On Critical-Rhetorical Pedagogy: Dialoging with Schindler's List

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On Critical-Rhetorical Pedagogy:Dialoging with Schindler's ListBrian L. Ott a & Carl R. Burgchardt ba Department of Communication, University of Colorado Denverb Communication Studies, Colorado State University

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On Critical-Rhetorical Pedagogy:Dialoging with Schindler’s ListBrian L. Ott & Carl R. Burgchardt

The two prevailing critical paradigms in rhetorical and media studies can be characterized

as artistic and ideological. Despite their evident differences, both of these analytical modes

impose a final signified on the text. That is to say, each approach insists its critical

interpretation is authoritative. Consequently, neither mode is particularly well suited to

the broad aims of critical pedagogy, which values the dynamic and always-unfinished

interplay among text, citizen-student, and other. Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion

of dialogism, this essay offers an alternative critical paradigm that values the lived

experiences of students and promotes agentive citizenship. This paradigm, which we have

dubbed critical-rhetorical pedagogy (CRP), conceptualizes criticism dialogically and situ-

ates it in a much larger network of pedagogical and political discourses. To illustrate the

utility of CRP, this essay provisionally sketches how it might be practiced to critically

engage Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List.

Keywords: Bakhtin; Critical Pedagogy; Dialogism; Ideological Criticism; Schindler’s List

If we declare that we value different perspectives,. . . perspectives of those new to adiscipline or to academia, perspectives different from ours culturally, then we mustdevelop practices that also value those differences. (Cooper 532)

In his essay ‘‘Discourse in the Novel,’’ the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin

posited that an individual’s always-unfolding sense of self is characterized by a ten-

sion between two types of discourse. On one hand, there is ‘‘the authoritative word

(religious, political, moral; the word of the father, of adults and of teachers, etc.),’’

Brian L. Ott (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University) is a teacher-scholar of media and rhetorical studies in the

Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Carl R. Burgchardt (PhD, University of

Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. The authors wish to

thank Gordana Lazic and Larry Erbert for their willingness to dialog with and about Bakhtin, and Greg Dickinson

for his support and astute advice. They are also grateful to the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their

thoughtful comments and suggestions. Correspondence to: Brian L. Ott, Department of Communication, Cam-

pus Box 176, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO 80217-3364, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Western Journal of Communication

Vol. 77, No. 1, January–February 2013, pp. 14–33

ISSN 1057-0314 (print)/ISSN 1745-1027 (online) # 2013 Western States Communication Association

DOI: 10.1080/10570314.2012.719659

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and, on the other, there is the ‘‘internally persuasive word that is denied all privilege,

backed up by no authority at all, and is frequently not even acknowledged in society

(not by public opinion, nor by scholarly norms, nor by criticism)’’ (The Dialogic

342). The main concern of this essay is Bakhtin’s identification of the ‘‘sharp gap

between these two categories’’ (342)—between ‘‘reciting by heart’’ another’s dis-

course and ‘‘retelling in one’s own words’’ (341). Specifically, we will consider

whether contemporary rhetorical scholarship tends to privilege the former (authori-

tative discourse) over the latter (internally persuasive discourse), in both the conduct

of criticism and the pedagogy explaining it.

For more than three decades now, two critical modes have dominated the field

of rhetorical studies: artistic and advocacy. As Barbara Warnick clarified in 1992,

the aim of criticism in the artistic (or close reading) mode is ‘‘to demonstrate a

proper response to the text’s artistry,’’ while the aim of criticism in the advocacy

(or ideological) mode entails ‘‘revealing the text’s implicit ideology and engaging it

polemically’’ (232).1 Preferences regarding approach largely followed the selection

of critical objects. Scholars who investigated more traditional objects of study (such

as public speeches, essays, and declarations), for instance, tended to gravitate toward

the artistic mode, while those who examined less conventional objects of study (such

as media and popular culture) tended to adopt an ideological stance. This, in turn,

made the study of media virtually synonymous with ideological criticism in the field

of communication (Ott 199).

But the privileged status of ideological critique in evaluating media today hardly

matters, for despite dramatic differences in their core aims, the artistic and advocacy

modes of analysis share an important and overriding similarity, namely their tend-

ency to impose a final signified, and hence meaning, on the text. While mastery of

the text, whether by hermeneutic or ideological means, serves the aims of traditional

modes of criticism quite well (Barthes 147), we believe that it undermines the aims of

critical pedagogy.2 By imposing a limit on the text, the critic closes the writing,

transforms the text into an object for consumption, and locates her or himself as

the authority on its meaning (not to mention as the solitary site of knowledge pro-

duction). There is, in this context, nothing left for the reader=student to do other

than to accept, or impiously reject, the authorized reading.3 Ironically, even as tea-

cher-scholars seek to stimulate critical thinking, foster political engagement, and pro-

mote civic involvement, they may position students as passive receivers of textual

meaning through the criticism they produce and assign. How, we wonder, can stu-

dents be expected to engage their social world in personal, productive, and dynamic

ways, when their models of engagement favor fixed texts and authorized readings?

Nor are our models of criticism the sole source of difficulty. Frequently, the man-

ner in which criticism, regardless of mode, is incorporated into the classroom con-

tributes to what radical education reformer Paulo Freire called the banking model

of education. It does so by turning students ‘‘into ‘containers,’ into ‘receptacles’ to

be ‘filled’ by the teacher . . . in which the scope of action allowed to students extends

only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits’’ (72). The danger of the bank-

ing model, continued Freire, is that ‘‘the more students work at storing the deposits

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entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would

result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world’’ (73).

The development of a critical consciousness depends, then, on creating and promot-

ing opportunities for students to see themselves as active social agents, to engage and

interpret texts in relation to their own lived experiences, and to struggle meaningfully

to connect and understand texts within larger social contexts.

With this in mind, the central goal of this essay is to begin to theorize a mode of

critical praxis that seeks to facilitate and realize the aims of a critical pedagogy.

