(Un)Compromising/In Tension: Critical Pedagogy and the Academy

Abstract

In asking about the experiences of professors embodying and enacting tools of critical pedagogy, this thesis seeks to explore strategies of resistance to the hegemony of neoliberalism in the Academy. This research focuses on the Canadian university as characterized by neoliberal logic and the hierarchical practices of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism. By exploring the themes of neoliberalism, violence, tension, critical pedagogy, and anti-oppression, that are in turn rooted in personal testimony and lived experience of educators, this study seeks to challenge normative systems of knowledge production to expand and explore subjugated knowledges. What is at stake is developing strategies that may be cultivated and documented as critical pedagogical tools that work toward collective imaginings of resistance.