and practice of citizenship.
Liberal cosmopolitanism offers another important perspective on ped-
agogy and citizenship. This view advocates a form of “world citizenship”
where we achieve a “sophisticated grasp of human variety” and broaden
our perspective but nonetheless find common ground in core political prin-
ciples and the primacy of reason.22 Martha Nussbaum has emerged as one
of the leading proponents of this position. She argues that a “world iden-
tity” is better than one rooted in a “racially based group identity.”23 For
Nussbaum, we must seek mutual understanding via tolerance and a broad
form of open-mindedness: “The cosmopolitan puts right before country
and universal reason before the symbols of national belonging.”24 Much
to its credit, this position prevents excessive patriotism and extreme forms
of group identity. However, liberal cosmopolitanism is not as open to oth-
erness as the label implies. Liberal cosmopolitanism contains difference
via defensive gestures that perpetuate a static conception of reason and
the West. Nussbaum states that students “must learn enough about the
different to recognize common aims, aspirations, and values.”25 As such,
learning about different cultures is ultimately a homogenizing gesture to
recognize what we all have in common as opposed to genuinely learning
about what is different. Because of this, Nussbaum inadvertently promul-
gates a neocolonial discourse that comes close to the form of patriotism
she criticizes. As Romand Coles aptly puts it: “Nussbaum acknowledges
that colonialism has influenced knowledge in the past, but her texts exhibit
virtually no attention to the ways colonialism may still be at work in her
own project.”26
The last perspective on pedagogy and citizenship is activist. It stresses
the value of active political engagement as a form of ongoing learning (e.g.
service learning), criticizes narrow rights based models of citizenship and
22 Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal

Education (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 62.
23 See Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity (1997), p. 168.
24 See Martha C. Nussbaum, For Love of Country, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press,
2002), p. 17.
25 Martha C. Nussbaum (2002), p. 9.
26 Romand Coles, Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 63.
it seeks to preserve, perpetuate and encourage widespread participatory

democracy.27 The Greek polis, republican Rome, town hall meetings and
Soviet council system are frequent reference points. Social movements are
its life-blood. Political engagement by active citizens is its spirit. Political
participation is both an end in itself and a means to make the world a better
place. Civic deliberation and service learning are pedagogical practices that
promote political engagement as a way of life. Even though this perspective
is the closest to my own, the drawback of this perspective is that it lacks a
sufficiently critical, radical and utopian perspective on pedagogy.
The descriptive-historical, fundamentalist/conservative, liberal, cos-
mopolitan and activist approaches constitute the horizon of political science
pedagogy and citizenship today. In what follows, I draw on what I think
are the best aspects of these approaches and articulate an alternative view-
point that is critical, radical and utopian in order to stimulate a broader
conversation on pedagogy. My critical and radical orientation to political
science pedagogy is dialectical, develops forms of “everyday utopianism,”
and views conflict as a prerequisite for a vibrant democratic life.28 I assume
knowledge is never completely isolated from questions of power. These
genealogical and deconstructive components, as well as what I call critical
intersectionality, distinguish my position from all of the other ones. This
more self-consciously critical, radical and utopian perspective on pedagogy
and citizenship is, generally speaking, nowhere to be found in the discipline
of political science. Ultimately, my goal is to develop a general theory of
radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.
The difficulty finding critical, radical and utopian research on political
science pedagogy is not surprising given that, as Judith Grant argues, the
discipline of political science is defined in an exclusionary and highly politi-
27 See Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Political Sci-
ence, eds. Richard M Battistoni and William E. Hudson (Washington, DC: American Asso-
ciation for Higher Education, 1997). See also Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone:
The Politics of Education and the Future of America (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992).
28 I try to provide this perspective by drawing on interdisciplinary research, my experience
as a student in public schools and universities, my experience working with non-traditional
students in community colleges and at CUC, working with students in the CSU and UC
systems, working at a “Hispanic Serving Institution” in south Texas and reading innovative
scholarship. For “everyday utopianism” see Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual
Life of Promising Spaces (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). See also Romand Coles,
Visionary Pragmatism (2016). See, finally, Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life:
Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
10 W. W. SOKOLOFF
cized manner. For Grant, political scientists are “insufficiently reflective

about the politics of the discipline itself.”29 Indeed, the discipline arguably
excludes modes of inquiry that do not conform to widely accepted ground-
ing assumptions for the discipline. This plays itself out in terms of who
succeeds in the discipline and what students are taught about politics.30
According to a 2011 Task Force report on the discipline of political sci-
ence, for example, introductory textbooks in American government and
politics “often employ the institutional and/or behavioral approach and
lack diversity in their texts and images. They examine institutions and pro-
cesses from a majority white perspective.”31
Definitions of disciplines in terms of curriculum requirements and dom-
inant methodology reflect whose ideas will win and how the discipline posi-
tions itself to the larger society. As Timothy W. Luke puts it, “American
political scientists remain among the most recalcitrant disbelievers in the
notion that disciplines serve as political structures interconnecting larger
systems of political economy and the academic production of disciplinary
knowledge.”32 This blind spot is reproduced (via evasion) by excessively
methodological training in graduate programs (where critical modes of
theory are not required in the curriculum) as well as by insufficient atten-
tion to politics of the discipline.33 A more self-consciously critical turn is
necessary.34
29 Judith Grant, “Forget the APSR: The Politics of Political Science,” New Political Science
33 (March 2011): 87, 89.
30 Meta Mendel-Reyes argues that “the academy’s claim to disinterestedness disguises the
actual role played by most political scientists in articulating and helping to sustain conventional
relations of power”; in Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning
in Political Science, eds. Richard M. Battistoni and William E. Hudson, (Washington, DC:
American Association for Higher Education, 1997), p. 17.
31 See “Political Science in the 21st Century: Report of the Task Force on Political Science
in the 21st Century,” American Political Science Association (2011): 37.
32 Timothy W. Luke, “Caught Between Confused Critics and Careerist Co-Conspirators:
Perestroika in American Political Science,” in Perestroika! ed. Kristen Renwick Monroe
(2005), p. 476.
33 The University of Iowa, for example, does not require political theory in the training
of graduate students. According to its website, “Graduate students can choose from five
fields of study: American Politics, International Politics, Comparative Politics, Formal The-
ory, and Research Methods.” See https://clas.uiowa.edu/polisci/graduate/political-science-
phd-and-ma.
34 See, for example, Rogers M. Smith, “The Puzzling Place of Race in American Politi-
cal Science, PS: Political Science and Politics (January 2004): 45. See also Jessica Lavariega
Perhaps what I am saying is an exaggeration and the tide is already begin-

ning to change in the direction of a more reflective, politically self-conscious
and critically oriented form of political science and pedagogy.35 Also, given
the epistemological diversity in terms of approach (e.g. historical; empirical;
theoretical; critical; sociological; Marxist; post-modern; post-behavioral;
post-positivist; feminist; intersectional; queer, etc.), and growing interest
in teaching political science, perhaps what I am saying about the discipline
is wrong and more applicable to a bygone age.36 Indeed, many political
scientists conduct research on teaching and learning and the results appear
in the Journal of Political Science Education (JPSE) and “The Teacher” in
PS: Political Science and Politics (PS). A lot of the work published in JPSE
and PS is interesting. I have participated and presented at the “Teaching
and Learning” conference hosted by APSA on several occasions. I benefited
from the lively discussions and dedication to teaching evident in all partic-
ipants at this conference. Nevertheless, a lot of this mainstream research
on teaching reinforces and replicates at least some of the uncritical and
arguably conservative assumptions of the discipline and does not include
critical, radical and explicitly utopian perspectives. This is especially the case
Monforti and Adam McGlynn, “Aquí Estamos? A Survey of Latino Portrayal in Introductory
U.S. Government and Politics Textbooks,” PS: Political Science and Politics (2010). See also
Sherri L. Wallace and Marcus D. Allen, “Survey of African American Portrayal in Introductory
Textbooks in American Government/Politics: A Report on the APSA Standing Committee
on the Status of Blacks in the Profession,” PS: Political Science and Politics (2008). Jessica
Blatt claims “race thinking shaped U.S. political science at its origins far more profoundly
than has previously been recognized.” See Jessica Blatt, Race and the Making of American
Political Science (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), p. 4.
35 See Jenny Kehl, “Indicators of the Increase of Political Science Scholarship on Teaching
and Learning in Political Science,” PS: Political Science and Politics (June 2002). For Kehl,
“The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is gaining increased recognition, interest, and
support” (p. 232).
36 For an account of the epistemological diversity within the discipline of political science
see Keith Topper, The Disorder of Political Inquiry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2005).
12 W. W. SOKOLOFF
in JPSE.37 Critically oriented voices are usually not part of the conversation
on political science pedagogy in this journal.
The exclusion of critical, radical and utopian perspectives on political
science pedagogy plays itself out in publications on teaching and learning
and unfortunately becomes a self-perpetuating circle. The questions raised
by one scholar, as well as what is regarded as the relevant literature, serve
in turn to condition what passes as appropriate research on teaching and
learning in the next study. It is entirely possible under these conditions to
fail as a scholar. One could “publish and perish if the publishing is not done
in the right journals, with the right publishers and to universally laudatory
reviews.”38
The reader may wonder, once again, whether I am overstating my case.
Anticipating this, I conducted key word searches in PS and JPSE on rad-
ical pedagogy. I also scoured the table of contents of every issue of JPSE.
Nothing comes up that grapples with radical and utopian pedagogy. Crit-
ical modes of pedagogy inspired by Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux, bell
hooks, Jacques Rancière and others constitute some of the most provoca-
tive research on pedagogy. To learn about this radical and utopian peda-
gogy, though, you would have to leave the discipline of political science.
To compound the problem created by the neglect and marginalization of
critical and radical approaches to political science pedagogy, minimal atten-
tion is given to teaching as part of graduate education in political science.
According to Anna Sampaio, “very few graduate students or junior faculty
receive any instruction on how to instruct.”39 A 2004 APSA Task Force
on graduate education included a brief blurb on teaching in its report and
hailed the benefits of graduate students working as a teaching assistant (TA)
37 Consider the conclusion reached by Stephen G. Hartlaub and Frank A. Lancaster’s

national survey on pedagogy. “The most important factor in how we teach is our own choices,
and it seems that faculty in all institutions make a wide variety of pedagogical choices”; Hart-
laub and Lancaster, “Teacher Characteristics and Pedagogy in Political Science,” Journal of
Political Science Education 4 (2008): 387. This conclusion avoids the ways in which disci-
plinary norms and graduate school training impact the choices faculty make about how to
teach, what to teach and what to say about it. An exception to this surface level analysis can be
found in Amy Cabrera Rasmussen’s “Toward an Intersectional Political Science Pedagogy,”
Journal of Political Science Education 10 (2014): 102–116.
38 See Seidelman, Disenchanted Realists (1985)‚ p. 226.
39 Anna Sampaio, “Women of Color Teaching Political Science: Examining the Intersections
of Race, Gender, and Course Material in the Classroom,” PS: Political Science and Politics
(October 2006): 917.
and research assistant (RA) with experienced undergraduate teachers. This

is a great point but it begs the question of how one becomes a good teacher
to begin with. The report largely restricted its statements to the importance
of serving as a RA and TA and said nothing about the importance of doing
research on teaching political science.40
Many years ago, I served as a TA for faculty teaching large sections of
introductory U.S. government courses. I sat in on an instructor’s class and
took notes while she lectured. I led discussion sections pertaining to course
material. As I look back on this experience, my time serving as a TA was the
dominant form of learning about teaching I received. This was a standard
practice at other Ph.D. granting institutions too, as I have heard anec-
dotally from friends and colleagues in the discipline. According to Albert
Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, “graduate programs paid little attention to
the fledgling Ph.D. as prospective teacher. Since the great majority of new
doctorates went into academic life, they were admirably unprepared for
the pedagogical duties promptly thrust upon them.”41 It is important to
note that Somit and Tanenhaus are making this claim in reference to U.S.
political science Ph.D. programs in the 1880–1903 period. Their claim, I
fear, is still accurate today, over a hundred years later. If graduate school
insufficiently prepares Ph.D. candidates to teach, the process for getting
tenure, as Benjamin Barber puts it, “marginalizes teaching.”42 By implica-
tion, conducting research on teaching would guarantee denial of tenure.
Given that almost all individuals in the U.S. are required to take some
form of civics and political science course during their secondary and post-
secondary educational experience, the problem and political stakes involved
with political science pedagogy and democratic citizenship make it a wor-
thy topic of a book length study. Educational institutions specialize in the
production of subjectivity. At least theoretically, students enter the insti-
tution with a certain set of views and beliefs and exit it as a new person.
Universities are one of the few places where critical, skeptical and reflective
citizens can be cultivated. It is comparatively one of the “most free spaces
40 See “2004 Report to the Council: APSA Task Force on Graduate Education,” in Pere-
stroika! (2005).
41 See Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science:
From Burgess to Behavioralism (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1967).
42 Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, p. 196.
14 W. W. SOKOLOFF
in our polity.”43 It is time to exploit this freedom in new ways. This is what
my general theory of radical political theory pedagogy tries to do. The goal
is to open minds, recreate a sense of political possibility, counter the cyni-
cism of social conservatism and hopelessness of recent forms of apocalyptic
Leftism and reinvent the discipline of political science.
My commitment to critical, radical and utopian pedagogy springs from
my hope in the possibility of a better future. Practices in the classroom
can have a ripple effect and transform the world in egalitarian directions.
However, the current political situation is daunting. Budget cuts to higher
education, the appointment of billionaire Betsy DeVos to head the U.S.
Department of Education and another conservative appointment to the
U.S. Supreme Court squash hope in the possibility of positive political
change. We are swimming in racist, anti-immigrant, hyper-masculinist and
authoritarian rhetoric and practices. Every day, we seem to be moving fur-
ther and further to the Right. In this context, working people and espe-
cially our students face a grim reality. Their prospects for finding good
employment and living meaningful lives are in jeopardy. The role of educa-
tors (especially political scientists) in this context should be to ensure that
students are acquiring the critical abilities needed to understand the con-
nection between their lives and the broader political-economic context.44
This is why my approach to pedagogy is critical, radical and utopian. A gen-
eral theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality
expands the political imagination.
Critical
By critical I am not referring to some sort of compulsive and incessant com-
plaining, mean-spiritedness and pointless hair-splitting. Rather, by critical
I am referring to the political and moral imperative to expose the limits of
practices we take as given and natural. We need to employ a variety of per-
spectives (not just a Eurocentric one) to gain critical distance from current
social, economic and political arrangements. The goal is to expose what
43 Romand Coles, “Transforming the Game: Democratizing the Publicness of Higher Edu-
cation and Commonwealth in Neoliberal Times,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics
and Culture (2014): 628. The university is both the propaganda machine for capitalism and
liberal democracy as well as the site that can contest these hegemonic narratives.
44 See Peter McLaren, Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Founda-
tions of Education (Boston: Pearson Education, 2007).
blocks the educational egalitarianism and forms of citizenship needed for a

vibrant democracy. As Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss put it, we need to “de-
construct those policies and practices that have historically encoded power,
privilege, and marginality in our public schools.”45 Critique is important
because it can prevent hubris, cruelty and violence and help us understand
what is standing in the way of human flourishing.
Being critical also refers to the need to call things by their proper
names. As Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss put it, “naming involves those
practices that facilitate critical conversations about social and economic
arrangements, particularly about inequitable distributions of power and
resources.”46 In societies where billionaires rule and saturate the political
arena with their money, it is a stretch (if not an outright lie) to refer to
them as republics and democracies. When words change their meanings to
accommodate those in power, critique must expose the power play. Cri-
tique can also do more. According to Keith Topper, the critical project
helps us “overcome false beliefs, misunderstandings, self-defeating prac-
tices, oppressive social arrangements, asymmetrical relations of power, and
crippling ideological distortions, all of which intensify human misery and
social injustice while diminishing human dignity.”47
I am aware that critique can lead to unproductive pessimism, relativism,
skepticism and despair. Hence, an explicitly utopian dimension (more on
this in a moment) must work in tandem with it. Nevertheless, critique,
genealogy and deconstruction are good because they illuminate the his-
torical conditions connected to dominant views and practices. Specifically,
they expose the limits of these social and political practices. Critique also
allows us to reflect on what we are doing and potentially stops us from being
unjust. Critique can make us humble, cautious, and sensitive. As Socrates
teaches, a life lived without a critical dimension makes self-improvement
impossible.
45 See Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools, eds. Lois
Weiss and Michelle Fine (Albany: State University of New York, 1993), p. 1.
46 See Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss, Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-
Imagining Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003), pp. 18–19. See also Benjamin
Barber: “When values have been named, issues identified, agendas set, and options delineated,
most of what is meaningful in politics has already taken place,” in Barber, Strong Democracy:
Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 157.
47 Keith Topper, The Disorder of Political Inquiry (2005), p. 110.
16 W. W. SOKOLOFF
The questions that are essential in this regard are simple: What role
has the educational sphere played in a historically racist, patriarchal and
capitalist society characterized by entrenched privilege and inequality?48
Why are students often passive and silent in the classroom?49 By asking
these questions and providing this more self-consciously critical and macro
approach to the politics of pedagogy, vistas can be opened for new modes
of thought and action, new types of research on pedagogy can emerge
and a broader conversation about the prospects for thoughtful social and
political transformation can take place. As Stephen Gilbert Brown aptly
puts it, “pedagogy among the oppressed is not about the transmission of
knowledge; it is about the transference of power.”50
This point is especially pertinent for young people and students at pub-
lic institutions of higher learning. They face challenges in terms of spik-
ing tuition, the skyrocketing cost of living, stagnating wages, crippling
debt, negative encounters with authority figures (e.g. police; teachers) and
increasingly grim prospects to eke out more than a life of subsistence earn-
ing and dead end part-time employment in the new gig economy. Given
the seismic shifts in the economy, growing inequality and limited social
mobility, students need to acquire the conceptual apparatus to make sense
of the relationship between their lives and the broader socio-economic-
political context.51 The point of this is not to engage in indoctrination but
to expand the political horizons of students beyond mainstream perspec-
tives so they are able to engage in intelligent modes of political struggle
based on an honest assessment of what is happening. This begins with the
cultivation of the critical faculties through readings, discussions, assign-
ments and activities that put into question the myths of the political and
economic status quo.
48 See Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of Amer-
ica’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013); see also Jerome Karabel, Chosen:
The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton (New York:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005).
49 Consider the following quote: “Despite years of consistent research on the efficacy of
pedagogies that engage students, a glance into many classrooms will find faculty members lec-
turing.” See Paul L. Gaston et al., General Education & Liberal Learning: Principles of Effective
Practice (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2010), p. 42.
50 Stephen Gilbert Brown, Words in the Wilderness: Critical Literacy in the Borderlands
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), p. 216.
51 See Henry A. Giroux, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Chicago: Haymarket
Books, 2014).
Radical
By the term radical, I am not referring to some form of political extremism
and belligerent activism. Rather, I am referring to the political and moral
imperative to investigate and interrogate (e.g. get to the root) unexamined
guiding assumptions/grounds/foundations. Structural analysis can fruit-
fully illuminate the patriarchal, racist, colonial, heteronormative and class
biases that have constituted the “hidden curriculum” in political science.52
Liberal versus conservative does not constitute a real choice when it comes
to pedagogy. Both are uncritical and anti-utopian perspectives that mys-
tify power relationships and trap us in the cyber-cage of the present. My
hope is that radical forms of inquiry will expose the contingent character
of social and political arrangements assumed to be natural and inevitable.
Everything can be otherwise than it is. The point is to expand our polit-
ical horizons beyond the parameters of the status quo in order to inspire
hope and optimism. Radical analysis is the precondition for new forms of
research, thought and political struggle. Hence, it is important to challenge
the assumptions of the present. We must think outside of the dominant
frames of reference (e.g. liberal, conservative, cosmopolitan and activist)
because these perspectives limit the political imagination. Beyond all of
this, radical means promoting structural change that undermines various
forms of domination and allows for human flourishing for all people, not
only for the non-working 1%.
Utopian
Radical and critical modes of inquiry clear the ground and open spaces for
thought but they require a hopeful and utopian disposition. This simply
means that we need to set our sights high, avoid cynicism, despair and
pessimism and embrace utopian thinking. Based on my experience in the
52 For the expression “hidden curriculum,” see Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York:
Harper & Row, 1970). See also Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (New York: Rout-
ledge, 1990). The hidden curriculum “refers to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unin-
tended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school. While the ‘formal’ cur-
riculum consists of the courses, lessons, and learning activities students participate in, as well
as the knowledge and skills educators intentionally teach to students, the hidden curriculum
consists of the unspoken or implicit academic, social, and cultural messages that are com-
municated to students while they are in school.” See https://www.edglossary.org/hidden-
curriculum/, accessed on July 12, 2018.
18 W. W. SOKOLOFF
field of political science, the word utopian is not fashionable. It is met with
claims that this is not what we do, that utopian aspirations are misguided,
a waste of time, irrelevant, dangerous (e.g. leading to totalitarianism) and
they are a form of empty dreaming better left to individuals in insane asy-
lums and comparative literature departments. The anti-utopian chorus has
deep roots dating back to Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s ideal city and con-
tinues today in the apocalyptic leftism of Giorgio Agamben and Wendy
Brown.53 Beyond the rejection of utopian theorizing by these authors, the
discipline of political science screams its rejection of utopian thinking at
a deafening level.54 For Judith Shklar, “‘utopia’ and ‘utopian’ have come
to mean mostly a project that is not just a fantasy but also one that will
end in ruin.”55 Why has “utopian” come to mean these things? Are there
other meanings, uses and value to the word utopian? I believe that there
are. I defend utopian political science pedagogy as a way of going against
the grain and stimulating the political imagination. For me, utopian means
doing something now not just dreaming about it. I draw on the innovative
work of Davina Cooper on “everyday utopias” to demonstrate the crucial
role a utopian disposition plays in the classroom and in the struggle for a
better world.56
Please allow me to be more specific about the word utopian. I do not
mean the search for a perfect society. I am not promoting a situation where
everyone joins hands and sings songs around a campfire. I am not look-
ing for a conflict free “Garden of Eden.” I employ the word utopian to
flag the need to explore the possibility of a new future. This new future
requires fighting for a democratic public sphere, accountability to the peo-
ple, substantive equality, meaningful work, the abolition of prisons, the
protection of our environment, universal health care, guaranteed hous-
ing, the end of imperialism, quality education for all and putting an end
to the war machine. Engaging in utopian practice and thinking is not, to
53 For anti-utopian theorizing see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and
Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). See also
Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone
Books, 2015).
54 See William Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2004).
55 Judith N. Shklar, Political Thought and Political Thinkers, ed. Stanley Hoffman (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 176.
56 See Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias (2014).
use Judith Schklar’s words, “an improbable scheme of salvation-through-

schooling.”57 Rather, it is a call to experiment and innovate beyond the cur-
rent horizon of cruelty intrinsic to neoliberal authoritarian politics, social-
ism for the non-working rich and transfer of wealth upward via theft of
public funds and tax breaks for billionaires.
Arguing about competing forms of utopian visions expands the political
imagination. It also adds stimulating controversy to the classroom.58 For
Mark Coté, Richard J. F. Day, and Greig de Peuter, utopian simply means “a
critical attitude towards the present and a political commitment to experi-
ment in transfiguring the coordinates of our historical moment.”59 Utopian
pedagogy is thus a subversive form of pedagogy that aims to achieve the
impossible (a never completed and ongoing endeavor). As Stephen Eric
Bronner suggests, “the invocation of utopia makes us realize that what we
have is not necessarily what we want and what we want is not necessarily
all we can have.”60 Foregrounding the utopian dimension essential to ped-
agogy is my way to further the project of thoughtful social and political
transformation. As Benjamin Barber puts it, “the aspiration to democratic
education requires an often utopian, sometimes foolish, always risky faith
in the human capacity for change.”61
Utopian aspirations will inevitably lead to some experiences of loss and
failure. Far from taking the steam out of a utopian sensibility, failure and
loss comprise valuable moments of learning and can inspire us to innovate
and press on. That is to say, failure is an opportunity to grapple with the
57 Judith Shklar, Redeeming American Political Thought, eds. Stanley Hoffman and Dennis
F. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 78. See also Shklar, After
Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
58 As a point of contrast, the American Sociological Association’s theme for its 2012 annual
meeting was “Real Utopias: Emancipatory Projects, Institutional Designs, Possible Futures.”
According to the program, “a great deal of scholarship focuses on explaining the sources of
social injustice and the causes and consequences of undesirable social conditions; much less
explores the design of alternatives to existing institutions that would help realize moral ideals
of justice and human flourishing. The idea of ‘real utopias’ is meant to point sociology in this
direction.” See “A Sketch of the Real Utopias Theme for the 2012 ASA Meetings,” American
Sociological Association, (p. 1).
59 See Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization, eds. Mark
Coté, Richard J. F. Day, and Greig de Peuter (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007),
p. 13.
60 Stephen Eric Bronner, The Bitter Taste of Hope: Ideals, Ideologies, and Interests in the Age
of Obama (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017), p. 12.
61 Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992), p. 266.
20 W. W. SOKOLOFF
distance between theory and practice in ways that open up new vectors for
thought and action. Failure can also lead to learning what tactics must be
changed, which aspects of neoliberalism must be co-opted and used against
neoliberalism, when it is time to play by the rules and when one must
engage in “game transformative practices.”62 That is to say, it is important
to recognize when it is necessary to alter the terrain and invent new forms
of political struggle.
Methodology
A book grounded on a critical, radical and utopian practical and theoret-
ical commitment requires a unique approach and methodology. The one
employed in this book is autobiographical, qualitative, quantitative and
theoretical. I draw upon my own experiences as a student in primary and
secondary public schools. I draw on my experience teaching at commu-
nity colleges, state schools, research universities and private colleges. I also
draw upon my experience and training as a political scientist with a special-
ization in political theory. Finally, I draw on my experience working with
my students on community engagement and service-learning projects. The
questions I am attempting to answer are simple: How can we best educate
the increasingly diverse students we encounter in the classroom and make
political science more relevant to their lives?63 How can pedagogical prac-
tices play a role in the creation of a better and more just world? To answer
these questions, the chapters in this book are theoretical and practical. I
bring different discourses and perspectives into conversation. My goal is to
articulate an anti-Straussian and non-mainstream perspective on political
science pedagogy via a critical, radical and utopian approach. This emerges
as a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy that shatters the
authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and transforms pedagogy into
the practice of equality.
The chapters in this book do not constitute a linear narrative but raise a
constellation of themes that all come back to the question of political sci-
ence pedagogy and the importance of seeing something familiar in a new
62 Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism (2016), p. 196.

63 According to J. Wesley Leckrone, “a major cause of students’ disinterest in politics is
its perceived irrelevance to their daily lives.” See “Hippies, Feminists, and Neocons: Using
The Big Lebowski to Find the Political in the Nonpolitical,” PS: Political Science and Politics
(January 2013): 130.
way. It is this concern that comprises the coherence of the book. The more
theoretical chapters (Introduction, 2, 3, 5, 7) have practical relevance. The
more practical chapters (4, 6, Conclusion) also engage broader theoret-
ical issues. The chapters contest static and fixed assumptions pertaining
to pedagogy. The goal is to open up vectors for creativity, improvisation
and alternative ways of thinking. I seek to shatter the connection between
authority, hierarchy and knowledge perpetuated by the medieval vision of
the teacher and university. The authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus
silences students, entrenches inequality and perpetuates the privilege of
political and economic elites and their offspring. Radical political theory
pedagogy is the practice of equality and freedom for everyone, not just for
the privileged.
If a particular chapter does not interest you, kindly skip it and move
on to the next. In Chapter 2, “Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Prac-
tice,” I challenge a grounding assumption in political theory, namely, the
so-called divide between Sheldon S. Wolin and Leo Strauss. I demonstrate
that Wolin and Strauss not only share similar visions of the practice of
political theory but both have blocked the type of critical reflection on
pedagogy I advance in this book. In the case of Strauss, one finds a defense
of natural law (permanent and trans-historical).64 The form of pedagogy
peddled by Strauss and his followers emerges as elitist, anti-democratic and
anti-utopian. A strange mix of paranoia and hatred of the demos, Strauss’s
celebration of the Western tradition is ultimately a defense of the privi-
lege of the current reigning political and economic elite and the need to
protect them from democratic challenge. Pedagogically, Strauss seeks to
cultivate intellectual aristocrats. Common people are incapable of obtain-
ing and even recognizing a quality education. The erudition provided by
the Western tradition provides the foil for Strauss’s elitist political agenda.
Wolin also brings us to a dead-end in terms of radical pedagogy. In my
view, political theory is not a body of knowledge with a relatively fixed set
of concerns (as Wolin stipulates) but is something that changes over time
and is open to infinite reinvention. Wolin’s reverence for the tradition nul-
lifies this open-ended and radical aspect. The teacher is not an authoritative
dispenser of knowledge (as Wolin stipulates) but a provocateur for critical
thinking. Ultimately, this chapter puts into question the authority, hierar-
chy and knowledge nexus in their work in order to open a new horizon
64 See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1965).
22 W. W. SOKOLOFF
for student voice and learning. The goal is to articulate a general theory
of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality. This is my
alternative to the Wolin and Strauss version of pedagogy.
Chapter 3, “Against the Socratic Method,” is a critique of Socrates and
explores the often over-looked connections between politics and pedagogy.
Specifically, I argue that the Socratic Method (e.g. argumentative question-
ing, answering and refutation) is a limited pedagogical practice because it
is adversarial under conditions of unequal power. It is also hierarchical and
authoritarian, albeit in subtle ways. The Socratic Method is also a practice
based on questionable epistemological assumptions about the character
of knowledge and perpetuates an aggressive and masculinist mode of dis-
course. The Socratic Method may have a future but it would require what I
call the dialectical radicalization of it. This would lead to a greater awareness
and sensitivity to questions of power in the classroom pertaining to ped-
agogy that instructor-led forms of the Socratic Method have occluded. I
ultimately attempt to recover the Socratic Method as a mode of intellectual
emancipation based on challenging all forms of authority, triggering a shift
in power from the instructor to the student and moving us beyond the “ac-
tive learning method” which, just like Socrates and his followers, masks its
power and control behind proclamations of openness and transparency.65
In Chapter 4, “Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas,” I
argue that taking students to a local prison for a field trip creates a unique
opportunity to engage students on issues central to democratic citizenship
that may not come to the surface in a classroom setting. Leaving the ivory
tower and entering a prison improves the learning environment. Students
connect their experience at the prison with their own experiences as well
as with course material on democracy, punishment, mass incarceration and
power/domination. Even if some students opt out of the voluntary prison
visit, a field trip to a prison creates a vibrant learning environment where
students can share their experience with other classmates, as well as reflect
on their own experiences with authority figures. The visit to the prison,
finally, disrupts power relationships between student/instructor (e.g. sub-
verts hierarchy) because all prison field-trip participants are inmates for
a day. The prison visit, ironically, is a dialectical utopian experiment. We
catch glimpses of what a world without a prison industrial complex and
the lives it destroys might look like. By creating a space for the voices of
65 I thank an anonymous reader of this manuscript for suggesting this point.

students as they emerge in a novel educational experience, the prison visit

challenges the top-down epistemology of knowledge that is the main link
in the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus.
In Chapter 5, “Frantz Fanon’s Subversive Pedagogy,” I analyze the role
education and pedagogy play in Fanon’s revolutionary politics. The violent
overthrow of colonialism ultimately depends, in the words of Fanon, on
“educating the masses.” My chapter elucidates the role Fanon’s subversive
pedagogy plays in undermining colonial domination, white privilege and
racism. Impossible to locate in any school and definite place, Fanon’s sub-
versive pedagogy emerges as an embodied experience of disruption that
shatters the colonial subject, undermines the discourse of universality as
ideology and gives birth to new militant political identities. My chapter
concludes with an analysis of the connections between Fanon’s subver-
sive pedagogy and NFL athlete-protestors. Educators can draw on both
to change the terms of the debate about racial injustice in the U.S. and
promote subversive and enlightening forms of visceral learning.
Chapter 6, “Teaching Political Theory ONLINE at a ‘Hispanic Serving
Institution’,” challenges the critiques of online learning by authors who see
it as a negative sign of the growing corporatization of the university and
drift to substandard learning. I draw on my experience teaching online at
a public institution of higher learning to challenge this negative interpre-
tation. Several of my colleagues told me that I should not teach online and
that they would sabotage the course by discouraging students from taking
it. I decided to do it anyway. I refused to tow the department party line
against online learning. As a result, I learned a lot about teaching and the
potential of online course delivery and lived to tell about it. Drawing on
the scholarly literature on teaching online and my experience teaching in
this format, I offer a defense of it as a way to turn the neoliberal university
against itself and offer the course to students who might not otherwise
be able to take it. Just like face to face (F2F) learning experiences, teach-
ing theory in an online format can be an effective and at times better way
to explore a variety of political perspectives, foster critical thinking about
pressing social, political and economic issues, empower students to find
their voice, stimulate serious intellectual conversation and employ expe-
riential/service learning. There are many opportunities for dialogue and
engagement in the online setting (e.g. discussion forum) that are supe-
rior to F2F interactions. Teaching political theory online is also a way to
give access to education for first-generation and non-traditional students
who may not be able to attend F2F classes due to work and family obliga-
24 W. W. SOKOLOFF
tions. Finally, teaching political theory online provides a vantage point to

improve teaching political theory in a F2F format. This chapter attempts
to fill the gap in the scholarly literature insofar as I present what I have
done and learned via teaching theory online and connect it to the broader
theme of this book on the type of education needed in a democracy. This
chapter also continues the broader theme of this book about disrupting the
authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus in the classroom. Disrupting this
nexus allows radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality to
emerge.
Chapter 7, “Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution,” provides a cri-
tique of core assumptions pertaining to research and teaching that block
radical, critical and utopian political science pedagogy. My goal in this
chapter is to articulate an alternative to Leo Strauss’s pedagogical elitism
as well as politically narrow modes of liberal and conservative “common
core” approaches that mandate blind allegiance to the political and eco-
nomic status quo. Through an engagement with the work of Paulo Freire, I
chart paths for transforming political science into a form of radical critique
and project for thoughtful social and political transformation. Political sci-
ence pedagogy properly conceived as a radical, critical and utopian practice
can produce citizens capable of refuting and challenging neoliberal dog-
mas and corrupt political and economic elites. The authority, hierarchy and
knowledge nexus must be shattered to open the prospect of learning that
complements democracy, not subverts it.
In the conclusion, “Silence, Voice and Political Resistance in the Class-
room,” I advance a critical intersectional and utopian approach to political
science pedagogy. To this end, I pose a simple question. What are the
best ways to reach and help silent students (in particular, women of color)
find/refine their voices and come to see themselves as political agents?
Drawing on research pertaining to underserved student populations and
my own experience working with a predominantly Latin@ population in a
border region of Texas, I argue that the best way to cultivate the agency
and voice of students is through a culturally relevant curriculum, criti-
cal autobiography, inclusion of feminist perspectives, visceral learning and
everyday utopianism in the classroom. This chapter delivers a final blow to
the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus perpetuated by traditionalists
and some good intentioned progressives housed in the medieval university
and advances a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the
practice of equality.
All of the chapters in this book insist on the importance of student

voice, making course material relevant and connecting it to the lives of
our students. They also highlight the inescapable political choices involved
in the construction of a curriculum. Additionally, all of the chapters crit-
icize entrenched positions and try to stimulate a broader conversation
about political science pedagogy through exposing the limits of mainstream
approaches. It is time to shatter the authority, hierarchy and knowledge
nexus. This nexus is a form of social control and stands in the way of equal-
ity and real democracy.
CHAPTER 2
Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice
Abstract This chapter presents the work of Sheldon S. Wolin and Leo
Strauss as it pertains to the politics of pedagogy. Their work shares the
assumption that teaching is the transmission of knowledge. In contrast to
this approach, I defend Jacques Derrida’s concept of textual interpretation
because it displaces the authority of the instructor, increases the interpretive
range of texts and opens a space for the voice of students. This chapter thus
puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus present
in Wolin and Strauss’s work and develops a form of radical political theory
pedagogy as the practice of equality.
Sheldon S. Wolin, Leo Strauss and many other contemporary political theo-
rists have argued that the practice of political theory is ultimately a pedagog-
ical undertaking. One with a direct connection to the quality of democratic
life. If this is true, then the question of how we conceptualize political the-
ory (as a vocation; a conversation with the Masters; as reverence for a canon;
and as participation in a tradition of discourse) necessarily has significant
political and pedagogical implications.1 It is thus impossible to escape the
1 For Wolin, “education is one of those truly political matters,” The Presence of the Past:
Essays on the State and the Constitution (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989),
p. 47. See Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_2
28 W. W. SOKOLOFF
politics of political theory notwithstanding the considerable effort by con-

temporary political theorists to evade this question.2 In light of this basic
insight, this chapter argues that it is misleading to conceptualize political
theory as a disinterested search for the truth and autonomous endeavor.
Political theory as a practice and a discipline cannot evade questions of
authority and power. Political theorists provide authoritative interpreta-
tions of texts, produce legitimation discourses for political orders, defend
particular political concepts and thereby create an academic discipline that
defines and controls the appropriate forms political theory can take that
teach students what is worth knowing. To put it differently, political theo-
rists transmit knowledge to students. Students learn about great thinkers.
This influences their political horizons. Hence, a series of disciplinary norms
constitute political theory as a pedagogical practice. Consequently, political
theorists should not work to conceal the politics of political theory, but be
more open and transparent about these political-pedagogical aspects and
take a stand in terms of the specific political commitments and concerns
that inform their work.3 The goal of such an approach is not to turn the
classroom into a site of political indoctrination but to make political theory
more politically relevant and contentious, and to make political theorists
more self-reflective about the relationship between political theory, politics
and pedagogy.
1968). See Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund,
2001); J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1985); Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1960); and Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Intro-
duction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952). See also Martha Nussbaum, Not for
Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
For a critical interrogation of the politics of political theory, see Richard Ashcraft, “On the
Problem of Methodology and the Nature of Political Theory,” Political Theory 1:3 (1975):
5–25; “Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology,” The Journal of Politics 42:3 (August
1980): 687–705.
2 Academic political theory refers to the attempt to evade political responsibility for how
political theory is defined and practiced. For these and related issues, see Tradition, Interpre-
tation, and Science: Political Theory in the American Academy, ed. John S. Nelson (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1986).
3 The failure to do so would constitute a hidden curriculum. On the “hidden curriculum”,
see Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Michael W. Apple,
Ideology and Curriculum (New York: Routledge, 1990); and Eric Margolis, ed., The Hidden
Curriculum in Higher Education (New York: Routledge, 2001).
2 POLITICAL THEORY PEDAGOGY AS RADICAL PRACTICE 29
Consistent with this goal, I want to make it clear from the beginning
that my aspiration as a political theorist is to have an impact on the reigning
distributions of power in society as it pertains to inequalities based on class,
race, gender, sexuality and ability. I explicitly promote radical egalitarianism
as one of the prerequisites for a vibrant democratic society. To this end, I
endorse critical, radical and utopian modes of inquiry and practice that call
into the question the economic, social, political and cultural parameters of
the status quo.4 We are all familiar with arguments pertaining to neoliberal-
ism, the growing corporatization of the university and the transformation of
all modes of human conduct into rational self-maximizing activities. Given
this, a critical, radical and utopian stance in relation to the economic and
political status quo strikes me as a minimal condition for opening paths
to emancipation and envisioning/practicing the transformation of society
into something better.5 Fighting for the democratization of democracy
and resisting the neoliberal assault on public life raise the stakes of the
pedagogical mission of the university and, therefore, the stakes involved in
contesting the traditional practice of political theory pedagogy.
Putting the matter in this admittedly extreme manner gives us a bit of
distance from the practice of political theory. We need to be in a better
position to evaluate and reflect on some of the major currents, and the
range of issues, that have informed political theory as an academic sub-
field in the discipline of political science over the last seven decades, if not
longer.6 In what follows, I address this question by putting pressure on
one of the many fault lines in contemporary political theory; namely, the
perceived divide between Sheldon S. Wolin and Leo Strauss. According
4 See Karl Marx, “For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (Karl Marx to Arnold
Ruge),” in Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1978).
5 See Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York:
Zone Book, 2015); Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and
the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Clyde
W. Barrow, The Entrepreneurial Intellectual in the Corporate University (Cham, Switzerland:
Palgrave, 2018); and Joel Spring, Education and the Rise of the Global Economy (Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, 1998).
6 See John G. Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American Voca-
tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); David Ricci, The Tragedy of Political
Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and
Raymond Seidelman, Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1985).
30 W. W. SOKOLOFF
to a 2010 national survey on major trends in political theory, Leo Strauss