Because such a goal entails radically reforming existing modes=aims of criticism,

however, this essay is necessarily preliminary and provisional in nature. In an attempt

to reconcile the competing aims of rhetorical criticism (as it is currently practiced)

and critical pedagogy, we proffer the notion of critical-rhetorical pedagogy (CRP).

To illuminate this alternative paradigm, our essay unfolds in three stages. The first

stage outlines the general theoretical issues surrounding CRP. The second stage

sketches what CRP might look like in practice by taking up Steven Spielberg’s

award-winning 1993 film Schindler’s List. The third and final stage reflects on what

is at stake in our proposed model.

1. Charting a Critical-Rhetorical Pedagogy

In a Special Forum titled ‘‘Being Critical’’ in the March 2011 issue of Communication

and Critical=Cultural Studies, Kent Ono urged communication scholars to sharpen

‘‘the meaning of the word ‘critical’’’ by, among other things, clarifying the relation-

ship between ‘‘critical rhetoric’’ and ‘‘critical pedagogy’’ (91). In this section, we do

precisely that, arguing that critical rhetoric, as it is currently understood and prac-

ticed, lacks the dialogic dimension essential to critical pedagogy. But, first, we define

critical pedagogy and identify its central aims. Critical pedagogy is a transformative

and emancipatory educational practice=process that seeks, among other things, to

heighten critical consciousness, to give voice to the disenfranchised, to end human

suffering, and to foster more democratic forms of governance. As Peter McLaren

elaborated, it aims to promote the conditions in which one can ‘‘act consciously

in and on the world, changing it while simultaneously deepening one’s understanding

of it’’ (127). To achieve these aims, critical pedagogy enlists both demystification and

dialogism.

1.1. Demystification and the Discourse of Critique

Demystification is a form of textual analysis that utilizes critical theory to expose how

social discourses work to ‘‘empower some groups while disempowering others’’ (qtd.

in Harris 405). ‘‘The political and pedagogical importance of this form of analysis,’’

clarified Giroux, ‘‘is that it opens the text to deconstruction . . . [and] draws attentionto the ideologies out of which texts are produced’’ (Pedagogy 137). In rhetorical stu-

dies, this form of analysis has received its fullest expression in Raymie McKerrow’s

theorization of critical rhetoric, which combined a critique of domination with a

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critique of freedom (91). For McKerrow, a critique of domination has as its primary

aim ‘‘the process of demystifying the conditions of domination’’ (91) and, thus, like

critical pedagogy, ‘‘is concerned to teach people how they can recognize and resist

dominant ideology’’ (Brookfield 141). Elaborating on the goal of demystification,

Ira Shor commented that it is about equipping students with:

habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning,first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional cliches,received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes,social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event,object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media,or discourse. (129)

In the case of media texts, such ‘‘deep meaning’’ (ideology) is a product of (typically

unconscious) rhetorical invitations or inducements to sense making (e.g., representa-

tional and institutional practices). Thus, as Joe Marshall Hardin explained, ‘‘Interro-

gating rhetoric to uncover its motives and values’’ is crucial in teaching students how

‘‘to resist the uncritical acceptance of cultural representations’’ (7). Since any critical

praxis that aims at demystifying ideology is itself an ideological discourse, however, it

is vital that the critic also engage in a critique of freedom, which McKerrow wrote is a

mode of ‘‘permanent criticism—a self-reflexive critique that turns back on itself even

as it promotes a realignment in the forces that construct social relations’’ (91). At a

minimum, this means acknowledging one’s own ideological commitments and posi-

tionality as they are mediated by socially contingent networks of power.

While demystification plays a crucial role in critical pedagogy, it alone does not

lead to critical consciousness or social transformation, for the practice of demystifica-

tion is rooted primarily in polemical and debunking discourses. Such discourses

reflect what Kenneth Burke termed ‘‘frames of rejection’’ because they emphasize

an attitude of no more strongly than an attitude of yes (Attitudes 22). The pitfalls

of a pedagogy and a politics grounded solely, or even chiefly, in frames of rejection

are twofold. First, frames of rejection tend to stifle independent thought and action

(see Rueckert 119). For Burke, rejection entails a polemical and negativistic discourse

that stresses an absolutist view and, thus, ‘‘somewhat robs a thinker of his [sic] birth-

right, his right to ‘consume’ reality without regurgitation’’ (Attitudes 22–23). Second,

frames of rejection do not lend themselves well to social change. As a debunking dis-

course, rejection lacks ‘‘the well-rounded quality of a complete here-and-now philo-

sophy’’ (Attitudes 28) and, consequently, ‘‘destroys without offering constructive or

creative alternatives’’ (Rueckert 119).

If a pedagogy is to be truly liberatory, i.e., to facilitate critical thinking and advance

progressive social change, then it cannot be content simply to critique existing forms

of inequality and injustice. It must also work to foster agentive citizenship and

promote political alternatives. To do so effectively, Giroux maintained that critical

pedagogy must carefully balance a discourse of critique and associated practice of

demystification with a discourse of possibility and the process of dialogism (Pedagogy

120; see also Leonardo 15; Shor and Freire 11). Paul Duncum concurred, cautioning

that ‘‘critical theory translated directly into a critical pedagogy without the leavening

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of dialogue simply does not work’’ (248). In the next section, we explore the

importance of dialogism to a critical pedagogy and begin to suggest how criticism,

and specifically dialogic criticism, can be marshaled in its service.

1.2. Dialogism and the Discourse of Possibility

Whereas demystification is a form (or practice) of textual analysis rooted in critical

theory, dialogism is a mode (or process) of knowledge production based upon a

philosophy of the dynamic (and always-conflicting) interplay among beings, objects,

and contexts, as well as a belief in the ‘‘necessary multiplicity of human perception’’

(Holquist 22). Dialogism is derived from the theories of language, communication,

and self (and other) developed by Mikhail Bakhtin in the early twentieth century.

For Bakhtin, all of social life, and thus all the things that make up social life, could

be approached through the lens of dialog—the process by which unifying and disuni-

fying voices, viewpoints, and varieties of speech intersect and coexist in an utterance,

thereby reflecting the fundamental heteroglossia of language (The Dialogic 271–72).

