Abstract
This chapter argues that the implications of reconsidering normalised ideas in HRE can become more intelligible by engaging, through critique, with the crises of our times. The interplay between crisis and critique, so this chapter argues, will open up new possibilities for emancipatory praxes within HRE that are better rooted within social reality. An enhancement of the social justice potential of HRE is also anticipated. Treating crisis and critique as analytically and historically central to the program of critical theory, this chapter further suggests that the major shifts in critical theory provide productive pathways for the renewal of HRE.
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Notes
- 1.
CE is defined by UNESCO as educating children, from early childhood, to become clear-thinking and enlightened citizens who participate in decisions concerning society (UNESCO, 1998a).
- 2.
‘Education for democratic citizenship’ means education, training, dissemination, information, practices and activities which aim, by equipping learners with knowledge, skills and understanding and moulding their attitudes and behaviour, to empower them to exercise and defend their democratic rights and responsibilities in society, and to value diversity and to play an active part in democratic life, with a view to the promotion and protection of democracy and the rule of law (Kerr, 2013).
- 3.
These are no poverty; no hunger; good health; quality education; gender equality; clean water and sanitation; renewable energy; good jobs and economic growth; innovation and infrastructure; reduced inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; responsible consumption; climate actions; life below water; life on land; peace and justice; and partnerships for the goals. See the full document at https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2016/
- 4.
Allen, 2016, pp. xi–xii. ‘In its most narrow usage, “critical theory” refers to the German tradition of interdisciplinary social theory, inaugurated in Frankfurt in the 1930s, and carried forward today in Germany by such thinkers as Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst and in the United States by theorists, such as Thomas McCarthy, Nancy Fraser, and Seyla Benhabib. In a more capacious usage, “critical theory” refers to any politically inflected form of cultural, social, or political theory that has critical, progressive, or emancipatory aims. Understood in this way, critical theory encompasses much, if not all, of the work that is done under the banner of feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and post- and decolonial theory. A distinct but related capacious usage of the term refers to the body of theory that is mobilised in literary and cultural studies, otherwise known simply as “theory.” Here critical theory refers mainly to a body of French theory spanning from poststructuralism to psychoanalysis, and including such thinkers as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Lacan.
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Zembylas, M., Keet, A. (2019). Crisis and Critique: Critical Theories and the Renewal of Citizenship-, Democracy-, and Human Rights Education. In: Critical Human Rights Education. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27198-5_9
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