ranked fifth and Sheldon S. Wolin ranked eighth (behind John Rawls [1];
J¨Urgen Habermas [2]; Michel Foucault [3]; William E. Connolly [4];
Michael Walzer [6]; and Charles Taylor [7]). Strauss and Wolin are highly
regarded by the 1086 survey respondents.7 This is not surprising because
they have largely set the terms for defining the practice of political theory
in the twentieth century.
It is common to focus on the divide between Wolin and Strauss. There
is no denying the fact that there are differences between them (e.g. Wolin
as an egalitarian left liberal and Strauss as a conservative elitist). Neverthe-
less, I argue here that there are deep moments of similitude and overlap
between them. This emerges when one examines how both Wolin and
Strauss conceptualize the project of political theory and how it pertains to
pedagogy. Wolin and Strauss are actually quite similar in terms of their epis-
temological commitments, the valorization of contemplation, their uncrit-
ical acceptance of the public/private dichotomy, their relationship to the
“republic of property” and their critique of political science.8 Wolin and
Strauss are also committed to creating a common culture based on pass-
ing down an intellectual inheritance, teaching students about citizenship
and public life within the framework of liberal democracy, and both fail
to put into question the legitimacy of one of the grounding pillars of lib-
eral democracy, namely, the “republic of property.”9 As political theorists,
they are not as different from each other as we might believe. Their first
polemical encounter in the highly influential 1963 American Political Sci-
ence Review essay written by John H. Schaar and Sheldon S. Wolin on
7 See Matthew J. Moore, “Political Theory Today: Results of a National Survey,” PS: Polit-
ical Science and Politics 43 (April 2010): 267.
8 By “republic of property,” I am referring to the “transcendental structures of law and
property” as described by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Commonwealth (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 19. For them, “the establishment of the constitutional
order and the rule of law served to defend and legitimate private property” (p. 9).
9 See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, 2009. See also Benjamin R. Bar-
ber, “The Politics of Political Science: ‘Value-Free’ Theory and the Wolin-Strauss Dust Up
of 1963,” American Political Science Review 100 (November 2006): 539–545. See Anne
Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2004). See also Nicholas Xenos, Cloaked in Virtue: Unveiling Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric
of American Foreign Policy (New York: Routledge, 2008). See Gregory Bruce Smith, “Leo
Strauss and the Straussians: An Anti-democratic Cult?” PS: Political Science and Politics 30
(June 1997): 180–189. See Steven B. Smith, “Leo Strauss’s Platonic Liberalism,” Political
Theory 28 (December 2000): 787–809.
Herbert J. Storing’s (ed.) Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics obscures

the overlap. More recently, Wolin’s critique of Strauss and Straussians in
Democracy, Inc. as well as earlier in The Presence of the Past also hides impor-
tant similarities.10 My general theory of radical political theory pedagogy
as the practice of equality disrupts the authority, hierarchy and knowledge
nexus and opens new directions for the emancipatory project beyond the
models of pedagogy offered by Strauss and Wolin.
My alternative position draws on the work of Michael Hardt and Anto-
nio Negri (critique of the “republic of property”), Jacques Rancière (teach-
ing as an ignorant schoolmaster) and Jacques Derrida (textual dissemina-
tion).11 In this vein, I argue that we must broaden the tradition/canon,
reject authoritative and hegemonic knowledge claims in the classroom and
enlist political theory in the struggle to create a better world. Contra Wolin,
practices of interpretation are not predetermined by the historical terms of
discourse, but should be open to indeterminate horizons.12 Contra Strauss,
political philosophy is open to the future, not something bound by an “ab-
solute horizon.”13 In my view, political theory should constantly reinvent
itself in response to changing political conditions. My alternative position
attempts to open texts and pedagogy to an egalitarian sphere of disputation
that permanently displaces the authority of the instructor and encourages
students to be insurrectionary agents of their own enlightenment; joyfully
irreverent, and critical of the many ruses of power they will encounter in
the realm of politics and, by definition, in the classroom. This chapter is
10 See John H. Schaar and Sheldon S. Wolin, “Review: Essays on the Scientific Study of
Politics: A Critique,” American Political Science Review 57 (March 1963): 125–150. See also
Herbert J. Storing et al., “Replies to Schaar and Wolin: I-IV,” American Political Science
Review 57 (March 1963): 151–160. See also Wolin, Democracy, Incorporated, 2008; Wolin,
The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution, 1989.
11 See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, 2009. See also Jacques Derrida,
Limited Inc., trans. Samuel Weber, Jeffrey Melman, and Alan Bass (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1990). See also Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans.
Gayartri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). See also
Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans.
Kristin Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).
12 See Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation and Western Polit-
ical Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960/2004), pp. 1–26.
13 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953),
p. 35.
32 W. W. SOKOLOFF
thus a contribution to a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy

as the practice of equality.
Leo Strauss and the Re-discovery of Political

Philosophy
Leo Strauss’s (1899–1973) influence on political philosophy in the twenti-
eth century and beyond is impossible to deny. After leaving Europe in 1937,
Strauss had a distinguished teaching career at the University of Chicago,
with stints at St. John’s College, The New School for Social Research, and
Occidental College, to name a few of the places where he taught during
his lifetime. His legacy lives on via his writings. He has many devoted stu-
dents who occupy positions of influence at elite academic institutions and
in government. There is a steady stream of publications pertaining to his
life and work. Among many of his devoted followers, the alleged moral col-
lapse of Western “high” civilization and its attendant social chaos validate
Strauss’s claim that nihilism, mass culture, relativism and mobocracy threat-
ened the philosophical foundations of the Western world. The issues first
flagged by Strauss continue to frame debates for academics, media pundits
and advisors to politicians. Strauss’s project was ultimately about maintain-
ing authority by legitimating inequality, inculcating deference to aristocrat
intellectuals, keeping the masses pacified and ensuring law and order. He
is thus an apostle of the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus.
Strauss published on a wide range of themes, he deemed to be founda-
tional for Western civilization and he urged his followers to “rally around
the flag of the Western tradition.”14 Strauss thus sought to defend the
intellectual hegemony of the Western world and he articulated a qualified
end of history thesis (before the end of history thesis), where he came to
view an aristocratic form of liberal democracy as the next best, and only
viable option to the rule of philosopher-kings. As he puts it, the “best
regime is the absolute rule of the wise and the best practicable regime is
the rule of gentlemen.”15 He posited incontestable transcendental founda-
tions (i.e. natural law) as the ground supporting the political status quo and
14 Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought
of Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 72. See also Alan Bloom on
the universal, imperial and hegemonic mission of the Western tradition in The Closing of the
American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).
15 Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 185.
he enlisted the authority of the Western tradition to immunize this arché

(e.g. beginning; origin; first cause) from attack. Strauss maintained that
there was “absolutism inherent in our great Western tradition.”16 Com-
mon people failed to see this foundation. Since they played no significant
part in Strauss’s project, except in terms of deference and obedience, this
was not a problem. Indeed, Strauss believed common people are incapable
of reading anything more complicated than a comic strip. For them, philos-
ophy was something repulsive. Hence, pacification of the masses requires
myths (philosophical “truths” expressed in accessible rhetorical forms).17
The unity and depth of Strauss’s body of work as well as its internal tensions
and unresolved ambiguities, account for Strauss’s relevance today and the
significance of his legacy.18
The aforementioned themes, and a number of other key ideas, orient
and organize Strauss’s thinking as a strange constellation of tensions, not
a totalizing system. The first pertains to political philosophy’s relationship
to the broader society. For Strauss, the political philosopher has a par-
ticular responsibility in a political order. The goal of political philosophy
is essentially pedagogical. As such, Strauss formulated an “ideal type” of
the scholar as a classically educated male versed in the timeless wisdom of
ancient Greek philosophy. Political philosophy has reached its goal when
it becomes the “teacher of legislators.”19 Strauss argues against the politi-
cization of political philosophy. It is not to serve a specific political cause.
Philosophy, if it is to remain even a close approximation to what it was
in classical Greece, must have a certain level of distance from the specific
political concerns of the day and ask instead the timeless questions. As
such, pedagogy as Bildung is committed to the cultivation of the complete
16 Strauss, Rebirth, p. 12.

17 For Strauss, it was essential that there was an “unqualified commitment of the many to the
opinions on which society rests”; Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1959/1988), p. 222. It was also essential that there were things about which
“it is absolutely forbidden to laugh”; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 40.
18 See The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective, eds. Kenneth L. Deutsch
and Walter Soffer, corrected edition (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987).
See also Thomas L. Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
19 Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? p. 84.
34 W. W. SOKOLOFF
person.20 This aristocratic intellectual receives the highest form of educa-

tion. Strauss calls it “royal education.”21 For Strauss, the emergence of
modern political science as an empirical-positivist method, or what he calls
the new political science, annulled the pedagogical aspect of political philos-
ophy as Bildung and led to “conformism and philistinism.”22 At its worst,
social science positivism represented the “victory of the gutter.”23
The success of the pedagogical mission of Strauss hinges on the teacher’s
authority acquired via the acquisition of timeless knowledge and depends
on the student’s ultimate deference to this authority. Knowledge (epistēmē)
is the primary goal of political philosophy and, as Strauss states, “political
philosophy is the conscious, coherent and relentless effort to replace opin-
ions about the political fundamentals by knowledge regarding them.”24
This knowledge was contained in classical texts and accessed via non-
arbitrary interpretations acquired through careful reading. Strauss was a
close reader of texts and he sought to avoid “arbitrary interpretation.”25
He urged readers to pay “the greatest attention to every detail.”26 Studying
these texts and “Great Books” was a way of “listening to the conversation
between the great philosophers.”27 The knowledge claims of the instruc-
tor, as well as the designation of certain books as “great,” gives the conver-
sation between masters a certain authority. This in turn supplements the
teacher’s authority. Listening to this conversation, Strauss claims, is fore-
most an exercise in modesty. As Strauss puts it, “philosophy in the original
20 Bildung is “a broad educational and cultural background.” See The Oxford Duden Ger-
man Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 159. Bildung also implies
self-cultivation, maturation and the formation of character.
22 Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? p. 20. Wolin also claimed that political science as
method led to “conformism.” See Wolin, “Political Theory: From Vocation to Invocation,” in
Vocations of Political Theory, eds. Frank and Tambornino (Minnesota: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000), p. 12.
23 Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1968/1995), p. 222.
25 Strauss, On Tyranny, eds. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (New York: Free Press,
1963/1991), p. 27. See also Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1952/1980).
26 Strauss, On Tyranny, p. 27.
27 Strauss, “What Is Liberal Education?” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 7.
meaning of the term is nothing but knowledge of one’s ignorance.”28 In

addition to this arguably skeptical side to Strauss (thinking that results from
his adoration of Socrates) he also states: “The philosopher ceases to be a
philosopher at the moment at which the ‘subjective certainty’ of a solution
becomes stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of that
solution.”29 Strauss nonetheless found support for his second best option
of rule by classically educated aristocrats. The problematic character of phi-
losophy (e.g. antinomies and contradictions) in no way interfered with this
aspect of Strauss’s political project.
Ancient political thinking was hardly an unconditional endorsement of
democratic politics. Given its hostility to democracy, the combination of lib-
eral democracy and ancient political thinking only on the surface constitutes
a tension in Strauss’s thinking. At a deeper level, the tension evaporates for
this amalgamation is consistent with the doctrine of democratic elitism.30
Indeed, Strauss was an unrepentant elitist and maintained that the practice
and preservation of the tradition of political-philosophical inquiry should
be restricted to the few. The few were well-born men educated at elite
institutions. Strauss even goes so far as to say that a woman’s place is in the
home, that women are inferior to men and that a “gentleman looks down
on many things which are highly esteemed by the vulgar.”31 For Strauss,
women and common people should stay away from the inner sanctum of
philosophy. Alexandre Kojève flagged the negative implications of Strauss’s
position. For him, Strauss risked situating political philosophy in a closed
society. As Kojève put it, this was problematic because “any closed society
that adopts a doctrine, any ‘elite’ selected in terms of a doctrinal teaching,
tends to consolidate the prejudices entailed by that doctrine.”32 Strauss
nevertheless remained committed to an elitist version of political philoso-
phy and liberal democracy.
28 Strauss, On Tyranny, p. 196.

29 Ibid.
30 See Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (London, UK: Uni-
versity of London Press, 1967).
31 See Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966),
p. 210. See also Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 142. For a defense of the superiority
of men by a prominent Straussian, see Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2006). Mansfield states: “I take the side of common sense. I like its forthright
defense of stereotypes regarding the sexes,” p. x.
32 Kojève, On Tyranny, p. 155.
36 W. W. SOKOLOFF
For Strauss, ordinary people do not have the leisure to read, think and
cultivate the mental faculties that support liberal democracy. He wonders by
what right a low-class human being is still even a human being.33 Whereas
Tocqueville praised lawyers and saw the practical and political habits of
Americans (e.g. reading newspapers; attending town meetings; and serving
on juries) as key for preserving American democracy, Strauss believed that
ordinary people were sleeping dogs and we should “let sleeping dogs lie.”34
For him, most people are unfit for participation in a democracy. Strauss was
also explicitly anti-utopian and warned against “visionary expectations from
politics.”35 For him, economic inequality was natural and inevitable. Since
it was natural, there was nothing to fix. The same was true of intellectual
inequality. Hence, according to Strauss, “the philosopher and the non-
philosophers cannot have genuine common deliberations.”36 For Strauss,
an unbridgeable chasm separates aristocratic intellectuals from common
people. The latter flounder in watered-down forms of education and tech-
nical training. Real scholars are engaged in soul-craft, leave Plato’s cave, and
they pursue a liberal education. For Strauss, “liberal education is liberation
from vulgarity.”37 For Strauss, “democracy is meant to be an aristocracy.”38
Given the divide between the philosopher and common people, decep-
tion (myths) were needed as a form of consolation and domestication of the
ignorant majority to prod them to live virtuous lives (e.g. religion), defer
to the wisdom of gentlemen (e.g. rule by the wise) and accept the absolute
33 Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 75.

34 See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (New York:
Perennial, 2000). See also Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism
Ancient and Modern, p. 14. There was thus an implicit alliance and agreement between behav-
ioralists and Straussians on the limited ability and capacity of ordinary people to participate
in politics. Behavioralists discovered this with public opinion and knowledge surveys. Strauss
and Straussians justified it with the wisdom obtained from classical texts. See Stephen Earl
Bennett, “‘Know-Nothings’ Revisited: The Meaning of Political Ignorance Today,” Social
Science Quarterly 69 (January 1988): 476–490. For a counter-position on this, see James L.
Gibson and Gregory A. Caldeira, “Knowing the Supreme Court? A Reconsideration of Public
Ignorance of the High Court,” The Journal of Politics 71:2 (April 2009): 429–441.
35 Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern,
p. 24.
36 Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern,
p. 14.
legitimacy of the status quo (e.g. patriotism). In this regard, at least two
different strands of pedagogy are apparent in Strauss. One for the elite and
another for the masses. The former involves the pursuit of truth; the latter
requires myth, deception and noble lies. Strauss’s elitism was also appar-
ent in his approach to reading texts. Via textual interpretation, Strauss sets
himself up as the master of locating the apparent meanings, as well as the
hidden ones, contained in the written word. In this regard, there were exo-
teric and esoteric meanings in texts and Strauss wrote books that explicated
these meanings.39 Authors “wrote between the lines” which made it nec-
essary for readers to “read between the lines.”40 As stated earlier, though,
Strauss seeks to avoid “arbitrary interpretation.” Thus, the theorist must
discard everything that may keep him bound to a particular context. He
must depart to the ethereal realm of pure reflection. For Strauss, the end of
philosophy was the “disinterested contemplation of the eternal.”41 Philos-
ophy is possible “only if there is an absolute horizon or a natural horizon
in contradistinction to the historically changing horizon of the caves.”42
To repeat, philosophy is only possible for the enlightened few. It is
not possible for the demos because they are unwilling to be deferential to
it.43 Deference is ultimately a political-pedagogical and hegemonic project
involving indoctrination. Even though Strauss claims “liberal education
cannot be simply indoctrination,” his inclusion of the word ‘simply’ in
this citation implies that education receives its outlines and forms as a
project of indoctrination.44 Education as indoctrination works alongside
Strauss’s view that to be “inhuman is the same as to be unteachable.”45
To be unteachable would mean to resist Strauss’s project of indoctrination.
39 Strauss’s obsession with the explication of classical texts was not politically neutral.
According to Jacques Rancière, “explication is not only the stultifying weapon of pedagogues
but the very bond of the social order”; The Ignorant Schoolmaster, 1991, p. 117.
40 On this issue see Arthur Melzer, “On the Pedagogical Motive for Esoteric Writing,”
Journal of Politics 69 (November 2007): 1015–1031. I agree that esoteric writing (if such a
thing exists) requires close reading. As I shall make clear in this chapter, I disagree that the
aim of philosophical education is to “convert” (p. 1018).
42 Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 35.
43 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, p. 296.
38 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Exactly how this plays out comes into even greater focus when we bring
Wolin into the conversation.
Sheldon S. Wolin and the Making of Political

Theory
Sheldon S. Wolin (1922–2015) has had an undeniable impact on politi-
cal science and political theory. Educated at Oberlin College and Harvard
University, Wolin had a distinguished teaching career and taught at UC
Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and Princeton University, to name a few of the
institutions he taught at during his career. His publications are wide rang-
ing. He influenced not only the identity of political theory as a vocation
but he engaged what he believed to be the most pressing issues of the time.
These topics include the increased power of the state, the destruction of
democratic life, the corporate takeover of the political realm, the threat of
new forms of totalitarianism and the transformation of the human being
into a calculating economic machine. Wolin’s legacy is strong and alive and
many of his talented students have influential academic positions at elite
universities.46
Like Strauss, Wolin was also interested in foundations, but he conceived
of these foundations as a dialectical and conflict-prone relationship between
the political activity of the demos who must perpetually fight off and chal-
lenge the political state and its weapons (e.g. constitutionalism) and not
as some sort of trans-historical foundation. The fight between fugitive
democrats and the state only flared up occasionally but it was nonethe-
less an ever-present possibility. For Wolin, political theory was not primar-
ily a philosophical undertaking but a “civic activity.”47 However, in a way
that is arguably similar to the stance taken by Leo Strauss in relation to
“Great Books” that set the terms and parameters of political philosophy,
Wolin casts the political theorist as a pilgrim who pays an ongoing homage
to the tradition of political theory. For Wolin, the contemporary politi-
46 For critical engagement with Wolin’s work, see Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and
the Vicissitudes of the Political, eds. Aryeh Botwinick and William W. Connolly (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001). See also Vocations of Political Theory, eds. Jason A. Frank
and John Tambornino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
47 Wolin, The Presence of the Past. For Wolin, Political theory is “primarily a civic and sec-
ondarily an academic activity” (p. 1).
cal theorist “enters into a debate the terms of which have largely been set
beforehand.”48 The debate is “transmitted as a cultural legacy.”49
Wolin’s position is evident in his foundational early writings like Poli-
tics and Vision. It was also the result of his attempt to carve out a spe-
cific disciplinary space and identity for political theory. For Wolin, political
theory was distinct from political science as science (e.g. behavioralism,
positivism and methodism) that emerged in the middle of the twentieth
century. Wolin’s article “Political Theory as a Vocation” makes this clear
and does nothing less than construct a distinct sub-disciplinary identity
for political theory. He identified two different and competing concep-
tions of knowledge (epistēmē). Scientists sought objective knowledge. This
required the de-contextualization of data. Appropriate methods and tech-
niques revealed statistical significance. In contrast to this approach, political
theory was a historical project that generated a distinct form of knowl-
edge and political wisdom via the preservation of past theories. For Wolin,
political theory was a “historical undertaking that exposed the nature of
our present predicament.”50 The knowledge aspirations and claims of the
political science technicians narrowed their focus and led them to measure
what was measurable and to stay out of the business of making partisan and
value-laden statements about the quality and direction of political life. The
political theorist, in contrast, grappled with the political issues of her day.
It is striking to note that Strauss and Wolin’s negative descriptions of
the political science technicians are arguably identical. Because they aspired
to be scientists, Wolin argued that political science technicians avoided
“fundamental criticism” and “fundamental commitment.”51 In contrast
to the vocation of the political theorist that was motivated by a specific
calling and commitment to the common good, methodism (which Wolin
called a “proposal for shaping the mind”) evaded politics, and purged public
concern from the field of political science in the name of dispassionate and
objective research.52 For Wolin, this constituted nothing less than a “crisis
in political education.”53
48 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 21.

49 Ibid.
50 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. xxiii.
51 Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” in Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 11.
40 W. W. SOKOLOFF
In addition to clarifying the forms of knowledge and wisdom generated

by political theory, Wolin’s “Political Theory as a Vocation” was also a
response to the growing attack waged against political theory by political
scientists who viewed the historical and philosophical aspects of political
theorizing as sloppy, unscientific, prescriptive and irrelevant. In a way that
was, yet again, similar to Leo Strauss, Wolin sought to provide a ground to
legitimate the practice of political theory in a discipline that was increasingly
hostile to it. For Wolin, political philosophy was “not an essence with an
eternal nature,” like it was for Leo Strauss.54 However, political theory
for Wolin was also “not an arbitrary construction” (just like Strauss) but
generated knowledge as wisdom and vision (also like Strauss).55 For Wolin,
political theory generated forms of knowledge that were responsive to the
needs of the political moment (Wolin calls it, drawing on Karl Polyani,
“tacit knowledge”).56
There was much more to Wolin’s mode of political theorizing than carv-
ing out a space for the autonomous practice of political theory within the
confines of the academy and foregrounding public commitment.57 Once
the space was created for the practice of political theory—“a privileged the-
oretical vantage point”—as Wolin puts it, the question became what exactly
would Wolin’s form of political theorizing take above and beyond his view
of political theory as a vocation and his interpretations of canonical thinkers
in Politics and Vision?58 His concept of “fugitive democracy” provides the
answer to this question.59
For Wolin, fugitive democracy was the high point of politics. It was
Wolin’s antidote for the nihilism of consumer culture, the transforma-
tion of the human into homo economicus and the nightmare of inverted
totalitarianism. Even though it was essentially episodic, fugitive democracy

56 See Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political, eds. Aryeh
Botwinick and William E. Connolly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
57 Wolin states: “The activity of theorizing declares its autonomy from politics”; Fugitive
Democracy and Other Essays, p. 293.
58 Wolin, Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 288.
59 Wolin and John H. Schaar’s, The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond: Essays on Politics and
Education in the Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1970) provides the bridge
between political theory as a vocation and fugitive democracy. Wolin arguably underwent a
“radicalization” by the student movement he encountered while teaching at UC Berkeley.
combined protest and pedagogy and named the unfinished project of the
self-fashioning of the demos. Wolin viewed education not as the acquisi-
tion of a skill set and techniques but the “development of individuals who
will be able to practice the life of free citizens.”60 Even if it accomplished
nothing, however, fugitive democracy was still good because it named the
possibility of human dignity and aspiration for self-determination. Fugitive
democracy was not a form as much as it was the pure voice of the people
acting in concert and in public against the threat of state power. It was
unmediated democratic energy. It was the political form of democracy. It
exceeded all boundaries and limits. Fugitive democracy was irreducible to
democracy conceived of as a form of rule.61
This final statement led political theorist George Kateb to flag the
ambivalence but also the despair and rage embedded in Wolin’s formula-
tion. Wolin appears to celebrate disruption as such and fugitive democracy,
for Kateb, “borders on the nihilistic, the merely destructive.” “At the bot-
tom of Wolin’s notion of fugitive democracy is, precisely,” Kateb continues,
“rage.”62 Kateb’s point is interesting but it misses something more signif-
icant, namely, the contradiction between the political side of Wolin’s work
(fugitive democracy), on one hand, and the epistemological side (political
theory as a vocation), on the other.
The divide between these two sides of Wolin’s work is striking. Fugitive
democracy cannot be contained in constitutions and bound by bound-
aries.63 Political theory as a vocation operates within the tradition and the
inherited terms of discourse.64 For Wolin, the theorist “enters into a debate
the terms of which have largely been set beforehand.”65 Whereas fugitive
democracy explodes onto the stage of history and is unpredictable and
destructive, the political theorist is bound by a “speculative horizon” that
60 Wolin, The Presence of the Past, p. 62.

61 Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” in Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays.
62 Kateb in Democracy and Vision, p. 45.
63 Wolin formulates a political challenge to constitutional orders but it is destined to fail
because his challenge (e.g. fugitive democracy) leaves the material foundation of constitution-
alism untouched. For Hardt and Negri, “the concept of property and the defense of property
remain the foundation of every modern constitution.” Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth,
p. 15.
64 Wolin claims that the epic theorist is bold and daring and “ignores formal protocols”;
Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 120.
42 W. W. SOKOLOFF
serves to stabilize the meaning of selected texts and connects the past with
the present.66 Fugitive democracy (what George Kateb claims is “underde-
veloped, barely sketched”) is “episodic, rare” and “rebellious.”67 Political
theory as a vocation is a continuous foray into the tradition and thus resem-
bles the stable practices that contain and possibly annihilate fugitive bursts
of energy. For Wolin, the political theorist is compelled “to abide by certain
rules and usages.”68 Whereas state power annihilates fugitive democracy,
political theory as a vocation empowers and elevates the practitioner of
political theory to the status of protector of the threatened tradition (just
like Strauss). Political theory as a vocation thus serves a valuable function.
It provides the political theorist with solace and a comfortable resting place
from the potential futility of the fugitive political activity of the demos.
As I have already indicated, the divide between explosive fugitive democ-
racy, on one hand, and the stabilizing/interpretive side of political theory
as a vocation, on the other, is a puzzling tension in Wolin’s work. In my
view, Wolin cannot think himself out of this antinomy. Kateb targets the
latent nihilism in fugitive democracy. Political theorist Linda Zerilli targets
the other side of Wolin’s work and criticizes the conceptualization of polit-
ical theory as a perennial dialogue and conversation (as Leo Strauss and
Michael Oakeshott also stipulate) because, for Zerilli, this “obscures the
historical conditions that have shaped the ‘perennial dialogue.’”69 More
problematically, this blindness (and denial) of the politics involved in the
constitution of a canon and tradition results in policing the meaning and
content of the tradition as well as the participants in the conversation. This
is a way of defending “their own cultural authority for which they refuse

67 Kateb, Democracy and Vision, p. 44; Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” in Fugitive Democracy
and Other Essays, p. 100.
68 Wolin, Politics and Vision, 22.
69 See Linda Zerilli, “Machiavelli’s Sisters,” p. 257. Strauss and especially Oakeshott are
obsessed with the conversation with the past. See Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal
Learning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001). For an uncritical deployment of conversation
see Luke Philip Plotica, Michael Oakeshott and the Conversation of Political Thought (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2015). See also Aryeh Botwinick on the similarities
between Oakeshott and Wolin. For Botwinick, “what unites Wolin and Oakeshott is far deeper
and more significant than what divides them,” namely, their “conceptions of theory, philoso-
phies of history, and education.” Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of
the Political, eds. Botwinick and Connolly, p. 118.
to make themselves accountable.”70 On the surface, the concept of con-

versation and dialogue seems to be inclusive and apolitical. Who could
reasonably object to it? Oakeshott, Strauss and Wolin valorize conversa-
tion as a dominant trope for political theory. One can legitimately wonder,
though, if ‘conversation’ is a ruse that serves to mask the power of the lead
interlocutor who sets the terms of the conversation. For Zerilli, the watery-
eyed appeal to conversation with the masters is “an academic fiction.”71
I suppose another way of labeling the appeal to conversation within the
sub-discipline of political theory is as a “noble lie.”
For Strauss and Wolin, the political theorist is a priest and reverential
sage who preserves an inherited tradition of inquiry (the construction of
which is always the result of a power struggle) via appropriate interpre-
tations of a limited number of texts. They deny culpability in the ways
that political theory is inescapably a practice of power. Strauss insists that
political philosophy as a quest for answers to fundamental questions is out-
side of politics because it is the “humanizing quest for the eternal order”
and the theorist is merely an “umpire.”72 Wolin claims that “the history
of political philosophy has been a dialogue” and the political theorist is
just like an umpire insofar as he “declares his autonomy from politics.”73
Wolin and Strauss have a deep respect for the Western tradition of “Great
Books.” They employ static (in the case of Strauss) and near static (in the
case of Wolin) epistemological horizons that determine in advance the con-
tent of the perennial political questions and the proper range of political
concerns as a result of what Wolin calls a “privileged theoretical vantage
point.”74 Strauss and Wolin also criticize methodism (behavioralism) and
oppose identity politics.75 For Strauss, identity politics and multicultur-
70 Zerilli, p. 270. In Strauss’s What Is Political Philosophy? he states that the political phi-
losophy is the “umpire”, p. 84. This implies impartiality, objectivity and autonomy within the
parameters and terms of the game.
71 See Zerilli, p. 267.
72 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965),
p. 34. See also Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? p. 84.
73 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 12. See also Wolin, Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays,
p. 288.
74 Wolin, Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 288.
75 Wolin’s earlier emphasis on a unified and relatively homogeneous public was dropped
and he came to see that a “unified demos is no longer possible or even desirable.” See Wolin,
Democracy, Inc., p. 290.
44 W. W. SOKOLOFF
alism threaten the sovereignty of the Western tradition and undermine

its authority.76 For Wolin, identity politics threatens the common with
intractable fragmentation.77 Since grievance recognition relies on the state,
this is at odds with Wolin’s anti-statist position. Their respective concep-
tions of the type of knowledge gained from political philosophizing are
not identical. They both nonetheless endorse conceptions of knowledge
(epistēmē) that secure and fortress their own authority. The point is to
transmit this knowledge to students.
Conclusion
Is there another possible direction for the political theorist, if one agrees
that Strauss’s and Wolin’s approaches are insufficiently reflective about how
political theory has been deployed as a form of cultural control, obfuscation
of unequal property relations and to reproduce a ruling elite? As I stated
earlier, one of the goals for political theorists should be to reflect more
precisely on the practice of political theory as it pertains to pedagogy. As
I have already indicated, my goal is to formulate and practice an explicitly
self-critical form of political theory grounded in egalitarianism and a radi-
cally democratic orientation as part of a general theory of radical political
theory pedagogy. My alternative position on the project of political theory
draws on the work of Hardt and Negri, Rancière and Derrida.78 Derrida’s
views on textual interpretation challenge the republic of property, shatter
the view that a text has one meaning and broaden the tradition/canon.
Rancière is helpful to my general theory of radical political theory peda-
gogy insofar as radical egalitarianism constitutes the essence of his work.
He urges political theorists to be pedagogical provocateurs and to teach
as “ignorant schoolmasters.” In his words, “a professor is neither more
76 See also, Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987.
77 Wolin, Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, pp. 409, 419, 420.
78 I have already commented on Hardt and Negri. It is worth pointing out that William
E. Connolly, a thinker ranked 4th in terms of influence by the same 2010 national survey of
political theorists, has expanded what counts as political theory and is deeply influenced by
French post-structuralism. I thank an anonymous reviewer of this manuscript for suggesting
this point.
nor less intelligent than another man.”79 Education is not a matter of the
transmission of knowledge but is a battle for an egalitarian order. The goal
is to restore the “equality of nature.”80
Allow me to be more specific about my general theory of radical political
theory pedagogy by drawing on Derrida’s work. In contrast to the Wolin–S-
trauss approach to politics and pedagogy, a more egalitarian approach might
start with one of the grounding assumptions formulated by Derrida in Lim-
ited Inc.: “A written sign carries with it a force that breaks with its context.”
He continues: “The sign possesses the characteristic of being readable even
if the moment of its production is irrevocably lost and even if I do not know
what its alleged author-scripter consciously intended to say at the moment
he wrote it, i.e., abandoned it to its essential drift.”81 Apparently, there is
force of rupture embedded in all signs that opens texts to an inexhaustible
dispersion of meaning.82 In addition to this aspect, Derrida also accorded
a new level of dignity to seemingly marginal comments made by an author.
What may seem to be incidental and not worthy of attention in a text, Der-
rida argued, is actually in certain cases the text’s condition of possibility. For
him, what is in the margin does not stay there but threatens the center.83
The play of these differences ultimately undermines the text’s coherence
and stable meaning. The author cannot control and secure its meaning.84
Imagine the impact of this on reading texts, especially with students. The
careful reader that pays attention to these details challenges and subverts
traditional and mainstream understandings. In this regard, she is analo-
gous to a discerning democratic agent who resists being seduced by the
rhetoric and empty talk of politicians and authoritarian pedagogues ped-
79 Jacques Rancière, Ignorant Schoolmaster, p. 102. Teaching as an ignorant schoolmaster

would mean practicing emancipation in the classroom. As he states, “there is no hierarchy of
intellectual capacity” (p. 27).
80 Rancière, Ignorant Schoolmaster, p. 27.
81 Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., ed. Gerald Graff, trans. Geffrey Mehlman and Samuel
Weber (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 9.
82 See Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982).
83 For an example of this in reference to a long footnote in Kant’s Groundwork for the
Metaphysics of Morals, see William W. Sokoloff, “Kant and the Paradox of Respect,” American
Journal of Political Science 45:4 (October 2001): 768–779.
84 For Strauss, “the author of the text, when writing it, understood it in one way only”;
Rebirth, pp. 209–210.
46 W. W. SOKOLOFF
dling the authority, inequality and knowledge gospel. The activist reader
can easily become the defiant citizen, precisely the person who constantly
criticizes and tests democracy and keeps it alive (e.g. connected to the peo-
ple) through the critical spirit.85
Can the historical context and “meanings extended over time” (Wolin)
stabilize the text? Can an act of “reading between the lines” (Strauss) arrest
and put an end to the uncontrollable textual dispersion of meaning? Derrida
says that the dissemination of meaning is the text’s condition of possibility.
Strauss claims “the author of the text, when writing it, understood it in
one way only.”86 This is precisely the chain of authority/knowledge that
Derrida puts into question and shatters.87 With Derrida, the transmission
of a static (or near static) textual meaning and tradition is not at stake.
What is at stake is opening a space for readers to challenge received wisdom
and thereby reinvent the tradition.88 Derrida thus puts into question the
authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus.
My point with all of this is not that we should yell out and say what-
ever we want about a text. The point is much more important and one
that deeply troubled Strauss and Wolin. For Strauss, the problem with the
written form was that it was “equally accessible to all who can read.”89
The role of the teacher, for Strauss, is to ascertain who should read certain
texts, as well as to secure the meaning and authority of the text. As Strauss
insists, “the assumption that the Platonic dialogues do not convey a teach-
ing is absurd.”90 The risk of absurdity is what Strauss must combat for it
would undermine the authority of the tradition as well as Strauss’s own
authority as a scholar and pedagogue. For Wolin, a text is part of tradition
85 See J. Peter Euben on the “reader-citizen,” in The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road
Not Taken (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 299.
86 Strauss, Rebirth, pp. 209–210.
87 Does Derrida have something in common with Strauss in terms of textual interpretation?
The answer is no. Derrida has a new concept of tradition and tries to break open new futures
for texts. Strauss, in contrast, has an antiquarian interest in classical texts and posits a single
textual meaning based on the author’s intention.
88 I concur with Benjamin Barber who states “education for liberty lends itself neither to
fixed canons nor to no canon at all. It flourishes with active students, bold teachers, and loose
canons.” See Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of
America (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), p. 106.
89 Strauss, The City and Man, p. 52.
90 Strauss, The City and Man, p. 51.
of political discourse. The text speaks to a limited number of concerns.