In this view, meaning is never finished and static, but endlessly fluid and mutable.

The concept of dialogism is relevant to critical pedagogy on three distinct, but deeply

intertwined, levels: (a) the text, (b) the criticism of the text, and (c) the classroom

conversation surrounding both the text and formal criticism of it.

1.2.1. The text

Over the past few decades, scholars and teachers increasingly have acknowledged the

centrality of media and popular culture in the lives of their students (hooks 2). Recog-

nizing that popular culture is itself pedagogical, i.e., that it teaches students lessons

about the world and their place in it (Giroux and Simon 1–2), teachers in a wide var-

iety of disciplines and fields now regularly integrate media and popular culture into

their classrooms (Buckingham 8). While all texts ‘‘teach,’’ not all texts teach=speak

dialogically, which entails a ‘‘plurality of independent and unmerged voices and con-

sciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of valid voices’’ (Bakhtin, Problems 6). As Bakhtin

observed in his study of Dostoevsky’s novels, communication utterances range on a

continuum from dialogic or double-voiced utterances, which are more open and

unfinished, to monologic and single-voiced utterances, which are more authoritarian

and finalized (199; see also Volo�ssinov 72–73). Bakhtin had a clear preference for dia-

logic texts, which he saw as far less totalitarian and repressive than monologic texts

(see Holquist 34). All of this suggests that the empowering and democratizing capacity

of a dialogic pedagogy=politics is shaped to some extent by the very character of the

texts selected by teachers for curricular inclusion (see Luke 36).

1.2.2. The criticism

Just as the texts of popular culture—be they novels, films, television programs, music,

etc.—vary in dialogic degree, so too does the criticism surrounding those texts. That

having been said, ideological criticism (at least as it is currently practiced) tends with

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few exceptions toward the monologic because it suggests a unity of action and effects

in the text. Too often, ideological criticism mistakenly conflates the omnipresence of

a particular ideology with its omnipotence (Gunn, ‘‘Beyond Transcendence’’ 13),

leading to a monologic (polemical=absolutist) reading and rejection of the worldview

of a text. As with texts, Bakhtin favored dialogic modes of criticism, or what he

termed ‘‘contrapuntal analyses’’ (Problems 221), which enact an open-ended engage-

ment and exchange with the text, over more monologic (and dogmatic) modes,

which enforce a closing of the text and quelling of discordance voices.4 ‘‘Bakhtinism,’’

clarified Giles Gunn, ‘‘ultimately boils down to a question of the polyphony of our

interpretations, our discourses, our critical practices’’ (The Culture 146). Since both

texts and criticism vary in dialogic degree, dialogic criticism is all the more important

to a critical pedagogy when engaging a monologic text. In addition to engaging the

text dialogically, a dialogic criticism would also place itself in dialog with other

criticisms of the same text.

1.2.3. The classroom

The third level of socio-linguistic utterance at which dialogism is important is that of

classroom practice. As with texts and the criticism of texts, the aesthetics of teaching

is both pedagogical and political. At the level of classroom practice, a dialogic

pedagogy entails a reciprocal exchange between teachers and students, utilizing an

‘‘interrogative framework’’ to engage students’ lived experiences in the production

of knowledge and understanding (Giroux, Pedagogy 140). Elaborating on this point,

Ira Shor and Paulo Freire wrote, ‘‘Dialogue is the sealing together of the teacher and

the student in the joint act of knowing and re-knowing the object of study . . . .[I]nstead of transferring the knowledge statically, as a fixed possession of the teacher,

dialog demands a dynamic approximation towards the object’’ (14). Ideally, dialog in

this mode serves as the basis for social and political action. As Biren Nagda, Patricia

Gurin and Gretchen Lopez elaborated,

students and teachers engaged in dialogic pedagogy can become active citizens,challenging injustices both within and among themselves, and in the social worldaround them. The processes of reflection and dialog are central to the educationalendeavor. Reflection, both self and social, coupled with dialog can foster a criticalconsciousness by which students and teachers see their experiences situated inhistorical, cultural, and social contexts and recognize possibilities for changingoppressive structures. (168)

As the forgoing discussion suggests, texts, criticism, and classroom practice are all key

sites of pedagogy, and hence they can all profitably be approached from a dialogic per-

spective. To date, critical pedagogy has concerned itself primarily with dialogism at the

level of classroom practice. But dialogism also has an important role to play in critical

pedagogy at the level of curricular choices concerning what types of texts and criticism

to include. It seems to us that a student presented with a monologic text and an equally

monologic reading of that text is unlikely to actively or productively participate in

dialog about that text, no matter how open and well intentioned the teacher.

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Thus, we believe rhetorical and media critics, through the practice of dialogic criti-

cism, have an important contribution to make to the emancipatory and progressive

aims of critical pedagogy. Moreover, dialogic criticism is just one element of what

we are calling a critical-rhetorical pedagogy. The praxis we are suggesting sees schol-

arship and teaching as unified endeavors. As such, they involve careful reflection on

the public pedagogy of popular cultural texts selected for criticism, the pedagogy of

criticism itself, and the recognition that both discourses may find their way into the

classroom, where teachers and students will then potentially engage with them

dialogically. In the hopes of clarifying what a critical-rhetorical pedagogy might entail,

in the next section we provide an initial sketch of the process in relation to the film

Schindler’s List.

2. Dialoging with Schindler’s List: Toward a CRP

Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List is an epic historical tale of Oskar

Schindler, a German industrialist and war profiteer, whose gradual recognition of

the unspeakable suffering and inhumanity he witnesses compels him to preserve the

lives of over a thousand Polish Jews during World War II. By industry and artistic

standards, the three-hour, sixteen-minute film was an astonishing success in the

United States and in some parts of the world (Rapaport 55; Sterling 70). In addition

to being one of the top-grossing films of the year, it captured the New York Film

Critics Award, Golden Globe, and Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. The cul-

tural and political significance of Schindler’s List cannot be measured solely in terms of

its popular reception or critical accolades, however, impressive though they may be.

