What is it about?
This paper revisits the three revolutionary thinkers, Steve Biko, Paulo Freire and Visvanathan, and what their work can tell us about cognitive justice and learning. We draw on Bhaskar's epistemological dialectic to dig deep into how their work emerged as a response to deep structural contradictions that they identified and worked to absent. Through this conversation with their work we distill what they offer the concept of cognitive justice and consider what this means for our educational work with community based environmental activists in South Africa.
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Why is it important?
Often educational approaches, even emancipatory ones, become consumed and obscured by Neo-liberal educational systems. Paying attention to cognitive justice troubles and agitates so that educators cannot become complacent and ignore the contradictions that arise when learning together how to activate environmental and social justice.
Perspectives
This is the first of a series of four papers written my PhD entitled: The Insecurity of Knowledge: cognitive justice and emancipatory learning. The wonderful thing about doing a PhD by paper is I can acknowledge an individual does not create knowledge. Knowledge creation is a collaborative, interdependent and interconnected process. This paper was written with a younger PhD scholar who was just starting out on her PhD journey but had similar interests to me. The paper became a platform for her to think into her work in conversation with my work which was further down the line. One of my PhD supervisors joined us in this conversation adding her wisdom and experience to our debates. The paper was a delightful and heart warming. I revisited of thinkers that have inspired me since my early 20's. Critical Realism enabled me to relook at their work with new eyes revealing their contributions to cognitive justice and emancipatory learning.
Jane Burt
Rhodes University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A peaceful revenge: achieving structural and agential transformation in a South African context using cognitive justice and emancipatory social learning, Journal of Critical Realism, October 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14767430.2018.1550312.
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