This claim serves to stabilize a text’s meaning. It is not difficult to see the
type of teacher that emerges from this position. The teacher must police
the meaning of a text and prevent students from straying from the real
meaning (just like Strauss). As Wolin puts it: “The theorist enters into a
debate the terms of which have largely been set beforehand.”91 Reading a
text thus becomes an exercise in accepting specific terms that are set before
the reader even starts to read the text.
In contrast to Strauss and Wolin, Derrida argues textual meaning (if
there is one) cannot be fixed. Hence, the work of reading is never finished.
New interpretations of texts are always possible. Reading books with new
generations of students thereby becomes a battle of interpretations and an
exercise in playful contestation, including the author’s claim to dictate and
control the ultimate meaning of the work, as well as the instructor’s author-
ity in trying to dictate the meaning of a text. Contrast this playful aspect
pertaining to textual interpretation with Strauss’s somber proclamation that
“every complete society necessarily recognizes something about which it
is absolutely forbidden to laugh.”92 Given the absolute and unconditional
nature of Strauss’s statement prohibiting laughter, I wonder what would
happen to a student if she inadvertently laughed at the wrong thing. Laugh-
ter, apparently, is incompatible with the authority, hierarchy and knowledge
nexus peddled by Strauss.
Nevertheless, I call the potentially comical relationship between the
author, the text, readers and context fugitive textuality. Fugitive textu-
ality is a joyful anarchistic and utopian moment that undermines authority
in the classroom (both the teacher’s and the author of a book) and thereby
opens a space of freedom where students can breathe and be creative. As an
approach to reading texts, Wolin invokes tradition as a way to set the proper
parameters for the “interpreting faculties” and to sustain a clear boundary
for the political.93 His position in this regard is essentially defensive. As
he puts it, “the tradition of political thought is not so much a tradition of
discovery as one of meanings extended over time.”94

92 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, p. 40.
93 Wolin, Presence of the Past, p. 65.
48 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Unfortunately, this conception of political theory leads to a form of

pedagogy that creates an impenetrable epistemological fortress around the
teacher and the text. It prevents discovery and innovation in the name of
preserving meanings over time. Similarly, Strauss conceives of political the-
ory pedagogy as working to develop authoritative interpretations of texts by
virtue of privileged access to the author’s secret message “written between
the lines” that he can deposit into the brains of students. Instead of these
authoritarian and stifling approaches, I argue that political theory peda-
gogy should produce new forms of agency constituted by insubordination,
disobedience, dissent and subversion. This new agency would also chal-
lenge the “republic of property” (e.g. the claim that the author owns and
controls the meaning of a text). This starting point encourages students to
read texts carefully and to formulate their own positions while taking risks
and making bold arguments. This grounding assumption creates an egali-
tarian sphere of disputation where students become insurrectionary agents
of their own emancipation and enlightenment, not followers of reverential
sages in the classroom. Pedagogy emerges as a political practice oriented
to human emancipation instead of social control. This approach under-
mines and challenges the attempt to position students in the classroom as
reverential, deferential and docile. The goal is to shatter the authority of
texts, traditions and instructors in order to open the possibility of radical
Perhaps Wolin would accuse me of falling into the trap of “over-
theorization” and assert that I am promoting a “theoretic form of the-
ory.”95 Strauss would certainly accuse me of abusing philosophy and being
unteachable (meaning that I simply refuse to submit to his hegemonic
pedagogical program) and therefore he would label me “inhuman.” My
response to these charges is simple. The stakes of what I am calling fugitive
textuality are ultimately political and pedagogical. As such, they pertain to
nothing less than the cultivation of subversive students capable of enacting
strategies to reclaim, rebuild and unleash new possibilities for political life.
We need to help students think on the margins and potentially even outside
of the inherited terms of discourse. We need to help students become fear-
less and confident in challenging the end of history thesis and anti-utopian
rhetoric of the neoliberal order. We need to help students challenge the
conversations that are already fixed and conclusions already known before
95 See Wolin, “Political Theory: From Vocation to Invocation,” in Vocations of Political

Theory, eds. Frank and Tambornino (2000), pp. 13, 15.
they even enter the scene. We need to reward students for being militant
in their refusal to be initiated into something that preserves the cultural
authority of institutions that have served too long as the prime source of
the reproduction of ruling elites. If my project turns out to be a form of
“over-theorization,” “theoretic theory” and the abuse of philosophy, then
I proudly wave these flags. I flat out reject Strauss’s call to “rally around the
flag of the Western tradition” because of the radically un-egalitarian bag-
gage, hubris and contempt for democracy that goes along with his appeal.96
To conclude the conclusion, Wolin’s appeal to history and tradition
resembles Strauss’s turn to absolute foundations. Even though they are
not exactly the same, they ultimately have the same epistemological func-
tion. They serve as pedagogical whips that police the boundaries of political
theory. Their goal is to protect and preserve political philosophy rightly
understood, protect the authority of the teacher, stabilize the meaning
of select texts and properly initiate students into the heritage of Western
civilization.97 They both have too much reverence for the tradition. As I
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the grounding assumptions I
prefer as parameters for teaching political theory include interpretive free-
dom, radical egalitarianism and a utopian sensibility as a way to expand, not
constrict, the political imagination. The authority, hierarchy and knowl-
edge nexus promoted by Wolin and Strauss must be shattered to open the
prospect of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

97 As Barber puts it, “teachers cannot teach the canon properly without provisionally sub-
verting it. Their task is not to transmit the canon but to permit, even to help, their students
reinvent it”; see Barber, Aristocracy of Everyone, 1992, p. 215.
CHAPTER 3
Against the Socratic Method
Abstract The Socratic Method (e.g. argumentative questioning, answer-

ing and refutation) is a limited and potentially a bad pedagogical practice
because it is authoritarian and hierarchical. Often praised as neutral, open
and welcoming, I make the case that it is not. The Socratic Method may
have a future but it would require what I call the dialectical radicalization
of it. This would lead to a greater awareness and sensitivity to the contexts
of power pertaining to pedagogy that instructor led forms of the Socratic
Method have occluded. Hence, I recover the Socratic Method as a mode
of intellectual emancipation based on egalitarianism and challenging all
forms of authority, especially the instructors. I connect this to a defense of
democracy in the classroom.
Introduction
Dialogue, a discursive practice where two or more individuals share their
ideas on a subject, give reasons for their views, attentively listen to each
other, learn and possibly alter their views, is a defining characteristic of the

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_3
52 W. W. SOKOLOFF
human condition.1 Reasonable dialogue enables democracy.2 If it is correct

to say that we have entered an era where ignoring the other’s question,
scowling while the other speaks, interrupting the other and talking louder
to get one’s point across, then this is an important moment to reflect on
power dynamics pertaining to dialogue as a discursive practice.
A figure in the history of political thought often viewed as a master of dia-
logue is Socrates. Socrates questioned everyone, urged his fellow Athenians
to reflect on their beliefs and practices and embodied the philosophical prin-
ciple of self-examination. Over two thousand years after his death, Socrates
and the Socratic Method enjoy near unanimous support. According to the
“Critical Thinking Community,” the Socratic Method and Socratic teach-
ing is “the oldest, and still the most powerful, teaching tactic for fostering
critical thinking. In Socratic teaching we focus on giving students ques-
tions, not answers. We model an inquiring, probing mind by continually
probing into the subject with questions.”3 In 2017, the Socratic Method
was a “theme track” at the American Political Science Association Teach-
ing and Learning conference.4 Clearly, Socrates still enjoys superstar sta-
tus. He is “the first political philosopher of our great tradition.”5 Socrates
is the “leader of all modern enlightenment.”6 Socrates is great because
he invented “dissident citizenship.”7 Even Martin Luther King, Jr. and
1 See Aristotle, Politics, trans. C. D. C Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1998). See also
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
2 See Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2009).
3 Downloaded on December 31, 2016 from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/
socratic-teaching/606.
4 This is the conference blurb pertaining to the Socratic Method: “This theme will explore
the Socratic Method in teaching political science and particularly political theory. Proposals
might address topics such as the Socratic Method and its purpose in teaching; how was it
understood by Plato and other subsequent thinkers; how the Socratic Method is relevant for
the classroom; and effective ways to teach the Socratic Method today. Participants will leave
with a greater understanding of the Socratic Method, how to implement it, and its pedagogical
value” (https://www.apsanet.org/tlc/paperandworkshopthemes).
5 See Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1966), p. 3.
6 Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 13.
7 See Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001),
p. xi.
3 AGAINST THE SOCRATIC METHOD 53
Cornel West praise Socrates.8 Given all of this, a critique of Socrates and the
Socratic Method is not likely to fall on receptive ears.9 How could anyone
object to dialogue, questioning, self-examination and life-long learning?10
In what follows, I argue that the Socratic Method (e.g. argumentative
questioning, answering and refutation) is at best a limited and a bad peda-
gogical practice. Why? Because it is adversarial, hierarchical and authoritar-
ian, albeit in subtle ways. It is also a practice based on questionable episte-
mological assumptions about the character of knowledge.11 The Socratic
Method, finally, is not a trans-historical practice with universal applicability
but privileges certain styles of speech.12 A critique of the Socratic Method
is needed because of its popularity with academics and, more importantly,
the view that it is a neutral dialogic practice. It also gives us a vantage point
to reflect on the “active learning method” which, just like Socrates and
his followers, masks its power and control behind proclamations of open-
ness and transparency. In this regard, this chapter connects to the last one
because it puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus
perpetuated by the Socratic Method. It advances a general theory of radical
political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.
8 See Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in Why We Can’t Wait
(New York: Signet, 2000), pp. 67–68. See also Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the
Fight Against Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 2005).
9 For a defense of Socratic Method‚ see Peter Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy: Perplexity,
Humiliation, Shame and a Broken Egg,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 44:7 (2012):
710–720; Peter Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy, Race, and Power: From People to Propo-
sitions,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 10:3. Retrieved on November 15, 2016 from
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n3.html. See also Anthony G. Rud, Jr., “The Use and Abuse
of Socrates in Present Day Teaching,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 5:20. Retrieved on
November 15, 2016 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v5n20.html. For a critique of Socratic
Method‚ see Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Eman-
cipation, trans. Ross (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 29, 59.
10 Many college and university administrators also indirectly embrace Socrates via their
defense of “active learning.” On the connection between Socratic Method and active learning‚
see Christian Riffel, “The Socratic Method Reloaded: How to Make It Work in Large Classes?”
Canterbury Law Review, 2014.
11 See Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law
School, and Institutional Change (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1997), p. 13.
12 For the trans-historical value of Socrates, see Nicholas Tampio, “What if the Pious Don’t
Want to Deliberate?” Political Theory 42:1 (2014): 106–118.
54 W. W. SOKOLOFF
The Myth of Socrates

My interpretation of Socrates [469–399 B.C.] gives primacy to Plato’s
“Apology” but also identifies relevant moments in other dialogues.13 As
the reader may recall, Plato’s “Apology” is an account of a courtroom
battle between Socrates and his accusers. Socrates is in court because he
has angered prominent individuals in Athens. The legal complaint against
Socrates pertains to his incessant questioning of his fellow Athenians about
their beliefs, practices and priorities.14 This questioning was set in motion
by a rumor that Socrates was a wise man. Chaerephon, who was dead at
the time of Socrates’s trial, went to Delphi and asked the god whether
anyone was wiser than Socrates. The Pythian priestess replied that no one
was. Socrates had always professed that he only knew that he did not know.
Confused by the priestess’s statement, Socrates decided to investigate the
meaning of the oracle.
He did this by questioning prominent individuals in Athens, especially
individuals with a reputation for being wise. Young Athenians from promi-
nent families observed. Via precise question and answer sessions, Socrates
tied up his interlocutors in words. When asked what he knew, Socrates
proclaims that he knows nothing. This infuriated and humiliated his tar-
get interlocutor. This went on for decades and made Socrates unpopular.
Eventually, he was charged with crimes against the Athenian people. Specif-
ically, he was accused with making the weaker argument beat the stronger,
practicing atheism and corrupting the youth of Athens. He had to defend
himself in court.
Through question and answer, with Socrates asking questions and Mele-
tus answering them, Socrates tries to refute the charges against him.
Socrates explains that he dedicated his life to self-examination and the
examination of others, one that allows him to distinguish between the
good life and life that is not worth living. Do not dedicate yourself to the
pursuit of money, Socrates argues, dedicate your life to self-examination
and the care of your soul. I am not a criminal. I am the only true patriot,
Socrates might say, because I have dedicated my life to the improvement
13 My critique of Socrates is primarily based on Plato’s “Apology” in Plato, The Last Days
of Socrates, trans. Tredennick and Tarrant (New York, NY: Penguin, 2003).
14 Plato, “Apology,” p. 45. I privilege Plato’s “Apology” because, as Werner Jaeger puts
it, this text is a description of the essence of the work of Socrates in the shortest and plainest
form; see Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. 2, p. 37.
of my fellow citizens. I have chastised them for being stupid and lazy. I am
not an atheist. I am on a divine mission. Additionally, I never corrupted
anyone. If I did so, it was unintentional. I am not a teacher in any formal
sense of the word. I do not earn a salary for what I do. I am poor and
dressed in rags. Go ahead and kill me. You will eliminate your sole chance
of living a thoughtful life. I am the only one who goads you to reflect on
what you are doing. I am a gift to you and this city.
Socrates arguably refutes the charges brought against him. Nevertheless,
the verdict is guilty as charged. Socrates suggests a punishment for himself.
Given that he sacrificed his well-being to care for his fellow citizens, he
asks for “free maintenance by the state.”15 The court rejects this proposal.
He receives the death penalty. Socrates lashes back: “As soon as I am dead,
vengeance shall fall upon you with a punishment far more painful than
your killing of me.”16 In Crito, Socrates is urged to escape to avoid death.
He refuses and accepts his death sentence with serenity. Over two thousand
years later, Socrates is required reading for nearly all university students. He
is a model citizen, philosopher and educator.17 He was a martyr for truth,
goaded his fellow citizens to live well and he refused to abandon philosophy
as a form of dialogic engagement with others. Socrates becomes a legend
and myth. His legacy is the Socratic Method.
It is important to point out that the Socratic Method is difficult to define.
Socrates does not have a fixed style of questioning in all of Plato’s dia-
logues.18 Nevertheless, drawing on what I recounted from Plato’s “Apol-
ogy,” the Socratic Method is a process of question and answer.19 The
15 Plato, “Apology,” p. 65.

17 For Socrates as a model philosopher‚ see Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2001). For Socrates as a model for living‚ see Alexander Nehamas,
The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2000). For Socrates as an advocate of active as opposed to passive learning‚
see Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2010).
18 For the complications involved with Socrates, see Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and
Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).
19 For a variety of ways to interpret and practice Socratic education‚ see Jordan Fuller, “‘Lis-
ten Then, or Rather, Answer’: Contemporary Challenges to Socratic Education,” Educational
Theory 65:1 (2015): 53–71. See also Peter Boghossian, “The Socratic Method (or, Having a
Right to Get Stoned),” Teaching Philosophy 25:4 (December 2002).
56 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Socratic Method keeps argumentative dialogue focused. Terms are defined,

examples are given, critique is offered and a conclusion is reached. Ulti-
mately, the point is to undermine and expose fallacies in the argument of
one’s interlocutor via elenchus (e.g. logical refutation) in order to encourage
them to rethink what they think they know, to question their assumptions
and to pursue continued study.
Critique of Socrates and the Socratic Method

I am skeptical about the Socratic Method as a pedagogical practice for a
number of reasons. First, Socrates is always in charge during the dialogues.
He controls the question and answer sessions. At times, the dialogues seem
more like exercises in continually reaching agreement and being silenced
by Socrates.20 Calling something a dialogue does not necessarily make it
one, especially given the pedantic character of the intellectual exchanges
between Socrates and many of his interlocutors. Because Socrates is always
in charge of the discussion, the Socratic Method in the classroom can mask
a top-down model of learning with the professor on top, students on the
bottom, the instructor asking the questions, students answering them.21
The Socratic Method should be deployed playfully where the roles between
student and instructor are inverted or at least not stuck in a hierarchical dia-
logic structure. This might make the more laudable aspects of self-discovery
and non-directive inquiry possible.
Second, Socrates often embarrassed, humiliated and ironically mocked
others. When rationality fails to persuade, Socrates resorts to other means
and tries to shame his interlocutors into agreement. This is apparent in
some of the heated exchanges in “Apology” and in Plato’s Republic and
Gorgias.22 True, a conversation with Socrates may end with perplexity (e.g.
aporia). However, it could also end with embarrassment and silence.23
20 This is especially the case in Plato’s, Republic, trans. Grube and Reeve (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Press, 1992).
21 As Guinar et al. put it, “Socratic method is employed to intimidate or to establish a
hierarchy within large classes” (p. 50).
22 Plato, Gorgias, trans. Walter Hamilton and Chris Emlyn-Jones (New York: Penguin,
2004), 471d.
23 For embarrassment (e.g. Thrasymachus blushing) and then silence resulting from an
encounter with Socrates, see Book I of Plato’s Republic, trans. Grube and Reeve (Indianapolis,
IN: Hackett Press, 1992). See also the exchanges between Socrates, Polus and Callicles in
Even if some individuals deserve to be humiliated because they are arro-

gant, this still illustrates a lack of the type of empathy needed for good
pedagogical practice.24 I doubt that students would be willing participants
if they knew the point of a Socratic exchange is to dissolve their beliefs and
reveal their ignorance publically. Students should know this before they
enter into Socratic exchange. To be fair, it is important to point out that
Socrates denied that he was a teacher. Perhaps this absolves him of having
to explain what the result of an intellectual exchange with him would be.
Educators should be more transparent about this since they usually do not
deny that they are teachers.
Third, Socrates is not always the embodiment of detached and objec-
tive pure reason but loses his cool. In a manner similar to how Mr. Brett
Kavanaugh acted while questioned about allegations of sexual assault dur-
ing confirmation hearings, Socrates gets belligerent and lashes out at the
court.25 Specifically, Socrates vows revenge against the city he proclaims to
love: “As soon as I am dead, vengeance shall fall upon you with a punish-
ment far more painful than your killing of me.”26 As opposed to lashing
out at the court and his city, I would recommend that Socrates keep his
cool and have a bit more patience with the procedural-deliberative process.
After all, Socrates is not afraid of death. Perhaps laughter at his death sen-
tence would be the more appropriate response.27 In this instance, Socrates
lacks playfulness and is hostile and resentful.
It is also important to point out that Socrates’s guilty verdict indicates
many different things. It illustrates the failure of rational dialogue to per-
suade the jury. It also indicates that Socrates may have done a poor job of
teaching the jury. As he states, he is unable to speak in the manner that is
typical in courtrooms. Even though he seems quite comfortable engaging
Plato’s Gorgias, trans. Hamilton and Emlyn-Jones (New York, NY: Penguin, 2004), 471d. For
related themes‚ see Peter Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy: Perplexity, Humiliation, Shame
and a Broken Egg,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 44:7 (2012).
24 For a defense of compassion as a mode of pedagogy‚ see Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the
Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York, NY: Free Press, 2010). For a defense
of the modesty intrinsic to Socratic Method‚ see Theodore Christou, “Satan or Socrates: The
Perils of Excessive Pride in Pedagogy,” Encounters in Education 9 (Fall 2008): 175–181.
25 Mr. Brett Kavanaugh was arguably more belligerent during his hearing than was Socrates.
26 Plato, Apology, p. 68.
27 See Plato, “Crito,” in Plato: The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Tredennick and Tarrant
(New York, NY: Penguin, 2003).
58 W. W. SOKOLOFF
in verbal battle with his accusers, he states that he is “a complete stranger

to language of this place.”28 Additionally, the guilty verdict seems to be
a result of Socrates’s own inflexibility and self-righteousness. “Confident
as I am in the justice of my cause,” as he puts it.29 Socrates’ words con-
tradict Dana Villa’s claim that Socrates is “the enemy of all forms of self-
righteousness.”30 During his trial, Socrates is inflexible and self-righteous.
Socrates is unwilling to employ a variety of pedagogical devices as learn-
ing tools for the jury. Specifically, he refuses to get close to the syntax of
his audience and states that he will speak “in the first words that come to
me.”31
What is the lesson for educators? If a majority of students do poorly on
an assignment and fail to grasp a difficult concept (analogous to Socrates
failing to persuade the jury), it strikes me as a mistake to blame the stu-
dents and to persist doing the same thing. Effective teaching requires self-
critique, flexibility and a willingness to change. We need to learn about our
students and be willing to speak in a syntax they understand. Assuming
that the power of analytical and rational propositions is universal and trans-
historical, as Peter Boghossian claims, strikes me as rigid and myopic.32 In
the case of Socrates, this led to his guilty verdict. In addition to employing
a fixed method, when Socrates impatiently lashes out at the jury (because
he is astonished that reason alone did not persuade), this is the wrong
approach.
Fourth, Socrates employed words in a zero-sum competitive game. This
can undermine trust and solidarity. In just about all of the dialogues,
Socrates is the winner (even if many dialogues end in perplexity). This sort
of adversarial model puts a premium on aggressive speech and downplays

30 See Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 2001, p. 4.
32 On the benefits of a culturally relevant curriculum‚ see Tyrone C. Howard, “Culturally
Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection,” Theory into Practice 42:3
(2003). See also Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,”
American Educational Research Journal 32:3 (1995): 465–491; Barry A. Osborne, “Practice
into Theory into Practice: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Students We Have Marginal-
ized and Normalized,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 27:3 (1996): 285–414. For
Boghossian’s claim‚ see “The Socratic Method (or, Having a Right to Get Stoned),” Teach-
ing Philosophy 25:4 (2002): 355.
the importance of listening.33 Peter Boghossian argues “there is no winner

and there is no loser in a genuine Socratic discourse.”34 I disagree given
the intensely competitive and glory-oriented character of Athenian culture
during Socrates’ life. In the Athenian city-state, the point was to win and
vanquish one’s opponent publically. If you are exposed as ignorant then
you lost the dialogue. Socrates was engaged in a fierce struggle with poets
and rhetoricians as to who was the best educator of Athenian citizens. This
sort of competitive approach is not always a good fit in the classroom. Com-
petition creates a hostile zero-sum atmosphere, where verbally aggressive
male students shine, but where students who are not accustomed to and are
uncomfortable with aggressive argumentation will be left behind. As Lani
Guinier et al. claim in Becoming Gentlemen, the Socratic classroom charac-
teristic of American law schools sets up “few winners and many losers.”35
The Socratic Method is not a neutral practice. A neutral communica-
tion style does not exist. Communication styles differ in terms of social
class, race and gender. Research demonstrates that white, masculine and
aggressive communicative styles constitute an invisible norm, one widely
accepted as neutral.36 Because Peter Boghossian sees the Socratic Method
as having little to do with people and much more with propositions, the
Socratic Method for him is the “ultimate form of racial and gender egal-
itarianism.”37 Boghossian fails to acknowledge the problem of exclusion
as well as the more troubling fact that, as Lynn M. Sanders puts it, “some
people might be ignored no matter how good their reasons are.”38 This
is a troubling aspect pertaining to communication. Ignoring it would vio-
late the principle of communicative equality. Educational institutions as
33 For the displacement of listening as a democratic practice‚ see Susan Bickford, The Disso-
nance of Democracy: Listening, Conflict, Citizenship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
34 Peter Boghossian, “The Socratic Method (or, Having a Right to Get Stoned),” Teaching
Philosophy 25:4 (December 2002): 352.
35 See Guinier et al., p. 60. For Boghossian, “race and gender play less a role in a Socratic
discourse” in comparison to other dialogical contexts. See Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy,
Race, and Power: From People to Propositions,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 10:3
(January 2002): 3.
36 See Amanda Carlin, “The Courtroom as White Space: Racial Performance as Noncred-
ibility,” UCLA Law Review 450 (2016). For Carlin, “women of color are at the bottom of
the credibility hierarchy” (p. 476).
37 Peter Boghossian, “The Socratic Method (or, Having a Right to Get Stoned),” Teaching
Philosophy 25:4 (2002): 355.
38 See Lynn M. Sanders, “Against Deliberation,” Political Theory 25:3 (1997): 354.
60 W. W. SOKOLOFF
the premier site for the Socratic Method would then serve an ideological
function. That is, they will privilege those accustomed to aggressive verbal
interaction, as opposed to giving everyone a chance to succeed. Ironically,
educators will pat themselves on the back for a job well done in the face of
their complicity with educational injustice. We need to realize that “schools
are venues where intersecting power relations of race, class, gender, sexual-
ity, nationality, ethnicity, ability and age routinely privilege some students
over others.”39
Fifth, there is a subtle form of violence inherent to the Socratic Method.
Socrates baits the other, sets the hook and then thrashes his victims in all
directions until their intellectual guts fly out. He plays a word game involv-
ing definition, classification and reduction of arguments to absurdity.40
Soren Kierkegaard refers to this aspect of Socratic dialogue as a form of
“squeezing.”41 Socrates seems to know the answers to the questions he is
asking but acts as if he does not know. This sets up a power/knowledge
relationship in a dialogue.42 After the first student’s views are squeezed
and then popped via the Socratic Method, the risk is that other students
will “avoid serious conversation with the teacher altogether.”43 This sort of
disengagement is precisely what happens to Thrasymachus (cf. Republic)
and to Callicles (cf. Gorgias ).44 In Book I of the Republic, Thrasymachus
and Socrates lock horns because they have incompatible definitions of jus-
tice. Thrasymachus ultimately gives up and listens while Socrates plays his
game of question and answer with Glaucon and Adeimantus nodding in
agreement. In the Gorgias, Callicles ultimately tunes out and gives up on
the discussion.
39 See Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (Malden, MA: Polity Press,
2016), p. 165.
40 In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades compares the impact of Socrates to a reptile bite. In
Plato’s “Apology,” Socrates compares himself to a stinging fly.
41 See Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates, ed.
and trans. Hong and Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 45.
42 For Peter Boghossian, “Socratic pedagogy confuses, and to an extent even inverts tradi-
tional power relations” in Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy, Race, and Power: From People
to Propositions,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 10:3 (January 2002): 4.
43 See Daniel Pekarsky, “Socratic Teaching: A Critical Assessment,” Journal of Moral Edu-
cation 23:2 (1994): 10.
44 See, in particular, Gorgias 497c, 501c, and 505d: “I don’t understand your quibbles,
Socrates.” “Oh yes, you do, Callicles; only it suits you to feign ignorance.” See also Plato’s
Republic, Book 1, where Thrasymachus is reduced to silence.
Seen in this light, Socrates risks corrupting the minds of others, and stul-
tifying them, as Jacques Rancière argues, by making them dependent on his
argumentative expertise and positioning them, to put it oxymoronically, as
passive participants.45 I would add, though, that in addition to stultifying
minds, followers of Socrates also risk silencing the individuals they are try-
ing to get to speak. In the classroom, the Socratic Method will empower
individuals who dominate discussions and it will marginalize others.46 If
issues pertaining to power and privilege in the classroom are ignored (e.g.
attention to who speaks and who remains silent), instructors armed with
the Socratic Method will be unaware of their role in perpetuating marginal-
ization and exclusion.47
Sixth, Socrates claims that he only knows that he knows nothing. As
Socrates puts it, “I have no claim to wisdom.”48 This is problematic because
it positions Socrates as invulnerable, sovereign and untouchable. Via the
clever deployment of irony, Socrates becomes the ultimate authority figure
who knows nothing but can refute everything while never being subject
to refutation himself. According to David Corey, “Socrates’ Delphic wis-
dom of his own ignorance recommends itself for the way it opens Socrates
up to his fellow citizens with whom he converses.”49 I disagree. Socratic
ignorance does not open him up to his fellow citizens. It shuts him down.
First, it is logically impossible to have knowledge of one’s ignorance. If
you know what you do not know, then you know something, namely, that
you do not know anything. At moments like this, Socrates’s style of think-
ing is arguably a mystifying and counter-productive word game. For this
reason, it would be a mistake to confuse this sort of ironic deployment
of discursive negativity as openness. Secondly, perpetually reducing argu-
ments to self-contradiction and absurdity does not open up Socrates to
his fellow citizens. In fact, Socrates’s argumentative style during intellec-
45 Jacques Rancière states: “The Socratic method represents the most formidable form of
stultification. The Socratic method of interrogation that pretends to lead the student to his
own knowledge is in fact the method of a riding-school master”; see The Ignorant Schoolmaster,
1991, p. 59.
46 See Sanders, “Against Deliberation,” 1997.
47 For Guinier et al., “Many women and people of color are reluctant partners in the Socratic
exchange” (p. 91).
49 See David D. Corey, “Socratic Citizenship and the Divine Sign,” The Review of Politics
67 (Spring 2005): 228.
62 W. W. SOKOLOFF
tual exchanges engendered hatred. In my view, teachers need to be more

honest and transparent with students about what they claim to know and
what they do in the classroom especially pertaining to their role perpetu-
ally undermining arguments. This type of honesty and transparency would
build trust. Trust creates a productive learning environment with higher
levels of student participation.
Seventh, Socrates was hostile to the other because he sought to under-
mine the other’s argument. As he states, he discovered that “the people with
the greatest reputations [for wisdom] were almost entirely deficient.”50 He
sets out on his divine mission, questions people and achieves the same self-
serving and arguably boring result day after day. That is, Socrates learned
that most people think they know something but they do not know any-
thing. As opposed to the obsession with undermining the weakest compo-
nent of someone’s argument, the better approach in the classroom would
be to build on the most creative, original and strongest part of what a
person has to say, even if it is not the “right” answer the instructor might
have been hoping to hear. This requires intellectual modesty, compassion
and kindness. These traits are crucial for building a supportive learning
environment. Socrates’s obsession with analytical reasoning that seeks to
undermine the other’s argument via the acid bath of elenchus risks creating
a counter-productive space of rational annihilation.
Interestingly, rational annihilation and argumentation for sport are
themes in Book VII of Plato’s Republic and flagged as a danger to phi-
losophy. As the reader may recall, Book VII is one of the high points of
Western philosophy where Plato presents the allegory of the cave to illus-
trate what the lack of knowledge looks like. In this same story, he also
describes the dangers faced by anyone who lives the life of the mind and
tries to converse with common people. After Plato concludes the allegory
of the cave and moves on to discuss other themes in Book VII, Socrates
states the following:
When young people get their first taste of argument they misuse it by treating
it as a kind of game of contradiction. They imitate those who’ve refuted them
by refuting others themselves, and, like puppies, they enjoy dragging and
tearing those around them with their arguments.
Socrates continues:

When they’ve refuted many and been refuted by them in turn, they forcefully
and quickly fall into disbelieving what they believed before. And, as a result,
they themselves and the whole of philosophy are discredited in the eyes of
others.51
With Socrates, the problem was not that he plunged into disbelief
and skepticism via games of argumentation and contradiction but that he
enjoyed dragging and tearing those around him with his arguments and jus-
tified this as a “divine mission.” Socrates claimed that “god has assigned me
to this city” and that he was a gift from god.52 His arrogance undermined
the possibility of intellectual communion, irritated others and potentially
discredited philosophy.
Eighth, the Socratic Method perpetuates questionable epistemological
assumptions about the character of knowledge. These assumptions position
Socrates as a sovereign lord of the universe.53 For Socrates, knowledge is
the result of logic. It floats above and is independent of a particular social
and historical context.54 To get to pure knowledge, one must strip away
remnants of the material world that lead to distortions, fallacies, compet-
ing perspectives and contradictory propositions. At least as depicted in the
Republic, the “Form of the Good” provides Socrates with a metaphysi-
cal grounding for knowledge and an incontestable basis for thought and
action. Via the realm of eternity as the ultimate measure, the illusory stabil-
ity of the empirical world is shattered. As Nietzsche puts it in his critique of
Socrates in The Birth of Tragedy, Socrates armed with reason penetrates into
the deepest abysses and makes everything about human existence “com-
prehensible and thus justified.”55
A better epistemological starting point would presuppose equality as
opposed to hierarchy in levels of understanding. It would be more mod-
est about the power of reason as opposed to casting reason and logic in
51 Plato, Republic, trans. Grube and Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 1992), 539a–c.
53 For the political significance of epistemological assumptions‚ see João Paraskeva, Con-
flicts in Curriculum Theory: Challenging Hegemonic Epistemologies (New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011).
54 For a defense of Socratic ideals, see Nicholas Tampio, “What if the Pious Don’t Want to
Deliberate?” Political Theory 42:1 (2014): 106–118.
55 Friedrich Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: Vintage
Books, 1967), p. 96.
64 W. W. SOKOLOFF
missionary-imperialistic terms. It would pay attention to the contexts of

power within which knowledge claims emerge. It would acknowledge the
validity of competing claims to knowledge. It would start from the assump-
tion that the human mind cannot escape a socio-cultural perspective (e.g.
cave) that one did not choose and that one might not even be aware that
one has.56 These more modest assumptions strike me as the sort of pre-
conditions that lead to greater openness and enable dialogic exchange.
Informing others that they are stuck in the cave of shadows and only have
opinions as opposed to true knowledge is a counter-productive assumption.
Additionally, the point should never be to construct an impenetrable
epistemological fortress around oneself but to subject all starting points
to critique and strategically employ a variety of perspectives to make an
informed argument. Becoming stuck in any one epistemological position
(e.g. materialist, idealist, realist, historicist, empiricist, post-modern, etc.)
would be just as problematic as getting stuck in the Socratic epistemo-
logical cul-de-sac that casts analytical reasoning as a panacea. The differ-
ence between how these two competing epistemologies—one based on an
incontestable metaphysical foundation that grounds knowledge; the other
based on keeping a space open for competing perspectives and plurality—
would play out in the classroom is obvious.
The former creates a classroom environment ruled according to the prin-
ciple of aggressive rationalism where there is little space for dissent. In the
classroom characterized by aggressive rationalism, poets and sophists must
become philosophers and justify what they do in philosophical terms.57 In
contrast to a classroom ruled according to a hierarchical epistemological
foundation, the instructor that acknowledges the competing ways knowl-
edge is constructed would create a welcoming and plural classroom envi-
ronment, with flexible lines of authority, greater participation, inclusion,
spontaneity and openness to interpretive possibilities. Reasoned and prin-
cipled dissent would be encouraged and rewarded. Students might even
be encouraged to take over the classroom. Instructors could encourage
56 On these and related themes‚ see Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews
and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Gordon, trans. Gordon et al. (New York, NY: Vintage
Books, 1980). See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of
Knowledge, trans. Wirth and Shils (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc., 1936);
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale (New York,
NY: Vintage Books, 1989).
57 Plato, The Republic, pp. 264–292.
students to overthrow the authoritarian Socratic pedagogue and take

responsibility for their own education. Students would thus have a chance
of becoming conscious of “the equality of intellectual capacity.”58
What I am proposing as an alternative to the Socratic teacher is a type
of educator who always keeps her critical eye on the contexts of power that
condition what can take place in the classroom in terms of who speaks and
who is silent. Additionally, it matters who has been allowed to physically
enter the university and on what and whose terms.59 Ultimately, I am not
rejecting Socrates but trying to recover the Socratic Method as a practice
of dissent, that is, a way of putting the authority, hierarchy and knowledge
nexus into question, and being skeptical of any claim, but doing so in ways
that keep in mind broader contexts of power.
Perhaps the most important aspect that students should learn about
Socrates was that his mission was self-authorized. Socrates took it upon
himself to challenge the validity of the oracle (e.g. question its authority)
and find out for himself whether it was indeed true that he was the wisest.
Through his skeptical mindset, he dedicated his life to investigating the
veracity of an authoritative source of knowledge. Our students should be
encouraged to do the same. Less Socratic Method and more collaboration,
mentoring, empowerment with and between students is the way to trans-
form the classroom into a critical and utopian force for social and political
transformation.
Refutation of Objections
Peter Boghossian defends the intrinsic egalitarianism of Socratic pedagogy
and claims that Socratic pedagogy is about rational propositions and not
the particular people making the arguments. For him, “who physically gets
to be in the classroom is not immediately relevant to Socratic pedagogy.”60
58 Rancière, 1991, p. 27.

59 For data on the changing demographic of university students‚ see William J. Hussar
and Tabitha M. Bailey, Projections of Education Statistics to 2021 (NCES 2013-008). U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (Washington, DC: U.S.,
2013). Government Printing Office. This report projects significant increases in African-
American and Latino/a student college enrollment (25 and 40%) while enrollment for white
students will slightly increase (4%).
60 Peter Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy, Race, and Power: From People to Propositions,”
Education Policy Analysis Archives 10:3 (January 2002): 2.
66 W. W. SOKOLOFF
He may be partially correct on this point but we need to remember that

educational access and privilege implied by who attends the university and
how they get there reflects reigning power relations.61 The individualistic
discourse of merit mystifies these relations. We also need to entertain the
possibility that the Socratic Method might fail to serve the full range of
students attending the university because of its valorization of an aggressive
and masculinist mode of verbal sparring.62
The ruthless Socrates I have depicted here is not a caricature. Socratic
arrogance, self-righteousness, analytical destructiveness and rough han-
dling of interlocutors are apparent at many critical moments in the dia-
logues. To the extent that these aspects inform the Socratic Method, stu-
dents deserve better treatment. In the classroom, students may have not
chosen to be there (e.g. it is a required course) and instructors have the
added power of grade giving. In many of the Platonic dialogues, Socrates
engages someone that he wants to engage. That is to say, there is a quali-
tative difference between the dialogues (at least as depicted by Plato) and
how the Socratic Method takes place in the classroom where students pour
in, take a seat and hope to survive the ensuing boredom. Hence, instructors
should be gentle, kind and modest at least in comparison to Socrates. Per-
haps there is nothing intrinsically bad and humiliating about the Socratic
Method. If there are bad effects from it, this has more to do with the per-
sonality of the instructor and the particular classroom environment that
they foster, not the Socratic Method. Clearly, any pedagogical technique in
the hands of bad teachers will lead to bad outcomes. However, the Socratic
Method is difficult to separate from the annoying and bristly personality of
Socrates.
Finally, many of Plato’s dialogues exhibit collaborative modes of inves-
tigation on questions like justice, love and piety. Does this complicate my
claim that Socratic Method is unnecessarily adversarial? It does not. Edu-
cators should try to see the Socratic Method from the eyes of students.
What might seem like collaboration for instructors might not feel like
61 See Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Har-
vard, Yale, and Princeton (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005).
62 See recent feminist critiques of Socratic Method including Susan H. Williams, “Le-
gal Education, Feminist Epistemology, and the Socratic Method,” Stanford Law Review
45 (1993): 1571–1576; Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, Becoming Gentlemen:
Women, Law School, and Institutional Change (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1997). See also
David D. Garmer, “Socratic Misogyny? Analyzing Feminist Criticisms of Socratic Teaching
in Legal Education,” BYU Law Review 4 (2000): 1579–1650.
collaboration from the vantage point of students. It may be true to say

that Socrates invented a mode of dissident philosophical citizenship. For
Dana Villa, it is one based on dissent and saying no.63 I think this is a
reasonable interpretation but I would like to be able to practice this form
of dissident citizenship and say no to aspects of Socrates that strike me as
counter-productive. The arrogant and adversarial style of Socrates is not
a form of intellectual collaboration. However, I am not out to condemn
Socrates. Benjamin Barber claims that Socrates is a “dubious model for
teaching in democratic polity.”64 I disagree. There are aspects to Socrates
and the Socratic Method that strike me as indispensable for democratic citi-
zenship and education including ceaseless self-examination, the cultivation
of discerning judgment and intellectual modesty. Benjamin Barber, who I
have favorably cited earlier in this book, gets this one wrong and misses the
value of certain aspects of Socrates as a teacher.
Conclusion
When we talk about justice, equality and freedom, we must define our
terms. Asking questions also seems praiseworthy. This prevents misunder-
standings and ensures that there is a basic level of agreement at the outset
of a conversation. Living a life of self-examination is also a good aspiration
that leads to self-improvement. I have demonstrated, however, that these
non-objectionable aspects to the Socratic Method are only a part of his
legacy.
It is important to acknowledge the contexts of power within which the
Socratic Method takes place. In this sense, the Socratic Method is in need
of dialectical radicalization, inversion and reconceptualization. The unre-
flective deployment of the Socratic Method can reproduce an unjust and
hierarchical social order and mystify the ways in which teachers are com-
plicit with this injustice. First-generation college students of color, women
and poor people sometimes remain silent in the classroom. This is not
the result of a culture of low achievement but pertains to structural dis-
advantage. Viewing the out-spoken children of university educated profes-
sionals as superior and academically gifted (and non-traditional students as
63 Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
64 See Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future
of America (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), p. 186.
68 W. W. SOKOLOFF
apathetic and disengaged) perpetuates privilege, perpetuates the marginal-

ization of previously under-served groups and allows educators to wrap
themselves in the seemingly egalitarian robes of Socratic dialectic.65 The
Socratic Method refigured as challenging authority and subverting hierar-
chy leads to a more egalitarian and better educational experience for all
students. Students assume greater responsibility for their own education
and take greater joy in it. I support the Socratic Method and active learn-
ing method only to the extent that they shatter the authority, hierarchy and
knowledge nexus, not perpetuate it.
65 For these and related themes‚ see Victor M. Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and
Latino Boys (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2011). See also Samuel Bowles and
Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of
Economic Life (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976). See Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities:
Children in America’s Schools (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1992).
CHAPTER 4
Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South