Ultimately, we selected this particular text to explore the notion of a critical-rhetorical

pedagogy because—functioning as both an informal and formal educational text—the

film has fundamentally influenced ‘‘the way our culture understands, historically

orders, and teaches how the Holocaust should be remembered’’ (Berstein 432).

Schindler’s List functions as an informal educational text simply by virtue of its

status as a film. Reflecting upon the unique role of cinema in society, Giroux argued

that ‘‘not only does film travel more as a pedagogical form compared to other

popular forms (such as television and popular music), but film carries a kind of

pedagogical weight that other media do not’’ (‘‘Breaking’’ 588). Elaborating further,

bell hooks wrote,

Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of manypeople. It may not be the intent of a filmmaker to teach audiences anything, butthat does not mean that lessons are not learned. . . .my students learned moreabout race, sex, and class from movies than from all the theoretical literature Iwas urging them to read. (2)

Despite its limited theatrical release, an estimated twenty-five million Americans

viewed Schindler’s List in theaters (Rapaport 55). Less than three years after its initial

showing, another sixty-five million viewers saw the film on television when NBC—in

an unprecedented televisual event—aired it in prime time, uncut and commercial

free.5

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From the beginning, Schindler’s List was promoted, sanctioned, and utilized as a

resource for teaching about the Holocaust. Following its debut, Steven Spielberg

repeatedly encouraged the adoption of Schindler’s List in formal educational settings.

For example, during his March 1994 acceptance speech for the Best Picture Oscar,

Spielberg appealed to millions of viewers worldwide to raise awareness and historical

knowledge of the Holocaust: ‘‘Please listen to the words and the echoes and the

ghosts. Please teach this in your schools’’ (qtd. in Diegmueller 13). To ensure that

the film would, in fact, be taught, Spielberg and the Shoah Foundation, which he

established, subsidized free theater screenings of Schindler’s List for high school

students across the country (Diegmueller 13; Rapaport 61–62). Indeed, almost two

million students in the US attended these showings, ‘‘preceded and followed by class

instruction and discussion’’ (Feinberg and Totten 365–66).

To this day, educators at a variety of levels widely screen Schindler’s List as means of

teaching about the Holocaust. In fact, according to a 2007 survey of high school His-

tory teachers in Wisconsin and Connecticut, over one-third of them reported showing

Schindler’s List regularly to their students. When asked how teachers employed the

film in the classroom, they replied as follows: 83% used it as a means of cultivating

‘‘empathy’’; 76% used it to teach about the ‘‘subject matter’’; 38% used it as an ‘‘atten-

tion grabber’’; and 7% listed ‘‘other’’ (Marcus and Stoddard 313). But only a ‘‘hand-

ful’’ of ‘‘teachers mentioned showing a movie as a way to examine film as a

representation of history or as an alternative source of historical information.’’ These

survey results imply that many teachers present Schindler’s List uncritically. In

other words, they may be letting the film speak for itself (Marcus and Stoddard

311–312). Often shown in conjunction with Holocaust Awareness Weeks at high

schools or colleges, Schindler’s List has become, by design or default, a quasi-official

condensation of the entire history of the Holocaust.6 In light of the singular impor-

tance of Schindler’s List in Holocaust education (and thus public memory construc-

tion), we turn now to the various ways the film might be mobilized to heighten

critical consciousness, foster an enhanced sense of civic responsibility, and ‘‘promote

dialogue as the condition for social action’’ (Giroux, Pedagogy 139).

2.1. A Dialogic Text?

Since films are powerful sites of public pedagogy, teacher-scholars might begin by ask-

ing how well does a particular film ‘‘prepare students to function as critical agents cap-

able of understanding, engaging, and transforming those discourses and institutional

contexts that closed down democratic public life’’ (Giroux, ‘‘Breaking’’ 586). In the case

of Schindler’s List, the teacher-scholar would want to assess the extent to which the text

aids students in connecting memory (of the Holocaust) to ongoing political events, to

social conscience and morality, and to the self in society. In other words, does the film

readily create the self-reflective spaces necessary for subjects of history, in this case

citizen-students, to insert themselves as agents of memory? In short, is the text dialogic?

On the surface, Schindler’s List would seem to have strong dialogic potential. It

was, after all, based upon a novel, which, according to Bakhtin, is a genre that has

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a unique capacity to present a polyphony of different (characters’) voices that do not

merely ‘‘serve as a mouthpiece for the author’s voice’’ (Bakhtin, Problems 7).7 And,

indeed, Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel, originally titled Schindler’s Ark, did incorpor-

ate a wide array of discordant voices, drawing upon interviews with fifty Schindler

survivors, information supplied by Oskar’s friends, family, and wartime associates,

and a wide assortment of papers, letters, and testimonies regarding Schindler

deposited at Yad Vashem (Keneally 9–10). But when novels are adapted into screen-

plays and produced as films, characters and subplots are commonly combined or

eliminated, and the vibrant plurality of voices and perspectives that comprise a story

are often lost. In her critical comparison of Spielberg’s film with Keneally’s novel,

Lynn Rapaport argued that Schindler’s List significantly simplifies the story by

‘‘focus[ing] on Schindler as rescuer, showing the world through his perspective’’

(59; see also Fogel; Klugherz).

The shift from a more inclusive set of voices, an ambivalent treatment of Oskar

Schindler and his motives, and a broader social context (as reflected in the novel)

to a focus on Schindler as a heroic savior whose perspective is often homologous with

the camera (as reflected in the film) significantly undercuts the dialogic potential of

the text. As such, it is important for teacher-scholars and their students to explore the

ways in which a text encourages dialog or forecloses it. Though such a conversation

will necessarily be shaped in important ways by the particular text in question, as well

as the context of its reception, there are nonetheless a number of narrative features

that might be highlighted=problematized to initiate such a conversation. Though

by no means a comprehensive list, we offer narrative scope, slant, and salience as

three possibilities in this regard.

