Peter McLaren - Pedagogy of Insurrection: From Resurrection to Revolution (Education and Struggle)

PRAISE FOR pedagogy of insurrection

Unabashed and undeterred, Peter McLaren offers a new manifesto, written from the shabby lean-to room of the American hall-and parlor house that is revolutionary critical pedagogy. Pedagogy of Insurrection is yet another example of Peters unflinching critique of our contemporary moment of neoliberal capitalism and its contribution to our crisis of democracy. Beautifully written, creative, and broad and ambitious in its conceptual scope, Pedagogy of Insurrection offers a radical vision of human possibility and social transformation; a reclaiming of critical pedagogys connection to a political strugglea philosophy of praxis. As Peter has argued for nearly four decades, nothing less than a global revolution can be our collective aim and, once again, with Pedagogy of Insurrection, McLaren has leapt into the breach, challenging, no, demanding that we follow him.

Ernest Morrell, Macy Professor of Education; Director, Institute for Urban and Minority Education; President, National Council of Teachers of English; Teachers College, Columbia University

In this dark night of the soul of global political economy, Pedagogy of Insurrection comes like a wild prophetic yell through the streets that would teach us of the radically democratic demand for revolutionary intolerance that must sound across the planet as never before. Here McLarens unparalleled pedagogical poetics rises up with new moral urgency to speak true words for and with humanityan enflamed series of critical communiqus from the heart, these almost incantatory and expressionistic critical visions courageously unveil the global imaginary of violent corruption and terror and inveigh against the transnationally institutionalized denigration of the educational hope that we the people may still yet learn that the beloved community can be here now as soon as we demand it. Then, like non-GMO seeds scattered everywhere, this book salutes the diverse movements for the total liberation of life on earth that move us toward the eschatalogical omega point that will be the abolition of the masters of war and their historical domination of nature. Hasta siempre, Comandante!

Richard Kahn, Core Faculty in Education, Antioch University Los Angeles

The modernist separation of church and state has functioned well to silence both radical discourses of spirituality and public life, even when they might point us toward formidable theological, pedagogical, and communal practices of resistance, insurrection, and transformation. In this unique and courageous revolutionary volume, Peter McLaren cultivates exciting new ground for rethinking a pedagogy and politics of global liberation, including formidable re-readings of historical figures and reasserting their place in the long recalcitrant struggle for human emancipation. At the very heart of this passionate manifesto lies a deep yearning for an ethical world that can propel us beyond the mania of racialized capitalism and its advancing destruction of the planet.

Antonia Darder, Leavey Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership, Loyola Marymount University, Author of A Dissident Voice: Essays on Culture, Pedagogy, and Power

With Pedagogy of Insurrection, McLaren again makes it clear that he simply has no equal today in writing revolution as critical pedagogy. In this book, he brings a photorealist poetics to a searing political vision; he applies a street-savvy Marxism and a salvaged Jesus to contemporary social movements. His is a rage against the machine with the facts lined up, with history present, with teeth and heart bared. If this be McLarens manifesto for a new humanity, it is also, without missing a beat, his Ginsbergian Howl.

John Willinsky, Stanford University

With this latest volume, one can almost hear McLarens pen raging away on the page. Evoking Jesus, one of our first documented critical pedagogues, McLaren shouts back at policy wonks and corporate babblers that feed the frenzy of failure dominating twenty-first century mainstream discourse in education. Theorists and critical practitioners will find themselves challenged again by McLarens clarion call for us to do better in service of the worlds most vulnerable youth.

Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Associate Professor, Raza Studies & Education, San Francisco State University

Pedagogy of Insurrection is both a call to arms and a call to reflection, from the foremost critical educator working today. McLarens unparalleled exegeses invite us out of the dead ends offered by neoliberal capitalism and toward a horizon of revolutionary love and solidarity. Simultaneously challenging the value-form of capital, the violent legacies of colonialism, and the conservative monopoly on theology, McLaren shows brilliantly how teaching must be tied to the project of transforming the fundamental conditions of life. For the contemporary malaise produced by both corporate education reform and postmodern abstentionism, this book offers the cure. There is simply no text that should be more urgently read by those committed to social justice.

Noah De Lissovoy, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies in Education, University of Texas at Austin

With his encyclopedic mind and laser-like vision, his agile wit and acrobatic imagination, Peter McLaren once again draws his flaming red-hot pen as a sword against the banksters and their hedge-fund homies, the marketeers and their brother barbarians in the political class. McLaren illustrates in compelling cadences that imperialism is in decline and capitalism exhaustedits brief parenthesis in history is at an end. Another world is coming, but the outcome is far from certain: chaos or community, brutality or solidarity, barbarism or socialism. Here is a clarion call to love one another or die.

William Ayers, Author of Fugitive Days, Public Enemy, and Teaching the Taboo

In Pedagogy of Insurrection, Peter McLaren passionately embraces life, while forcefully denouncing the violently predatory capitalist system that sucks life out of humanity as well as those who masquerade as revolutionaries. In this brilliantly provocative series of essays, McLaren has the courage to call out neoliberalisms king for wearing no clothes, and to reclaim the revolutionary power of critical pedagogy.

Christine Sleeter, Professor Emerita, School of Professional Studies, California State University, Monterey Bay

Pedagogy of Insurrection is without question McLarens boldest book to date. Inspired by a deep Fanonian rage, he unleashes a cogent critique of neoliberal capitalism and its assault on the mind, body, and spirit of its global subjects. Summoning the best of his own catholic-schooling, McLaren engages in a clever inversion of the Rights appropriation of religion to serve the un-godly aims of capital. McLaren offers what he terms a new aperture through which to examine the modern human predicament. In so doing he aims to suture critical pedagogy back to a revisioned liberation theology, one that reclaims Christ as a postulate for humanity and radical love. This is the exact right book for the exact right time.

Sandy Grande, Associate Professor, Connecticut College; Author of Red Pedagogy

With passion and provocation comes this newest book by Peter McLaren that dissects the now of U.S. capitalism, neoliberalism, and imperialism with a historical juxtaposition of liberation theology that is nothing short of startling. Read this book, share in the rage that catapults to collective action, and bring to life the promises of a Pedagogy of Insurrection.

Kevin Kumashiro, Author of The Seduction of Common Sense

Peter McLaren has done it again. For several decades, McLaren has given us different treatises on Marxist revolutionary education. In his newest intervention, he takes us through the paradoxes of a materialist spirituality. At once lyrical and disturbing, apocalyptic as well as humanizing, McLarens new direction is bold. Like a particle collider, he fuses two seemingly incommensurable perspectives. What results is an explosive argument imbued with beauty, symmetry, and a new physics of liberation.