Texas
Abstract Taking students to a local prison for a field trip is an effective way
to engage students on issues central to democratic citizenship. Even if some
students opt out of the voluntary prison visit, a field trip to a prison creates
a vibrant learning environment where students can share their experience
with other classmates as well as reflect on their experiences with authority
figures. The visit to the prison also disrupts power relationships between
student/instructor because all prison field-trip participants are inmates for a
day. This chapter puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge
nexus via experiential learning and constitutes a contribution to a general
theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.
Introduction
As I look back on my experience in public schools, one experience stands
out. When I was in the 8th grade, I visited Folsom Prison on a weekend
school organized field trip as part of a visit to Sacramento, California. I
remember the experience with vivid detail. I saw an inmate sweeping the
An earlier version of “Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas”

appeared in PS: Political Science and Politics 47 (2014): 518–522.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_4
70 W. W. SOKOLOFF
area near the entrance to the prison. I recall his somber facial expression
and slumped shoulders. I recall the razor wire, the thick brick walls, obser-
vation towers and the armed guards. The massive character of the prison
was unforgettable. The teachers who accompanied us did not say anything
about the prison including why we were visiting it. I am nonetheless grate-
ful for having had the opportunity to visit Folsom Prison. I decided to
continue the tradition of taking students to prison now that I am a teacher.
I took a group of approximately 30 of my students to Reynoldo V. Lopez
State Jail in Edinburg, Texas. Why take university students to a jail, you
ask?
All instructors are committed to student learning but there is dispute
about how to accomplish this. Should instructors lecture and use power
point since this is the most efficient way to cover quantity?1 For me, the
answer is no. Pedagogical variety and experiential learning brings course
material to life. Lecture and power point kill it. My experience teaching
indicates that students are interested in politics and big theoretical ques-
tions but the reading material, activities, and class discussions need to be
relevant to their lives. Research demonstrates that it is desirable to engage
students in community and other activities outside of school and integrate
experiential learning into the classroom.2 This chapter is thus a contribu-
tion to the practical side of my general theory of radical political theory
pedagogy. It formulates a mode of critical pedagogy as the subversion of
hierarchy and practice of equality via experiential learning.
Taking students to a prison on a field trip enhances the learning expe-
rience in politics and political theory courses in valuable ways. The U.S.
has the largest prison population in the world.3 This is a fact rendered
1 See Mariya Y. Omelicheva and Olga Avdeyeva, “Teaching with Lecture or Debate? Testing
the Effectiveness of Traditional Versus Active Learning Methods of Instruction,” PS: Political
Science and Politics 41 (2008): 603–607.
2 See John Halliday, “Political Liberalism and Citizenship Education: Towards Curriculum
Reform,” British Journal of Educational Studies 47 (1999): 34–55. See also Raymond J.
Wlodkowski, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All
Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).
3 For data on this as well as other themes pertaining to mass incarceration in the U.S., see
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness (New
York: The New Press, 2012); Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories
Press, 2003); Baz Dreisinger, Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around
the World (New York: Other Press, 2016); Marie Gottschalk, Caught: The Prison State and the
Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Todd R. Clear,
4 TEACHING POLITICAL THEORY AT A PRISON IN SOUTH TEXAS 71
invisible by the geographical isolation of many prisons and minimal public

discussion of mass incarceration in the U.S. Therefore, taking students to
a prison can be a first step to learn more about mass incarceration and start
a dialogue about why the U.S. imprisons more of its own people than any
other country. From a pedagogical perspective, taking students to a prison
creates a student-centered learning environment where students can use a
personal experience to connect theory with practice and discuss the issues
that are important to them. It is also a way to put oneself in a new and
unfamiliar situation. This adds unpredictability and excitement into the
learning process and heightens visceral dimensions of learning. Addition-
ally, the prison visit potentially levels the playing field between instructors
and students (e.g. subverts hierarchy) since all participants are inmates for
a day.
Visiting a prison can also transform the way we see prisons and prison
inmates and thereby acquire a deeper understanding of both. For example,
students learn that prisons are places where people live and that inmates
are actual human beings.4 Based on my experience teaching at a variety of
educational institutions, first-generation and/or non-traditional students
particularly enjoy prison field trips.5 This chapter connects to the two pre-
vious ones insofar as it foregrounds the importance of student voice and
making courses relevant to students. It continues the theme of disrupting
the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus that grounds traditional ped-
agogy. It goes further than the previous ones by including an off campus
site as a space for the practice of equality.
The Challenge
The largest Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in Texas, the University of
Texas, Pan American (UTPA) [now called UTRGV] is located approxi-
mately 15 miles from the U.S./Mexico border in Edinburg, Texas. At the
time of the prison visit I recount in this chapter, UTPA had a student pop-
ulation of approximately 19,000, served mainly first-generation university
Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Katherine Beckett, Making Crime Pay: Law
and Order in Contemporary American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
4 I thank Renée Heberle for a conversation pertaining to these issues.
5 While I was an instructor at a satellite campus at CUC, I arranged a field trip with my
students to the prison complex located in Lompoc, California.
72 W. W. SOKOLOFF
students, and had a predominantly Latin@ student population (88.7%),

many of whom have not been adequately prepared to succeed at the uni-
versity. It is important to note that the Rio Grande Valley is one of the
poorest metropolitan areas in the U.S. with a low high school completion
rate and a high teenage pregnancy rate. Many of the students are English
language learners from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Addi-
tionally, many of the students work part- or full-time jobs and have family
responsibilities that may involve taking care of a child, parent, grandpar-
ent, sibling and other relatives. Many students also commute to UTPA from
long distances and some of these students are Mexican nationals delayed
at border crossing stations.
Many UTPA students lack basic academic skills, tend to underestimate
themselves academically and have limited experience traveling outside the
Rio Grande Valley. Additionally, the student faculty ratio at UTPA is 25:1,
one of the highest among state universities, making it difficult for faculty
to provide optimum attention to the particular needs of students. South
Texas primary and secondary education based on “teaching to the test”
has left many of our students unprepared for critical and analytical think-
ing, argumentation and intellectual synthesis skills.6 Given the complicated
character of the lives of the students and their lack of preparation to succeed
at the university level, this translates into poor academic performance that
goes far beyond the structural-institutional factors discussed by Richard
Arum and Josipa Roska they believe account for limited learning on uni-
versity campuses.7 Even among political science majors at UTPA, students
have a difficult time writing argumentative essays, can be fearful about chal-
lenging even a weak argument and adopt a passive and uncritical mindset
in relation to the reading material.
Additionally, the failure rate for introductory U.S. and Texas Govern-
ment and Politics courses offered to about 5000 students per academic
year is approximately 30%, a matter of great concern to faculty and admin-
istrators. The ways in which Latin@s are portrayed in mainstream American
6 See Louis Volante, “Teaching to the Test: What Every Educator and Policy-Maker Should
Know,” Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 35 (2004): 1–7. Teach-
ing to the test limits the ability of teachers to address the specific educational needs of their
students, arguably kills the imagination and takes the joy out of learning.
7 Richard Arum and Josipa Roska, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Cam-
puses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
government texts may play a part in accounting for this problem.8 My goal
in this chapter is to join the dialogue on what faculty can do to stimulate
greater student interest in course material among a historically under-served
student population. I argue that taking students on a field trip to a prison is
an effective strategy for creating a vibrant student-centered learning envi-
ronment where students can discuss the issues that are important to them.
It injects joy and risk into the learning process. Visiting the prison with
students is also a way to cultivate a utopian sensibility that involves staring
into the abyss and then reflecting on ways we might create a world without
a prison industrial complex.
Pedagogical Theory
The question I am constantly asking myself pertains to my students. How
can I engage and motivate my students to succeed?9 To answer this ques-
tion, I have had to rethink what it means to teach. As J. Peter Euben puts
it, “how one teaches may be as ‘substantive’ as what one teaches.”10 I
also realized that I needed to read scholarship on how to best work with
historically under-served populations. In this regard, one of my colleagues
recommended that I read a book by Paulo Freire. I took this advice and
was glad that I did. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire presents two
conflicting conceptions of education.
The standard form, which Freire calls the “banking model,” rests on
the assumption that teachers should transmit “knowledge” to students.
According to this model, students have brains but their brains are empty.
Empty brains need wisdom and course material via lecture and tests. Freire
opposes this approach and labels it an education in submission, subjugation
and subordination. As Freire puts it, the oppressor educator “decrees the
ignorance of someone else” from a position of superiority.11 This approach
8 See Jessica Lavariega-Monforti and Adam McGlynn, “Aquí Estamos? A Survey of Latino
Portrayal in Introductory U.S. Government and Politics Textbooks,” PS: Political Science and
Politics 43 (2010): 309–316.
9 Marcos Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and
Empowerment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005).
10 J. Peter Euben, Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture and Political
Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 186.
11 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Con-
tinuum, 2000), p. 134.
74 W. W. SOKOLOFF
to teaching engenders passivity inside and outside of the classroom and

socializes students to follow orders and defer to experts. Students learn
to doubt their own intelligence and look for someone who knows more
than they do. The banking model of education entrenches the authority,
hierarchy and knowledge nexus.
As an alternative to the banking model of education, Freire puts forth a
conception of education as a mode of liberation based on the idea of edu-
cation as a “practice of freedom.” As Richard Shaull puts it in his Foreword
to Freire’s text, “there is no such thing as a neutral educational process.
Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the inte-
gration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and
bring about conformity to it, or it becomes ‘the practice of freedom.’”12
Freire sees education as a practice of freedom, an imperative of liberation
for the oppressed. Education as a practice of freedom requires a dialogic
approach to learning. One that encourages students to trust themselves,
one that frees their creative power and one that helps students name their
world. For Freire, an education in liberation equips people to “develop
their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world.”13 This
is the approach I try to practice in the classroom and employ as a part of
a broader political strategy to fight the grim prospects for success faced by
the working class and people of color in the U.S.
As I have already mentioned, I work with a predominantly Latin@ stu-
dent population. For a variety of reasons, Latin@s face the highest dropout
rates of any major ethnic group in the U.S.14 Nationally, incarceration
rates for Latin@s are twice as high as compared to Whites.15 Low edu-
cational achievement and disproportionate incarceration are two sides of
the same coin. In his book on how Chican@s have fared in educational
institutions, Marcos Pizarro demonstrates that they have not performed
well. As opposed to constructing a narrative that finds the sources of fail-
ure in Latin@ culture itself, Pizarro argues poor academic performance is
the result of the indifference of teachers, underfunded schools, curriculum
requirements irrelevant to the needs and interests of the students, lack of
12 Richard Shaull, “Foreword,” in Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra
Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 34.
13 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 83.
14 Marcos Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and
Empowerment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), p. 1.
15 Pew Research Center Report, April 7, 2009.
contextual mentoring and, in some cases, racism.16 For Pizarro, Latin@ stu-
dents must discuss the issues that are important to them. Course material
must be relevant to their lives.
Taking students on a field trip to a prison bridges the theoretical work of
Freire on education as a practice of freedom with the practical recommen-
dations of Pizarro. It allows students to interact with their faculty mem-
ber outside of the stifling classroom setting. It also levels the playing field
between faculty and students by putting both in a situation where they are
relatively equal. Additionally, students are able to discuss the issues that are
important to them pertaining to the field trip. This serves to validate the
connections that students make.17
Pedagogy and Prison

The prison as both metaphor and concrete reality occupies a central place
among theorists, film directors, activists and is present in popular culture.
In the Republic, Plato emphasized the prison-like character of ignorance
(cf. “allegory of the cave”). For Plato, a prison break—freeing oneself from
the chains of the cave of shadows—was the necessary condition for human
enlightenment. Friedrich Nietzsche explores the question of punishment
in On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche concludes that it is ultimately
unclear why anyone is punished since punishment does not make a human
better and does not prevent future misdeeds. Michel Foucault came to
a similar conclusion about the cruelty and pointlessness of punishment.
Foucault also led a human rights campaign that sought to transform not
only how we view inmates but conditions for prison inmates too.18 In the
film “Battle of Algiers,” Ali la Pointe experiences a political awakening in
a prison. As portrayed in the film, Ali La Pointe witnesses the execution
of an un-named Algerian and achieves political consciousness through that
event and via conversations pertaining to the French occupation of Algeria
with other prisoners.
16 See Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School, 2005.

17 For an example of how to speak with people from radically different locations and with
experiences alien to one’s own, see Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless
Compassion (New York: Free Press, 2010).
18 See Michel Foucault, “Prison Talk,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other
Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Gordon et al. (New York: Pantheon, 1980).
76 W. W. SOKOLOFF
In addition to the theoretical and cinematic aspects pertaining to pris-

ons, prison is ground zero for critically oriented intellectuals and polit-
ical activists. Many thinkers, political activists and politicians spent time
in prison including Socrates, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau,
Martin Luther King Jr., Antonio Gramsci, Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis
and countless others. There is also a lot of popular interest in gangs, pris-
ons, prison life and the “criminal element.” Many of my students report
watching and knowing about television programs such as “Cops,” “Locked
Up,” “Locked-Up Abroad” and “Gangland.” Additionally, political candi-
dates routinely exploit prison inmates to mobilize the electorate via fear for
right-wing law and order policies (e.g. more prisons; security surveillance;
walls; expanded police forces). Finally, prisons are horrible dystopian places
but they also name possibility and hope. They are a way to hold a mirror
up to our ideals, a place to reflect on who we are, how we treat people who
make mistakes and a place to trigger a conversation about how to imagine
a world where prisons would not exist.
Field Trip to a Prison

As opposed to trying to drag my students out of Plato’s cave, I turn Plato
on his head and take willing students on a field trip to an actual prison
to explore questions pertaining to citizenship, the ethics and politics of
punishment, the possibility of rehabilitation, justice, education, power and
domination. In one of my theory courses, I scheduled a visit to a local prison
on a Friday afternoon into the outline of possible course activities listed in
the syllabus. My students were thrilled to have this opportunity. Research
demonstrates that off-campus activities create a stimulating learning envi-
ronment that can break down the inhibitions of students who may not feel
comfortable in sterile classroom spaces.19 The prison visit also serves as
an experience that allows students to share their observations about the
prison with other students and connect this with course material when we
are back in the classroom.
Instructors reading this chapter that may want to take their students to
a prison should keep a number of practical issues in mind. After I asked stu-
19 See John Halliday, “Political Liberalism and Citizenship Education: Towards Curriculum
Reform,” British Journal of Educational Studies 47 (1999): 34–55; see also Raymond J.
Wlodkowski, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All
Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).
dents who demonstrate interest in visiting the prison to write their name on
a list, I sought approval with the Dean of Students for the off-campus activ-
ity. I also contacted the prison warden to obtain permission. The students
and I reviewed university and prison regulations pertaining to off-campus
trips and dress code requirements. For example, sexually provocative and
torn or ripped clothing constituted grounds for ejection from the prison.
The day had arrived. It was time to go to jail. Located in Edinburg, Texas,
Reynoldo V. Lopez State Jail has a maximum capacity of 1100 inmates,
262 total employees, and inmates are serving relatively short-term sen-
tences (five years) for a variety of offenses including burglary, DWI, rob-
bery, aggravated assault and robbery, and drug possession/trafficking.20
According to their website, Lopez State Jail offers educational programs
in literacy (GED), CHANGES/Pre-Release and Cognitive Intervention.
Over 60% of inmates at Lopez Jail are Hispanic, approximately 20% are
Black, and 14% are White.
Students arrived at the prison at approximately 1:00 p.m. Once we were
all there, a prison guard greeted us in the parking lot. We walked past an
outdoor plaque that stated “Dedicated to Improving Lives,” and walked
up a short staircase and entered the first door. We surrendered our iden-
tification and walked through a metal detector. Then, the prison warden
greeted us in the glass booth area where inmates speak with visitors. After
this welcome speech, students were escorted through a door and then to
the entrance of the main prison housing unit area. We walked passed a
sign that states “NO NEGOTIATION WITH HOSTAGES.” During the
three-hour tour, students observed a demonstration of prison contra-band
(e.g. tattoo machines; prison ink; weapons and “shanks”; and homemade
alcohol made with bread and pieces of fruit). Students were impressed with
the creativity and ingenuity of the inmates. We toured the inmate medical
center, the “yard,” eating areas, educational facilities and housing units.
We learned that the unarmed guards monitoring inmates wear goggles as
protection against blood, feces, semen and urine, or a mixture of all of the
above, thrown into their eyes by inmates. Finally, some students entered a
vacant out-of-service prisoner cell.
The conditions in the prison were startling and students commented on
this. There is no air conditioning in the inmate housing units. The units
have metal roofs (summers in South Texas are quite warm, with highs
20 See Texas Department of Criminal Justice website. This data pertains to the 2011 prison
visit.
78 W. W. SOKOLOFF
averaging over 100 F for months). Breakfast was at 3:00 a.m. The prison
was overcrowded. The prison was noisy with thundering echoes. The envi-
ronment was sterile, with concrete floors and thick metal doors. The scent
of industrial strength chemical cleaning agents permeated the facility.
After the tour was over, we gathered in the parking lot, but departed
quickly, as it is against prison rules for visitors to linger in the parking lot.
When a normal class session resumed the following week, students shared
their experience with the class. Student interest in the prison visit was very
high. It was much greater in comparison to anything else in the course.
In terms of specific class activities, a wide range is possible. As Morgan C.
Grefe suggests, students that visited the prison could write a letter to a
family member from the vantage point of a prison inmate describing their
life in prison. Students could also write a memo as a legislator advocating
prison reform that focuses on the problems that participants observed.
Students could evaluate the living conditions in jail from the perspective of
a human rights activist. Finally, students could argue that serving time in
jail is an effective approach to prevent crime and transform a criminal into
a well-functioning member of society.21
In my course, not all students in the class were able to go on the field
trip due to family, work and other obligations, or they elected not to visit
the prison for other reasons, so these assignments would not be fair to stu-
dents who did not want to or were unable to visit the prison. Nevertheless,
students that participated were willing to discuss and describe their experi-
ence with the entire class. In fact, I had a hard time keeping the discussion
focused given the level of interest and excitement pertaining to the prison
field trip. In this respect, taking students to the prison on a field trip cre-
ated a student-centered learning environment, where students discussed
the issues that were important to them, which research shows improves
academic success.22
21 See Morgan C. Grefe, “Making Prison History Matter: Field Trips and Lessons for
History and Civics,” Connecticut History 47 (2008): 132–136.
22 See Candace C. Archer and Melissa K. Miller, “Prioritizing Active Learning: An Explo-
ration of Gateway Courses in Political Science,” PS: Political Science and Politics 44 (2011):
429–434. See also Miguel Cantellas, “Pop Culture in the Classroom: American Idol, Karl
Marx, and Alexis de Tocqueville,” PS: Political Science and Politics 43 (2010): 561–573;
Tyrone C. Howard, “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflec-
tion,” Theory into Practice 42 (2003): 195–202; Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Educational Research Journal 32 (1995): 465–491;
Prison Field Trip Reading Assignments

Before the prison visit, a class discussion took place to explore assump-
tions students had about conditions in prisons, inmates and punishment.
Prior to sharing their ideas with the class, students wrote these preconcep-
tions down and handed them in. Pre-prison visit perceptions were used
after the prison visit to assess whether and how they differed from post-
prison field-trip perceptions. In terms of specific reading material, students
read Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals and a chapter from Dana Vil-
la’s Socratic Citizenship.23 These texts highlight the stark contrast between
engaged citizenship and prisoner subjection. Faculty could also assign parts
of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to prepare for the visit. In terms of the
reading material by Villa, we explore the idea of the prison as the space
of political death, since felons lose the right to participate in politics (e.g.
vote), although this varies from state to state and depends on the charac-
ter of crime committed. Additionally, as Villa argues in his book, dissident
citizenship is an important but forgotten component of democracy, one
exemplified by the life and death of Socrates, but one marginalized in nor-
mal political life. This form of active citizenship is impossible in the context
of the prison by living in relative isolation. Additionally, inmates did not
have the luxury of engaging in Socratic dialogue. As we walked by them,
for example, they were ordered (e.g. screamed at) to remain silent and press
their faces up against a wall.
Of those who attended, students were encouraged to use the reading
material to analyze what they observed during the prison visit. Students also
had the option of including their insights drawn from the prison visit in
their required argumentative essays. Students reported enjoying the prison
visit and said they would never forget it. In terms of the impact of the
prison field trip on student performance, students who included references
to the prison visit in their essays demonstrated greater mastery of course
material. A student informed me that he was better able to understand the
mentality of the colonized as depicted in Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth.
and Raymond J. Wlodkowski, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide

for Teaching All Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).
23 See Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
80 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Refutation of Objections
The advantages of a field trip to a prison outweigh the disadvantages. It
is nonetheless important to specify possible challenges, disadvantages and
problems. The prison is arguably terrifying and could be traumatizing for
a student and a faculty member. For example, when student participants
came into visual contact with approximately one hundred inmates behind
a large glass window, many students looked visibly uncomfortable. It is
also unpleasant to observe humans in cages. It is impossible to know how
students will react to this.
In terms of the unpredictability of experiential learning, consider the
next example. A handful of inmates were jeering and pointing at the par-
ticipants, especially the female ones. In response, a female student made
an inappropriate sexual gesture back at the inmates (e.g. she pretended to
lift up her blouse which would expose her breasts) but she stopped when
she noticed I saw her do this. Finally, the prison warden ejected a student
from the prison for a dress code violation. It is important to realize that
the traditional classroom space is a safe and controlled environment for
learning. Experiential learning in a prison adds an intense visceral dimen-
sion. Additionally, a maximum of thirty students can visit the prison on a
particular day. If class size is more than thirty, all students will not be able
to attend the trip and faculty members might be in the position of telling
interested students that they are not able to participate.
Finally, even being in a prison for a few hours is unpleasant. I am sure
most people could think of a better way to spend a Friday afternoon. Based
on my experience, the advantages of taking students to a prison that include
leveling the playing field between faculty/instructor (e.g. subverting hier-
archy), learning about prison conditions, and creating a student-centered
learning environment outweigh the disadvantages. Visiting a prison on a
field trip can create a vibrant learning environment and can break down
some of the barriers that might exist between students and faculty. All stu-
dents were able to fulfill learning objectives pertaining to the application of
theory to practical situations (e.g. students explained what Nietzsche would
say about the prison conditions we observed). Students demonstrated criti-
cal thinking skills (e.g. students compared and contrasted educational insti-
tutions with the prison). Students also engaged in critical textual analysis
(e.g. students analyzed strengths and weaknesses of Nietzsche’s view on
punishment).
Conclusion
Students need to learn and know that their voice and experiences are essen-
tial components in understanding their role as citizens in a democracy and
as active participants in their education. Taking students to a prison pro-
vides a unique opportunity to stimulate student engagement and create
a student-centered learning environment defined as giving students the
opportunity to discuss the issues that are important to them. It also creates
a learning environment where students can use a personal experience to
connect theory with practice. It levels the playing field between student
and professor since both are virtual inmates for a day. Finally, it can also
encourage students to share their experiences in class with the police and
other authority figures.
Approximately one year after the prison visit, I contacted students who
visited the prison. I posed the following questions: Could you please write
a paragraph (or more if possible) describing what you learned from the
prison visit, how it impacted your performance in the course, whether you
thought it was a positive or negative experience and why, and anything else
you feel comfortable sharing about your visit to the prison? One student
over one year after the prison visit had the following to say:
I believe the prison visit helped in a great way, it made me open my eyes to
how a prison is really like. I watch many shows where delinquents go in for
one day and they get to go inside and experience it firsthand like we did, and
I thought they were just exaggerating but now I know that they weren’t.
I believe it was a positive experience, even though I know for myself I will
never be in jail anytime soon or ever, but it was an experience I will never
forget because every time people talk about jail they say some horrific things
and now I believe it because I got to experience those things when I went.
The way they have no privacy, and a certain schedule in order for them to eat,
and the way that like about six people had to share one cell, including the
restroom. The stories that the guards would tell us were also very interesting
and unbelievable because I never thought people were that messed up to do
the things that they did. It was very interesting the way that they had to be
standing against a wall and not make any eye contact whenever we passed
by. I also like the fact that the people in prisons had many opportunities to
shape up their lives even if they were in jail. I liked that they could take classes
and do volunteer work. It was a scary experience at first because of the way
some prison members treated us, like screamed at us and made these noises
when they saw us but the experience overall was worth it. They should have
programs that can take high school students or even middle school kids to
82 W. W. SOKOLOFF
jail so that more and more children will experience the negativity of going to
jail so that they will get their lives together and shape up their lives before it is
too late. (Student prison visit testimonial received via email, May 15, 2012)
Even though the student did not connect the prison experience with course
material, the statement contains details pertaining to the trip (written over
15 months after the visit to Lopez Jail), as well as a recommendation about
taking younger students to correctional facilities. This indicates that the
prison visit was a memorable and significant experience for this student.
Based on a field trip to a prison, my experience indicates that students
are more willing to argue and participate in class when the material and
class activities are controversial and relevant. Analyzing the relationship
between democracy and punishment in a prison is a great way to begin
a conversation with students about assumptions about inmates, prisons,
democratic citizenship and mass incarceration. Because students and faculty
share an experience, the prison field trip can increase the level of trust
between them. The field trip can also be a form of education as social
justice insofar as it subverts the authority, inequality and knowledge nexus
intrinsic to traditional approaches to teaching and learning.24 Finally, the
prison visit opens a space for students to discuss what is important to them,
it disrupts traditional authority relations between students and faculty and
it stimulates critical reflection on one of the fastest growing industries in
the U.S. It is also my way to re-conceptualize learning as an intense and
joyful undertaking that reinvents pedagogy as the practice of equality.
24 For education as a social justice practice, see Marcos Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in
School, 2005, p. 266.
CHAPTER 5
Frantz Fanon’s Subversive Pedagogy
Abstract Subversive pedagogy is an embodied experience of disruption

that shatters the oppressed colonial subject, undermines the discourse of
universality, fosters a bottom-up perspective and gives birth to new mili-
tant political identities. After I present these aspects of Fanon’s thinking,
I draw some parallels between Fanon’s subversive pedagogy and National
Football League (NFL) athlete-protestors. Subversive pedagogy emerges
as a visceral experience of disruption that exposes the authority, hierarchy
and knowledge nexus and the doctrine of color blindness as neocolonial
practices.
Introduction
The dialogue about racism in the U.S. seems to be stuck and going nowhere
fast. Indeed, confusion, double talk and exhaustion inflect conversations
about racial injustice today. Because of its subtle and constantly mutat-
ing forms and the cloud of denial that surrounds it, talking about racial
injustice is perhaps more difficult than it has ever been. When it comes
to racial injustice, most Americans enjoy a diet of complacent ignorance,
selective amnesia and cold indifference.1 To complicate this matter even
1 See Ange-Marie Hancock, Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppres-
sion Olympics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 8–13.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_5
84 W. W. SOKOLOFF
further, I occasionally hear racist jokes, derogatory comments and general-

izations about people of color. The individuals making these claims assume
that because I am white I will agree with them and they often throw in
the statement “I am not a racist but…” and “you know what I mean.”
If I question them about what they say, they become defensive and the
conversation ends awkwardly.
There are many other reasons why the dialogue about racial injustice
seems to be stuck. First, the voices that are allowed to participate (and the
ones excluded) in the public conversation about it have framed the issues in
an individualistic and narrow manner so as to perpetuate a shallow, ahistori-
cal and largely celebratory conversation about how much progress has been
made for people of color. The power of the “American dream,” namely, the
myth that hard work pays off and that any individual can succeed in Amer-
ica also blocks the discussion. Anyone who does not succeed cannot blame
structures of power (e.g. racial bias, patriarchy, class position, (dis)ability,
heteronormativity) but has only themselves to blame. Ignored is data on
poverty and wealth, disproportionate incarceration, racial profiling, police
brutality, discrimination and limited educational attainment for people of
color.2
Second, the U.S. Supreme Court’s proclamations on race, current doc-
trine of “color blindness,” dismantling of affirmative action and the Court’s
repeated claims that race is no longer relevant has also stifled the conversa-
tion about racial justice. It has led to the belief that white people are now
the primary victims of racism and that reverse discrimination is rampant.3
In the sphere of electoral politics, politicians make subtle and coded racist
statements out of one side of their mouth to mobilize the white electorate
while they proudly proclaim that race is no longer relevant out of the other
side. Unfortunately, this tactic pays off with electoral victory. This form of
“dog whistle politics,” however, seems to have ended with the victory of
2 See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
(New York: The New Press, 2012); Victor M. Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and
Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2011); and Angela Davis, Are Prisons
Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003).
3 See Ian Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New
York University Press, 1996). For an analysis of affirmative action, see Ira Katznelson, When
Affirmative Action Was White: The Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century
America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005).
5 FRANTZ FANON’S SUBVERSIVE PEDAGOGY 85
Donald Trump and racism has mutated yet again.4 Trump made repeated
and explicitly racist and anti-immigrant claims as a way to generate white
political support for his bid for the presidency. His bet that racism in a
post-racial society can mobilize anxious white Americans into the voting
booth paid off and he won the election, even though he lost the popular
vote.5
The view that racial justice only pertains to African Americans and other
people of color and therefore constitutes a narrow form of “identity pol-
itics” also stands in the way of intelligent and informed dialogue about
racial justice. It would be better to talk about political issues that mat-
tered to everyone (e.g. class). Racism is over and is simply “black Ameri-
ca’s problem.”6 In some academic circles, talking about identity and race
is frowned upon even among individuals who identify as politically pro-
gressive. Their position sounds something like this. The fixation on race
eclipses the common, obscures social class and risks becoming a form of
politically counter-productive essentialism and cultural/identity politics.7
Political candidates representing (or claiming to represent) working
Americans (including people of color) are also unable to talk about racial
issues in a productive manner. For example, even though African Ameri-
cans supported her at a rate higher than Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton
failed to responsibly respond to questions about racial injustice (e.g. “super-
predators”) raised by a protestor at a $500 per plate fundraiser.8 In Seattle,
black protestors shut down a Bernie Sanders rally. According to Seattle’s
#BlackLivesMatter chapter, it protested the Sanders event for the follow-
ing reason: “The problem with Sanders, and with white Seattle progressives
4 See Ian Haney López, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented
Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
5 For the ways in which poor, working-class and middle-class whites and wealthy elites over-
come class animosity and unite via racism, see Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004).
6 See John McWhorter, “Racism in America Is Over,” Forbes, December 30, 2008.
7 See Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
Rorty argues that the cultural left has eclipsed the reformist left. See also Sheldon Wolin,
“Democracy, Difference, and Re-cognition,” in Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, ed.
Nicholas Xenos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). See, finally, Wendy Brown,
States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995).
8 See Eugene Scott, “Black Lives Matter Protester Confronts Clinton at a Fundraiser,”
CNN, February 26, 2016.
86 W. W. SOKOLOFF
in general, is that they are utterly and totally useless (when not outright
harmful) in terms of the fight for Black lives.”9
Finally, the appropriation of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. has also
hindered the conversation about racism. His legacy has become a status quo
perpetuating message about the importance of calmly pursuing political
change within the parameters of the political system. MLK’s name is on
approximately 900 street signs throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico.10
MLK day is a national holiday and he has become a part of black history
month. This incorporation arguably reflects the domestication of his legacy
and his transformation into a non-threatening activist. In what is without
doubt a distortion of his legacy, Mike Huckabee stated King would criticize
Black Lives Matter protestors because King believed that all lives matter.11
“Thank you for making me even more depressed than I already am,” one
might say in response to this bleak situation. It would be a mistake to throw
up our hands and simply tell people of color that there is no hope. My goal
is not to plunge us into the abyss of despair but to trigger a shift in how we
talk about racial injustice. I also want to show how educators can disrupt
white privilege and deafness in the classroom via subversive pedagogy as
a visceral experience of disruption that exposes and undermines tactics of
mystification (e.g. doctrine of color blindness). This chapter connects to the
other ones insofar as it contributes to a general theory of radical political
theory pedagogy as the practice of equality and exposes the doctrine of
color blindness as the latest phase of colonialism.
I turn to the work of the revolutionary theorist Frantz Fanon as a way
to change the terms of the debate on racism and white privilege, reflect
on the best ways to bring about racial justice and explore how subversive
9 See Dan Merica, “Black Lives Matter Protesters Shut Down Sanders Event in Seattle,”
CNN, August 10, 2015. See also Gil Troy, “Why Black Voters Don’t Feel the Bern,” Politico,
March 7, 2016.
10 See Haimy Assefa, “Restoring MLK’s Dream, Street by Street,” CNN, January 18, 2016.
11 CNN, August 18, 2015. Mike Huckabee falsifies the content of King’s writings as well
as the historical record. For King’s defense of extreme tactics, forcing a crisis and fostering
tension, see “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Signet, 2000).
King states: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension
that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue”
(p. 67). See also Charles E. Cobb, Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns
Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (New York: Basic Books, 2014). For Cobb, “this
willingness to use deadly force ensured the survival not only of countless brave men and
women but also of the freedom struggle itself” (p. 1).
forms of pedagogy are key components in this transformation. Why turn to

Frantz Fanon, the apostle of revolutionary violence, to explore issues per-
taining to racial justice and pedagogy? What possibly could this advocate
of the violent overthrow of colonial regimes who died decades ago con-
tribute to reflection on racism and pedagogy today? After all, colonialism is
dead, the French have left Algeria, and national self-determination has won
the day. Despite the possible objections against turning to Fanon, I argue
that Fanon’s work is indispensable for reflection on the politics of racial
oppression and pedagogy because he offers a message of hope via visceral
pedagogy and confrontational forms of political activity.12 Fanon is also
valuable for reflection on racial justice because he offers an immanent cri-
tique of abstract liberal theory, strips politics down to its polemical essence
(e.g. conflict and violence) and thereby shatters the various forms of obfus-
cation (e.g. discourse of universality; color blindness) that serve as covers
to racism.13 Through uncovering the historical and psychological bases of
oppression that create docility, submission and inhibition, combined with
exposing the futility of liberal universal approaches to overcoming racism,
Fanon’s work culminates in the defense of confrontational means for chal-
lenging racial injustice.14 As we shall see, the intersection between politics
and pedagogy emerges as a particularly important site in Fanon’s work.
However, and this is what this chapter contributes to ongoing discussions
about Fanon’s significance today, Fanon’s work on the politics of pedagogy
(e.g. colonial/oppressive versus liberating) has not received the attention
12 For a theoretical account that focuses on thinkers only from the Western canon, see
Dana Villa, Teachers of the People: Political Education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
13 See also Étienne Balibar, “Racism as Universalism,” in Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on
Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, trans. James Swenson (New York: Routledge,
1994).
14 Fanon calls for a “new start,” a “new way of thinking,” a “new man.” He claims that the
European game is over and that “we must look elsewhere besides Europe” (pp. 235–239).
Fanon also highlights confrontational tactics used to contest European domination. See
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004),
hereafter WE.
88 W. W. SOKOLOFF
it deserves.15 I attempt to fill this gap and stimulate a dialogue about the
role of pedagogy in his thinking.
Frantz Fanon
The neglect of Fanon’s views on pedagogy is a curious oversite given the
centrality of this theme in his work. In the opening pages of his classic The
Wretched of the Earth, for example, Fanon states that education “instills in
the exploited a mood of submission and inhibition” (WE 3–4).16 Addi-
tionally, he argues “everything rests on educating the masses” (WE 138).
In Black Skins White Masks, he continues this theme: “To induce [Amener,
which is also translated as ‘to educate’] man to be actional, by maintaining
in his circularity the respect of the fundamental values that make the world
human, that is the task of the utmost urgency for he who, after careful
reflection, prepares to act” (BSWM 197).17
Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) was born in the Caribbean on the island of
Martinique. The standard view is that he is a prophet of violence for the
“wretched of the earth.”18 A number of experiences were important for
15 Jean-Paul Sartre gave the question of violence center stage in his Preface to WE. Hannah
Arendt has a critical account of Fanon and violence in On Violence (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1970). The focus on violence has led to the neglect of other themes in Fanon’s work.
For Sefa Dei and Simmons, there has been “inadequate attention paid to Fanon’s ideas and the
pedagogical implications.” See George J. Sefa Dei and Marlon Simmons, “The Pedagogy of
Fanon: An Introduction,” Counterpoints 368 (2010): xiii. See also Zeus Leonardo and Ronald
K. Porter, “Pedagogy of Fear: Toward a Fanonian Theory of ‘Safety’ in Race Dialogue,” Race
Ethnicity and Education 13:2 (2010): 139–157.
16 It is not only in Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth where the pedagogical significance of the
fight against colonialism appears. References to education and pedagogy can also be found
in Fanon, Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays, trans. Chevalier (New York: Grove
Press, 1988), hereafter TAR; Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Philcox (New York: Grove Press,
2008), hereafter BSWM; A Dying Colonialism, trans. Chevalier (New York: Grove Press,
1965), hereafter ADC; and Frantz Fanon: Alienation and Freedom, eds. Khalfa and Young,
trans. Corcoran (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), hereafter AF.
17 The French amener has a variety of meanings. Richard Philcox translates it as “induce.”
Amener also implies to bring, to take, to cause, to bring up, to lead, to pull. All of these are
closely connected with “to educate.”
18 For these and related themes, see Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue, ed. Nigel
C. Gibson (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 1999). See also The Fact of Blackness:
Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ed. Alan Read (Seattle: Bay Press, 1996) and Fanon:
A Critical Reader, eds. Lewis R. Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Renée T. White
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000).
his intellectual trajectory. He fought and he was wounded while serving

for the Free French Army in Europe. After his recovery, he continued
his education in Lyon, France. He pursued a wide range of interests at
the university including literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry.
While in France, he attended lectures by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He was
also strongly influenced by French existentialism. Ultimately, he passed
the Médicat des hôpitaux psychiatriques and became a doctor. He practiced
psychiatry in a manner that incorporated his interests in medicine, politics
and philosophy. Shortly after assuming a post at a hospital in French Algeria,
he joined the revolutionary FLN [Algerian National Liberation Front]. He
also served as an ambassador to Ghana before his death in 1961.
Fanon worked with Algerians suffering from a variety of mental and
physical complexes caused by French domination in Algeria. Fanon articu-
lated paths for recovery for his patients. He practiced a form of pedagogical-
political-psychiatry. He identified mental complexes caused by colonialism
and prescribed revolution as the cure. Because his work contains an auto-
biographical aspect at nearly every turn, his presence as an author makes
the reader feel as if Fanon is on the verge of jumping out from between the
pages. This intensity is also the result of his inability to type. It also stems
from Fanon’s visceral hatred of colonialism and racism. As Leo Zeilig puts
it, Fanon tried to invoke in the reader “an experience of what race and
racism really mean and how they are felt.”19
Fanon’s time in France was central to his political transformation and
newfound political consciousness. In A Dying Colonialism, for example,
he states that his time in France “confirmed for me what I already sensed:
that I was not French, that I had never been French” (ADC 175). The
problem, however, was that Fanon was told that he was French. For-
mally, he was a French citizen. Empirically, though, Fanon “had never
been French.” Fanon left France for Algeria where he practiced psychiatry
in Blida-Joinville from 1953 until 1957. He learned that the hospital where
he worked was going to be raided. He resigned from this position and left
Algeria. Diagnosed with Leukemia, he died in the U.S. at the age of thirty-
six. Fanon was an intellectual generated by the contradiction between the
discourse of liberal universalism and the way in which these ideals were
hypocritically deployed for people of color.
19 See Leo Zeilig, Frantz Fanon: The Militant Philosopher of Third World Revolution (New
York: I. B. Tauris, 2016), p. 39.
90 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Universalism as Ideology
The Western world prides itself on its intellectual achievements and, as
Fanon puts it, its “humanistic superiority” (TAR 125). Universalism and
the doctrine of human rights are two of the West’s shining stars. Individuals
are rational. They pursue their conception of the good and determine their
place in the world. The doctrine of universalism dissolves particular differ-
ences (ethnic/racial; gender; class). It also elevates a transcendental disem-
bodied subject as master of the universe and at least theoretically creates
a world community based on equality, rationality and self-determination.
Reason leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to freedom. Progress is uni-
versal.20 The philosophical articulation of radical enlightenment and uni-
versalism found its political enunciation in the revolutions of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. The work of the eighteenth century philosopher
Immanuel Kant exemplifies the doctrine of liberal universalism, one that is
not without its own internal ambiguities.
Indeed, Kantian universalism depends on a strange oscillation between
the formal side of Kant’s thinking apparent in his ethical tracts like Ground-
work for the Metaphysics of Morals and the limitations of the abstract or
universal form when it runs up against its political and empirical deploy-
ment.21 As Étienne Balibar has noted in his essay “Racism as Universalism,”
Kantian universalism is grounded in certain anthropological characteristics
“in which the characters of sex, people, and race are thought of as natural
categories.”22 The fact that these categories are posited as natural impacts
Kant’s politico-philosophical trajectory. It leads Kant, for example, to iden-
tify greater and lesser degrees of “civilization” in nations and races. This
aspect of his thinking links Kant to colonialism, empire and the domina-
tion of “savages.” For Kant, the two most civilized nations on earth are, for
example, “England and France.”23 The intermixture of races, Kant claims,
“does not seem beneficial to the human race.” For Kant, “humanity is at
20 For a critique of these and related ideas, see Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno,
Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2002).
21 Fanon states: “The starry sky that left Kant in awe has long revealed its secrets to us”
(BSWM 202). See also Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (New
York: Routledge, 1990).
22 See Étienne Balibar, “Racism as Universalism,” p. 196.
23 See Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle
Dowdell (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), p. 226. See also Kant, Obser-
its greatest perfection in the race of the whites.”24 Such statements cast a
shadow on the universal and egalitarian character of human reason Kant
celebrates in “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’”25
Kant’s abstract universalism announces and seems to take away the uncon-
ditional egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism his universalism at least initially
seems to promise.26 A similar giving and then taking away is also appar-
ent in one of the most important political documents of the eighteenth
century.
“The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” approved on
August 26, 1789 by the National Assembly of France, announces univer-
sal ideals for the political sphere that are intended to undermine arbitrary
authority, promote self-determination, fight corruption and protect the
rights of the individual:
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly,

believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are
the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have
vations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1960), pp. 110–111.
24 Immanuel Kant, Anthropology, p. 236. In reference to the “Carib,” Kant states he lives
carelessly and “sells his sleeping-mat in the morning and in the evening is perplexed because
he does not know where he will sleep during the night” (p. 78). See also Race and the
Enlightenment: A Reader, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001),
p. 63. See also Jonathan I. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and
Human Rights, 1750–1790 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 738–740. As
Israel notes, other major European thinkers had troubling assumptions pertaining to race.
Hegel claimed Africa has no history and it is not part of the historical part of the world.
Germans were on the top of the racial pyramid. See also Teshale Tibedu, Hegel and the Third
World: The Making of Eurocentrism in World History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,
2011). Hegel depicts Africans as “people of the senses” (xii). Tibedu continues: “Hegel
articulated a sophisticated theory of the rationality of European colonial expansion” (xiii).
For Robert Young, “Marxism’s universalizing narrative of the unfolding of a rational system
of world history is simply a negative form of the history of European imperialism” in White
Mythologies: Writing History and the West (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990),
p. 2.
25 Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’” Kant: Political
Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
26 In contrast to Kant, Rawlsian universalism neutralizes racial/ethnic, gender and class dif-
ferences behind the veil of ignorance in the original position. In this idealized space, the human
is a human as such and is uncontaminated by markers of difference (e.g. ethnic/racial; gender;
class; sexuality; ability). See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1971) and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
92 W. W. SOKOLOFF
determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and

sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all
the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights
and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those
of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the objects
and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and,
lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple
and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution
and redound to the happiness of all. (“The Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen,” 1789)
Article 1 in the same document goes further: “Men are born and remain free
and equal in rights.” The implications for the political realm are clear. The
political state creates the conditions (e.g. abstract human rights and polit-
ical equality) for the “happiness of all.” These abstract ideals undermine
illegitimate usurpations of power and provide the philosophical grounding
for democracy. They also served as the meta-political basis for the transfor-
mation of subjects into citizens. The French “Declaration” created shock
waves throughout the world because it threatened established power rela-
tions (e.g. inheritance; caste; slavery; preferential taxation for the poor).
Sensing the threat, the conservative philosopher Edmund Burke was hor-
rified and defended the ancien régime in Reflections on the Revolution in
France. Others, however, employed the ideas announced in the French
“Declaration” to fight for the cause of the oppressed. The “Declaration,”
for example, inspired the overlooked Haitian anti-slavery and anti-colonial
revolution (1791–1804).
Ironically, the universal ideas of the French Revolution were a bat-
tle ground over who was included in the universal, where the universal
applied and how far the universal could be extended. Many Haitians, for
example, believed that the universal ideals articulated by the leaders of the
French philosophical and political Enlightenment applied to them. The
logic seemed simple enough. Since they are not bound to a particular time
and place, universal ideals apply to everyone. This upset plantation power
relationships on the wealthy sugar producing island of San Domingue and
threatened the privileges of the colonial elite. As a result, a long and bloody
revolution ensued between the Haitian revolutionaries and various reac-
tionary colonial powers that sought to keep the slaves in their place via the
denial of their inclusion under the Declaration’s emancipatory umbrella.27
These universal ideals as a political terrain of struggle (e.g. the antinomy
between philosophical universalism and political practice) was experienced
first-hand by countless other individuals living in European colonies and
“departments.” Western universalism promised liberation for some; but for
others it was pure verbiage. Nearly two centuries after “The Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” its flowery rhetoric did not square
with Frantz Fanon’s lived experience in Martinique, France and Algeria.
For Fanon, these ideals announced and negated the promised equality,
freedom and self-determination.
Fanon’s theoretical work provided a political form of deconstruction of
the constitutive interrelationship between Western philosophy, which he
argued provided the foil and justification for colonialism, on the one hand,
and power and domination in the colonies, on the other. Western meta-
physics, it turns out, was a political project based on a peculiar form of
universalism. As the French Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida puts it,
“metaphysics – the white mythology which reassembles and reflects the cul-
ture of the West: the white man takes his own mythology, Indo-European
mythology, his own logos, that is, the mythos of his idiom, for the universal
form of that he must still wish to call Reason.”28
The roots of metaphysical-political domination were cloaked by the ide-
ology of Western universalism. Ironically, the French Third Republic, the
“golden age of French universalism,” was the high point of French colonial-
ism.29 A combination of an arrogant civilizing impulse, domestic political
crises and economic interests contributed to the French presence in Alge-
ria for over a century (1830–1962). The problem of Algeria in terms of
hypocrisy and selective deployment of the discourse of universality put into
motion a variety of radical critiques of the Western tradition by twentieth
27 See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo
Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1989).
28 See Jacques Derrida, “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy,” Margins
of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 213. See
also Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel
Levinas,” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978). Deconstruction targeted Western metaphysics as a practice of power, subverted it from
within and attempted to open the project of critical reflection to a new emancipatory project.
29 See Naomi Schor, “The Crisis of French Universalism,” Yale French Studies 100 (2001):
47. The French occupation of Algeria began in 1830 and ended in 1962.
94 W. W. SOKOLOFF
century French thinkers who had strong ties to Algeria or who grew up
in Algeria. These authors include Albert Camus (born in Algeria), Jacques
Derrida (born in Algeria), Hélène Cixous (born in Algeria), Louis Althusser
(born in Algeria) as well as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre
Bourdieu, Simon de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard and
many others.30 For Hélène Cixous, “I learned to read, to write, to scream,
and to vomit in Algeria. To have seen ‘Frenchmen’ at the ‘height’ of impe-
rialist blindness, behaving in a country that was inhabited by humans as if
it were peopled by nonbeings, born-slaves. I learned everything from this
first spectacle: I saw how the white (French), superior, plutocratic, civi-
lized world founded its power on the repression of populations who had
suddenly become ‘invisible.’”31 The culminating moment for French intel-
lectuals pertaining to Algeria was the Manifesto of the 121 (“Declaration on
the Right to Insubordination in the War in Algeria”).32
Colonialism and the system of racism that operated alongside and
justified it enriched European powers through the extraction of natural
resources, provided a never ending source of cheap labor, created a conve-
nient location to send criminals and political trouble makers and tantalized
travelers with cheap tourist destinations.33 Hence, Algeria served key polit-
ical, economic and cultural functions. Support for the French presence in
Algeria therefore ran deep. Yet again, the enlightenment and/or universal
ideals that cloaked colonial domination only served as a sort of market-
ing and global public relations campaign that concealed what was actually
taking place. Critically oriented French intellectuals protested against the
hypocrisy: “The cause of the Algerian people, which contributes decisively
30 See Jean-François Lyotard, Political Writings, trans. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 165–326. See also Hélène Cixous
and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1988). See, finally, Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians, trans. Alan C. M.
Ross (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962).
31 Cixous and Clement, Newly Born Woman, 1988, p. 70.
32 See the Manifesto of the 121 or “Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the War
in Algeria,” originally written in 1960, https://www.marxists.org/history/france/algerian-
war/1960/manifesto-121.htm, accessed on December 27, 2017. See also Étienne Balibar,
Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology, trans. Steven Miller (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2017). See, in particular, Balibar’s “Blanchot’s Insubordination:
On the Writing of the Manifesto of the 121,” pp. 256–272.
33 See Aimé Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 2001).
to the ruin of the colonial system, is the cause of all free men and women”
(Manifesto of the 121). In this statement, the universal, “all free men and
women,” was reversed to serve the Algerians in resistance, not sovereign
French power.
Enter Fanon
Although Fanon arrived late on the colonial scene, the world he observed
in Algeria was in the hands of the European bourgeoisie. He observed that
colonialism as practiced in Algeria was based on violent domination, theft,
unequal power relations, lies, hypocrisy and exploitation. The expression
“French Algeria” was a cruel and violent oxymoron, where the universal
ground down the particular. As Fanon put it in reference to the French pres-
ence in Algeria, “colonialism cannot be understood without the possibility
of torturing, of violating, or of massacring” (TAR 66).34 The exclusions
built into “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” namely, its
silence on the status of women and slaves, as well as the selective, contin-
gent and conditional implementation of its core ideas, set the doctrine of
universalism on a collision course with excluded others.35
The discourse of human rights, self-determination and democratic ideals
represented the high point of France’s contribution to political humanism.
French colonialism as a system of brutality and domination was the low
point. The blatant contradiction between ideal and reality required lies to
sustain it in practice, made life a living hell for the colonized and created, in
Fanon’s words, a “sector on its knees, a sector of niggers, a sector of tow-
elheads” (WE 5). The grandeur of France’s universal ideals only applied to
white Europeans. Algerians were cast as sub-human, “thingified,” “objec-
tified,” called “Mohammed” (TAR 14; 35): “Every contact between the
occupied and the occupier is a falsehood” (ADC 65). As Charles W. Mills
aptly puts it, “European humanism usually meant that only Europeans were
human.”36 Fanon concurs:
34 Psychological warfare, pacification of the civilian population via arbitrary arrests, rape
and torture were common practices in Algeria.
35 See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo
Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1989). See also Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the
Rights of Women (New York: Penguin, 2004).
36 Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 27.
96 W. W. SOKOLOFF
When it is strong, when it organizes the world on the basis of its power, a
bourgeoisie does not hesitate to maintain a pretense of universal democratic
ideas. An economically sound bourgeoisie has to be faced with exceptional
circumstances to force it to disregard its humanist ideology. Although fun-
damentally racist, the Western bourgeoisie generally manages to mask this
racism by multiplying the nuances, thereby enabling it to maintain intact
its discourse on human dignity in all its magnanimity. (WE 109, emphasis
added)
The pretense of universal ideas masked the racism of the Western bour-
geoisie. The discourse of human dignity was, as Fanon puts it, “funda-
mentally racist” (WE 109). Even the medical establishment in Algeria was
essentially political because it was part of an occupying force, accepted
the fact that Algerians were not human and medical personnel practiced
forms of “veterinarian medicine” on the Algerian people (ADC 127).37
The “multiplication of nuances,” qualifications and conditional applica-
tions of universal ideals only served to pump air into Europe’s humanist
ideology and hide the domination and exploitation of Algerians.
Violence
Colonialism is a system of oppression ultimately grounded in violence
and the dehumanization of colonial inhabitants. According to Fanon, de-
colonization will therefore be a violent process (WE 1). Fanon knew that
the problem of political violence was a complicated issue. For Fanon,
“the issue of violence needs to be given careful consideration” (WE 33).
The options to bring about political change were limited. Nothing would
change via electoral politics. Negotiating with an occupying force was
impossible. Fanon therefore came to a simple conclusion: “To wage war
and to engage in politics are one and the same thing” (W 83). In this for-
mulation of war as politics and politics as war, there were no bystanders
and spectators: “A bystander is a coward or a traitor” (WE 140).38 With
Fanon, recourse to violence was how the victims of European universalism
37 For the connection between the medical establishment and racism, see also Harriet Wash-
ington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans
from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Broadway Books, 2006).
38 See also Étienne Balibar, “Politics as War, War as Politics: Post Clausewitzian Variations,”
public lecture, Northwestern University, May 8, 2006.
formulated a new universal and recovered their dignity and confidence.39

For him, violence unifies the people; it is a “cleansing force”; it “rids the
colonized of their inferiority complex”; it “restores their self-confidence”;
it gives birth to a new man (WE 51; 2). Violence, moreover, is the only
language the colonizer understands (WE 42). Since colonialism is naked
violence, it will only give in “when confronted with greater violence” (WE
23). For Fanon, liberation is possible “in and through violence” (WE 44).
This represents politics, not as a tactic of mystification and weapon of dom-
ination against the people, but politics conceived of as praxis, struggle and
the violent overthrow of the occupying force. For Fanon, the fight against
colonialism was not “a rational confrontation of viewpoints” (WE 5).
Irrespective of what it calls itself, colonial domination makes dialogue
and negotiation impossible. Rigged elections prevent change and perpet-
uate colonialism. Local politicians betray their people in the name of their
own self-interest. Academics nod their heads and proclaim the superiority
of European ideals as their own people are massacred. The common peo-
ple have their faces pinned to the ground and are told to speak and express
their views but nothing comes out, just like dogs who are commanded to
run while in a cage and are then whipped because they remained in their
place. Fanon makes these and other themes clear in an important passage
in The Wretched of the Earth. Here, Fanon argues that the values of the
oppressor are tactics of mystification that cloak the violence and domina-
tion of colonialism with liberal abstract ideals. These ideals are shattered
once they are brought into contact with the lived experience of people in
political struggle:
In its narcissistic monologue the colonialist bourgeoisie, by way of its aca-

demics, had implanted in the minds of the colonized that the essential values
– meaning Western values – remain eternal despite all errors attributable to
man. The colonized intellectual accepted the cogency of these ideas and there
in the back of his mind stood a sentinel on duty guarding the Greco-Roman
pedestal. But during the struggle for liberation, when the colonized intellec-
tual touches base again with this people, this artificial sentinel is smashed to
smithereens. All the Mediterranean values, the triumph of the individual, of
enlightenment and Beauty turn into pale, lifeless trinkets. All those discourses
39 The new universal was based on the reciprocal relativism between cultures. See Fanon,
TAR: “Universality resides in this decision to recognize and accept the reciprocal relativism
of different cultures” (p. 44). Universalism thus becomes a political practice requiring inter-
minable political struggle.
98 W. W. SOKOLOFF
appear a jumble of dead words. Those values which seemed to ennoble the
soul prove worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life
struggle in which the people are engaged. (WE 11)
Fanon argues that abstract Western ideas do not apply to and, more impor-
tantly, negate the lived political experience of colonized people. The doc-
trine of equality has been used “to justify the extermination of man”
(BSWM 12). In political struggle, abstract liberal universal ideals are shat-
tered and revealed as “lifeless trinkets” and “dead words.” Western values
are “smashed to smithereens.” In political struggle, words take on new
meanings. Politics emerges as the battle over the meanings of words.40 The
word truth loses its ahistorical character. It now signifies “what destroys the
colonial regime” (WE 14). Likewise, good does not denote an abstract the-
ory of justice but it is what “hurts the colonizer the most” (WE 14). Work
does not mean a nine to five job but “to work toward the death of the
colonist” (WE 44). Fanon’s words on violence, however, do not exhaust
his understanding of political engagement. Another terrain was available
for political struggle.
Pedagogy as Ideology
Fanon argued that pedagogy was one of the key sites for revolutionary
struggle. In Fanon’s words, “everything rests on educating the masses”
(WE 138). The question becomes who educates the masses and how the
masses are educated. Fanon thus gives us a vantage point to reflect on ped-
agogy as ideology, that is, a practice that attempts to perpetuate the sub-
jugation of dominated populations.41 Pedagogical practices are not neu-
tral but instruments of domination. They can perpetuate inequality and
serve as legitimation tools for the political and economic status quo.42 The
authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus intrinsic to traditional pedagogy
40 The radio became a pedagogical instrument for the political awakening of the Algerian
people via the spoken word. See Fanon, ADC, pp. 69–97.
41 See Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of Amer-
ica’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).
42 See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and
Culture, 2000. See also Wilder, Ebony and Ivy, 2013.
perpetuates colonialism.43 Colonial pedagogy was a top-down epistemol-

ogy of domination.
Colonization is a form of top-down pedagogy that seeks to “make peo-
ple ashamed of their existence” (BSWM 59) and creates what Fanon calls a
“colonized personality” (WE 182), a “personality in shreds” (ADC 138).
Subjugated populations learn via the pedagogy of domination how the
world works meaning who is in charge, who matters, who speaks, who
remains silent, who must stay in their place, what is valued and who is
worthless. Official versions of knowledge are disseminated. The historical
record is falsified and how one perceives the world is fundamentally altered.
“Reality” emerges as a political construct based on a pedagogy of falsifica-
tion.44 The mind and body are colonized. Colonization distorts vision and
perception and instills an inferiority complex into the native population via
brute force and daily humiliation. This takes place through a protracted
learning process that teaches the colonized to see themselves through the
eyes of the European. The colonized are also “made to feel inferior” via
“cultural obliteration” (WE 16; 170).45 Nothing about the colonized is
valued and their attempt to assimilate always fails. According to Fanon, “the
oppressor, through the inclusive and frightening character of his authority,
manages to impose on the native new ways of seeing” (TAR 38).
The abstract universal values of the colonizer serve to mask the ways in
which these values serve particular groups at the expense of everyone else.
The correlate of the European’s feeling of superiority is l’infériorisation
of the native (BSWM 73). As Albert Memmi put it, “the colonial situa-
tion manufactures colonialists, just as it manufactures the colonized.”46
Colonial education was a complicated process of surveillance. When
43 See Decolonising the University, eds. Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial, and Kerem
Nişancioğlu (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2018).
44 In racialized societies, the dominant group sees its social mobility and success as a reflec-
tion of merit and hard work as opposed to preferential treatment. In contrast, the failures
of dominated groups are the product of their indolence. For these and related themes, see
Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality
in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005). As Audre Lorde puts it,
“racial difference creates a constant, if unspoken, distortion of vision.” See Audre Lorde, The
Cancer Journals (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1980), p. 21.
45 For an analysis of the concept of “whitening” (e.g. an aesthetic project where people try
to look white), see Ian Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New
York: New York University Press, 1996).
46 See Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), p. 56.
100 W. W. SOKOLOFF
students spoke, their words were tightly monitored and controlled. When
he speaks, Fanon claims, “I must watch my diction” (BSWM 4). In colonial
but also capitalist societies, education, what Fanon calls the “teaching of
moral reflexes,” serves to “instill in the exploited a mood of submission
and inhibition which considerably eases the task of the agents of law and
order” (WE 3–4). For Fanon, “the first thing the colonial subject learns is to
remain in his place and not overstep its limits” (WE 15). In Fanon’s words,
“everything rests on educating the masses, elevating their minds” (WE
138). Just like liberal abstract ideals, the authority, hierarchy and knowl-
edge nexus mystifies its role as a form of social control. It announces itself
as neutral and fair. This is a ruse. It names pedagogical domination.
Subversive Pedagogy
Pedagogical practices and content can serve the political status quo. They
can also transform it. Fanon deconstructs and then tries to reconstruct the
colonized subject via a liberating form of pedagogy. A different pedagogi-
cal trajectory was possible beyond the authority, hierarchy and knowledge
nexus. An alternative was needed that promoted equality, freedom and self-
determination. Fanon struggled to articulate exactly what this would be.
Fanon’s politico-pedagogical awakening and turn to subversive pedagogy
was the result of his own protracted learning process. In chapter five of
Black Skins, White Masks titled “The Lived Experience of the Black Man,”
Fanon reflects on his own struggles as someone fixed and deemed inferior
by the stares and glances of the police, teachers, fellow students and the
entire world. He was, as he puts it, “overdetermined from the outside”
(BSWM 95). He continues: “I was hated, detested, and despised, not by
my next-door neighbor or a close cousin, but by an entire race” (BSWM
98). He could not assimilate enough; nor could he whiten himself out of
being black and into “authentic” French existence: “Wherever he goes, a
black man remains a black man” (BSWM 150). Fanon had been taught to
hate the black man but, as Fanon states, “I am the black man” (BSWM
174).
In theory, Fanon was French. He was reminded via daily humiliations
that generated his self-alienation that this was not the case. While in a train,
for example, he “existed in triple.” As he puts it, “I was responsible not only
for my body but also for my race and my ancestors” (BSWM 92). Wherever
he went “the white gaze, the only valid one, is already dissecting me, I am
fixed” (BSWM 95). At a crucial moment that represents a turning point
in the development of his political consciousness, he is identified in Lyon.

While he was walking, a boy says to his mother, while referring to Fanon,
“Look, a Negro!” [“Tiens, un nègre”]. The boy repeats it: “Maman, a
Negro!” And then the boy says: “Maman, the Negro’s going to eat me”
(BSWM 93). In an effort to defuse the awkward situation, the anxious
mother responded to her child in a manner that was loud enough for Fanon
to hear: “Look how handsome that Negro is.” Fanon responds to the boy’s
mother: “The handsome Negro says, ‘Fuck you,’ Madame” (BSWM 94).47
This was the first step to Fanon’s political awakening. As he puts it, “I had
identified the enemy and created a scandal” (BSWM 94, emphasis added).
Fanon was a human being, not a Negro. To force the issue, Fanon repeats
what the French women stated and refers to himself in the third person, as
“the handsome Negro.” This draws attention to his alienation and distance
from himself as a human who is simultaneously French and not French,
trapped as “Negro” and all the negative associations this involves (e.g.
lazy; dirty; stupid; animalistic; genitally determined). From this moment
on, Fanon refused to play the mendacious game of liberal universalism
where he is said to exist in the abstract as a person “just like everyone
else” (albeit as one who is essentially and ontologically black) but is denied
existence and recognition as a concrete human being.48
According to the discourse of liberal universality, Fanon was just like
everyone else who was French. His abstract and legal identity, however,
was out of alignment with his lived experience. As James R. Martel puts
it, “a narrative of race and colonialism has been superimposed on and over
Fanon’s own sense of self.”49 Fanon came to the realization that he could
not continue to live if he believed what the dominant ideology told him
about himself. He was not equal. He was not French. He was a BLACK
MAN. As Fanon puts it, “since the Other was reluctant to recognize me,
there was only one answer: to make myself known” (BSWM 95, emphasis
added). Making himself known was an act of militant refusal. He refused
to be misrecognized by the discourse of liberal universalism. From now on,
47 The French expression is “il t’emmerde, madame.”

48 The visceral and anger inducing character of this pedagogical moment for Fanon distin-
guishes it from Socratic pedagogy. Socrates promoted self-examination. His goal was to get
others to rethink their priorities. Fanon, in contrast, was motivated by ending oppression and
caring for the wretched of the earth.
49 See James R. Martel, The Misinterpellated Subject (Durham: Duke University Press,
2017), p. 98.
102 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Fanon was going to assert his own identity: “Accommodate me as I am; I’m
not accommodating anyone” (BSWM 110). The subversive pedagogical
significance of Fanon’s assertion of agency, as we shall see in the following
example, is threatening to established power relations. Even though Fanon
never wanted to travel to the U.S., I bring Fanon into dialogue with a
form of protest taking place in the U.S. This highlights Fanon’s work on
subversive pedagogy and illuminates Fanon’s relevance to what we do as
educators committed to racial justice. Subversive pedagogy emerges as a
visceral experience of disruption that undermines tactics of mystification
(e.g. doctrine of color blindness) and exposes the authority, hierarchy and
knowledge nexus as the latest phase of colonialism.
NFL Protest as Subversive Pedagogy

If one takes the cold indifference that has met the #BlackLivesMatter move-
ment as a sign, Fanon was right, black political agency is unwelcome, espe-
cially in white racial dictatorships. San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin
Kaepernick found this out the hard way during the 2016–2017 football
season. He refused to stand during a patriotic ritual. He challenged the
pedagogical goal of the NFL in terms of the cultivation of an uncritical
mode of patriotism via stealth bombers overhead and the national anthem.
Kaepernick was “not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country
that oppresses black people and people of color.”50 Kaepernick, now out of
work, an athlete who led the 49rs to the Super Bowl in 2012, has filed a for-
mal grievance against the NFL for collusion against hiring him.51 Kaeper-
nick continues to draw media attention and he earned the Muhammad Ali
Legacy Award from Sports Illustrated magazine.52 He stole the show and
turned NFL games into sites of protest against police brutality. He practiced
an inside/outside position insofar as he co-opted the NFL game platform
to advance his anti-racist political agenda. He thereby revealed the NFL
as a white space in a “color-blind” society, one that denies this fact even
as the NFL excludes and tries to silence the voices of black athletes. Black
50 See CNN September 23, 2017.

51 Even though the NFL recently settled with Kaepernick and paid him an undisclosed
amount, Kaepernick’s defiance connects to Fanon’s work on the pedagogical import of radical
black agency.
52 Des Beiler, Washington Post, November 30, 2017. See also Daniel Kreps, “Watch Jay-Z
Salute Colin Kaepernick, Perform ‘4:44’ Tracks on ‘SNL,’” Rolling Stone, October 1, 2017.
athletes comprise the majority of athletes playing in the NFL. About 70%
of NFL players are black. About 75% of NFL head coaches are white.53
Other NFL players have also protested during the U.S. national anthem
and other patriotic rituals by taking a knee and raising a fist at the beginning
of the sporting event thus challenging the hegemonic form of patriotism
peddled by the NFL. Some cheerleaders have begun to do the same.54
These protest gestures enrage Donald Trump and his loyal followers who
see it as disrespectful to veterans and to the U.S. flag. Recently Trump
stated: “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he’s fired. He’s
fired!”55 Trump also stated that the protestors are “ruining the game.”56
Contra Trump, I read the actions of these athlete-protestors as a valuable
form of political agency and subversive pedagogy insofar as they are naming
the world in which they live, forcing recognition of their identity, opening
the possibility of solidarity and engaging in a type of Fanonian defiance.57
They are pointing out the emptiness of abstract liberal ideals and contesting
the NFL’s complicity with the spectacle of black massacre.
In theory, U.S. citizens are equal before the law and have basic rights.
The narrative the U.S. tells itself is one of a color-blind society where eth-
nic and/or racial designations are irrelevant. An individual’s character and
merit determine success. Anyone can succeed in this land of unlimited
opportunity, so the story goes. Thanks to dash cams and other recording
devices that have documented encounters between people of color and the
police, the lived experience of people of color in the U.S. tells a different
53 See https://qz.com/1287915/the-nfls-racial-makeup-explains-much-of-its-national-
anthem-problems/, accessed on May 4, 2019.
54 For an analysis of different forms of political agency taken by black athletes, see Joshua
Wright, “Be Like Mike? The Black Athlete’s Dilemma,” Spectrum: A Journal of Black Men 4
(Spring 2016): 1–19. See also Eric Adelson, “Power of Kneeling Kennesaw State Cheerleaders
Revealed in President’s Resignation,” Yahoo Sports, December 17, 2017.
55 See CNN, September 27, 2017.
56 See CNN, September 27, 2017.
57 For an analysis of the racial politics pertaining to the sports-entertainment complex, see
William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black
Athlete (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006). For Rhoden, “the power relationship that had
been established on the plantation has not changed, even if the circumstances around it have”
(x).
104 W. W. SOKOLOFF
story, that is, one of police harassment/brutality/murder.58 This is what

the NFL protestors are trying to highlight. Just like Fanon, who learned
that liberal universalism was an ideology that engendered colonial oppres-
sion and preserved an oppressive racial order while mouthing equality and
fairness for all, NFL athletes who protest see a racial order in the U.S.
cloaked with the discourse of liberal universality. In response, protestor
athletes are refusing to bow down to the false god of liberal universality
symbolized in U.S. patriotism. They are asserting a counter-identity that
draws attention to them not as abstract men but as African Americans liv-
ing in a racialized polity. To put it differently, they are asserting a counter-
universal. The NFL athlete-protestors are thus critical patriots engaged in
a form of political-pedagogy. They are disrupting top-down epistemolo-
gies of knowledge. The black athlete could forego this project and pretend
to be white. As Fanon puts it, though, “no matter how white one paints
the base of the tree the strength of the bark screams underneath” (BSWM
175). By silently protesting, these athletes are sending out a message of
solidarity to other African Americans.
The owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, recently locked arms
with his players in a show of solidarity but he has more recently claimed
that players will not play if they disrespect the flag.59 Apparently, Jones
has had enough of the gesture of protest that continues to draw media
attention. Although everyone in principle defends free speech as an abstract
right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, it is easy to
defend free speech as an abstract right. Acts of free speech that disrupt and
exceed the spaces where this speech is authorized to occur and that voice
dissent against America’s blind and thoughtless celebration of itself are not
welcomed. Indeed, according to a recent poll, Americans oppose the NFL
athlete acts of protest.60 Although it is hard to say with certainty why this
is the case, this opposition to the athlete-protestors is arguably the result
of the view that the status quo is just. Hence, nothing needs to change.
Protest is unnecessary and absurd.
Those who oppose the NFL athlete-protestors are unable to compre-
hend what they are doing and why they are doing it because they have
58 Police killed 1147 people in 2017. Black people were 25% of those killed despite being
only 13% of the population. See https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/, accessed on May 20,
2019.
59 See Chris Perez, New York Post, October 8, 2017.
60 Russell Blair, Hartford Courant, October 11, 2017.
adopted the official self-congratulating narrative America peddles about

race. Those opposed to NFL protest are also unable to hear the cry from
another person because their ears are tone deaf and they fail to see what is
hidden in plain sight. The cognitive dissonance caused by protesting ath-
letes is too much to take. It interrupts and blocks the spectacle and roar
of the crowd and causes a recoil effect that ironically casts the protestors
engaged in an arguably minimal act of peaceful protest as public enemies.
By excluding and attempting to silence black protest before NFL games,
the NFL reveals itself as an essentially white space.
As a white institution, the NFL speaks a white language the current
form of which is the doctrine of “color blindness.”61 By protesting, the
players are asserting themselves as BLACK humans. They are refusing to
go away and to shut up. As Fanon puts it, “since the Other was reluctant
to recognize me, there was only one answer: to make myself known”
(BSWM 95, emphasis added). When they raise a clenched fist and when
their knee drops, they are not only NFL players. They are black citizens in a
racialized polity. Millions of people ignore #BlackLivesMatter and pretend
the movement does not exist. Some assert that they are paid protestors
and posit that their grievances are irrelevant. The NFL players on center
stage of the media-corporate complex are not so easy to ignore, caricature,
and misrepresent.62 The player protestors are out of place as protestors
and they are a problem precisely because of this. The point seems to be
that black athletes can play football on the condition that they keep their
mouths shut, privatize their grievances and express them in the appropriate
state sanctioned channels for voicing one’s concerns and discontent about
injustice (e.g. voting booth), what Fanon called “politics as a sleep-inducing
tactic.”63
61 See Ian Hany López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New
York University Press, 2006).
62 See Juliet Hooker, “Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes of U.S. Black Politics: From
Democratic Sacrifice to Democratic Repair,” Political Theory 44 (2016): 448–469.
63 The athlete-protestors are violating the sensibility of the viewers. The failure to do vio-
lence to racist perceptions becomes a form of complicity with racism. See Lewis R. Gordon,
Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (New
York: Routledge, 1995), p. 79.
106 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Patriotic rituals make people feel good but they arguably numb the
critical faculties via emotional attachment to myths, songs and symbols.64
Dropping a knee in protest steels the show and gently force-feeds Amer-
ica its hollow ideals. It is a way of practicing the universal as something
dialectical (not static and closed). People (meaning viewers) are uncom-
fortable at precisely the moment when they expect to be comfortable. The
athlete-protestors are not allowing the viewers to enjoy the game but are
reminding viewers that something is seriously wrong in the U.S. today.
Fanon told the mother of a child who identifies Fanon as a Negro to “fuck
off” (BSWM 94). The NFL players are also creating a scandal, albeit one
without a raised middle finger and employing the “f” word, to force the
issue or, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it in reference to his defense of
civil disobedience, to “generate a crisis.”65 They are putting into question
the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus that demands obedience and
squashes dissent. The NFL players are asserting an identity, a defiant one,
one that cannot be intimidated into silence, one that is arguably “ruin-
ing the game” if by game one means an opportunity for thoughtlessness,
historical amnesia and complicity with police brutality against people of
color. The fact that the NFL players may have the economic wherewithal
(at least in the short-term) to weather the penalties and punishment that
they might endure for protesting in no way detracts from their courage.
The NFL protestors are rendering themselves visible as political agents in
spaces that they are creating and defining as political.66
This is a position that aligns (at least partially) with Thomas Jefferson’s
“Declaration of Independence,” a document that created its own space
of resistance (e.g. declarative speech), upholds the right of resistance and
requires naming the “long train of abuses and usurpations” as one of the
conditions for entering into political struggle.67 The alignment also con-
ceals a fundamental difference. Liberal universalism, as Fanon points out,
64 See George Kateb, Patriotism and Other Mistakes (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2008).
65 See Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in Why We Can’t Wait,
2000. For King, “the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists” (p. 77).
66 For racism as a form of enforced invisibility, see Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York:
Vintage, 1985). See also Andy Cush, “#Black Lives Matter Protesters Hit Whites Where It
Truly Hurts: Brunch,” Gawker, January 5, 2015.
67 In the same document, Thomas Jefferson blames the King of Great Britain for “exciting
domestic insurrections” and stimulating “merciless Indian savages” into action.
has always been a problem for black people because they have not been
included in its warm embrace (e.g. exclusion clauses; exceptions; status as
property and non-persons; state’s rights). The athlete-protestors are assert-
ing a counter-universal, or as I put it earlier, a dialectical universal. It is not
a rejection of universality but an attempt to transform universality into a
political practice. By taking a step back from procedural-institutional modes
of political engagement and dropping a knee, the athletes are opening a
space for political struggle. Universalism without the dialectical dimension
is a tactic used to justify racism while simultaneously rendering it invisible.
Via their resistance to being included in a false universal (e.g. patriotic rit-
ual), NFL protestors make it impossible for universalism to mask racism.
This is what the dialectical deployment of universality as a political practice
names. The universal is not a static ideal but a terrain of struggle.
By dropping a knee and raising a fist, the athletes have partially taken the
stage away from the corporate sponsors of the NFL who profit off of the col-
lective exuberance and historical amnesia engendered by this concussion-
inducing sport. In this act of solidarity with other people of color that is
drawing attention to the spectacle of black massacre, the players are dis-
rupting the NFL’s profit accumulation party. The protesting players are
showing up to the NFL party and they are willing to play the game, but
on their own terms. They are using the stage of the sport to criticize the
emptiness of the discourse of universality and to appear in public as defiant
and black. Their defiance is a way of saying that the universal is an unful-
filled promise. They are saying that the universal is a white one, a form of
empty talk, white mythology and collective blindness.
The fact that there have been calls to boycott the NFL illustrates the
effectiveness of the dropped knee and the threat black agency and subver-
sive pedagogy poses to the white racial order.68 Some viewers simply refuse
to acknowledge the legitimacy of black agency expressed in any form. Some
viewers refuse to acknowledge contemporary racism, police brutality and
systemic abuse of people of color. They employ the one-dimensional nar-
rative provided by the mainstream media that a lot of progress exists for
people of color and the players are simply being disrespectful to the flag and
to veterans. The athlete-protestors are forcing a shift in perspective, that
is, they are trying to shatter the complicity of the average NFL viewer with
racial oppression via historical amnesia, thoughtlessness and indifference.
68 See Richard Morgan, “Group Calls for Boycott of NFL on Veteran’s Day Weekend,”
New York Post, November 11, 2017.
108 W. W. SOKOLOFF
They are drawing attention to the problem of racial injustice. The player
protestors are engaging in a subversive pedagogical act designed to make
viewers feel uncomfortable.
Conclusion
In a recent report, a FBI terrorism unit stated that “black identity extrem-
ists” posed a violent threat.69 This is nothing new for it is only an attempt to
criminalize all forms of black agency and activism and define manifestations
of it as always existing outside legitimate forms of democratic politics. To
counter this top-down criminal-managerial approach to interpreting black
activism, as well as the medical-therapeutic one that sees black agency as
always essentially pathological, Juliet Hooker recently suggested that riot-
ing is a “form of democratic redress for black citizens.” For Hooker, rioting
allows “black citizens to express their pain and make their losses visible to
a racial order that demands that they sacrifice both by not expressing anger
and grief at said losses, and also by peacefully acquiescing to them.” By
seeing the democratic potential in rioting, Hooker goes on to say that this
could “rescue contemporary black politics from the strategic dead-ends
produced by the enshrinement of a romantic narrative of the civil rights
movement as an exemplary moment when racial progress was achieved
via political activism that fully acquiesced to liberal democratic norms.”70
Theoretically, Hooker may be right. Practically, the defense of rioting (or
seeing the “democratic potential” in it) strikes me as unwise in our cur-
rent political context when simply standing near a protest (which is then
renamed a riot) can lead to an arrest, imprisonment and torture while in
custody.71
To bring this back to subversive forms of pedagogy, perhaps educators
can take Hooker’s advice but try to replicate conditions in the classroom
(as an experiment) that generate frustration so as to bring students to the
brink of an uprising. The goal would be to create an experience of racial
contingency as a new form of enlightenment (e.g. the racial order is not
69 See Sam Levin, “FBI Terrorism Unit Says ‘Black Identity Extremists’ Pose a Violent
Threat,” The Guardian, October 6, 2017.
70 See Juliet Hooker, “Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes of U.S. Black Politics: From
Democratic Sacrifice to Democratic Repair,” Political Theory 44 (2016): 464–465.
71 See Sean Rossman, “Free Speech or Destruction: First Trump Inauguration Protestors
Go on Trial,” USA Today, November 20, 2017.
fixed and eternal but can be challenged and changed) as opposed to perpet-
uating white privilege via status quo perpetuating discourses of merit, color
blindness and Western superiority.72 This could be accomplished through
exercises involving arbitrary authority, examples on YouTube of police bru-
tality, data on the life chances of black Americans and a bottom-up per-
spective that helps students see and feel what the world looks like from
the perspective of those positioned on the bottom. The point of subversive
pedagogy is to try to provoke students to fight back peacefully and assert
their own agency in response to various forms of injustice in the classroom.
Then the class can reflect on various forms of resistance as political modes
of democratic citizenship. This activity that combines how the experience
of racial oppression feels with modes of fighting back may lead, as Leonard
and Porter argue in their article on Fanon and pedagogy, to “knowing each
other more fully as complex human beings,” especially for white students
who are often “racially illiterate.”73
I propose the following four provocations that constitute the subversive
pedagogical lessons of Frantz Fanon: (1) Political scientists are complicit
with racial injustice if they fail to challenge white privilege via data on the life
chances for people of color and reading materials that expose the doctrine
of color blindness as a tactic of mystification (2) If no one is uncomfortable
during a dialogue about racial injustice, the conversation is perpetuating
white privilege (3) Bottom-up pedagogical approaches based on logic and
reasoning are needed to challenge white privilege. This will help to ventilate
assumptions about race, especially the presumption of white innocence.74
(4) The American culture of political avoidance continues to destroy
the chance for productive dialogue about racial injustice.75 Structural
72 For Fanon, universality would not take the form of the imposition of European ideas
and values but “resides in this decision to recognize and accept the reciprocal relativism of
different cultures” (TAR 44). For an attempt to develop a post-colonial universal, see Jacques
Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and
Michael B. Naas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).
73 For a discussion of white innocence, see Lawrie Balfour, The Evidence of Things Not
Said: James Baldwin and the Promise of American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2001). See also Zeus Leonardo and Ronald K. Porter, “Pedagogy of Fear: Toward a
Fanonian Theory of ‘Safety’ in Race Dialogue,” Race, Ethnicity and Education 13 (2010):
153, 154.
74 For these and related themes, see Leonardo and Porter (2010): 139–157.
75 For these and related themes, see Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Pro-
duce Apathy in Everyday Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also Nikol
110 W. W. SOKOLOFF
analysis is needed. These provocations rest on the following assumption:

The problem of racial injustice must become a militant commitment to
crash the thoughtless celebration and make everyone feel uncomfortable
that African Americans are treated like a colonized population in the U.S. I
am not saying that colonialism in Algeria is identical to the American form
of racism. However, there are enough similarities to lead us to include
Fanon’s post-colonial subversive pedagogical tactics (e.g. discomfort; vis-
ceral learning; confrontation) in the fight against racial injustice. For Fanon
wants only one thing: “May the subjugation of man by man cease” (BSWM
206). The first step needed for this is the destruction of the authority, hier-
archy and knowledge nexus and the top-down epistemology perpetuated
by the doctrine of color blindness.
Alexander-Floyd, “Critical Race Pedagogy: Teaching About Race and Racism Through Legal
Learning Strategies,” PS: Political Science and Politics 41:1 (January 2008): 183–188.
CHAPTER 6
Teaching Political Theory ONLINE

at a “Hispanic Serving Institution”
Abstract This chapter challenges the critiques of online learning by

authors who see it as a negative sign of the corporatization of the uni-
versity, a drift to substandard learning and a threat to democracy. Drawing
on my experience teaching online, I argue teaching theory in an online for-
mat is an effective way to explore a variety of political perspectives, foster
critical thinking, empower students to find their critical voice and employ
experiential/service learning. Teaching political theory online is also a way
to give access to first-generation and non-traditional students who may
not be able to attend face-to-face (F2F) classes because of work and family
obligations. Finally, teaching political theory online can shatter the author-
ity, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and open pedagogy to the practice of
equality.
One of my colleagues told me there was nothing I could do to change

his mind that online learning was a horrible practice. For him, it spelled
doom for students, faculty, the university and the world. At a department
meeting, he said he would ensure Introduction to Political Theory Online,
the course I designed and wanted to teach, would not achieve sufficient
enrollment. Another one of my colleagues advised political science majors
and told students which courses to take. Just like the former department
chair, he opposed online learning. I asked him if he would at least read my

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_6
112 W. W. SOKOLOFF
syllabus so I could prove to him that it was rigorous. He agreed and claimed
that the course did in fact look challenging. The next time I offered it, the
course failed to make sufficient enrollment. I suspected sabotage. Over the
last number of years, things have changed and my online course runs on a
regular basis. To get to this point, though, I have had to overcome my own
reservations about online learning, learn how to do it well and carve a space
for teaching online without alienating colleagues. As time goes on, I have
learned that the online classroom can contain critical, radical and utopian
moments. In my online courses, my goal is to stimulate student voice, pro-
duce defiant forms of subjectivity, enact everyday utopianism and subvert
hierarchy. In addition to trying to stimulate a discussion about teaching
political theory online, this chapter connects to my general theory of rad-
ical political theory pedagogy as the disruption of the authority, hierarchy
and knowledge nexus. Via online learning, I open pedagogy to the practice
of equality.
If you are opposed to e-learning, then you may want to consider skipping
this chapter. If you are somewhat skeptical but open to learning more about
online learning, then please read on. I was also reluctant about teaching
political theory online. After all, I am a political theorist. I earned a Ph.D.
in the northeast. I enjoy speaking with students about books. I decided to
try teaching online because I was working at an adult serving educational
institution that was moving the curriculum to blended and online delivery
modalities. The goal was to increase access to a liberal arts education for
students who could not attend brick and mortar universities. I also wanted
to have a job in the rapidly changing realm of higher education. I needed
to expand my skill set. Finally, I wanted to have a basis for evaluating how
effective online learning was before I condemned it.
The online revolution in higher education is a fait accompli. More and
more students are taking their college courses online.1 Major universities
offer online degrees. Given this fact, how can educators thrive in the rapidly
changing environment characterized by greater reliance on e-learning and
digital communication? How can students become empowered as demo-
cratic citizens via online learning? Finally, how can online learning be
co-opted by political theorists for a radical politics of democratic trans-
formation? Just like anything else, online courses can be a disaster and no
learning can take place. Someone I know who earned an online business
1 See Jordan Friedman, “Study: More Students Are Enrolling in Online Courses,” U.S.
News and World Report, January 11, 2018.
6 TEACHING POLITICAL THEORY ONLINE … 113
degree at the University of Phoenix told me he did not read anything to

earn the degree. However, online learning can also be a utopian experience
and experiment that subverts the neoliberal university. As Romand Coles
puts it, “we have too often avoided asking how we might create interfaces
between radical democratic dynamics and neoliberal dynamics in ways that
enable us to co-opt some of the latter in ways that enhance the former in
potentially transformative ways.”2
This chapter challenges the entrenched position, especially among polit-
ical theorists, that online learning is a suspect practice. For me, online learn-
ing is a key aspect of a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy
because it disrupts the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and rein-
vents pedagogy as the practice of equality. To be more specific, e-learning
can be mobilized to empower students to be discerning readers, critical
thinkers and defiant democratic citizens. It can also create a space for stu-
dent voice in ways that are superior to F2F teaching. As I have already indi-
cated, most of what I had heard about e-learning from colleagues where I
currently teach has been negative. Just about every week someone in my
department sent out an email with a blog about how horrible online learn-
ing was. The message was clear. It would ultimately destroy faculty and
obliterate the university. Online learning was a gift of death from hell.
Some scholarship on online learning is also quite critical. Arthur Versluis
and David F. Noble, respectively, argue online learning lowers academic
standards, de-professionalizes the faculty and panders to the consumer-
student thereby progressively disempowering the faculty.3 At the end of
the day, faculty are intimidated into towing the corporate party line. Qual-
ity education dies because of the new online Corporate University. UC
Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown is also critical of online learning.
In Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’ s Stealth Revolution, Brown claims
online learning is a symptom of a broader problem whereby market ratio-
nality has taken over all aspects of life. Online education as a symptom
of market rationality threatens learning and thus democracy. For Brown,
online courses utilize casual adjunct labor who must become entertainers
2 Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism, 2016, p. 118.