2.1.1. Narrative scope

Teachers can begin by reminding students that stories are, by their very nature, selec-

tive. They include some views and events, and exclude others; thus, stories (re)present

a necessarily incomplete history. In assessing the narrative scope of an historical film,

i.e., what is selected for inclusion and exclusion, it is important to consider both the

perspective it adopts and the context it supplies. Schindler’s List, for instance, tends to

privilege the perspective of the perpetrators over the victims by viewing the Holocaust

through the eyes of those who had the power to influence life and death (Gourevitch

51). ‘‘There is no convincing attempt,’’ according to Geoffrey Hartman, ‘‘to capture a

glimpse of the daily suffering in camp or ghetto: the kind of personal and characteriz-

ing detail which videotestimony projects record through the ‘lens’ of the survivors’

recollections’’ (128). As such, it may be difficult for the Jewish characters to elicit

identification or empathy, and Holocaust history risks being inscribed in memory

from the perspective of the perpetrators. While this perspective is, no doubt, histori-

cally significant, it is also biased and incomplete, and students should be encouraged

to think about the consequences of such a limited perspective. Does the film encour-

age identification with Jewish victims? Does it sensitize viewers to the inhumanity and

suffering inflicted by the Nazis?

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The scope of the film is also limited with regard to historical context. With no

attempt to explore the conditions in Germany that prompted and allowed the Nazi

rise to power, the racism that informed the Nazi Final Solution, or the Nazis’

persecution of Gypsies, the handicapped, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, Soviet

prisoners of war, political dissidents, Poles, and others, the historical absences in

Schindler’s List are legion. For example, Andrew Nagorski pointed out that, despite

its Polish setting, the film fails to examine the pivotal history of relations between

Polish Jews and Catholics. Such an absence, he concluded, was problematical:

Despite Spielberg’s earnest appeals that the movie be seen as part of a broader studyof the Holocaust, most viewers will indeed see it in isolation, and they mayerroneously generalize from it. The movie’s narrow [historical] construction there-fore constitutes its primary weakness as an educational tool. (157)

Nagorski’s concern seems especially warranted given the image portrayed by one

of the few scenes to depict Polish Catholics. As Jews are herded into the ghetto, a

Polish man hurls horse dung at them, while a young girl hatefully shouts, ‘‘Good-bye,

Jews! Good-bye, Jews!’’ Generalizing from scenes like this one, viewers may incor-

rectly conclude that the only role Poles played during the war was to applaud Nazi

acts of terror. Indeed, as powerful as synecdoche may be as a rhetorical trope, the

potential for distortion and inaccuracy is very high when part of a story is taken

for the whole.

2.1.2. Narrative slant

In addition to scope, all stories are shaped by their narrative slant. Slant describes the

‘‘psychological, sociological, and ideological ramifications of the narrator’s attitudes’’

(Chatman 143). Slant should not be confused with filter, which describes the percep-

tions, attitudes, and emotions of characters within a story (Chatman 144). So, while

Oskar Schindler views the Holocaust through a particular filter, the narrational discourse

views him and his perceptions through a particular slant. Slant refers to how a story is

told and to how that telling encourages viewers to perceive and feel about the events,

actions, characters, and characters’ experiences and perceptions within a story (Chatman

143–44). Key questions that educators might pose in this regard are: What is the

narrative slant of Schindler’s List, and what are the likely implications of that slant for

processes of memory work (i.e., how we remember the past) and agentive citizenship?

The action in Schindler’s List is structured around two primary characters: the pro-

tagonist and reluctant hero Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) and the antagonist and

Nazi commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes). The general narrative slant valorizes

Schindler’s perspective, while vilifying Goeth’s, reducing the moral action of the film

to a simple good vs. evil dichotomy. Thus, teacher-scholars could profitably ask stu-

dents to reflect upon the pedagogical and political consequences of being invited to

identify with a highly idealized Oskar Schindler (Samuels 61). Does the slant of the

film erase the moral ambiguities inherent in human action? In inviting viewers to

identify with an individual social actor, Oskar Schindler, and subsequently valorizing

his actions, how, if at all, does the film detract from the importance of collective social

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responsibility, as well as larger issues of community and social conscience? Does the

film readily encourage persons to reflect on the role and responsibility of groups

and nations when confronting human rights violations and genocidal acts? And, if

not, what are the consequences of locating social responsibility for mass injustices

in individuals? By exploring questions such as these, teacher-scholars can help

students to reflect on how the slant of the film structures their own sense of ethical

responsibility.

2.1.3. Narrative salience

A third matter of concern is narrative salience, or the degree to which Schindler’s List

challenges viewers to connect memory of the Holocaust to ongoing events and to

think critically about the implications of that memory for social responsibility and

political policy. Given the human rights violations, including genocidal acts, cur-

rently taking place around the globe, such connections deserve serious attention

and reflection. Since the chief witness to the horrors of the Holocaust is also the

one who saves Jews from these horrors in Schindler’s List, Samuels argues that the

very act of watching the film (and identifying with an idealized Schindler) may feel

like an ‘‘ethical act of heroic proportions’’ (62), thus foreclosing future action. In

other words, the strong sense of formal resolution brought about by the film’s nar-

rative closure may make reflecting on the connections between this tragedy and other

acts of nationalism, racism, and violence more difficult. In failing to invite viewers to

connect the Holocaust with contemporary global politics, viewers might be less likely

to see themselves as agents of memory.

Moreover, viewers may draw the questionable conclusion that the Holocaust,

while terrible and horrifying, was simply an historical aberration. By portraying

Goeth, a stand-in for all Nazis, as psychotic, Schindler’s List narratively tends to

relieve viewers of any social complicity for failing to intervene in similar situations

today. In other words, since the Nazis were crazy, we need not be concerned about

the rise of totalitarianism in the here and now. Such a conclusion has been most

famously challenged by Hannah Arendt, who characterized Nazi atrocities not as

insanity, but rather the prosaic actions of ordinary, dutiful people—what she termed

the ‘‘banality of evil.’’ Students should be invited to consider what is at stake, then, in

representing the Nazis as inherently evil, rather than as ordinary persons who system-

atically carried out the most horrific human atrocities.

