Striving against the Eclipse of Democracy Henry A. Giroux’s Critical Pedagogy for Social Justice

Abstract

This paper focuses on the work of Henry Giroux and attempts to provide a coherent overview and critical analysis of his extremely large output spanning almost thirty years. It traces the evolution of his thought throughout this period and discusses such aspects of his work and themes as his engagement with Freire's work, his treatment of social class and race, his contribution to cultural studies, his trenchant critique of the Bush Jr years as well as of the corporisation of various aspects of the public sphere including schooling and higher education, his notion and analysis of different forms of 'public pedagogy,' his contibution to a politics of Educated Hope and to the development of a substantive democracy, and his treatment of the recurring theme of the war being waged on different fronts against youth and children. Key-words: cultural politics, public pedagogy, educated hope, substantive democracy ________________________________________________________ When focusing on contemporary critical pedagogy, reference to the work of Henry Giroux is de rigueur. He is, after all, a founding figure in the critical pedagogy movement. A most prolific writer, one of whose works is recently being translated into Italian, Giroux explores resources of hope when, as indicated in a book title of his, democracy is being ‘eclipsed’ by a new 1 Department of Education Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Malta, Malta. Email: peter.mayo@um.edu.mt Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 3, 2009.