3 See Arthur Versluis, “Virtual Education and the Race to the Bottom,” Academic Questions,
2004. See also David F. Noble, Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003).
114 W. W. SOKOLOFF
and are not committed to real student learning.4 Learning becomes an

exercise in efficiency and accelerates to the point of meaningless. With the
online revolution, faculty lose control of the curriculum. Online learning
thus flags a broader problem of educational decline and the death of dis-
cerning and defiant democratic citizens. Seaton Patrick Tarrant and polit-
ical theorist Leslie Paul Thiele also criticize online learning. For them,
“preparing students for citizenship is generally neglected in the push for
online education.”5 Technologically mediated communication threatens
the development of the skills needed for a democratic society. For them,
online learning prevents embodied experiential interactions between teach-
ers and students.6 This, in turn, impoverishes the civic skill development of
students rooted in experiential and relational activities that require embod-
iment. For them, embodied learning, not online learning, is the key to the
education of empowered citizens. With F2F communication, a participant
can observe body language and other cues that “supply the contextual
information needed for the proper interpretation of the spoken word.”7
Online learning renders this impossible.
Other authors make the case for the benefits of online learning. This
more general research on online learning points to increased student sat-
isfaction, quality learning and greater flexibility.8 When I tried to find
research on teaching political theory online, though, I searched in vain.
There is almost nothing published on innovative ways to teach political
Zone Books, 2015), pp. 183–194.
5 See Seaton Patrick Tarrant and Leslie Paul Thiele, “The Web We Weave: Online Education
and Democratic Prospects”; New Political Science 36 (2014): 538–555.
6 For Tarrant and Thiele, “education for democratic citizenship entails students acknowl-
edging their social responsibilities, identifying means of involvement for responsible agents of
change, and developing values such as trust, empathy, motivation, and commitment”, 2014,
p. 540.
7 Tarrant and Thiele, 2014, p. 548.
8 See, for instance, Simon Dudley, “Why Online Learning Is More Valuable Than Tradi-
tional College,” Wired, https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/11/why-online-learning-
is-more-valuable-than-traditional-college/#start-of-content. See also Janni Aragon, “Tech-
nologies and Pedagogy: How YouTubing, Social Networking, and Other Web Sources Com-
plement the Classroom,” Feminist Collections 28 (2007). Carol S. Botsch and Robert E.
Botsch, “Audiences and Outcomes in Online and Traditional American Government Classes:
A Comparative Two-Year Case Study,” PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (2001): 135–141.
Kathleen Dolan, “Comparing Modes of Instruction: The Relative Efficacy of On-Line and
In-Person Teaching for Student Learning,” PS: Political Science and Politics (April 2008).
theory online. My suspicion is that online learning challenges a shared

assumption among political theorists that teaching theory requires F2F
contact. Online learning also challenges the basis of the traditional uni-
versity as the transmission of knowledge to students via the charisma and
expertise of the professor via F2F interaction. In what follows, I defend
teaching political theory online because it requires theorists to reinvent
political theory pedagogy beyond the shadow of the authority, hierarchy
and knowledge nexus that constitutes the identity of the traditional univer-
sity. I argue that the online pedagogical delivery can lead to innovative ways
of teaching political theory. Along the way, I also respond to the objections
advanced by critics of online learning.
It is important to point out many of the critiques of online learning are
based on the assumption that university students are eighteen to twenty-
two attending residential colleges and universities. However, eighteen to
twenty-two-year-old students only constitute a portion of students today.9
If this demographic is taken as the norm, and we ignore the needs of adult
and non-traditional students, we will create a university that is even more
exclusive and elitist than it already is. E-learning contains an undeniable
egalitarian aspect because it expands access to education. Contrary to pop-
ular belief among many academics in the ivory tower, the egalitarianism of
e-learning is also compatible with educational excellence. Teaching politi-
cal theory online is a way to improve the dialogic skills of students, build
contacts with community groups, foster critical thinking and negotiate dis-
agreement every week. Online courses also compel students to take greater
responsibility for their education.
I have taught political theory courses F2F, as blended/hybrid courses
and as strictly online courses for over a decade. My defense of online teach-
ing is also a result of reading scholarship on the pros and cons of e-learning
and competing forms of pedagogical practices. Even though I value F2F
interaction, it is important to realize that this is not always possible. Addi-
tionally, quality F2F interaction in the classroom may not happen as fre-
quently as critics of online seem to suggest. Online courses can require deep
and sustained dialogue every week and provide students with the intellec-
tual architecture to become critical thinkers and engaged citizens. Online
courses can also require students to extend and apply what they learn to
9 See Karl McDonnell, “Addressing the Changing Demographics of the New

College Student,” https://evolllution.com/attracting-students/todays_learner/addressing-
the-changing-demographics-of-the-new-college-student/, accessed on August 23, 2018.
116 W. W. SOKOLOFF
service learning and community engagement projects. Finally, online

courses can require deep and meaningful engagement with reading mate-
rial. This is the result of a combination of course content and the advantages
of the online format.
To support my defense of online learning, I present and justify my course
Introduction to Political Theory that I teach online at UTRGV. Thus far,
I have had a positive experience teaching this course. Students report that
they had a positive experience in this class. As Teena Gabrielson and Kait-
lyn Watts argue, if political theory courses are not available online, “many
students – especially nontraditional students – will not have access to the
content or practices of the [political science] subfield.”10 They continue:
“There has been little (if any) work [meaning scholarship] dedicated to
teaching political theory online.”11
Ultimately, my goal is to stimulate a conversation about teaching politi-
cal theory online. Hence, this chapter is relevant to faculty teaching political
theory F2F but are interested in learning more about teaching it online.
It will also be relevant for faculty teaching online to non-traditional stu-
dents, to students who may not speak English as their first language, and
to first-generation university students. This chapter will also be relevant to
faculty who may only put a part of their political theory courses online (e.g.
blended/hybrid courses). Finally, it will be relevant to faculty teaching any
political science course online.
Teaching Style
Teaching style covers a range of important pedagogical issues including
how to teach, what to teach, how to structure the classroom, how much
lecture is included (if any), whether students will be allowed to speak (if
so, how much, how often and under what constraints/parameters?) and
the inclusion of small group activities, debates, film clips, etc. All of these
issues are connected to the question of authority and power in the class-
10 Teena Gabrielson and Kaitlyn Watts, “A Sea of Riches: Teaching an Interdisciplinary

Environmental Justice Course Through Political Theory On-Campus and Online,” PS: Polit-
ical Science and Politics (2014), p. 511.
11 Gabrielson and Watts, 2014, p. 511. Non-findings: I conducted a literature search for
books and articles in scholarly journals using J-STOR, Google Scholar, and Academic Search
Complete. The key words used for the search were “teaching political theory online.” With
the exception of Gabrielson and Watts (2014), no articles and books exist on teaching political
theory online.
room since the instructor ultimately dictates the content and direction of
the particular course. How courses are offered is also connected to power
relations because, like it or not, pedagogical delivery format restricts (e.g.
F2F only) and expands (e.g. online) access to education for individuals and
groups who may not be able to attend the university. If we insist that educa-
tion is only a F2F experience, then we will exclude the growing number of
non-traditional students who are unable to attend the traditional university.
In both the F2F and online formats, research demonstrates that teaching
style is a critical component of effective pedagogy, especially for addressing
the needs of non-traditional and first-generation university students.12 It
is also important to acknowledge that one’s teaching style and practices
may reflect unacknowledged assumptions about who is able to learn, how
to reach students and what material should be included on the reading
list. The pedagogical delivery model (e.g. F2F; hybrid/blended; online)
believed to be best suited to non-traditional students also reflects unstated
assumptions about who is able to learn and how. Research shows that it is
a mistake to presume, for example, that non-traditional students are more
likely to succeed in F2F as opposed to online pedagogical settings.13 In
fact, research on educational attainment for African Americans and Latin@s
suggests that these demographics have not thrived in educational institu-
tions based primarily on F2F educational contact.14 According to a U.S.
Department of Education Office of Civil Rights report, black students are
expelled from primary school at a rate of at least three times higher than
white students are.15
12 See Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipa-
tion, trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993); Paulo Freire, Pedagogy
of the Oppressed, 2010; and bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of
Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994).
13 See Carol S. Botsch and Robert E. Botsch, “Audiences and Outcomes in Online and Tra-
ditional American Government Classes: A Comparative Two-Year Case Study,” PS: Political
Science and Politics 34 (2001).
14 See Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New
York University Press, 2011). See also Marcos Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial
Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). See,
finally, Christopher G. Robbins, Expelling Hope: The Assault on Youth and the Militarization
of Schooling (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008).
15 See https://www.brookings.edu/research/2017-brown-center-report-part-iii-race-
and-school-suspensions/, accessed on May 19, 2019.
118 W. W. SOKOLOFF
In contrast to the F2F format, the online classroom changes the dynam-
ics of a classroom. It at least partially levels the playing field between stu-
dents and instructor (e.g. subverts hierarchy). This does not happen auto-
matically. To accomplish this, a high level of student engagement in the
discussion forum must be a course requirement. The discussion questions
must be framed in ways that invite interpretation and reasoned argumenta-
tion as opposed to students being restricted to summarizing course mate-
rial. Finally, the instructor must participate in the discussion (as moderator
not holder of “objective knowledge”).
The online discussion forum draws students into conversations who may
not otherwise speak in a F2F setting. Some students lack confidence, believe
that teachers are authority figures and fear public humiliation for asking a
question. The online discussion forum is less intimidating than discussions
that take place F2F. In addition to a carefully calibrated discussion forum,
educators that view non-traditional students as individuals who bring a lot
to the classroom in terms of life experiences are more likely to be successful
reaching this demographic.16 According to Carol S. Botsch and Robert
E. Botsch, “web classes may be more effective in improving the general
factual knowledge of lower GPA students because such classes inevitably
place more responsibility on students who are likely to be passive in more
traditional classes.”17 This is a good point. However, we need to keep in
mind that knowledge-based pedagogical approaches requiring students to
memorize facts suck the life and joy out of learning. These practices position
the instructor as the ultimate authority, exactly what I criticize and put into
16 See Dolores Delgado Bernal, “Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Theory, and Critical
Race-Gendered Epistemologies: Recognizing Students of Color as Holders and Creators of
Knowledge,” Qualitative Inquiry 8 (2002): 105–126; Tyrone C. Howard, “Culturally Rele-
vant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection,” Theory into Practice 42 (2003);
Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Edu-
cational Research Journal 32 (1995): 465–491; and Barry A. Osborne, “Practice into Theory:
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Students We Have Marginalized and Normalized,” Anthro-
pology & Education Quarterly 27 (1996): 285–314. See also Marcus Pizarro, Chicanos and
Chicanas in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2005).
17 Carol S. Botsch and Robert E. Botsch, “Audiences and Outcomes in Online and Tra-
ditional American Government Classes: A Comparative Two-Year Case Study,” PS: Political
Science and Politics 34 (2001): 141.
question in Chapter 2 via Derridean textual interpretation, Chapter 3 via

the inversion of the Socratic Method and Chapter 4 via the prison field
trip.18
1. Organization of the Course and Course Content
Like my other courses, Introduction to Political Theory (online) is broken

down into weeks. Each week has a specific link that students click to access
that week’s objectives, assignments, lecture and activities. Assignments for
the course include a quiz on the syllabus; weekly discussion forum; three
argumentative essays ranging from two to eight pages; eight quizzes on
the reading material; a current events journal; a community engagement
project; and a self-reflective class participation statement. I require students
to complete a variety of assignments to make the course appealing to dif-
ferent learning styles. I also want to ensure that students are improving
their reading and writing skills via argumentative essays, connecting theory
to practice and participating in weekly discussions. The assignments satisfy
the course learning objectives.19 The required readings for the course are:
• Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

• Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compas-
sion.
• Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Mil-
itant.
• Niccolò Machiavelli, Prince.
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto.
• Henry David Thoreau, “On Civil Disobedience.”
• Plato, “Apology.”
18 See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2010; bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress,
1994; and Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, 1991.
19 The learning objectives include the following: Demonstrate knowledge of political the-
orists. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of core concepts in political theory. Apply the
ideas and themes in this class to contemporary political issues and current events. Apply the
ideas and themes in this class to a local community issue. Drawing on what you learned in
this course, create a new political order.
120 W. W. SOKOLOFF
• Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”20
I include these authors because they explore a wide range of political con-
cepts including race, gender, ethnicity, identity, compassion, power, class,
violence, dissent and others.21 Many of these authors are part of the canon.
I also include authors not part of the canon so that students can explore
issues and themes from non-traditional perspectives. Over the years, stu-
dents have informed me that one or several of the texts were particularly
memorable and important for their intellectual development.
2. Discussion Forum
Controversial and provocative online discussion questions comprise the

heart and soul of online learning and lead to a participatory learning envi-
ronment where, ironically, no student can hide.22 The online discussion
forum also avoids many of the drawbacks of the Socratic Method addressed
in Chapter 3. In my course, discussion forum participation is required and
heavily weighted in the final grade. Everyone is required to participate. A
single student or small group of students cannot dominate the discussion.
In terms of examples of discussion forum prompts, one of the discussion
questions I include in my course is the following: “A Mexican-American
20 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd Edition (San Francisco:
Aunt Lute Books, 2007); Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Com-
passion (New York: Free Press, 2010); Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir
of Feminist Militant (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans.
George Bull (New York: Penguin, 2003); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (New York: Penguin, 2002); Henry David Thoreau, Civil
Disobedience and Other Essays (New York: Dover, 1993); Plato, The Last Days of Socrates,
trans. Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (New York: Penguin, 2003); and Martin Luther
King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Signet, 2000).
21 See Joel Kassiola, “Effective Teaching and Learning in Introductory Political Theory: It
All Starts with Challenging and Engaging Assigned Readings,” PS: Political Science and Politics
40 (2007): 783–787. Kassiola states: “We should not fall prey to lower and condescending
expectations that dull our beginning courses in political theory” (p. 787).
22 See Gabrielson and Watts, 2014. See also the American Association of Univer-
sity Professors (AAUP) statement on academic freedom pertaining to controversial
material at https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-
and-tenure, accessed on November 2, 2018. “Teachers are entitled to freedom in the class-
room in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching
controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.”
insists that his name is John and not Juan. What would Gloria Anzaldúa say
about that? Politely disagree with Anzaldúa. How would Anzaldúa respond
to your objection? Include textual citations as evidence. Please respond to
at least three classmates. Please politely disagree with at least one classmate
and provide reasons and evidence to back up what you say.” Another dis-
cussion question reads: “Argue that Spanglish [‘code switching’ and/or
mixing English and Spanish] is a good linguistic practice. What would
Anzaldúa say about your argument? Include textual citations as evidence.
Please respond to at least three classmates. Then, argue that Spanglish is
a bad language. How would Anzaldúa respond? Include textual citations
as evidence. Please be sure to respond to three classmates. Please politely
disagree with at least one classmate and provide reasons and evidence to
back up what you say.”
With these discussion prompts, I am asking students to make connec-
tions between the course material and their lived experiences growing up
and/or having relocated to a border region of the U.S., where the popu-
lation is almost exclusively Latin@. Students are required to post responses
to the discussion prompts throughout the week (first one by Wednesday,
second post by Saturday, third and fourth posts by Sunday). Discussion
post requirements in terms of depth, length and content knowledge are in
an evaluation rubric. Students are required to disagree with one another.
They thereby acquire the capacity to voice disagreement and provide rea-
sons and evidence to back up what they say. As one student put it in his
evaluation of Introduction to Political Theory Online:
Unlike other online courses that I have taken before that required online
discussion posts, usually one per week, Dr. S required a minimum of four
posts per week. This created some rather memorable discussions, which in
my opinion is what made the actual material take on a life of its own. I felt like
there was a strong rapport between the students and Dr. S; he often would
comment on posts throughout the week and ask questions on our ideas and
really nurtured the concepts to grow organically. I am thankful that Dr. S
required so much activity in the discussion forums because it allowed me to
formulate and express my thoughts in a non-threatening environment. This
way provided every student a voice to share and a means to participate in
the discussion. Every in-person class should have an online discussion forum
to participate in. (Student testimonial, Introduction to Political Theory, May
15, 2016, emphasis added)
122 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Every instructor knows that stimulating thoughtful classroom discussion

is never easy. Classes based around lecture and power point arguably render
it unlikely if not impossible. Additionally, I have found that confident stu-
dents in a F2F setting can dominate the discussion and some students may
not say a single word for an entire semester, though this varies based on
class size. The online discussion forum can fruitfully change the F2F class-
room culture where the professor is the sun while students simply gravitate
and hover around his/her center of gravity, while other students disappear
from the solar system entirely. In my view, online discussion forums level the
playing field (e.g. subvert hierarchy) between all participants in the class.
Every student is required to participate and they do participate because
their grade depends on it. The online discussion forum also leads to more
reflective and thoughtful class participation because participants have time
to reflect on what they post as opposed to simply blurting out a response
in class. As long as discussion post parameters are clearly articulated, the
discussion topics contain issues relevant to the lives of students, and they
invite interpretation, quality discussion takes place on a regular basis. I have
found that culturally relevant subject matter in the discussion forum leads
students to forget about the minimum discussion post requirements and
engage in discussion throughout the entire week. Additionally, unlike F2F
teaching where there is no record of the quick verbal exchanges between
instructor and student, instructors can easily evaluate how the discussion is
going from week to week because all of the posts are saved and archived.
3. Argumentative Essay Assignments
My essay assignments require students to write argumentative essays that

demonstrate deep and meaningful engagement with reading material. I
allow students a wide degree of freedom to formulate their own argument
and write about topics that are important and relevant to their own lives.
This is an example of an essay prompt for my online class: “Drawing on the
work of all the authors we have read in this course, design an ideal political
order. Please include at least one citation (and explain what it means and
why you included it in your essay) for each author we have read in this class.
Please incorporate at least one current event in your essay and reference
your community engagement project. Advance your argument through
a critique of the authors we read in this class.” The point of this essay
assignment is to give students freedom to create a new political order but
within the parameters provided by Socrates, Machiavelli, Marx, Dworkin,

Anzaldúa, Boyle, King and Thoreau. As they build their ideal political order,
students are also required to criticize and/or improve upon the ideas of the
authors we read in class. Hence, they develop their argument through an
analysis of the limits of the authors we read. Students are also required to
email me their thesis statement so I can offer them constructive feedback.
Throughout the semester, I have a significant amount of back and forth
dialogue via email with students pertaining to what they are arguing.
4. A Culturally Relevant Curriculum
Research shows that a culturally relevant curriculum is an essential com-

ponent to student success.23 The point of a culturally relevant curriculum
is simple. Course material must speak to the issues that are salient to our
students so that they are able to form a personal connection to it. Addi-
tionally, instructors should know as much as possible about the context and
lives of the students they are trying to teach so they can design courses in
ways that appeal to and are relevant to them. Many of my students have
shared with me that American Government courses are incredibly boring,
possibly the most boring in the entire university curriculum. The problem
is not the students. The problem pertains to what counts as the material.
As Jessica Lavariega-Monforti and Adam McGlynn demonstrate, introduc-
tion to American government textbooks include relatively little about the
contributions made by Latin@s to American politics.24 It is no wonder that
students at the “Hispanic Serving Institution” where I teach are bored in
American government classes. Research shows that a culturally relevant cur-
riculum increases the likelihood of students taking an interest in the course
material. It thereby improves the likelihood of student success.25
5. Community Engagement Projects and Experiential Learning
23 See Howard, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Osborne, 1996; See also Renée Smith-
Maddox and Daniel G. Solórzano, “Using Critical Race Theory, Paulo Freire’s Problem-
Solving Method, and Case Study Research to Confront Race and Racism in Education,”
Qualitative Inquiry 8 (2002).
24 See Jessica Lavariega Monforti and Adam McGlynn, “Aquí Estamos? A Survey of Latino
Portrayal in Introductory U.S. Government and Politics Textbooks,” PS: Political Science and
Politics 43 (2010): 309–316.
25 See Howard, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Osborne, 1996.
124 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Community engagement projects and experiential learning are a great way

for students to connect theory with practice and to cultivate embodied
forms of learning and interaction that are important to democratic citizen-
ship.26 In my online theory class, I require students to write a community
engagement project and connect it to course concepts and material. In the
syllabus, I provide a list of possible groups they could learn more about
(e.g. Justice for Our Neighbors [JFON], Mujeres Unidas, Projecto Azteca,
La Union del Peublo Entero [LUPE], Planned Parenthood, National Orga-
nization of Women [NOW] and Infinite Love). Students can also select
something else. This assignment bridges theory with practice. It also helps
me learn more about the lives of my students in terms of what students
care about and the types of volunteer work they are doing. Learning about
the lives of students through course assignments re-positions students in
important ways. Students become individuals who bring something valu-
able to the table in terms of knowledge and experience.27 This disrupts the
top-down epistemology of knowledge intrinsic to the authority, hierarchy
and knowledge nexus. Both the requirements of the discussion forum and
the required interactions with a community group prevent students from
hiding in the back of the classroom. The virtual aspect actually leads to a
higher level of engagement. I agree with Tarrant and Thiele that embod-
ied forms of learning contribute to the development of the skill set needed
by students to become better democratic citizens.28 However, embodied
forms of learning can also take place in online courses. That the course is
online does not mean that all aspects of the course are necessarily online.
They are correct to suggest that the rush to online learning has neglected
the experiential learning aspect. However, it is not difficult to add this
aspect to an online course.
6. Course Design
In addition to clear learning outcomes, precise instructions and evaluation

rubrics for assignments (aspects of online course design recommended by
26 See Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Political Sci-
ence, eds. Richard M. Battistoni and William E. Hudson (Washington, DC: American Asso-
ciation for Higher Learning, 1997).
27 See Dolores Delgado Bernal, 2002.
28 See Tarrant and Thiele, 2014.
Quality Matters [QM]), it is important to design an online course that

is easy to navigate. Based on my experience, it is also best to avoid com-
plicated technology like wikis, instant messaging and other synchronous
learning practices. Wikis create a pointless online student free for all where
students create a shared document but one with questionable academic
value. Instant messaging negates the benefits of asynchronous learning
(e.g. flexibility). Additionally, instant back and forth messaging does not
give students sufficient time to reflect on what they say before they say it.
Finally, given the redundancy in an online course recommended by
instructional designers, online courses can become unmanageable (e.g.
with contradictory statements, conflicting due dates and different instruc-
tions for the same assignment) as they evolve over time. Instructors must
remember that something said in one place in the course is also at five other
locations. It becomes time consuming to change an essay prompt because
it is included in eight different locations in the online course. If one iter-
ation of the prompt is even slightly different from another, this leads to
confusion. To prevent this problem, I inform students that the syllabus for
the course is the master document that overrides all other statements in
various locations in the online course.
All instructors face challenges in both F2F and online teaching settings.
The question is the same irrespective of the particular delivery modality
for teaching. How can educators empower students to become active and
self-directed learners with confidence as well as individuals with the needed
discernment and commitment to the public good essential for a democratic
society? A student in my theory course said this: “Before initially beginning
the class I found myself feeling sorry that I was going to be taking a class
with such a highly recommended professor online instead of in person. I
consider myself fortunate to be able to tell you how wrong that assumption
was.”29
In terms of the quality of the work students complete, the writing
required in the discussion forum on topics that connect to essay writing
prompts allow students to practice writing for the argumentative essays
in the discussion forum in ways that led to improvements in their essays.
Because of this, the quality of student writing in my online courses is better
than the writing in my F2F courses. My discussion prompts require dis-
agreement. This helps students understand via constant practice that argu-
29 Student testimonial, Introduction to Political Theory, May 15, 2016.

126 W. W. SOKOLOFF
mentation requires refuting the arguments and counter-arguments raised

by a classmate with reasoning and evidence. This develops complex ana-
lytical and critical thinking skills since students are required to see an issue
from a variety of perspectives and carefully weigh the merits of conflicting
positions.
I recently surveyed my students in an upper-division Blended/Hybrid
political theory course to gauge what students thought was valuable and/or
lacking in a course that combines F2F instruction with an online compo-
nent. Specifically, I asked students whether they thought the online discus-
sion forum leads to greater learning in comparison to courses that do not
have an online discussion forum. Eighty percent of the students surveyed
(n 20) claimed the online discussion forum enhances their learning of
course material in comparison to classes that do not have an online discus-
sion forum.30 The results of the survey confirm a point made by Carl A.
Raschke: “The openness of serious intellectual conversation in a web-based
discussion forum can be even more important than a typical seminar, where
the professor does most of the talking.”31
Conclusion
What did I learn teaching Introduction to Political Theory online? First, I
have to employ a wider variety of teaching practices every week in an online
course than in a F2F course. Second, working under the constraints of an
online format leads to creativity and innovation but only if one has gained
the necessary skill set. That is to say, there is no way around investing time
in a few trainings and workshops dedicated to online learning. After a bit
of practice and technical training, one can also learn as one goes and pick
up effective practices through trial and error. Third, I give more thought
to discussion questions that stimulate disagreement and greater interest
in the subject matter in both F2F and online courses. A culturally relevant
curriculum also increases the likelihood of students taking an interest in the
subject matter. At least six of the weeks in the semester in my Introduction
to Political Theory course consist of culturally relevant material. Fourth,
I try to design my courses in ways that appeal to the students who need
30 Survey conducted May 1, 2017.

31 See Carl A. Raschke, The Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University
(New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003), p. 96.
a university degree the most, namely, first-generation and under-served

students who I attempt to empower without ever meeting them F2F.
Teaching and/or taking an online course may not work for everyone.
Students’ interest in taking online courses nevertheless continues to go
up.32 However, even in an online course, some students do not partici-
pate in the discussion forum, some students do not complete assignments
and some students fail the course. When I ask students a question via email,
sometimes they ignore me. This can be frustrating. Nevertheless, my Intro-
duction to Political Theory course arguably delivers a liberal arts education
dedicated to improving the analytical and critical thinking skills of my stu-
dents via unconventional means. Teaching online required me to reinvent
myself as an educator, learn a new skill set, create a virtual educational expe-
rience for students, and this has arguably made me a better F2F instructor.
Ironically, many of the prevailing critiques of online learning reflect invest-
ments in practices and institutions that might not be relevant to and speak
to the needs of the growing number of non-traditional students. Given
this, insisting on F2F teaching as the only appropriate way to teach polit-
ical theory strikes me as irresponsible and motivated by a fading dream
of a mythical “golden age” of education characterized by F2F contact in a
medieval cloister. The times have changed. Additionally, it is false to assume
that online courses do not contain embodied and experiential modes of
learning that are crucial for the development of the skill set required for
empowered democratic citizens. Teaching online does not require students
to sit in front of a computer and never get up. The claim that online courses
are not serious and that online instructors are not committed to student
learning depends on the instructor, not the delivery modality. As opposed
to complaining about a loss of faculty control of the curriculum and sub-
standard online courses, I would recommend that faculty teach online in
order to resist and struggle to preserve faculty control of the curriculum
and create online courses that are high-quality learning experiences.
In conclusion, teaching political theory in an online delivery format can
be an effective way to pique student interest in the subject matter, foster
critical thinking about social, political and economic issues and create a
positive learning experience for student and instructor. Teaching political
theory online can also be an effective way to empower non-traditional stu-
dents and create an egalitarian space for dialogue and disagreement. There
32 See Jordan Friedman, “Study: More Students Are Enrolling in Online Courses,” U.S.
New and World Report, January 11, 2018, accessed on August 8, 2018.
128 W. W. SOKOLOFF
are also challenges pertaining to teaching political theory online including

student retention, difficulty providing adequate support to students who
may be first-generation university students not located near campus, the
lack of student computer compatibility with current institution delivery
platforms and the feeling of isolation that may accompany taking a course
online. My defense of teaching political theory online recognizes these chal-
lenges but it also recognizes the amazing opportunity for rethinking what
it means to teach and create a place for the voices of students. My general
theory of radical political theory pedagogy requires educators to employ
all means (including online learning) to help students become defiant and
discerning democratic citizens. The claim that online education is risking
“the prospects for democracy” strikes me as an overstatement.33 There is no
guarantee that learning will take place in F2F and online modalities. How-
ever, I agree with Raschke that online learning “entails a wholly unprece-
dented synthesis of intellect, imagination and technical competency.”34
It is unclear whether political theorists will ever embrace online learning.
Does online learning kill the professor as the charismatic transmitter of
knowledge? Does this signal the end of the university? Is a university still a
university with virtual professors? Is online education the ultimate danger to
the humanities? In my view, it is time for political theorists to co-opt online
learning for radical democratic ends and shatter the authority, hierarchy and
knowledge nexus. My general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as
the practice of equality sees online learning as playing a role in reinventing
political theory pedagogy and empowering students to be defiant, informed
and skeptical democratic citizens.
33 See Tarrant and Thiele, 2014, p. 553.

34 See Raschke, 2003, p. 102.
CHAPTER 7
Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution
Abstract The work of Freire provides a valuable vantage point to reflect on

pedagogy as a practice of freedom that undermines the authority, hierarchy
and knowledge nexus. Via dialogic praxis, the reinvention of power and
permanent revolution, Freire overcomes the “iron law of oligarchy” and
charts a path for the future of democracy. He exposes the fundamentalism
of the Right and the Left and opens a new future for the emancipatory
project. He is thus a central figure who shatters the authority, hierarchy
and knowledge nexus and opens the prospect of radical political theory
At least since Plato who grounded his ideal city on a rigorous series of tests
and myth of legitimation to justify hierarchical rule in the Republic, educa-
tional institutions are sites of social control.1 Schools also help to sustain the
myth of merit, that is, that hard work leads to just desserts. This defuses the
An earlier version of “Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution” appeared in

Confrontational Citizenship: Reflections on Hatred, Rage, Resistance and Revolt
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017).
1 See Plato, Republic, trans. Grube and Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1992).