2.2. Criticism of Schindler’s List

In light of its past and ongoing cultural influence, it is hardly surprising that Schind-

ler’s List has received substantial attention and scrutiny from academics in a variety of

disciplines. Several of the more prominent criticisms of the film appeared in the 1997

volume Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List, edited by Yosefa

Loshitzky.8 Since that time, the film has continued to receive considerable academic

attention in essays and books. Though disciplinarily diverse, the preponderance of

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scholarship on Schindler’s List seems concerned with judging the film artistically and

politically. That those judgments have been almost universally negative on the part of

academics has resulted, according to MiriamHansen, in the ‘‘vehement rejection of the

film on the part of critical intellectuals’’ (emphasis added, 295).9 Among the common

critiques of the film are that it stages several audience-pleasing but unlikely last-

minute rescues; that it focuses on the survival of a few rather than the death of many;

that it ‘‘Americanizes’’ the Holocaust10; that it tells its story from the point of view of

the perpetrators rather than the victims; that it trivializes the scope and depth of

horror and suffering; and that it attempts to represent the ‘‘unrepresentable’’ (302).

The extant criticisms of Schindler’s List pose two difficulties for critical pedagogy.

First, driven chiefly by ideological critique (and thus a frame of rejection), the critical

responses to the film are largely monologic. Elaborating on this mode, Bakhtin

explained:

Ultimately, monologism denies that there exists outside of it another consciousness,with the same rights, and capable of responding on an equal footing, another andequal eye (thou). For a monologic outlook (in its extreme or pure form) the otherremains entirely and only an object of consciousness, and cannot constitute anyother consciousness. . . .The monologue is accomplished and deaf to the other’sresponse; it does not await it and does not grant it any decisive force. . . .Monologuepretends to be the last word. (Problems 318)

Bert Cardullo’s criticism of the film in The Hudson Review demonstrates well the

absolutist and authoritarian character of monologic criticism. Intoned Cardullo:

What makes Schindler’s List in the end an artless film? . . .All that Schindler’s Listdoes is congratulate its audience for not being anti-Semitic, for deploring the evilof the Nazis—an evil that they in their virtue would never be capable of, ofcourse. . . . Schindler’s List, then, is a sentimental melodrama, nothing more, andas such takes its ignoble place alongside all the other anti-German, pro-Ally(or-Occupee) propaganda films made during the Second World War and long afterit. (123)

The absolutism (closed, final voice) in Cardullo’s review is evident in his totalizing

linguistic choices, ‘‘All that Schindler’s List does . . . ’’ and ‘‘Schindler’s List, then, is a

sentimental melodrama, nothing more’’ (emphasis added, 123), which admit no

possibility for alternative readings and experiences of the text.

In addition to failing to engage the film dialogically, the majority of the scholarship

on Schindler’s List poses a second difficulty for critical pedagogy by failing to engage

other scholarly voices dialogically. Critics of Schindler’s List are neither in dialog with

the film (i.e., it is unable to change them) nor with other critics of the film. The danger

in exposing students to criticism that is autonomous, as well as absolutist and auth-

oritarian, is that it functions rhetorically to close down possible readings of the criti-

cism, in addition to possible readings of the text. The notable exception (which serves

to affirm the rule) to the autonomous and authoritarian responses to the film is Eric

Sterling’s 2002 essay in Film & History. Sterling, for instance, engaged with each of the

major criticisms of the film, not simply for the purpose of refuting them, but for

providing alternate interpretations. Sterling also found a less singular voice in the film

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than most critics, noting that ‘‘Spielberg uses various viewpoints’’ (66). In listening,

giving weight, and responding to the various voices about and within the film, Sterling

moved us in the direction of something approaching dialogic criticism. But, as we

explore in the remainder of this section, there is room and reason to go further still.

Because this essay is primarily a theoretical and metacritical exploration of a

critical-rhetorical pedagogy, we do not have adequate space to undertake a detailed

dialogic criticism of the film. So, instead, we briefly reflect upon what such a critical

praxismight entail. We stress the word ‘‘might’’ because reducing dialogic criticism to

a simple, singular method runs counter to the spirit of dialogism. There are, neverthe-

less, two crucial features of criticism in this mode: unfinalizability and answerability.

For Bakhtin, unfinalizability reflected his overriding belief that ‘‘nothing conclusive has

yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not

yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future and will always

be in the future’’ (Problems 166). Bakhtin’s commitment to the essential openness and

endlessly changing character of all things grew from the recognition that the interac-

tion between self and other, subject and object, and art and life, is dynamic and

ongoing (see Macintyre Latta 187). Ultimately, such interaction is, or ought to be,

according to Bakhtin, governed by answerability.

Answerability possesses a double meaning. On the one hand, it refers simply to the

dialogic nature of all interaction, which calls for continuous response (i.e., to answer

the other). On the other hand, it suggests (ethical) responsibility to the other (i.e., to

be answerable to the other). Answerability, then, involves both an active engagement

with—and a moral obligation to—the other (Rothschild Ewald 340–41). The princi-

ples of unfinalizability and answerability are not limited exclusively to the I-Thou

(self-other) relation, however. They can also profitably be applied to author (critic)

and art (object) relations. Critics operating in the dialogic mode appreciate that

neither themselves nor texts are ever finished and, thus, are mutually imbricated in

the production of one another. Consequently, dialogic criticism is necessarily a

momentary performance of self as responsive and responsible to the text. What we

are suggesting is not the familiar idea that texts are polysemous (open to multiple

meanings), but that both text and critic are creative expressions of dialog. So whereas

McGee argued critics construct texts, we propose that texts are equally constitutive of

critics=readers. Hence, criticism in the dialogic mode involves not an attempt to

master or conquer the text, but to stage a dialogic interplay. Such an exchange may

literally take the form of a dialog about (or with) the film, but, regardless of form,

it will involve multiple voices, each with equal weight and responsive=responsible

to others.

