A Critical Friendship
Brad Evans

I have a confession of sorts to make when writing this review of Henry A. Giroux’s On Critical Pedagogy. No living intellectual has had greater impact upon my work and thinking. I have had the distinct privilege of writing a book and a number of projects with Henry, which has given me a wonderful and privileged insight into his generosity of spirit and unrelenting drive in the search for justice. I also consider him one of my closest friends. So, in light of this, I think it’s fair to say the review is far from “objective” or “neutral”. But how awful would it be if it was written that way? 

The cover for Giroux’s 2nd edition features another of the brilliant artworks by the Viennese artist Gottfried Helnwein (Aktion Sorgenkind). Featuring a blinded child on a rundown street, her hands are tied by a ribbon that reach beyond the page. This image is perfect for a text that spans nearly half a century of critical effort. This unseeing child is the counterpoint to the blinded Oedipus who also shaped by the rubble of his times, knew his fate and had it mapped out in advance. The ambiguity to the image is striking. Should we look upon it from the Western gaze, invariably we would scan from left to right, hence witnessing the child present yet puppeteered by a force that is invisible and beyond the pale. All we can detect is the presence of some shadowy and crooked figure, who appears to be controlling her very existence with sinister intent. Should however we adopt the alternative movement, right to left, then we already note the binds that come from the past, while placing the child central to our concerns.

Helnwein’s child and Giroux’s work perfectly marry together in this aesthetic and critical moment. This is a child, which knows it’s been bound by the violence of history. And yet still she strikes a defiant pose. Stood in the street, with her knees already showing bruises and the traces of wounds, still she refuses to give up hope and finds possibility to recover something of her spirit. While her eyes may be covered, we get the sense she truly knows how to see the world. As such she knows that we are the ones so often veiled and unwilling to confront the intolerable.

The child remains truly symbolic for any viable conception of a critical education, which is not simply tasked with learning from the past but has the courage to bring thought to bear on the future. This is precisely what Giroux’s book gives to us. Meticulously moving across the landscapes of disposability, it exposes us to the violence of things that often remain hidden in plain sight.

Following in the spirit of the late Paolo Freire, what’s at stake in this book is not simply about petty disputes over the technical details of good, efficient, or even safe spaced education that has become a fetish for ideological purists. Revealing to us most fully how education is always a form of political intervention, critical pedagogy, like the critical child, may be beaten down, yet still it refuses to give in and still it continues to have the courage to ask power to account for itself.

The monochromatic appearance of the image only adds to the drama, for the untrained eye may look upon it in terms of the neutralisation of colour. There is no neutrality here. Or if there has been an extraction of colour, that is precisely what the dull forces of technocratic reason bring. But in these dark shadows – the dark times that Giroux continues to discursively paint throughout the text, that's where the optimism and hope can be found. Indeed, after reading the book, we might even be forgiven for seeing the young child as the empowered one.

That the cover image was produced back in early 1970’s is also perfectly in keeping with the book’s contents. Not only is this book a testament to a history of unrelenting and unselfish historical labour. It foregrounds the importance of historical testimony. The book in fact begins with a mediation on “the death of history”, forcing us to come face to face once again with the amnesia of certain claims to progress or what Giroux brilliantly terms elsewhere the violence of organised forgetting. There is no viable conception of the political without a considered understanding of the past. And it’s in his ability to act as a transgressive witness, where Giroux is at his best.

I do often wonder how Giroux maintains the energy and commitment for the plight of others. What is termed in one of the later chapters in the book “the politics of academic labour”, we might recall to also be a true labour of love. This book like Giroux’s wider corpus continues to give and yet asks for nothing in return. He continues to produce across the decades, driven by the rather simple premise that no human should be disposable. And it’s in this sense we can see that love is a political category. For it gives to others yet demands no material enrichment in return.

I am in no doubt that Helnwein’s image is meant to capture both the tragedy and love of existence. And like what the bandages conceal on the young child, these are the issues that course through the veins of this book. Such vitality should not be underestimated. On Critical Pedagogy is vital is so many ways. It is all about the blood we don't see spilling on the streets. It is all about the attempts to blind us from the truth. It is all about the shadows of history. And yet it is also all about defiance in the face of authoritarianism and the forces that continue to annihilate us on a daily basis. It is, in short, all about recovering the critical imagination.

I know in the short space allocated here that it is impossible to do justice to Giroux’s tremendous work. This was written out of respect, out of love and out of friendship for a public intellectual truly worthy of that name. But don't take my word for it. Take hold of the book, feel the weight of its historical reckoning in your hands, reflect for a while on the astounding art of Helnwein, then venture into the depths of the human condition and the need for an educated escape. Perhaps then, like myself, you will also find a critical friend in Henry Giroux.