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_7
130 W. W. SOKOLOFF
volatility of extreme inequality, something Aristotle identified as a cause of

faction and revolution.2 Thus, educational institutions are political because
they operate within a field of broader power relations.3 Through control of
the curriculum, establishing correct parameters for teaching/research and
promulgating professional norms educational institutions reinforce power
relations and cater to the needs of dominant groups.4 The use of violence
to beat a population into submission usually signifies the failure of educa-
tional (and other ideological) institutions to do their work. If it is true to
say that educational institutions have historically been conservative institu-
tions designed to perpetuate the political status quo, how can educational
institutions become sites of thoughtful revolutionary change? How can
they become places where defiant, informed and skeptical political actors
are cultivated?
Even though Paulo Freire’s work starts from a space seemingly distant
from the official institutions of the political realm, Freire provides a critical
understanding of education that has revolutionary implications for politics
as well as for the transformation of political science education. Via dialogic
praxis, the reinvention of power and permanent revolution, Freire over-
comes the ‘iron law of oligarchy’ in the classroom and polity.5 He shatters
the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and opens pedagogy to the
practice of equality. Freire thereby reconnects local political struggles to
the utopian aspiration for democracy without leaders.
2 See Aristotle, Politics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1988), Book V.
3 Thomas Hobbes argued that educational institutions serve a valuable function insofar as
they can domesticate the passions and perpetuate monarchical rule. See Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan, ed. Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 1994). Throughout the modern era,
schools operated according to liberal (enlighten the public), Marxist (create a reserve army
of labor for the capitalist class), Weberian (professionalize the workforce via credentials) and
Foucaultian (employ micro-tactics of domination in order to manage unruly populations)
paradigms. See Roger Duncan, “Michel Foucault on Education: A Preliminary Theoretical
Overview,” South African Journal of Education 26:2 (2006): 177–187.
4 For Richard Ashcraft, “political scientists have accepted not only a modified market econ-
omy as a general model but an ‘ethos of technology.’ The objectives to be achieved through
theorizing have been drastically narrowed.” See Richard Ashcraft, “Economic Metaphors,
Behavioralism, and Political Theory: Some Observations on the Ideological Uses of Lan-
guage,” in Western Political Quarterly 30:3 (1997): 323.
5 For the ‘iron law of oligarchy’, see Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study
of the Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden Paul and Cedar Paul (New York, NY: Free
Press, 1962), p. 342.
7 PAULO FREIRE ON PEDAGOGY AND REVOLUTION 131
It is important to note that scholars in the fields of education and soci-

ology, not political science, have been in the forefront of providing critical
commentary on Freire’s work.6 My goal is to bring Freire into the conversa-
tion on political science pedagogy. To this end, my interpretation of Freire
highlights how he advances a vision of pedagogy as the practice of equality.
Freire’s utopian hopefulness can help us think our way out of the contem-
porary impasse in political theory where it is fashionable to argue that we
are living in a nightmare where, as Wendy Brown puts it, the “demos have
been undone” but no paths are articulated by Brown to challenge this.7
Freire’s work can also broaden the conversation about pedagogy as more
political scientists express interest in and conduct research on teaching and
learning. Freire, finally, is helpful for exposing the complicity of at least part
of the discipline of political science with the political status quo.8
Paulo Freire
The Brazilian global educational activist Paulo Freire (1921–1997) is one
of the few thinkers in the twentieth century who argued that pedagogical
practices are essentially political. This was the result of Freire’s experiences
working with the illiterate in the former slave colonies in South America,
his time living in the U.S. and in Europe during his exile, his international
travel as a public intellectual, and his stint as secretary of education for the
city of São Paulo, Brazil. In terms of intellectual influences, Freire was a
dialectical thinker who fused Kantian universalism with the humanism of
6 See Sandra Smidt, Introducing Freire: A Guide for Students, Teachers, and Practitioners
(New York: Routledge, 2014); Antonia Darder, Freire and Education (New York: Routledge,
2014). See also Henry Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011); bell
hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge,
2014); Peter McLaren, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution (New York:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1999); and Donald Macedo, Literacies of Power: What Americans
Are Not Allowed to Know (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).
Zone Books, 2015).
8 The American Political Science Association defines itself as an organization that is “non-
partisan.” See “The Constitution of the American Political Science Association,” Article II:
Purpose, November 3, 2011. As we shall see, proclamations of non-partisanship as well as
methodological choices are inescapably political. As Christian Bay put it fifty years ago, “much
of the current work on political behavior generally fails to articulate its very real value biases”;
see Christian Bay, “Politics and Pseudopolitics: A Critical Evaluation of Some Behavioral
Literature,” American Political Science Review 59 (1965): 39.
132 W. W. SOKOLOFF
the early Marx. Freire connected both aspects in a form of popular “paideia”
signifying intellectual emancipation and commitment to the revolutionary
transformation of society.9 Freire thus rewrites Kant’s “An Answer to the
Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” for those who have been beatdown
by the authoritarian neoliberal global political order.10
Freire was imprisoned for approximately three months by the Brazilian
military junta that seized power in 1964.11 Why? Because Freire taught
slum dwellers and the lower classes how to understand their place on the
bottom of society objectively, that is, as the by-product of colonialism and
decisions of the reigning elite. Even after Freire finally left Brazil, Freire’s
reputation as an educational revolutionary, much like Che Guevara, often
preceded him. For example, Freire could not enter Haiti. He was arrested
in Gabon, Africa. After sixteen years in exile, Freire returned to Brazil in
1980 and continued his work on the humanization of the classroom space
and pedagogy as a form of politics.
Freire’s commitment to radical democracy, a non-dogmatic Marxist cri-
tique of society, and defense of identity politics is clear throughout his
writings and leads to a position not of just denouncing injustice but of
“announcing a new utopia.”12 Freire is thus a utopian thinker from whom
we have a lot to learn because Freire fused critique with the discourse
of hope. As Cornel West put it, Freire fused “social theory, moral out-
rage, and political praxis.”13 Freire thus models how to hold onto one’s
9 Freire states: “The dream of a better world is born from the depths of the bowels of its
opposite,” in Pedagogy of Indignation (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004), p. 121.
10 Immanuel Kant attributes intellectual immaturity to a lack of resolution and courage to
use one’s own understanding. Although Freire shares Kant’s defense of intellectual autonomy,
dignity of the human person and self-liberation, Freire views intellectual immaturity as the
result of political oppression and the material conditions of everyday life, not as something that
is self-incurred. See Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’”
in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Reiss and trans. Nisbet (New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
11 See Greg Grandin, “Interview with Noam Chomsky on the Crisis in Central America
and Mexico,” The Nation, October 31, 2014.
12 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998, p. 74.
13 See Cornel West in Paulo Freire, A Critical Encounter, eds. McLaren and Leonard (New
York, NY: Routledge, 1993), p. xiii. For bell hooks, “Freire’s work affirmed my right as a
subject in resistance to define my reality”; bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the
Practice of Freedom, 1994, p. 53.
integrity in the corporate neoliberal university and how to create strategies

for thoughtful political change.14
Neutrality as “Politics”
Freire’s reflections on the interrelationship between the political and edu-
cational spheres begin with Freire’s rejection of the discourse of neutrality.
The discourse of neutrality operates in a variety of spheres but is dedicated
to one goal. To prevent real political change and mystify power relation-
ships. For example, neutral formal-legal protections (e.g. rights) celebrated
by liberals obscure the way privileged and wealthy groups manipulate the
14 For research on the corporatization and corruption of higher education Kevin B. Smith,
The Ideology of Education: The Commonwealth, the Market, and America’s Schools (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 2003); James McKeen Cattell, University Control (New
York, NY: Science Press, 1913); Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America: A Memo-
randum on the Conduct of Universities by Businessmen (New York, NY: Sagamore Press, 1957);
Upton Sinclair, The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education, Revised Edition (Pasadena,
CA: Privately Printed, 1923); Earl J. McGrath, “The Control of Higher Education in Amer-
ica,” Educational Record 17 (April 1936): 259–272; Hubert Park Beck, Men Who Control
Our Universities (New York, NY: King’s Crown Press, 1947); David N. Smith, Who Rules the
Universities? An Essay in Class Analysis (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1974); Bar-
bara Ann Scott, Crisis Management in American Higher Education (Westport, CT: Praeger
Press, 1983); Clyde W. Barrow, Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism
and the Reconstruction of American Higher Education, 1894–1928 (Madison, WI: Univer-
sity of Wisconsin Press, 1990); Sheila Slaughter, The Higher Learning and High Technology:
Dynamics of Higher Education Policy Formation (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1990); Wesley Shumar, College for Sale: A Critique of the Commodification of Higher
Education (Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge Falmer Press, 1997); Sheila Slaughter and Larry L.
Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Gary Rhodes, Managed Professionals: Union-
ized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1998); Geoffrey White, Ed., Campus, Inc. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000);
Stanley Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001); Clyde W. Bar-
row, Sylvie Didou-Aupetit, and John Mallea, Globalisation, Trade Liberalisation, and Higher
Education in North America: The Emergence of a New Market Under NAFTA? (Dordrecht,
The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003); Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades,
Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Jennifer Washburn, University Inc.: The Corpo-
rate Corruption of Higher Education (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2005); Frank Donoghue,
The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities (New York, NY:
Fordham University Press, 2008); and Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise
of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (New York, NY: Oxford University
Press, 2011).
134 W. W. SOKOLOFF
political system to their advantage. The political state is not neutral. It is

an instrument of the ruling class to further their interests.15
The individualistic doctrine of merit and unlimited opportunity cele-
brated by conservatives teaches people to work hard. According to this
view, everyone has an equal chance to succeed. The assumption is that
competition between individuals takes place on a level playing field. Any-
one can win. This is a myth. The ideology of unlimited opportunity and fair
competition ignores the wealth and privilege passed on from one genera-
tion to the next that gives certain groups an unfair advantage. The discourse
of merit, hard work and just desserts conceals this. No matter how hard
poor people work, chances are they will remain poor.16 The doctrine of
merit de-politicizes this fact and teaches them that they only have them-
selves to blame if they fail. Color blindness, the doctrine that one’s color
is irrelevant, denies and obscures the presence of racism and the systemic
devaluation of black lives in social, economic and political structures.17 It
turns racism into a matter of personal prejudice and thereby de-politicizes
it.
Freire was a fierce critic of the doctrine of neutrality in all of its forms
because it was a way to mystify power and privilege and thereby prevent the
possibility of political change. For Freire, the belief in neutrality assumes
the legitimacy of the status quo. Freire states: “Claiming neutrality does not
constitute neutrality; quite the contrary, it helps maintain the status quo.”18
Freire continues: “All educational practice implies an interpretation of man
and the world.”19 Because of this, educational practices (e.g. teaching style
and definition of research) involve political and value commitments. As
Peter McLaren puts it, “the pedagogical is implicated in the political.”20 The
15 See https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/27/how-big-money-corrupts-the-
economy/, accessed on May 19, 2019.
16 Upward social mobility is on the decline. See https://www.businessinsider.com/social-
mobility-is-on-the-decline-and-with-it-american-dream-2017-7, accessed on May 19, 2019.
17 See https://www.urban.org/features/structural-racism-america, accessed on May 19,
2019.
18 Freire, Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation, trans. Macedo (Westport,
CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1985), p. 39.
19 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review,
2000), p. 13.
20 See Peter McLaren, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution (New
York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).
denial of the political and value-laden character of educational practices is

an outright lie.21 Freire states, “I could never treat education as something
cold, mental, merely technical, and without soul.”22 For Freire, education
for student and teacher alike involves the whole person, their life history,
their political commitments and their aspirations. As Freire puts it, “our
presence in the world, which implies choice and decision, is not a neutral
presence.”23
In any academic discipline, but especially the social sciences, the fixation
on method, technique and the belief in objective knowledge side-steps
the fundamental issue, namely, the problem of power as it plays out in
the relationship between education and the broader society.24 At its worst,
the fixation on method generates uncritical, descriptive and ideological aca-
demic disciplines via the de facto endorsement of the political status quo.25
As Freire states, “no educational practice takes place in a vacuum.”26 For
21 By claiming to be scientific, above politics, and non-ideological, behavioralism was a

political stance and a form of establishment ideology. See Clyde W. Barrow, “The Political and
Intellectual Origins of New Political Science,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and
Culture (October 2017): 437–472. I disagree with Timothy V. Kaufman’s Osborn who argues
that “the threat of behavioralism subsided in the late 1960s and early 1970s”; see “Political
Theory as Profession and as Subfield?” Political Research Quarterly 63 (2010): 657. Much
of political theory, according to John Gunnell, “manifests an elitist, antidemocratic bias that
echoes its origins in the moralism of nineteenth-century political science and in the scientism
of its early twentieth-century successors” in Gunnell, “Professing Political Theory,” Political
Research Quarterly 63 (2010): 678.
22 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998, p. 129. See David Easton, The Political System: An
Enquiry into the State of Political Science (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) for a
compelling example of the yearning for a scientific understanding of political life. For a recent
example, see “An Interview with Lynn Vavreck,” in PS: Political Science and Politics 48,
Supplement S1 (2015): 43–46. In this interview, Vavreck states: “We need our young scholars
doing science” (p. 44). She continues: “The average person is not going to read a scientific
publication and understand or track what the finding is…That’s okay” (p. 43).
23 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 2004, p. 7.
24 See John G. Gunnell, “The Reconstitution of Political Theory: David Easton, Behav-
ioralism, and the Long Road to System,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 49:2
(2013): 190–210 for a historical account of the rise of behavioralism. See also Sheldon Wolin,
“Political Theory as a Vocation,” American Political Science Review 63:4 (1969): 1062–1082
for an analysis of how the commitment to method threatens the capacity for discriminative
judgment.
25 See Richard Ashcraft, “Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology,” The Journal of
Politics, 42:3 (1980): 687–705.
26 Freire, Politics of Education, 1985, p. 12.
136 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Freire, “the so-called neutrality of science is nothing more than a neces-

sary myth of the ruling classes.”27 A politically relevant teaching practice
and research project, according to Freire, would fuse a critique of power
with a hopeful vision for social and political change. It would foreground
the question of whose interests are served via what is taking place in the
classroom and appearing in print.28
These conclusions were the result of Freire’s analysis of the intercon-
nections between pedagogy and politics. He observed the role education
played perpetuating the domination of impoverished populations. Even
today, the classroom continues to be used as a weapon against the poor to
keep them in their place (e.g. via high-tech surveillance in schools; perma-
nent police presence; policy of “zero tolerance”) and to disseminate ideo-
logical narratives (parading as objective) about why some people are poor
and others are rich (e.g. the American dream).29 However, the classroom
can also be a space to fight against the past and present legacies of colonial-
ism, rule by the few, and for thoughtful political transformation. Because
of this unconventional and provocative position, many doubted, as Freire
claimed, “whether or not I am an educator.”30 This reservation about
Freire being an educator was itself a political move. All education/research
is inescapably political because of the way problems are framed, the ques-
tions that are asked and whose research is included and excluded from the
discussion.31

28 See Bertell Ollman, “What Is Political Science? What Should It Be?” New Political Science,
22:4 (2000): 553–562 for a discussion of these and related issues.
29 See the New York Times bestseller by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. They
argue that “success and failure in the American economy are increasingly a matter of the
genes that people inherit” in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American
Life (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1996), p. 91. On the back cover, Milton Friedman
states The Bell Curve is “brilliant, original, and objective.” For an alternative perspective,
see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform
and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976). See Jonathan
Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York: Crown, 1991). See,
finally, Christopher G. Robbins, Expelling Hope: The Assault on Youth and the Militarization
of Schooling (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008).
30 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 1.
31 For an account of the complicity of the medical establishment with racial dictatorship,
see Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation
on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2006).
The acknowledgment of the political significance of research, teaching

and education does not mean that all positions are opinions and that no one
is right or wrong about anything.32 Some arguments are qualitatively better
than other arguments even if all arguments ultimately lack an absolute
basis. Freire’s rejection of neutrality simply means facing up to the fact
that everything that takes place within educational institutions has political
implications, that knowledge is situated in a historical context, and that
no decision is ever made in a sphere untouched by power.33 Freire wants
educators and scholars to embrace “epistemological distance” as a check
on “aggressive rationalism” where a methodological fixation on trees risks
blinding one to the larger forest of power.34 Freire’s rejection of positivism
as the ideology of the reigning elite should not be construed as a rejection
of rigorous academic work. Freire is not stuck in a simplistic binary. Freire
explains: “My position is to be in sympathy with both commonsense and
a rigorous academic approach.”35
Freire’s true educator, that is, one committed to creating a society that
allows all humans to flourish, would not indoctrinate students to follow
a particular party line. As Freire puts it, “no one can unveil the world for
another.”36 By avowing the political character of educational institutions
as a force for progressive social and political change, and simultaneously
rejecting the imposition of a counter-hegemonic dogma on the minds of
students, Freire constructs a hopeful vision for political change based on a
critical theory of power and a utopian disposition. Freire thus engages in a
meta-political project in the Kantian sense of working out the conditions
of possibility for the emergence of radical political subjectivity that avoids
the Leninist dictum of self-appointed elite that leads the people to nirvana.
For Freire, the decisions educators make (or simply accept and practice
out of habit and professional norms) must be brought out into the open.
Freire thus backs educators into a political-existential corner where they are
32 See John Stuart Mill for a discussion of uninformed versus informed discussion in On
Liberty and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press,
2005).
33 See Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, ed. and
trans. Colin Gordon (New York: Random House, 1988).
35 Freire and Antonio Faundez, Learning to Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation (Geneva,
Switzerland: WCC Publications, 1989), p. 48.
36 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2010, p. 169.
138 W. W. SOKOLOFF
required to be more explicit about the political implications of classroom

practices (e.g. how one teaches), the political implications of the content of
what is taught (e.g. what one teaches) and the core assumptions and polit-
ical implications of a particular research project (e.g. vision for political
change). It is hard to imagine, for example, that students are being edu-
cated as democratic citizens in classes organized by lectures where teachers
deposit knowledge into the heads of students who sit there passive and
silent. Students cannot be liberated with the “instruments of domestica-
tion.”37 Freire thus undermines the model of the charismatic instructor
who transmits knowledge to students via dynamic lectures. He puts into
question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus I have criticized
throughout this book.
It is also hard to imagine that students will understand anything signif-
icant about American democracy by memorizing the functions of political
institutions and sidestepping how capitalism limits, if not negates, rule by
the people.38 It is also hard to imagine that objective research is taking
place when the scholars conducting the research assume that inequality
is inevitable, rule by the enlightened few is wise and that the masses are
destined to be ignorant and impoverished.39 As Freire states, “it is naïve
to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would
enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.”40 Finally,
it is hard to imagine that a scholar is serving a valuable role as a member in
a democratic society and as an educator when they say “it’s not the job of
the scholars conducting the work to explain it.”41

38 I was Chair of the U.S. Government “Textbook Committee.” During the 2011–2012
and 2012–2013 academic years, I reviewed textbooks for introductory American government
courses. Not a single book I reviewed had a sustained analysis of the relationship between
capitalism and the political state and the overwhelming influence played by corporate money
subverting democracy.
39 As I indicated in Chapter 2, Leo Strauss provided the political philosophical rationale
for these positions. See also Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve for a justification for
the status quo masked as objective research. For Ian Shapiro, “hierarchical relations are often
legitimate and when they are, they do not involve domination on my account,” in Shapiro,
The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 4.
40 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 102.
41 See “An Interview with Lynn Vavreck,” PS: Political Science and Politics, Supplement
(2015): 43.
For Freire, there is no escape from the educational-existential decision.

Either one sides with the political status quo (even if by default) or one
positions oneself in the classroom as a force for social and political trans-
formation. Freire thus viewed education as a vehicle for the recuperation
of the humanity of the oppressed and for the thoughtful transformation of
society. This simply means we need to live up to our ideals about equal-
ity and democracy. If educators condition students to adapt and integrate
themselves to the status quo, Freire argues that they are instruments of
domination for the ruling class. What matters is how educational insti-
tutions position students as political subjects. Freire is explicit about this:
“The important thing is to place men in conscious confrontation with their
problems, to make them agents of their own recuperation.”42 As the reader
may have guessed, Freire becomes a political target. His ideas, as he puts
it, “do not benefit the interests of the dominant class.”43
It would be a mistake, however, to reduce Freire’s political position to
a sort of reverse indoctrination, where the ideas the educator identifies are
simply pounded into the brains of students. Freire states: “Treating schools
as non-neutral spaces does not mean turning them into a political base for
the party in power.”44 Freire claims “what is impermissible is for teachers
to impose on their pupils their own ‘reading of the world.’”45 For Freire,
the Right and Left are in some ways the same insofar as their dogmatism
leads them to use schools as propaganda sites for the political indoctrination
of young people. Education was not about the transmission of knowledge
but was a practice of self-awakening via dialogic practice. Freire puts into
question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus.
The Right imposes and generalizes a dictatorship of the marketplace and
eliminates from students the capacity to dream of an alternative to author-
itarian neoliberalism.46 The Left’s mistake, as Freire puts it, “has always
been their absolute conviction of their certainties, which makes them sec-
42 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013),
p. 13.
44 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, trans. Macedo et al.
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2005), p. 17.
46 I define neoliberalism as a strategy for the upward transfer of wealth (e.g. from working
people to the rich) via regressive taxation, privatization and financialization. See David Harvey,
A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
140 W. W. SOKOLOFF
tarian, authoritarian, and religious.”47 For Freire, Marxists need to get over
their “smug certainty.”48 Freire thus rejects all party lines and attempts to
make the political significance of education explicit through an egalitarian-
dialogic approach to teaching that recuperates the humanity of students.
This requires something deeper than merely inverting hierarchy and impos-
ing a model for correct thinking onto students. Rather, it starts by rejecting
the discourse of neutrality and positivism as ideologies of the ruling class.
It also starts by rejecting the fundamentalism of the Right and Left and
the “arrogance of administrators.”49 Finally, it requires having faith in the
people irrespective of their social class and previous conditions of physi-
cal and mental servitude. “Trusting the people,” Freire proclaims, “is the
indispensable precondition for revolutionary change.”50
Illiteracy
Reading and writing are not neutral activities but connected to power rela-
tions, access to quality education, free time (the word school comes from
the Latin word for leisure) and political struggle.51 Freire’s interest in adult
literacy grew out of his experience working with rural farm workers and
urban slum dwellers in South America. Literacy was a political issue not
in some broad existential-philosophical sense but because literacy was a
requirement for voting in Brazil as outlined in the 1891 Brazilian Consti-
tution. Like all literacy tests, it was designed to be failed.52 Hence, illiteracy
is a political and structural problem. The poor are prevented from reading
and naming the world. Other groups perpetuate privilege from one gen-
47 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 2005, p. 26.

51 Even though he had a narrow view on who qualified as the people, political education
was a major concern for Thomas Jefferson. For an insightful commentary on this, see Michael
Hardt Presents Thomas Jefferson (New York, NY: Verso, 2007).
52 For literacy and other restrictions on voting in the U.S. see Frances Fox Piven and
Richard Cloward, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote and Why Politicians Want It That Way
(Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000). For Piven and Cloward, “the United States is the only
major democratic nation in which the less-well-off, as well as the young and minorities, are
substantially underrepresented in the electorate” (p. 3).
eration to the next via wealth, access to education and political power. In
this sense, illiteracy is constructed, engineered and a political issue.53
In “Literacy and Destitution,” Freire continues these themes and argues
that literacy is not just about reading and writing (e.g. learning one’s
ABC’s), but is a broader political issue that is connected to struggles for
social and political transformation.54 Freire’s concept of literacy as some-
thing broader than a minimal capacity to grasp abstract symbols and rhyth-
mically sing the sounds of consonants to include a basic understanding of
politics, meaning political literacy, is particularly relevant to the U.S. and
other industrial societies. Consider, for example, that millions of people
in advanced industrialized democracies have their attention directed to a
variety of spectacles (e.g. sporting and media events) and seem to be swim-
ming in oceans of information via talk radio, tweets and headline news.55
These technologistas might crash into you because they are texting while
driving. They might impede your forward movement and bump into you
on the street and airport because they walk with their heads permanently
tilted downward as they scroll through information on a handheld device.
These techies also blog, text, tweet on “Twitter,” post “selfies” and “usies”
on “Facebook,” send videos on “Snapchat,” count their followers on “In-
stagram” and chase Pokéman. It would be a mistake, though, to define
communication and literacy as the quantity of information transferred and
absorbed.56 In the face of this glut of information, an uninformed elec-
torate paralyzed by the strange combination of profound ignorance and
self-satisfied arrogance stare political scientists in the face.57 Freire’s work
53 For the relationship between literacy and political struggle, see William W. Sokoloff,
“Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Rage,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and
Culture 36 (2014).
54 See Chapter 5 in Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 2004.
55 See Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1988).
56 See Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism
and Left Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
57 See Martin Gilens, “Political Ignorance and Collective Policy Preferences,” American
Political Science Review 95:2 (2001): 379–396. See also Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler,
“When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions,” Political Behavior 32
(2010): 303–330. Discontent led to the creation of PS: Political Science and Politics in 1968
to address issues pertaining to research, teaching and professional development. The Journal
of Political Science Education “especially invites articles that provided systematic tests and
empirical evidence to demonstrate that the pedagogical innovations or innovative teaching
142 W. W. SOKOLOFF
on literacy is important for understanding the broader social and political

forces that have produced this strange form of oligarchic corporate democ-
racy with uninformed/misinformed, somewhat cynical and self-satisfied cit-
izens.58 The political significance of sleep walking technologistas is troubling
because they are vulnerable to misinformation, propaganda and the inflam-
matory rhetoric of demagogue-entertainers who promise them freedom via
debt, peace through war, identity by way of walls and self-determination
via tyranny.
Contra conceptions of literacy construed as the minimal knowledge
needed to read and write, Freire’s concept of literacy is political because
it reclaims language from abstract, static and reified formulations. He sit-
uates words in contexts that illuminate broader power relationships. For
Freire, “problems of language always involve ideological questions and,
along with them, questions of power.”59 Words, for Freire, are not neutral
but weapons in charged political contexts that are connected to the social
control of marginalized populations.60 Since illiteracy is a structural prob-
lem, the project of literacy must put an end to the structures that generated
the problem. For Freire, “illiteracy is one of the concrete expressions of an
unjust social reality.”61 Hence, literacy and political agency work together.
For Freire, literacy is a route to the “invention of citizenship.”62 The teach-
ing style and specific examples used in the classroom must confront the
structures of power that shape the life chances and intellectual horizons
of impoverished people. Not hide these power relationships behind myths
about unlimited opportunity, the slow but inevitable spread of democracy,
the growing inclusion of under-represented groups in the political process,
minimal civilian casualties in war as a result of “smart bombs” and the U.S.
as the greatest peace loving country in the history of the world.63
techniques described in the article actually work”; see “Aims & Scope,” Journal of Political
Science Education. This statement arguably excludes the pedagogical-political research Freire
conducted on teaching and learning.
58 Hannah Arendt diagnosed how totalitarian regimes create widespread cynicism to per-
petuate their rule in Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, NY: Harcourt, 1968).
60 See Robbins, Expelling Hope: The Assault on Youth and the Militarization of Schooling,
2008.
63 For some of these and related themes, see Carl Boggs, Imperial Delusions: American
Militarism and Endless War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
Fundamental Inversion
The type of critical pedagogy formulated by Freire required something akin
to a fundamental inversion in the way educators and students conceptual-
ized the learning process. That is to say, a new definition was needed for
“student success.”64 The questions Freire asks are not whether our mea-
surements and rubrics are accurate, not whether students are being ade-
quately prepared for the workplace, not whether there are enough writing
assignments, not whether the latest “best practices” are employed and not
whether tests are being used to maximize learning.65 Rather, Freire fore-
grounds who the students are in terms of their lived experience, socio-
economic class and access to political power. This is pertinent because
teaching involves relating to particular individuals. As Stanley Aronowitz
aptly puts it, Freire helps students “achieve a grasp of the concrete condi-
tions of their daily lives.”66 For Freire, “the educator must begin with the
educands’ ‘here’ and not with her or his own.”67 One must, Freire asserts,
“get close to the language and syntax of the audience.”68 For Freire, there
is a “need for educators to soak up as it were the culture of the popular
masses.”69 This knowledge allows the educator to form an intersubjective
connection with students so a new type of learning could take place.70
This new type of learning must help students gain a political understand-
ing of their daily lives. For the majority of people on the planet, everyday
life is punctuated by exploitation, starvation, exclusion and domination
enforced through the internalization of codes dictating docility and def-
erence and ultimately backed up with violence. For Freire, anything that
64 Student success is usually defined as retention and graduation rates.

65 For these questions, see Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited
Learning on College Campuses (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). For a critique
of the discourse and ideology of “best practices”, see Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos:
Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, 2015. For Brown, “best practices are intended to displace
and replace politics” with “value free technical knowledge” (p. 139).
66 Stanley Aronowitz, Against Orthodoxy: Social Theory and Its Discontents (New York, NY:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), p. 114.
69 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 1989, p. 94.
70 For Raschke, “the scholarly community is very often terrified of letting its own discourse
community be challenged by popular styles of communication.” See The Digital Revolution
and the Coming of the Postmodern University, 2003, p. 73.
144 W. W. SOKOLOFF
prevents people from acquiring a political understanding of their daily lives

and lived experience is an oppressive mystification, an ideological tactic of
domination and the devaluation of their humanity. In contrast to vocational
pedagogical approaches based on teaching students skills and training so
they can adapt to and find a place within the political and economic status
quo, critical pedagogy helps students forge connections between their lives
and broader economic context for the purpose of the thoughtful trans-
formation of society. Students are thereby given and simultaneously give
themselves the capacity to “intervene in their context.”71 Critical peda-
gogy boils down to the self-acquisition of political consciousness and to
what Freire calls conscientização, which Freire defines as the “awakening of
critical awareness.”72
The failure to know one’s students in terms of their intellectual mind-
set and socio-economic location in society would thus make it impossible
to teach in any meaningful sense of the term: “Unless educators expose
themselves to the popular culture across the board,” Freire asserts, “their
discourse will hardly be heard by anyone but themselves.”73 Learning about
the daily lives of students is the first step to Freire’s political understand-
ing of teaching. The reinvention of power in the classroom via the dialogic
encounter and problem-posing pedagogical practice is the second step. This
sets the stage for the emergence of collective solidarity and a newly acquired
political consciousness.74 For Freire, “dialogue in any situation demands
the problematic confrontation of that very knowledge in its unquestion-
able relationship with the concrete reality in which it is engendered and
on which it acts in order to better understand, explain, and transform that
reality.”75
Freire’s theory of dialogue rejects the view that the teacher talks and
“teaches” and the student listens and “learns.” For Freire, this view objec-
tifies students and renders dialogue impossible. Freire also rejects a Socratic
dialogic-intellectual approach not because Socrates restricted himself to
interrogating Athenian elites (cf. Plato’s “Apology”), nor because Socrates
concluded his dialogic encounters by saying that he “knows nothing” which
71 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 2013, p. 45.

74 For Freire, “nobody is superior to anyone else”; Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998, p. 108.
renders Socrates unteachable at a certain level, but because Socratic intel-

lectualism avoided the “man-world relationship.”76 That is, Socrates failed
to illuminate how one’s place in the world impacts and constricts one’s
intellectual horizons.77 In contrast to Socratic a-contextual intellectualism,
Freire prefers “reciprocal learning between teachers and students” that puts
into question the legitimacy of the social and political status quo.78 This
requires a dialogic practice based on the mutual analysis of the contexts
in which teachers and students live. Via dialogic praxis, students become
“agents of their own recuperation.”79 To prevent dialogue from becoming
a ruse of power, dialogue for Freire is not about speaking “to” someone
(e.g. a hierarchal and vertical relationship) but “with” another person (e.g.
a horizontal encounter that engenders solidarity).80 Philia provided the
necessary intersubjective bridge between teacher and student that enables
mutual learning: “It is not possible to be a teacher without loving one’s
students.”81
Pedagogy and Revolt

Freire’s pedagogy of revolt requires dialogue, a critique of power, the con-
stitution of radical agency and conceptualizes revolution as a recurring
event. Freirean dialogue is a key component of the reinvention of power as
a non-reactionary force because it keeps a space open for listening, learning
and communion with the oppressed. The reinvention of power also plays
itself out in the transformation of the self-identity of educational practi-
tioners. For Friere, to be a teacher requires a metaphorical martyrdom, the
“death of the teacher,” as it were: “The educator for freedom has to die as
the exclusive educator of learners.”82 The “death of the teacher” emerges
76 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 55. Plato’s Meno is an exception to this claim
because Socrates and a slave engage in a dialogue. Plato, Meno, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indi-
anapolis: Hackett Press, 1980).
77 For a defense of Socratic citizenship that avoids an analysis of the material conditions of
everyday life, see Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2001).
146 W. W. SOKOLOFF
as the precondition for the birth of empowered democratic citizens. Freire

thus performs the deconstruction of educational institutions via teaching
practices that open a new horizon for the emancipatory project. What are
the steps needed to make this happen?
First, the social relations of domination in educational institutions that
mirror broader relations of domination have to be undermined. Much like
Michel Foucault’s genealogical analysis of how punishment renders the
body docile in Discipline and Punish, Freire was similarly interested in the
ways that students are “positioned” and become objects of power when
they enter the classroom.83 Located ambiguously between the family and
the workplace, educational institutions attempt to contain social problems,
defer entry into glutted labor markets and shape students to fit into pre-
ordained occupational roles. Through a protracted conditioning process,
students learn that they are required to be silent when the teacher enters.
For most of the day, students sit while the instructor stands. The classroom
space is hierarchical with an invisible yet concrete wall between students and
teacher that mirrors and reinforces the hierarchical character of churches,
the workplace, the courtroom, soccer teams, the cheerleading squad and
just about every aspect of life in a hierarchal society. The classroom spatially
organizes bodies via strict rules of placement, posture, hygiene, attire and
consciousness.84 All of this is somehow intended to constitute “readiness
for learning,” which resembles a strange immobilizing and infantilizing
form of domination.
Just like workers, students are individualized and constituted as a mass
via specific classroom practices. Teachers discipline students through public
humiliation, expulsion, evaluation according to “objective” criteria, surveil-
lance, classification, constant comparison, and referring students to the
appropriate disciplinary authorities (e.g. medical, psychological) when nec-
essary. Workers face termination and starvation if they violate the norms
of docility in the workplace. In classrooms, students enter a field where
they are accountable for their performance of unspoken educational rituals
including hygiene, punctuality, memorization, orderly classroom conduct,
following instructions, adherence to deadlines and evaluation. The evalu-
ation of students, for Freire, has nothing to do with education. It is about
83 See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan (New
York: Vintage Books, 1995).
84 See Roger Deacon, “Michel Foucault on Education: A Preliminary Theoretical
Overview,” South African Journal of Education 26 (2006): 177–187.
“punishment.”85 Once the social relations of domination in educational

institutions are illuminated, course content acquires a new level of signifi-
cance.
That is to say, the classroom must be shattered as a space of social control
and transformed into a space where social and political contradictions are
ventilated and subjected to critical and radical analysis. It is thus necessary
to disrupt the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. For Freire, the
learning process is not a disembodied pursuit of “facts” but a visceral experi-
ence: “I have a right to be angry and to express that anger,” he proclaims.86
Given the legacy of colonial domination outlined by Eduardo Galeano in
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,
education should be profoundly disturbing and upsetting.87 This is pre-
cisely what Freire injects into the curriculum via critical pedagogy. In this
sense, critical pedagogy gnaws at the foundations of oppressive political
orders, “like a pack of rats,” and positions students in a manner to hasten
their collapse.88 Education is thus an enactment and rehearsal of revolu-
tion.89 For Freire, the classroom is a space of struggle and revolt. It is a
location where students reclaim their humanity via a critical understanding
of their place in the world. The teacher had to occupy an ever-shifting loca-
tion to accomplish this, though. As Freire puts it, the teacher is both inside
and outside the system: “I have been trying to think and teach by keeping
one foot inside the system and the other foot outside.”90 In addition to
his commitment to dialogue and the metaphorical “death of the teacher,”
this inside–outside position flags Freire’s attempt to reinvent power.
In contrast to hegemonic sovereign power that insulates itself and hov-
ers above its objects, this new mode of Freirean power is one that “does
not fear to be called into question and does not become rigid for the sake
of defending the freedom already achieved.”91 If there is going to be a rev-

87 Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Conti-
nent, trans. Belfrage (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1997).
88 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, trans. Philcox (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2004), p. 81.
89 See Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. McBride and McBride (New York, NY:
Theatre Communications Group, 1985).
91 Freire, Learning to Question, 1989, p. 62.
148 W. W. SOKOLOFF
olution worthy of the name, Freire insists, it must be one that is a “contin-
uous event.”92 Taking power via a spectacular overthrow of an oppressive
regime reflects a superficial understanding of the problem of oppression
and yearning for popular rule. For Freire, the challenge was to “reinvent
power.”93 The starting place for this was in the classroom via a protracted
pedagogical-political experiment in self-rule, dialogue and thoughtful rev-
olution conceptualized and practiced as a continuous event. The type of
democracy Freire had in mind would not represent constituents. It would
resist institutional form and permanently disrupt the tendency to oligarchy.
Democracy, for Freire, is not a form but the perpetual enactment of a peo-
ple’s revolt against centralized power in the classroom and outside of it in
the polity. For Freire, “I prefer rebelliousness because it affirms my status as
a person who has never given into the manipulations and strategies designed
to reduce the human person to nothing.”94 It is through rebellion, Freire
asserts, that we can “affirm ourselves.”95
Rebellion must go further and become revolution as a continuous event.
This is grounded in collective agency and the formation of a political iden-
tity. Freire states: “Without a sense of identity there is no need for struggle.
I will only fight you if I am very sure of myself.”96 Freire continues: “At no
time can there be a struggle for liberation and self-affirmation without the
formation of an identity, and identity of an individual, the group, the social
class.”97 Consider, for example, the following Arizona law that maps with
brutal clarity the connection between politics and the political challenge
posed by emergent political identity, as well as the significance of Freire’s
argument.
Arizona’s 2010 House Bill 2281 eliminated ethnic studies programs
and indicates that the state has an interest in the proper (meaning political)
socialization of young people and in restricting the meaning of politics and
collective struggle so that it corresponds with official non-threatening defi-
nitions and understandings. To be more specific, House Bill 2281 explicitly
92 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, p. 64. See also Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revo-
lution, ed. Jonson (New York, NY: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2014).
forbids “ethnic solidarity” and promotes “treatment of pupils as individu-

als.”98 It thus eliminates ethnic studies programs and imposes the adoption
of an American individualistic identity premised on the negation of a histor-
ical understanding of the treatment of the conquered Mexican population
and theft of Mexican territory.99 Bill 2281 signifies a fear of ethnic/racial
activism emerging in the U.S. and the belief that this can be contained
through curriculum control.100 Although House Bill 2281 targets Latin@
students, the logic of it fits other ethnic/racial categories perceived as a
threat to current distributions of power. As racial unrest in response to
persistent police brutality continues to simmer in the U.S., the question
seems to be how effective this form of curriculum control will be for the
pacification of people of color over the long term.
In contrast to the type of teacher and student this House Bill tries to
create, Freire puts forward a vision of a new type of critical intellectual.
Someone who is not naïve about power. Someone that still has hope.
Someone who is able to explain why research is relevant to the lives of
people. Someone who is dedicated to social and political transformation
inside and outside of the classroom. Freire thus keeps history open to nov-
elty and invention and he rejects nostalgia that “nullifies tomorrow.”101
For both the Left and Right lured to sleep in the “end of history” the-
sis, political struggle is unnecessary, impossible and pointless. In contrast,
Freire creatively appropriated the intellectual resources at his disposal and
forged something new. He fused a mixture of Marxist humanism, post-
colonial theory and existentialism with the lessons he learned from work-
ing with illiterate farm workers and slum dwellers in South America. He
stands before us as a utopian political theorist committed to the fight for
thoughtful revolutionary change. I would bet that if you asked a random
political scientist at the APSA annual meeting if they read Freire’s work on
the political significance of pedagogy and practiced it, you would observe
a blank stare.
98 See House Bill 2281, state of Arizona, 2010.

99 For the linkage between individualism, neoliberalism and “Americanism”, see Milton
Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
100 See also Clyde W. Barrow, “The Coming of the Corporate-Fascist University?” New
Political Science 36:4 (2014): 640–646.
101 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 2007, p. 45.
150 W. W. SOKOLOFF
Conclusion
Does the fact that Freire wrote for a Third World context limit the applica-
bility of his ideas to other contexts? The answer is no. Freire states “any ideas
coming from another part of the world cannot be simply transplanted.”102
However, Freire also claims “there is a universal dimension to what I have
been writing about education.”103 Is it not the case, though, that Freire’s
work operates according to a simplistic either/or and us/them understand-
ing of the world and it might not always be as clear-cut as Freire seems to
think? Perhaps the “banking model” of education is not always oppressive.
Perhaps dialogue in the classroom is not always desirable and possible at
every moment. Freire’s typology between liberating and oppressive edu-
cation is nonetheless helpful for making basic distinctions, especially for
new educators that may not realize that the rhetoric of learning cloaked
over institutions of higher education conceals the fact that educational
institutions are big businesses, have ideological agendas and that teaching
practices have political implications.104
When President Obama claimed that it is not a student’s “color” or
the “income of their parents” that is the most important factor determin-
ing their success in “A Blueprint for Reform” but “the teacher standing
at the front of the classroom” Obama seems to be embracing a Freirean
position. He is not. Obama has a narrow historical sensibility and he is set-
ting teachers up for failure.105 Obama not only makes teachers responsible
for overcoming the legacies of racism and economic inequality but he also
denies the power of past oppression (not to mention current forms) on the
present and future. In addition to calling for a new type of educator, the
work of Freire brings the legacies of past and current oppression into the
102 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, 2000, p. 10.