2.3. Schindler’s List in the Classroom

As a relatively monologic text, it is predictable (though not inevitable) that much of

the criticism of Schindler’s List would function to further ‘‘monologize it into a single

theme or moral imperative’’ (Morson and Emerson 255). But given this double clos-

ing of the text, it is crucial that, when teacher-scholars take up this film (or any film

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for that matter) in the classroom, they not treat it, once again, in a monologic

fashion. The temptation to do so is, of course, great, both because of the character

of this particular text and the dominance of the monologic classroom paradigm

(Rothschild Ewald 343–44). Describing his own treatment of Schindler’s List in teach-

ing about the Holocaust, Robert Samuels commented that students frequently

resisted his interpretation, making his task primarily about helping students to

unblock or overcome their resistances (63). Samuels, like so many critics of the film,

seems to believe that he has uncovered the film’s final and unchanging meaning, and

that it is just a matter of getting students to accept his interpretation, no matter how

strongly their own experiences may differ.

In contrast, we believe that, if educators hope to ‘‘encourage students to partici-

pate more actively in the world around them—thinking more, engaging with others,

and applying concepts to real-life issues’’ (Nagda et al. 187), then a more dialogic

approach to Schindler’s List in the classroom is needed. Thus, we conclude our dis-

cussion of the film by suggesting three potential ways educators might actively

engage student voices and experiences regarding Schindler’s List: additional stories,

alternative voices, and associated events.

2.3.1. Additional stories

As a necessarily partial treatment of the Shoah, Schindler’s List ought to be positioned

and treated as aHolocaust story, not theHolocaust story (Sterling 64). Keeping this in

mind, educators have a responsibility to augment the film with additional historical,

social, political, and economic context. As Feinberg and Totten clarified, ‘‘As with the

study of all history, it is essential to place the study of the Holocaust within a historical

context that will allow students to see the relationship of political, social, and econ-

omic factors that had an impact on the times and events that resulted in that history’’

(325). At a minimum, they maintained, this entails familiarizing students with the

history of anti-Semitism, the influence of the German defeat in World War I, and

the consequences of the Great Depression for Germany. Situating the film within a

broader set of discourses surrounding the Shoah is essential, especially given the

universalizing tendency of the film’s narrative. Since any ‘‘contextualizing’’ discourses

will entail their own ideological biases, however, it is crucial that students be invited to

reflect upon and voice their perspectives concerning both the ideology of these

discourses and the way they contest, affirm, or modify an understanding of both

Schindler’s List and the Holocaust. Students’ interventions here will serve the added

benefit of sensitizing them to the political character of curricular choices.

2.3.2. Alternative voices

In light of its ideological slant, Schindler’s List must be supplemented with Holocaust

stories narrated from different perspectives. Feinberg and Totten asserted that it is

especially vital for students to be exposed to first-person accounts by survivors, lib-

erators, and those who perished as a way of personalizing the horrors of genocide and

appreciating the devastating effects of prejudice and racism (329). This might include

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letters, diaries, memoirs, interviews, oral histories, and artistic works such as novels,

plays, poetry, and film documentaries. Many of these materials lend themselves to

student readings and performances, which can meaningfully engage the body as a site

of knowing. Similarly, field trips to institutions such as the Holocaust Memorial

Museum in Washington, DC, provide experiences that are highly personalized,

immediate, and particular.

Further, it is important that each perspective not take ownership of particular

groups. Jews should not be perceived only as victims; Germans should not be viewed

exclusively as Nazis; and Poles and Ukrainians should not be treated solely as col-

laborators. Within each of these groups, resistance played a significant role in shaping

history. In expanding the range of narrative voices, the goal is to understand the

Holocaust from ‘‘multiple sides’’ and to think critically about the dangers of racism,

nationalism, and other forms of separatist politics, as well as the perils of moral

passivity. This is also an excellent opportunity for students to learn about their

own family histories, to talk about their personal backgrounds and experiences,

and to begin to reflect on how their own class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality,

etc., positions them in relation to power and knowledge that, in turn, influences

the way they make sense of the world and enables or constrains how they behave.

2.3.3. Associated events

Educators should also encourage students to connect the events storied in Schindler’s

List with contemporary geopolitical affairs and events. The Holocaust was neither

accidental nor inevitable, and students should be prompted to explore how the choices

of individuals, groups, and governments motivated by prejudice and hatred allowed

for violence, and how such motives continue to shape ongoing political situations

around the globe. The goal is not merely to help students remember, but to challenge

them to engage in memory-work—to use their knowledge and understanding of the

Holocaust to evaluate contemporary socio-political contexts and reflect upon what

their ethical responsibilities are as global citizens. One resource designed to improve

the pedagogical value of the film in this regard is the short study guide, Facing History

and Ourselves: A Guide to the Film Schindler’s List, commissioned by MCA Pictures.

The sixty-four-page guide, which is divided into three sections (Pre-View, Focus on

Schindler’s List, and Post-View), provides additional readings and materials that

encourage students to explore topics such as identity and racial hatred, and to consider

moral and ethical questions about cults of power and the indifference of bystanders.

The study guide should not be the sole supplemental material, however, as much of it

seeks impressionistic responses rather than sustained, critical engagement (Goldstein

362–64).

Students can perhaps play the most active part in their education by drawing con-

nections between the events (re)presented in Schindler’s List and other, no-less-

mediated events currently taking place around the globe. For instance, in evaluating

what is just or ethical in a particular context, students can draw on the personal

moral dilemmas they have faced in their own lives and share how their own histories

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and contexts informed, influenced, and delimited their choices. This is, in short, a

valuable opportunity for students to become co-producers of knowledge, to act as

agents of memory, and to promote consciousness of freedom.

