Criticality, Ideology and Implications for Materials Development in EAP for Fine Art and Visual Cultures

BALEAP Biennial 2015 University of Leicester

Criticality, Ideology and Implications for

Materials Development in EAP for Fine Art and Visual Cultures

Gary Riley-Jones Goldsmiths, University of London

17 April 2015

What Does it Mean to be ‘Critical’?

1) Critical Thinking

2) Critical Pedagogy

3) Poststructuralist Critique

Critical Thinking1) Involves generalised skills and abilities for the ‘correct assessing of statements’ (Ennis, 1962: 83)2) Is ‘purposeful, reasoned and goal directed’ (Halpern, 1997: 4)3) Involves ‘requisite tendencies’ (Ennis in Siegel, 1988: 6)

BUT No Engagement with Ideology

• English is a neutral language; language in general is neutral; science and technology are neutral rather than cultural and social; academic institutions are neutral places rather than sites of struggle between competing interests… [where] its goals and activities are presented as inevitable and natural [my emphasis] (Benesch, 2001: 257)

Definitions of Ideology• ‘A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy’ (OED online)

• Foucault makes a similar claim with regard to ‘regimes of truth’ which are ‘upheld and perpetuated through the manner in which particular knowledge [is] legitimated within a variety of power relationships within a society’ (Darder et al., 2009: 7)

Critical Pedagogy1) Represents an engagement with the ideological 2) Is concerned with social change and collective action to achieve that change3) Offers a language of possibility which ‘raise[s] ambitions, desires, and real hope for those who wish to take seriously the issue of educational struggle and social justice’ (Giroux, 1988: 177)

Poststructuralist Critique

1) Is concerned with an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ (Lyotard, 1984: xxiv)2) Involves a suspension of judgment not because of a lack of knowledge but because it risks closure (Butler, 2002)3) Represents a shift from causal responsibility to conditions (Butler, 2004)

The Nature of Fine Art Education

Fine Art education is associated with a high degree of ambiguity which encourages an associated ‘intensified emotional component’ (Austerlitz, 2008: 21) which may lead to ‘a sense of anomie and other negative emotional responses’ (Sovic and Blythman, n.d.)

Implications1) Criticality involves an ability to cope

with ambiguity2) Criticality involves an understanding

that not all forms of ‘criticality’ are neutral but may involve an engagement with the ‘ideological’/regimes of truth

3) Criticality may involve a process of self-transformation

4) Students need to be aware of ALL these forms of criticality

Angela Davis’ Visit

‘Beyoncé is a terrorist’ bell hooks

Coldplay / Rihanna ‘Princess of China’ (2011)

Thinking in Terms of Binaries…

male not malewhite not white (black=Asian)subject objectactive passive= an exoticised/eroticised

foreign other

Beyoncé’s Feminist Interlude (Live in London, 2014)

Beyoncé ‘Yoncé’ (2013)

‘Beyoncé is a terrorist’ bell hooks

So what are the Teaching Implications?

1) An awareness that other forms of criticality exist aside from Critical Thinking and that an understanding of criticality is contingent

2) An awareness that not all questions are ‘answerable’; that there is no one simple ‘truth’

3) An awareness that criticality is not just about thinking in a certain way but involves an active ‘seeing’ of the world (and, ultimately, involves a self-transformation)