ABSTRACT
As critics and scholars we face a tough road. The pressures are on for us to atomize our roles-work within delineated theories, choose clear methods and disciplines, remain professionals. Political interests and commitments are circumscribed within particular-albeit contentious-discourses like multiculturalism, postcolonialism, feminist theory, and critical race theory. We are encouraged to work within single genres of writing and to communicate our work to a body of our peers-narrowly defined-preferably as a single author. For those of us in education-a field seemingly rooted in praxis-these pressures can be particularly debilitating and are linked to a whole host of corporate imperatives and ressentiment logics operating at all levels of the educational enterprise (McCarthy and Dimitriadis, 2000). For example, for those of us in elementary, middle, and secondary education, high-stakes testing and accountability measures have become all-important, largely circumscribing the role of the teacher as a transformative intellectual. In turn, for those of us in higher education, an increasing reliance on adjunct teachers, enrollment-driven resource allocations, assaults on tenure, and corporate “distance learning” initiatives, have all conspired against the intellectual freedom once associated with graduate education and the professorate.