3.0. Extending the Dialog

It is both uncommon and unfashionable for rhetorical and media critics today to write

about pedagogy or, at least, to write principally about pedagogy. So, why, readers of

this piece may wonder, did the authors not spend more time conducting ‘‘criticism’’

of the text? It is precisely what this question takes for granted that our essay has sought

to call into question, namely the idea that criticism and pedagogy are somehow inde-

pendent of one another—that writing and teaching about a thing are distinct and

detached activities. To the contrary, as we have argued throughout this essay, criticism

(as with the texts it addresses) is fundamentally pedagogical, and, even if scholars are

criticism’s chronologically first audience, students and ordinary people are criticism’s

‘‘logically primary audience’’ (Brummett 102). To observe that criticism is itself peda-

gogical is not only to recognize that it teaches us about things, but also to acknowledge

that it teaches us how to relate to and interact with things.11 Criticism models philo-

sophies of communication, processes of knowing, and ways of being with and in the

world. Hence, we return to our opening reflections on the seemingly oppositional

modes of criticism we identified as ‘‘artistic’’ and ‘‘advocacy.’’ Employing monologic

discourses, both of these approaches model an authoritarian praxis that is poorly

suited to the sensibilities of critical pedagogy.

As an alternative to these two critical paradigms, we proffered the notion of a

critical-rhetorical pedagogy. CRP conceives of criticism as a dialogic encounter

with(in) a much wider (and always unfolding) constellation of discourses involving

the text, critical commentary on the text, and classroom conversation surrounding

the text.12 It urges teacher-scholars to see criticism not as an isolated act aimed at

imposing a final signified on the text, but as part and parcel of a pedagogical practice

designed to engage the lived experiences of individuals and to promote agentive cit-

izenship in an increasingly globalized world. In the case of cinema, such a practice

entails: (1) reflecting on the character of the film itself and the degree to which its nar-

rative scope, slant, and salience foster or foreclose possibilities for dialog; (2) engaging

with the text and extant criticism of it, guided by the principles of unfinalizability and

answerability; and (3) stimulating critical consciousness and civic responsibility

through attention to additional stories, alternative voices, and associated events.

Some teacher-scholars may question whether or not students are capable of exercis-

ing the dialogic practices we have described. We understand their trepidation. After

all, students are repeatedly exposed to modes of criticism that model singular, (politi-

cally) ‘‘correct’’ readings of texts, and then they are called upon to take up those texts

in personally productive and socially liberating ways. But if students are to learn to

remake themselves and their world, then they must be shown models of criticism that

invite an attitude of ‘‘yes,’’ rather than demand an attitude of ‘‘no,’’ that promulgate

possibility, rather than polemic, that are responsive and responsible to texts, rather

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than deaf and despotic to them. Only by demonstrating the force of dialog can we

hope to remake a pedagogy of transmission into a pedagogy of transformation.

Notes

[1] Warnick’s essay distinguished among four different critical modes: artist, analyst, audience,

and advocate. The perspectives of analyst and audience have not enjoyed the same cultural

currency in communication studies as artist and advocate, however.

[2] We understand critical pedagogy to be ‘‘a dialectical celebration of the languages of critique

and possibility—an approach which finds its noblest expression in a discourse integrating

critical analysis with social transformation’’ (Giroux, Pedagogy 132).

[3] Elaborating on this point, James Jasinski wrote, ‘‘Rhetorical advocates presume to speak in

an authoritative language that mirrors their objective total victory. Authoritative language

‘demands our unconditional allegiance’ and admits only two responses: complete

affirmation or complete rejection’’ (25).

[4] The dialogic critic speaks to the text, not just about it. Criticism is an interaction with the

text, not merely a metadiscourse about it. Arguing against a monologic interpretive prac-

tice, Jasinski commented,

The other interpretive option involves treating the text as a dialogic event. This

approach requires the critic to look at the language rather than through it; it involves

struggling to account for the various conceptual repercussions and implications of

the definitional tension rather than simply dismissing it. . . .The [dialogic] critic’s . . .task is to reconstruct the dialogue embedded in the dialogic word and polyphonic

utterance. (28).

[5] NBC aired Schindler’s List on February 23, 1997, from 7:30 PM to 11:00 PM. Ford Motors

sponsored the film’s televisual showing (‘‘NBC’s ‘Schindler’’’ 22).

[6] See, for example, ‘‘The 7th Annual Holocaust Education Week,’’ January 11–18, 2009, The

Holocaust Memorial, Greater Miami Jewish Federation. Web. 31 Mar. 2011; ‘‘Holocaust

Awareness Week, 3=19=2010, Pine Crest School.’’ Web. 31 Mar. 2011; ‘‘American Corner,

Tunis, Holocaust Awareness Week, October 30, 2010.’’ Web. 1 Apr. 2011; Gregory Gates,

‘‘Schindler’s List’’ to Be Shown as Part of Jewish Awareness Month, Planet Blacksburg Apr.

7, 2010. Web. 1 Apr. 2011; ‘‘Holocaust Memorial Day—27 January Holocaust Memorial

Day Trust.’’ Web. 30 Mar. 2011.

[7] ‘‘Bakhtin defines the novel,’’ elaborated Glazener ‘‘as an intermingling of discourses, uni-

fied by the author’s significant orchestration but none the less preserving their ideological

discreteness. The novel typically foregrounds the social differentiation of these discourses

by embodying them in characters who occupy distinct social worlds; it stages their inter-

action through the confrontations of characters, and usually it sets them against a narrator’s

diverse and socially significant modes of description, explanation, and judgement as

well’’ (111).

[8] In addition to a number of previously published essays (from Salmagundi, Critical Inquiry,

and the bookMurder in Our Midst), Loshitzky’s edited collection contained several original

pieces.

[9] A few examples of the largely negative response to the film by academics include Berstein

429–432; Cardullo 123–124; Epstein 136–138; Hartman 127–145; Nagorski 152–157; and

Richler 34, 68.

[10] The ‘‘Americanization’’ of the Holocaust describes ‘‘the establishing of a transnational

salvation-narrative focusing on Western values’’ (Classen 101).

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[11] We have in mind here Burke’s idea of orientation, of frames of acceptance and rejection

(Attitudes). Frames of acceptance are not about agreement, but about acknowledgement

(of the I-Thou relation).

[12] Dialogic criticism, as well as critical-rhetorical pedagogy generally, shares much in common

with Burke’s notion of the ‘‘unending conversation’’ (Philosophy 110–111).

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