'Pedagogical authority today? An interdisciplinary perspective on hegemony, education and the crisis of (reproducing) everyday life' is title of the next lecture in the Malta Review of Educational Research (MRER) Lecture Series. The lecture, that will be delivered by Janek Niggemann (Mag. A. in Educational Science), will be held on Thursday 4 May, at 17:30 in the Open Access Area, Faculty of Education (OH224).
Abstract
'All relations of hegemony are educational' (Gramsci), especially those forms of 'private sphere' that liberal theories tend to think of as the opposite of the public sphere of the state. Using Gramscian arguments Niggemann will figure out the status of educational/pedagogic authority as 'practical' mode of (re-)producing hegemony in everyday life. In family forms, make-over shows, in gender relations, in educational institutions one can identify micropolitics of building consensus in special ways of life, of morality, values, future perspectives, peer relations, education.
Starting with a brief overview of Gramsci's theoretical arguments on hegemony, state theory, culture and everyday life the thesis will be elaborated with taking recourse to early critical theory (Horkheimer) to highlight connections of family, character development and authoritarian structures as the framework for the analysis and critique of liberal and authoritarian concepts of education. Both approaches, Gramsci and critical theory, will be combined and used for a discussion on the role of pedagogical authority today. As a relational concept, pedagogical authority interacts with Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence. As a moment of building practical social consensus in everyday life, it is based on personal freedom. In this sense, authority is not the opposite of freedom, but a basis for either dominance or emancipation. It depends on 'belief', the ability to give or to take resources, to produce the practical legitimation through its everyday action as active or passive consensus.
This leads to a number of questions: Who are the protagonists of pedagogical authority, apart from all the 'great intellectuals'? What happens in times of eroding social terrains of consensus production, of polarisation and increasing restraints? How do we distinguish the analysis of authority from a concept of power relations, from domination and hegemony? Are there possibilities to critically develop meanings and functions of authority as leadership without leaders, as a mode of self-educating between analysing social power relations and educating each other democratically? What is the function of cultural forms such as make-over shows in spreading a special way of life as 'normal', 'contemporary' or 'sensemaking'? Who are the protagonists in the building of a new way of life and what would be intervening options for emancipatory educational politics? The relevance of Antonio Gramsci's approach to education and authority will be critically discussed. Niggeman will also make a case for the renewal of an analysis of authority with dimensions of social class, race/gender relations as well as the question, if authority works through the 'invisible white eye' (Stuart Hall).