104 See Gaye Tuchman, Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University (Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press, 2009). See also Henry Giroux, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher
Education (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2014).
105 See Obama’s statement in U.S. Department of Education, “A Blueprint for Reform:
The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” March 2010. In the
section of the report subtitled “Homeless Children and Youths Education,” the blueprint
states that “systems and services” will be put in place to “meet the educational needs of
homeless students” (p. 21). It is hard to understand the logic behind this formulation. How
will “systems and services” that address the educational needs of homeless students and ignore
homelessness meet the needs of these students?
lesson plan. The life contexts of students become the text. Dialogue is the
method. Democratic non-reactionary power is the practice. Self-liberation
is the goal. Facilitated by the ultimate disappearing act of the teacher as
the authoritative dispenser of knowledge. All of this geared to the broadest
possible humanization of society. Freire’s work thus expands the dialogue
about the types of pedagogy needed to build and sustain a democracy, and
the type of academic and professional institutions that need to be in place
to sustain this project over the long term. At the end of the day, though,
Freire’s work requires political scientists to look into the existential mirror
and ask, “What and who do I serve?”
CHAPTER 8
Conclusion: Silence, Voice and Political

Resistance in the Classroom
Abstract In this concluding chapter, I argue that the best way to cultivate
the voice of quiet and silent students is through critical intersectionality
and every day utopianism in the classroom. A culturally relevant curricu-
lum, critical autobiography, inclusion of feminist perspectives and visceral
learning constitute the form of critical intersectionality I promote. This
critical intersectional approach is simultaneously pedagogical and political.
It cultivates voice in groups poorly served by educational institutions and
opens utopian horizons of social and political transformation. This chapter
thus bridges the theoretical with the practical and shows how to practice
radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.
Speech and voice are fundamental aspects of the human condition. Com-
municating with others is how we tell our story, how we express pain, how
we create bridges and build community, how we overcome fear, how we
sing and celebrate and how we scream against injustice. If you are unhappy,
speak up. Persuade others to take action. Voice is a way to combat invisi-
bility and names the utopian hope in the possibility of meaningful political
change. The U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech as a formal
right because the founders believed it was an essential component in a
political regime. Historically, though, countless rules and practices nulli-

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_8
154 W. W. SOKOLOFF
fied the voices of certain classes of people. Blacks could not testify.1 Women
could not vote. Indigenous people were not U.S. citizens. Nevertheless,
productive engagement in politics is unlikely if not impossible unless indi-
viduals are able to exercise voice and coherently articulate their interests and
viewpoints. Hence, helping marginalized groups find and refine their voice
is a central component of the emancipatory project and consistent with
the U.S. Constitution’s valorization of free speech. Helping marginalized
groups find their voice is also an essential component of grassroots’ polit-
ical struggle.2 Cultivating voice both in oneself and for others, however,
is an incredibly difficult pedagogical task. No one can speak for someone
else. Building coalitions capable of contesting and transforming hegemonic
forms of political power nevertheless hinges on creating spaces for the voices
of historically marginalized, silenced and oppressed groups.
To claim that voice is not enough and that politics is about policy out-
comes and takes place in formally designated political institutions obscures
the ways that building voice, especially among marginalized groups, is a
subversive act and can set broader political forces into motion beyond the
horizon a politics of liberal incrementalism. Even though it might be dif-
ficult to measure, micro-level political practices signaled in building voice
can provide the necessary bridge to broader macro-level political practices
that can more effectively contest structural injustice, cruelty and violence.3
Without voice, emancipation and political empowerment are impossible.
Building voice is also a crucial component of counter-hegemonic utopian
pedagogy and a major theme of this book because it produces alternative
forms of subjectivity that can challenge the terms and conditions of the
political status quo and disrupt the authority, hierarchy and knowledge
nexus.4
Educators play an essential role in helping individuals acquire and refine
their voices and develop a strong sense of identity. I have noticed that
some of the Latina students in my lower- and upper-division political
1 See Amanda Carlin, “The Courtroom as White Space: Racial Performance as Noncredi-
bility,” UCLA Law Review 450 (2016).
2 By voice, I am referring to the capacity for critical self-reflection and articulation that
grows out of self but also reaches out to others.
3 I address the macro aspects of political struggle in my book Confrontational Citizenship,
2017.
4 In the prison visit chapter, the voice of students was a central component. In the chapter
on online learning, the voice of students was also a primary concern.
8 CONCLUSION: SILENCE, VOICE … 155
science courses are what we might call quiet and silent (or silenced) stu-
dents, meaning that they do not talk, or at least they stop talking when I
enter the classroom.5 As Ange-Marie Hancock puts it, Latinas have been
“socialized into voicelessness.”6 One of my students told me that her par-
ents have told her for years that “you are prettier when you are quiet.” One
of my Latino students shared with me that a teacher told him to “get the
tortilla out of your mouth” when he spoke. On a broader level, the voices of
women are not credible and routinely ignored, as Professor Christine Blasey
Ford discovered during U.S. Senate judiciary hearings. When it comes to
voice, “women of color are at the bottom of the credibility hierarchy.”7
In the classroom, some of my students might not say a single word for the
entire semester and some are visibly uncomfortable when they speak and
when asked to speak. Given this fact, an adversarial hyper-masculine Socratic
approach to teaching characterized by verbal jousting and confrontational
and aggressive questioning would be counter-productive. Approaching the
question of voice from an exclusively Marxist and social-class perspective
would address the impact economic exploitation has on the lives of silent
students but it would miss the ways in which interlocking forms of oppres-
sion work together to deny Latinas voice (e.g. patriarchy; poverty; racism;
machista culture).8 In what follows, I approach the question of Latina
silence and voice from a critical intersectional perspective, one that views
pedagogy as part of a larger utopian project of emancipation and political
5 For the narratives that frame students, see Michelle Fine, Framing Dropouts: Notes on
the Politics of an Urban Public High School (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1991), p. 61. Ange-Marie Hancock states that Latinas are taught “obedience to the church,
submission to men and limited participation in public discourse”; Hancock, Solidarity Politics
for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics (New York: Palgrave, 2011),
p. 153.
6 See Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School, 2005, p. 259.
7 Carlin, 2016, p. 476.
8 I acknowledge the wide range of diversity that the term “Latina” obscures. For the dif-
ficulties involved with Latino identity, see Cristina Beltrán, The Trouble with Unity: Latino
Politics and the Creation of Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
156 W. W. SOKOLOFF
empowerment.9 The classroom is a utopian space for building commu-

nity.10 This happens via joy, humor and experimentation.
This chapter is personal and political. It grew out of a variety of experi-
ences. Several years ago, I attended a panel at APSA where women of color
reflected on their experiences in the discipline of political science pertaining
to tenure and promotion, teaching and service. I went to this panel because
I was tired of hearing debates and discussions about topics that did not seem
to matter and that struck me as far removed from actual political struggles
taking place today. Without going into the details, I was appalled at what
I learned about the politics of the discipline and how unwelcoming it is to
people of color, women and individuals from working-class backgrounds.
As I listened, I also recalled many instances of elitist arrogance and cruelty
in the intellectual changes I witnessed at academic conferences. I recalled
the treatment of graduate students in the department where I earned my
Ph.D. I also recall many instances of the poor treatment of junior faculty
where I currently teach. These learning experiences, as well as many other
ones, have compelled me to write this chapter on voice.
Every instructor has had to grapple at one time or another with the
sea of blank faces in the classroom as well as students’ silence, especially
in state mandated political science courses where students must take the
course to fulfill a graduation requirement. Ignoring this silence and simply
lecturing, a form of teaching based on monologue, is something that I
refuse to do. When I ask students to speak about course material, though,
oftentimes they do not have much to say, or at least that is my impres-
sion. Nonetheless, I have struggled to understand classroom silence. I have
tried to come up with ways to stimulate more dialogue and conversation
in the classroom through (1) speaking with colleagues and asking them
what they do to stimulate discussion, (2) speaking with students about stu-
dent silence, (3) attending teaching workshops, (4) experimentation, and
9 See Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 2016. See Ange-Marie Hancock, Intersectionality:
An Intellectual History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). See also New Political
Science: A Journal of Politics & Culture, Special Issue: Intersectionality for the Global Age
(December 2015). See, finally, Amy Cabrera Rasmussen, “Toward an Intersectional Political
Science Pedagogy,” Journal of Political Science Education 10 (2014): 102–116.
10 See Gustavo E. Fischman and Peter McLaren, “Schooling for Democracy: Toward a
Critical Utopianism,” Contemporary Sociology 29 (January 2000): 168–179. See also Darren
Webb, “Where’s the Vision? The Concept of Utopia in Contemporary Educational Theory,”
Oxford Review of Education 35 (December 2009): 743–760.
(5) reading scholarly literature on silence in the classroom.11 The question

on my mind is the following. What are the best ways to reach and help quiet
and silent students (in particular, women of color) find/refine their voices,
speak with confidence, acquire a strong sense of personal identity, make
connections between their lived experiences and the broader political and
economic context and come to see themselves as political agents? Given
current hysteria about an endless invasion of unassimilable and possibly
criminal Mexican and Central Americans streaming northward in caravans,
the pedagogical project pertaining to Latina voice outlined in this final
chapter is intended to be a hopeful counter-narrative about the dignity,
resilience and humanity of Latin@s and the prospects for thoughtful forms
of political struggle.
This is an uncomfortable topic. I do not want to start any class with
assumptions about students. I would risk inscribing students in a neocolo-
nial discourse of helplessness and situating myself as their savior. Aware of
this risk, I believe that grappling with the challenges posed by quiet and
silent students has helped me grow as an educator and raise important
practical, political and theoretical issues. I also want to point out that I
am not “theorizing” women of color to continue their exploitation as a
means to my academic advancement.12 I hope to demonstrate that I am
genuinely committed to creating a vibrant learning environment for all of
my students and see the cultivation of voice as the bridge between politics
and pedagogy.
The conversations I had with colleagues about silence in the classroom
were interesting but also shocking. Many of my political science colleagues
were frustrated with students. One colleague informed me that he had
“tried everything” but kept getting the same results, namely, poor perfor-
mance and a high failure rate. He said “you cannot create a silk glove out of
a sow’s ear.” On another occasion he stated that he could not “humiliate
the students enough into caring about the subject matter.” Other more
empathetic colleagues informed me that they employ a variety of activities
11 See Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss, Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-
imagining Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003). See also Listening to Teach:
Beyond Didactic Pedagogy, ed. Leonard J. Waks (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015). See also James C.
Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1990).
12 A related concern is raised by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
in Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura
Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
158 W. W. SOKOLOFF
in the classroom but they tend to run up against the same challenge, namely,
the difficulty of sustaining student engagement throughout the semester.
In the face of what they perceived to be entrenched student apathy, they
gave up on trying to facilitate discussion and calling on students to speak
and went back to teaching via power point slides. Other colleagues told me
that they just lecture and do not worry about student silence.
In addition to having conversations with colleagues about quiet stu-
dents, I have asked students in my courses as well as students pursuing
a political science degree questions pertaining to classroom dynamics, in
particular, levels of engagement in the classroom. Many students have told
me that they tend to be quiet because they do not want to speak and look
foolish. Some are intimidated and they prefer to listen as a way to learn.
One of the Latina students in an upper-division course had the following
to say about student silence in the classroom:
I have felt that heaviness and responsibility to regard a professor, especially

a white male, with respect whenever they enter the classroom. Not exactly
because I feel inferior, but because of my disenfranchised upbringing from
education, white people, and males. Perhaps more women can relate to this:
I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic community, in a patriarchal home
where women do not associate with men, and where neither of my parents or
anyone in my family circle, went to college. A white, male professor is the very
opposite of that, so that creates a clash in cultures definitely. Before saying
something, I repeat it in my head multiple times, and then speak up. Slowly,
I have been adapting to the university environment and have started to lose
this hyper-awareness of my difference from other people, especially males
from other cultures. (Student testimonial via email, November 14, 2018,
emphasis added)
It is important to point out that some students might be silent in the

classroom but are talkative during office hour visits. Most of the students
I asked at UTRGV do not see student silence in the classroom as a matter
of concern. Nevertheless, the student I quoted above flags a complicated
range of issues that I believe require a critical intersectional perspective on
student silence to unpack, that is, one that highlights the interconnections
between patriarchy, white privilege and poverty (more on this later) and
employs utopianism in the classroom to combat these oppressive structures.
In addition to speaking with students about silence, I continue to attend
teaching workshops to learn how to be an effective educator (not recently
though due to writing this book). Many of these workshops have been
helpful but some of them employed a lecture model even though the
theme of the workshop was how best to foster participation. In some of
these workshops, the mode of participation that took place consisted of
the usual five to ten minute question and answer session at the end of the
workshop. The better ones emphasized the importance of student group
work, presentations and a variety of other activities. In these participation-
oriented workshops for faculty, we experienced what an engaging classroom
experience felt like through group activities. The goal was to overcome a
classroom environment dominated by the instructor’s voice.
I also experiment with a variety of teaching strategies that encourage
students to speak in class. I find that debates, student presentations, small
group activities (and avoiding power point) can be effective in soliciting
student participation. These activities also set a tone in the class that stu-
dents must actively participate on a regular basis as opposed to just sitting
and taking notes. However, the limits involved with these approaches (e.g.
lack of student preparation and basic knowledge of the reading material)
prompted me to turn to the scholarly literature to try to learn something
more about stimulating and sustaining class discussion.
In the scholarly literature, explanations for classroom silence vary. Silent
students can be the product of a long socialization process of what Paulo
Freire calls the “banking model” of education (e.g. educators pour knowl-
edge into the heads of students). Others argue that silent students have
internalized norms dictating deference to authority figures.13 Some silent
students are first-generation college students too exhausted to talk. They
work forty hours or more a week and the styles of speech on a university
campus are alien to them.14 Others argue silent students have low levels
of self-confidence. This could be caused by lack of mentoring, low educa-
tional attainment in their families, a curriculum that is irrelevant to their
lives and negative experiences with racist teachers and administrators.15
Other scholars view student apathy and silence as the result of the way
the contributions of Latin@s to the American story are ignored.16 Not all
13 See Victor Rios, Punished, 2011. See also Marcos Pizarro, Chicanos and Chicanas in
School, 2005.
14 See Stephen Gilbert Brown, Words in the Wilderness: Critical Literacy in the Borderlands
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000).
15 See Pizarro, 2009.
16 See Michelle Fine, Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban Public High
School (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991); Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: The Chicano’s
160 W. W. SOKOLOFF
scholars see silence in a negative light.17 Depending on the context, silence

can be a mode of resistance.18 Someone ordered to speak can refuse. This
is a sign of agency.
Even though all of these explanations strike me as reasonable, there
are some other pieces to the puzzle. The Texas approach to education as
well as the unique culture and history of south Texas are arguably impor-
tant aspects that could help us understand the range of causes for student
silence. Through a combination of an under-funded public education sys-
tem for the majority of Texas residents (Texas ranks near the bottom for
state spending on education in the U.S.)19 and an educational approach
known as “teaching to the test” many Texas students are poorly educated
and not prepared for the university. Some of my students have informed me
that they did not write argumentative essays in High School and that they
were completely lost when I required them to do so. As a result of attend-
ing schools in the state where “the stars at night, are big and bright,” a dull
malaise plagues Texas educational institutions during the day. A teacher at
a local high school informed me that teachers at her particular location are
routinely intimidated into passing students. Administrators can then report
Struggle Toward Liberation (San Francisco: Lanfield Press, 1972); and Gloria Anzaldúa,
Borderlands/La Frontera, 2012.
17 See Mary M. Reda, Between Speaking and Silence: A Study of Quiet Students (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 2009). She maintains that “silence is not necessarily
problematic” as it may provide opportunities for intense reflection, pp. 18–19. For a more
critical perspective on silence, see Lois Weis and Michelle Fine, Silenced Voices and Extraor-
dinary Conversations: Re-imagining Schools (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2003);
Lois Weis and Michelle Fine, Eds., Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United
States Schools (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). For a defense of voice
in the classroom as a path to empower students, see Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York, NY: Continuum Press, 2010). Finally, see Listening
to Teach: Beyond Didactic Pedagogy, ed. Waks (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 2015).
18 See Houston A. Baker, “Scene…not Heard,” in Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban
Uprising, ed. Robert Gooding-Williams (New York, NY: Routledge, 1993). It is important
to point out that silence can represent an opening for a lively discussion, where an instructor
simply waits and lets the atmosphere of silence descend on a classroom until someone finally
speaks. The willingness of instructors to embrace silence in the classroom as a learning tool can
also signal to students that the instructor is patient and willing to invest time in the learning
process. Silence can also be a valuable form of energy in the classroom that is mobilized to
intensify the theatrical aspects of dialogic encounters.
19 See http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-
per-pupil-data.html, accessed on August 12, 2017.
100% graduation rates. Systemic neglect (e.g. under-funded schools), ques-

tionable pedagogy (e.g. teaching to the test thereby annihilating joy in
learning) and exaggerating graduation and college attendance rates (e.g.
cooking the books) are serious problems. Tack on high poverty rates and a
historically low rate of educational attainment in south Texas. Additionally,
many students lack confidence speaking English because it is their second
language. They often cannot find the words in English to express them-
selves and are particularly vulnerable in this system. In some cases, these
bilingual students are also ashamed about the version of “border” Spanish
they speak because, as they tell me, it is not proper Spanish. They are also
very self-conscious about their accent when they speak English.
The combination of these issues make teaching in south Texas arguably
more challenging in comparison to other geographical regions in the U.S.
Nevertheless, I have been trying to find ways to understand and trans-
form classroom silence. In my view, exercising voice, that is, naming one-
self and the world, is a key component for developing political agency.
Individuals who do not tell their own story (a key component of political
agency) will have their story told by someone else.20 Scholar–teacher–ac-
tivists, it seems to me, should be particularly interested in questions of
political agency, especially for under-served, disproportionately poor, and
marginalized groups. Political and social transformation depends on exer-
cising voice, formulating a position of resistance and acting on it. I believe
the ways I have tried to reach my students and address the importance of
student voice in the classroom are relevant to the broader project of bring-
ing about thoughtful political and social transformation. This final chapter
bridges theory with practice via a critical intersectional approach and pro-
motes “everyday utopianism” in the classroom.21 My goal is to shatter the
20 American politics is largely a symbolic exercise. Politicians tell stories about contemporary
problems and who is to blame. These blame narratives propel politicians to the top via code
words (e.g. welfare queens; under-serving poor; immigrant invasion; etc.) that tap into popular
anger and channel it toward the most vulnerable members of society. For these and related
themes, see Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1998). For the racist character of these narratives, see Ian Haney López, Dog
Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle
Class (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014). For discourse analysis of narratives of
blame pertaining to welfare, see Sanford F. Schram, Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social
Science and the Social Science of Poverty (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1995).
21 See Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2014).
162 W. W. SOKOLOFF
authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and open a space for pedagogy
as the practice of equality.
Transforming the Classroom

The first way I try to reach my students, develop an intellectual relationship
with them and create a space for their voices is through a culturally relevant
curriculum and critical autobiography.22 As you may have guessed, I am
particularly interested in culturally relevant writings for my Latin@ students
that foreground the importance of voice. Since I work with a predominantly
Latin@ population, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera has been
an indispensable literary-political masterpiece that models how to find and
reclaim one’s sense of voice as both a writer and political agent via a critical
stance in relation to one’s own upbringing and culture.23 In a moment of
self-reflection, Anzaldúa states: “I abhor some of my culture’s ways, how it
cripples its women.” She continues: “I abhor how my culture makes macho
caricatures of its men.” She refused to plunge into the abyss of pessimism
and locates a way out, a path to freedom: “I want the freedom to carve and
chisel my own face, to staunch the bleeding with ashes, to fashion my own
gods out of my entrails. And if home is denied me then I will have to stand
and claim my space, making a new culture – una cultura mestiza – with
my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist archi-
tecture.”24 In what starts as a mode of painful critique Anzaldúa identifies
a way out and declares that she will “claim her space” on her own terms.
Through a combination of class discussions pertaining to these citations,
we explore how Anzaldúa was denied voice, what exactly denied it (e.g.
patriarchy; racism; poverty; homophobia, etc.) and how Anzaldúa claimed
and found her voice. We also discuss how Anzaldúa performs a founda-
tional insight pertaining to the emancipatory project. Until one voices or
22 See Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, “Wrapping the Curriculum Around Their Lives: Using a Cul-
turally Relevant Curriculum with African American Adult Women,” Adult Education Quar-
terly 58 (2007): 44–60. See also Carlos Alberto Torres, Ed., Education, Power, and Personal
Biography: Dialogues with Critical Educators (New York: Routledge, 1998).
23 See Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd Edition (San Fran-
cisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 2007).
24 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd Edition (San Francisco,
CA: Aunt Lute Books, 2007), pp. 43–44.
writes a critical-political autobiography, one will be voiceless and someone

else will write your story for you.
After an analysis of Anzaldúa’s work that is more of a discussion than
a lecture, students are asked to write their critical autobiography (that
addresses only the aspects about themselves they feel comfortable shar-
ing with the class). They focus on how and from whom they acquired their
sense of gender identity, whether or not their gender identity allows them
to flourish as a person, and whether or not their gender identity has given
them a powerful voice. Students connect theory (Anzaldúa) with prac-
tice (their life). Students share what they wrote with the class, bouncing
between what they learned from Anzaldúa and how it is relevant to their
life and experiences. I also share aspects about my upbringing that are rele-
vant to the discussion. Students may feel vulnerable during these exercises
but it is “only by undergoing vulnerable encounters that there is any hope
of learning.”25
The second way I try to develop an intellectual atmosphere that opens
a space for student voice is through the inclusion of feminist perspectives
(particularly ones that prioritize the centrality of voice as the foundation for
political agency) in my lower- and upper-division courses.26 For the lower-
level course, I require my students to read Andrea Dworkin’s Heartbreak:
The Political Memoir of a Militant Feminist, a text written with a high level
of intensity that explores patriarchal violence.27 At the upper level, my stu-
dents read bell hooks’s The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love.28
In hooks’s text, she argues that capitalism and patriarchy make love con-
ceived of as mutuality, reciprocity and partnership impossible. Patriarchy
leads to rape culture, abuse and existential misery: “Women and children all
over the world want men to die so that they can live.”29 For hooks, patri-
archy is a form of pedagogy. It is present in popular culture via the sexual
25 Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism, 2016, p. 20.

26 See Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward, eds. Robbin D. Crabtree, David
Alan Sapp, and Adela C. Licona (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). See
also Jeanne Brady, Schooling Young Children: A Feminist Pedagogy for Liberatory Learning
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
27 Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (New York,
NY: Basic Books, 2002).
28 bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York, NY: Washington
Square Books, 2004).
29 hooks, 2004, xv.
164 W. W. SOKOLOFF
objectification of women and the view that violence is the only solution to
problems. It damages the emotional life of boys. In a way that is similar to
Dworkin, hooks criticizes patriarchy in order to open a glimpse of utopia.
She develops a non-machismo form of masculinity based on mutuality and
reciprocity as a way out of patriarchal horror.30
The assignment I ask my students to complete in reference to Dworkin
and hooks requires them to interview family/friends about the particular
modes of gender relationships in their households. Who does what, when,
how and why? Students identify the ways in which their household is and is
not a dominator/patriarchal one. Students provide specific examples when
they report their findings to class. The point of this assignment is to help
students achieve some critical distance from aspects of their lives that may
be so close to them that they are unable to see what is going on. Oftentimes
those aspects of our lives that are the closest to us go unnoticed. Critical
distance from these practices is the precondition for honest evaluation and
transformation. Another way of putting this is to say that students connect
theory (e.g. Dworkin and hooks) to practice (e.g. their experiences and
life). Most of my students say that their families are “totally equal,” that
there is not a gender division of labor in their family because “everybody
does everything.” In response, I ask them to think about what happens
when they attend a BBQ or cookout (e.g. all of the men standing around
the grill and the women cleaning up and/or prepping side dishes in the
kitchen as helpers). Do the men and women separate? If so, why? Who grills
the meat? Why? Who is in the kitchen? Why? At the end of the exercise,
students come to different conclusions about gender relations at a south
Texas cookout. That is, they can see at least a few of the daily practices in
their homes with a new set of eyes. The goal is to build community through
discussions about shared experiences pertaining to growing up Latina.
What I call visceral learning is the third way I try to reach and develop
an intellectual relationship with my students that creates a space for their
voices.31 Given that my students have read Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La
Frontera, Dworkin’s Heartbreak and hooks’s The Will to Change, the stage
is set for a mode of learning that tests the willingness of students to enact
in the classroom core insights from the reading material. We start with a
30 See hooks, The Will to Change, 2004.

31 See Susan D. Blum, I Love Learning; I Hate School: An Anthropology of College (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2016).
citation from bell hooks. hooks states: “Learning to wear a mask is the first
lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns.”32 I inform the class that
we should see if what hooks says about masculinity is true. “Let’s play a
game,” I say. During this activity, students play with their gender mask.
Those who identify as male gather on one side of the classroom. Students
who identify as female gather on the other side. I ask male students to act
“feminine.” I ask female students to act “masculine.” I tell the students to
take a few moments to reflect on their counter-gender performance. Then,
I model both roles. When I announce that it is time for the theatre of gen-
der to commence, the students are not comfortable with this activity and
it stalls. No one is willing to play with gender masks, especially the men. I
inform the class that if we understand the claim that one’s gender identity is
largely a socially constructed performance that lacks an eternal and natural
essence, there is no reason why all of us could not simply just act differ-
ently.33 Doing so, I suggest, would help us feel in our bodies the power
of gender norms. The proper performance of gender identity is a powerful
script. We may not understand and recognize this. We automatically follow
it. If the unrecognized power of internalized gender roles prevents us from
playing a harmless game, then they must be powerful.
As I stated, this activity usually stalls and fails before it begins because
the students (especially those who identify as male) refuse to act feminine
(because it will be embarrassing). They claim that they do not know how
to do it. The failure of this exercise is in crucial respects the point of the
exercise. In class, we discuss the resistance we may observe on either side
of the gender divide. How the male students stand with their arms crossed,
chests puffed out and the annoyed looks on their faces. This sort of visceral
learning (e.g. a learning experience involving discomfort and vulnerability)
mobilizes the experience of embarrassment and vulnerability for learning.
The point is to overcome silence through laughter and humor.34 I also
want to engender voice via critical reflection on the invisible prison of our
socialization into rape culture and the naturalization of gender identity.
How do these three approaches help give students a voice? First, the
course reading material relates to the life experiences of students and that
32 See hooks, 2004, p. 153.

33 See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage
Books, 1989). See also Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004).
34 For the relationship between humor and critical reflection, see Simon Critchley, On
Humor (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 16–19.
166 W. W. SOKOLOFF
makes it more interesting to them. I have found that students are more
likely to say something about it if it is relatable. Second, students are
required to connect the reading material to their own experiences. When
they share these connections with the class, they talk with each other and
similarities and differences with other classmates emerge which, in turn,
continues the conversation and builds community. Additionally, when class
activities trigger discomfort (e.g. visceral learning), this raises the stakes of
the conversation about whatever is making students uncomfortable which
means that it is much harder for students to disengage from the conversa-
tion. These aspects arguably constitute the classroom as a utopian space.
I disrupt assumptions about what is supposed to take place in a classroom
environment (e.g. lecture). I open spaces for the voices of students so
that they can potentially contest some of the power relations woven into
their daily experiences. These activities disrupt the authority, hierarchy and
knowledge nexus that constitute traditional pedagogy.
Three Examples
Example 1. As the semester in my upper division Contemporary Polit-
ical Theory course was about at the halfway point, a student posed a
poignant question. He asked: “When are you going to teach?” I was not
being accused of being an “ignorant schoolmaster” (Rancière) but of being
an incompetent one.35 The student was clearly annoyed with my teach-
ing style. For the student, teaching meant lecturing. I was not lecturing.
Hence, I was not teaching. Apparently, the time I invested trying to get
students to speak via presentations, group discussions and in class debates
was at odds with the mental image of what this student believed should be
taking place in the classroom. I asked the student to say more about his
expectations about this class, and in particular, what he meant by teach.
This lead to a discussion about the point of the university, teaching, and
my intention to create a space for student voice. Ultimately, I am not sure
what caused the student to challenge me as an educator but I am glad
that he did. I view this as a sign of life, a moment of resistance and a sign
of precisely the type of defiant agency I view as a fundamental precondi-
tion for political engagement, even though the student’s question confuses
lecture/monologue with education/learning. The student’s question also
35 Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation,

trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).
contains agency (what bell hooks calls “talking back,” defined as “speak-
ing as an equal to an authority figure”).36 The student’s question, though,
simultaneously negates this agency by his yearning not to be included in
the discussion and preferring the passive subject position (as opposed to
the active one I was requiring). Nonetheless, the student’s question lead
to a positive discussion.
Example 2. According to a variety of thinkers (e.g. Sigmund Freud; Mar-
tin Heidegger), no comment or remark is without psychological and philo-
sophical significance.37 In my upper-division theory class, a female student
described what happened when she told her father about bell hooks’s main
arguments pertaining to patriarchy during a family dinner conversation.
hooks argues that patriarchal domination is quite common in the U.S. but
it is rarely discussed. Boys are taught to suppress their emotions, the father
solves problems through violence (and hooks claims they are therefore inca-
pable of love conceived of as mutuality), and that many relationships and
households are doomed to fail (substantiated by high domestic violence and
divorce rates in the U.S.).38 After listening to his daughter explain hooks,
she reported that her father exclaimed, “Our home is not like that.”
I informed the student that I thought this was an interesting comment.
I claimed that his decree, unfortunately, might confirm what it denies. The
student’s father arguably refused the vulnerability involved in phrasing an
open question about whether their home was in fact like the one bell hooks
was describing. He simply decreed that it was not. As opposed to asking
his daughter whether their home is a patriarchal one (an open question),
the father decreed that his home is not a patriarchal one. The dinner con-
versation pertaining to hooks ended via the father’s refusal to reflect on the
ways in which his home may in fact be a patriarchal one, possibly because it
made him feel uncomfortable and would require him to reflect on aspects
of life he had accepted as normal/natural.
36 See bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminism, Thinking Black (Boston, MA: South
End Press, 1989), p. 5.
37 See Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1990). See also Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan
Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).
38 According to the American Psychological Society, the divorce rate in the U.S. is 40–50%.
See https://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/, accessed on October 31, 2018. Every day, there
are 20,000 phone calls place to domestic violence hotlines. Intimate partner violence consti-
tutes 15% of all violent crime. See https://ncadv.org/statistics, accessed on May 15, 2019.
168 W. W. SOKOLOFF
During this class discussion, I never said this student’s father was a bad
person. However, I did say that there are different ways to have a con-
versation. For example, we can be open to different viewpoints and try
to learn more about them. Then, we can evaluate whether or not we can
learn something from them. We can be defensive when we encounter ideas
that require us to reflect on what we do and who we are. We can quickly
state that something does not apply to us. Because a student shared this
comment made by her father, the class discussion was lively. Other stu-
dents shared comments made by family members that were relevant to
the broader discussion about bell hooks and patriarchal masculinity. This
activity gives students critical distance from their upbringing so that they
can claim a space for themselves on at least partially their own terms. This
activity creates a space for the voices of my students.
One of my colleagues from the political science department happened
to be visiting my course on the day when a female student informed the
class about what her father said. My colleague included the following in his
teaching observation report:
In one of the most illuminating sections of the class, the instructor encour-
aged students to relate their personal experiences with being different and
evaluate their treatment and their reactions to it. This is a delicate situation.
It is one of those areas that many teachers (myself included) are uneasy about
broaching. Many students are understandably reluctant to divulge details
about their personal lives, particularly those about which they may harbor
some to considerable embarrassment. The instructor handled this with deli-
cacy, a soft touch, and considerable empathy. His probing led several students
to come forward with and discuss personal experiences that I would not have
thought they would divulge. Not only that, the other students in the class
reacted admirably. Their questions and responses were thoughtful and sup-
portive. As far as I could tell, no one felt threatened and no one felt misused
after the discussion.39
As this statement indicates, bridging course material with the lived expe-
riences of students is a great way to bring the course material to life and
stimulate modes learning that foster self-growth and voice. It can be gentle,
respectful and build a learning environment characterized by trust.
39 James Wenzel, “Classroom Observation Report on Contemporary Political Theory,”

November 20, 2017, unpublished.
Example 3. A female student informed the class that her father told her
she “looked dead.” I asked her to explain. Apparently, she was not wearing
any make-up. She also shared that her mother told her that her black back-
pack made her look “butch.” I suggested that perhaps these were harm-
less and innocent claims. For fun, I suggested that we analyze and discuss
these statements. A class discussion ensued about the mask of make-up that
paradoxically makes one’s face look alive when it is in fact fake and hidden
behind a Revlon veil. I suggested that conforming to the social dictate that
women always wear make-up (even while sleeping) might be the real form
of death because one is not living for oneself but submitting to expectations
pertaining to how women should appear. When this student’s father said
she “looked dead,” the social norm was speaking through him. A heated
discussion ensued and other female students shared their experiences per-
taining to the patriarchal enforcement of their proper appearance in terms
of attire and make-up. The backpack “butch” reference led to a discussion
about the limited range of costumes (exemplified in the ideal types of nun,
prostitute and mother [at least according to Gloria Anzaldúa]) mandated
as the proper forms for female gender identity.40 Another student said she
has to act dumb to get boys to like her. Another said that unlike many of
her friends, she refused to “use her body” at work to make tips and refused
to work at Hooters, Titled Kilt and other sports bars where women are
required to wear sexualized and revealing uniforms to earn tips by way of
the sexual stimulation of men.
Conclusion
These three examples illustrate the effectiveness of a critical intersectional
perspective on pedagogy. This involves including (1) a culturally relevant
curriculum; (2) critical autobiography; (3) feminist perspectives; and (4)
visceral learning as a way to open a space for the voices and experiences of
my students. Schools are spaces for learning but also for the development
of a positive self-concept and identity formation.41 Some of my colleagues
have voiced frustration with students. As opposed to blaming students, they
need to look to themselves. Students have so much to say if the context
allows them to speak. I continue to be impressed by the level of student
40 See Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 2007.

41 See Pizarro, 2005, p. 120.
170 W. W. SOKOLOFF
engagement in my classes. These practices lay the groundwork for student

voice but I have learned that they require patience, trust and believing in
students. Additionally, what worked in one class may not work in a different
one. Nevertheless, if students are not able to connect the course material to
their own lives, then they will probably not speak. If I fail to assign readings
that allow this, then that means I am the problem, not them. Just like an
elected official, I have to address the needs of my constituents. As a teacher,
I need to rethink what I am asking them to read. I need to rethink and
reinvent what I do in the classroom and learn more about the particular
people with whom I work. I need to get out of my comfort zone and put
myself in new situations that allow me to learn. I need to grow, learn and
listen in order to become a better educator. As Romand Coles puts it, “it
is often nearly impossible to hear another person or group of people well
if one has not spent time in their very different spaces and been proximate
to their discrepant conditions and modes of being.”42 To repeat, I am the
problem to the extent that I know nothing about my students and stand
in the way of students speaking. The authority, hierarchy and knowledge
nexus silences students. Pedagogy as the practice of equality opens a space
for the voices of students.
It is important to point out that the pedagogical approach I am defend-
ing can lead to painful realizations. A female student in my class informed
me that via Fanon, Freire, hooks, Dworkin and other authors, she had real-
ized her entire education thus far had been, to use her words, “completely
worthless.” Up to this point in her life, she was required to take tests about
material that had little or nothing to do with her lived experience. As a
result, learning lacked joy and relevance for her. I shared with her that
I had a similar revelation when I was an undergraduate. I explained that
it was not her fault. A real education was unlikely to occur in the typical
institutionalized settings where teachers adhere to modes of pedagogy that
perpetuate the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. I concluded by
saying that it was better to have this realization now than not to have it at
all because at least now she could take steps to acquire a different form of
education, one based on the practice of equality.
Someone might object and say my approach risks taking content out
of the classroom, or displacing it, in favor of turning the classroom into
some sort of political correctness therapy session. I understand these objec-
42 See Romand Coles, Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 223.
tions, especially in the current climate characterized by the obsession with

assessment and the right-wing domination of the media with pundits who
routinely demonize the professoriate. The design of my course addresses
both issues. Students have to master course content that includes reading
material from a wide variety of perspectives, write several argumentative
essays that require refutation of counter-arguments (meaning that all stu-
dents have to engage in critical thinking and acknowledge the weaknesses
of all positions), present course material to the class and bridge theory and
practice in a community engagement project. Assessment takes place via
grading rubrics that align with course learning outcomes. The classroom
atmosphere I construct around student voice is not a political correctness
therapy session. Rather, I ensure course content is relevant to the lives of
students. Via reading and discussions, students realize no position is com-
pletely correct, that politics is about arguing and providing reasons and
evidence, an always selective and imperfect practice.
This work involving a culturally relevant curriculum, critical autobiog-
raphy, feminist perspectives and visceral learning has helped me to over-
come silence in the classroom and position students as people capable
of understanding and resisting oppression. The type of agency this work
engenders—critical and defiant subjectivity—is clearly applicable to broader
social, political and economic contexts. Voice is a foundation stone for
political practice and consciousness. What we do and how we do it in
the classroom has significant and long-term political implications. Build-
ing the agency and voice of students in the classroom connects to the
emancipatory project. In a real democracy, all change comes from below,
requires voice and depends on the agency of everyone, including the silent
(or silenced) ones. In the classroom, students need to speak and we need
to listen. Pedagogical approaches that confront the intersectional bases of
oppression are best suited to addressing what I perceive to be the needs of
my students at UTRGV, especially the silent ones. What I have attempted
to do in the classroom does not put off utopia into the distant future.
Rather, I try to create the type of utopian pedagogy and practices in the
classroom today.
The risk with all of this is that what I am proposing is yet another form of
colonial domination but possibly worse in this case because it is wrapped in
the rhetoric of the emancipatory project. I disagree. Helping my students
speak and name their experiences disrupts any sort of pre-conceived agenda
and concept I may have about them. I work with my students from their
172 W. W. SOKOLOFF
point of departure but this ultimately depends on my capacity to create a

space for them to speak. This has required me to repeatedly reinvent myself
as an educator and deconstruct my privileged position as a white male as
a way to build trust in the classroom. Creating spaces for their voices is
my way to ascertain where they are so I can best help them. A critical
intersectional approach to teaching combined with everyday utopianism
turns the classroom into a space of freedom, joy and laughter. Shattering
the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus by including student voice
in the classroom opens a horizon for pedagogy as the utopian practice of
equality.

Political Science Pedagogy: Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice

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CRITICAL POLITICAL THEORY AND RADICAL PRACTICE

More information about this series at

Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

Cover illustration: Laurence Garçon/EyeEm

I worked with non-traditional students for five years at a satellite cam-

on teaching and learning. This oversight, namely, the failure to reflect on

political theorist, I hope this book appeals to scholars in the discipline

Edinburg, USA William W. Sokoloff

3Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism: Radical and Ecological Democracy in Neoliberal

Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), p. 3.

I thank Clyde W. Barrow, Daniel Chomsky, Mark Kaswan, James Martel,

particularly important. Finally, Romand Coles’s concept of game-trans-

I struggled in graduate school and as I tried to secure academic employ-

1 Introduction: Political Science, Democratic

2 Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice 27

3 Against the Socratic Method 51

4 Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas 69

5 Frantz Fanon’s Subversive Pedagogy 83

6 Teaching Political Theory ONLINE

7 Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution 129

8 Conclusion: Silence, Voice and Political Resistance

ADC A Dying Colonialism, Frantz Fanon

Introduction: Political Science, Democratic

Abstract This chapter examines the relationship between political science,

Like many other political scientists, I am interested in the relationship

1 Consider the following quote: “Historically, as indicated by the documentary record of

© The Author(s) 2020 1

sion between conflicting goals, namely, the education and reproduction of

I will not have a single person slighted or left away,

and conventional approach to pedagogy are compounded by the fact that

11 See Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992), p. 196.

terms of changes to the curriculum (e.g. feminism, multiculturalism) and

19 See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural

of the treatment of marginalized groups (e.g. people of color; poor peo-

22 Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal

it seeks to preserve, perpetuate and encourage widespread participatory

cized manner. For Grant, political scientists are “insufficiently reflective

Perhaps what I am saying is an exaggeration and the tide is already begin-

37 Consider the conclusion reached by Stephen G. Hartlaub and Frank A. Lancaster’s

and research assistant (RA) with experienced undergraduate teachers. This

blocks the educational egalitarianism and forms of citizenship needed for a

use Judith Schklar’s words, “an improbable scheme of salvation-through-

62 Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism (2016), p. 196.

65 I thank an anonymous reader of this manuscript for suggesting this point.

students as they emerge in a novel educational experience, the prison visit

tions. Finally, teaching political theory online provides a vantage point to

All of the chapters in this book insist on the importance of student

Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice

© The Author(s) 2020 27

politics of political theory notwithstanding the considerable effort by con-

to a 2010 national survey on major trends in political theory, Leo Strauss

Herbert J. Storing’s (ed.) Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics obscures

thus a contribution to a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy

Leo Strauss and the Re-discovery of Political

he enlisted the authority of the Western tradition to immunize this arché

16 Strauss, Rebirth, p. 12.

person.20 This aristocratic intellectual receives the highest form of educa-

meaning of the term is nothing but knowledge of one’s ignorance.”28 In

28 Strauss, On Tyranny, p. 196.

33 Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 75.

Sheldon S. Wolin and the Making of Political

48 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 21.

2 Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice 27

3 Against the Socratic Method 51

4 Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas 69

7 Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution 129

8 Conclusion: Silence, Voice and Political Resistance

ADC A Dying Colonialism, Frantz Fanon