Giroux struck a chord with me in his criticisms of Gitlin, particularly his critique of class essentialism: “Moreover, not only does Gitlin limit social agency to the pristine category of class, he can imagine class only as a unified, pre-given subject position, rather than a shifting, negotiated space marked by historical, symbolic and social mediations, including the complex negotiations of race and gender” (Giroux 137). I am intrigued by this passage and idea due to my own experiences listening to colleagues speak of their own perceptions of class identification as TAs and higher ed workers. I remember one union meeting, one of the members claimed that they did not recognize themselves as a member of the working class citing that they possessed certain privileges due to their position as a student. Indeed, there must be the recognition of the privileges proffered by our positions as graduate students (the capacity to pursue certain research passions, access to material and intellectual resources, etc.), however, I also began to think of my other colleagues. Some of my peers have kids, some have families, dependents, partners, any number of elements which necessarily strain the meager financial resources provided through our monthly stipends. I began to ask, not out of any critique of my peer who initially gave their perception, at what point does one enter the working class? Am I working class? I do have many privileges but I also make low wages. However, I can also recognize I am fortunate in some regards to have this opportunity and that some unfortunately make lower wages than we do. Giroux's reminder that class is variable and ever-shifting is necessarily prudent to not only abstract cultural analysis but also our self-reflective analyses as scholars and subjects. This gets me to my main question. Giroux speaks much on the relationship between pedagogy and culture, how education is necessarily related to the understanding and changing of the terrains of cultural struggle. This implies in some sense an abstract self-analysis as a predeterminate condition for cultural analysis, the recognition of one’s identity as situated in a matrix of different social codes. However, I want to ask is there an even more baseline analysis we often overlook before we engage in abstraction? There are ways in which pedagogies which are engaged in political struggle must necessarily engage with the experiential, the affectual, the phenomenal before the immediate attribution of the conceptual. As educators, where should the preliminary stages of political pedagogy lie, should they be in the more generalized abstractions of the grand movements of culture or the processing of individual phenomenal events which must necessarily inform those movements if only granularly?
Following on from my first question, Kiang’s more anecdotal presentation of his pedagogical philosophies gets to what I am asking about above. There is a way in which this more narrative focused exposition of method forces not only the reader into a reflection on potential practices, but writing as an exercise must necessarily force the author into a confrontation and reflection with both their conceptualization of their methods, but also their own experiences which addresses my question in some regard on the issue of phenomenal self-analysis. This gets into my second question, when writing (on any subject; pedagogy, theory, experiences, etc.) what obligation does the intellectual have to deconstruct themselves?
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