Chapter Eight Beyond protest and polarization (original) (raw)

This chapter, chapter eight from the forthcoming Pedagogy of the Empowered (Vanderbilt 2018) explores the way a politics of public work, what we call citizen or co-creative politics, is beginning to appear in higher education. It argues that citizen politics is a path "identity versus post-identity" politics, a debate which now dominates public discussion of politics. I argue that the mainstream debate, represented by figures like Coates and Crenshaw on the identity side and Lilla on the post-identity side, is rooted in two contending epistemologies. On the one hand identity politics is closely associated with what might be called oppression studies, now an extensive literature growing from humanities fields (based on humans as story tellers and meaning makers, and exploring the social construction of identities of relatively marginalized groups). It finds extensive expression in Intersectionality. On other other hand, "post identity" politics, represented by Mark Lilla but also more broadly the social democratic outlook of figures like Tony Judt and the New York Review of Books, is grounded in scientifically based fields - natural and social sciences. Citizen politics has affinity with some elements of both, but highlights narratives of agency and an ontology of agency, not simply oppression; offers a positive approach to democratizing change, and finds expression in Civic Studies, which seeks a synthesis of empirical, cultura/normative, and action knowledge. Citizen politics also has kinship with "Disability Studies" (which in turn has certain resemblances with Intersectionality, but also significant differences). This is the reason that the Augsburg special education, founded with a disability lens, found such resonance with Public Achievement. See also "The New Nonviolence," a speech to the India Association of Minnesota, posted on Harry Boyte Academia.edu under public work.