ABSTRACT
Henry Giroux challenges the neoliberal capitalism facing higher education and the pernicious effects of “negative globalization” (Giroux, 2007a, p. 3), mapping the pervasiveness of various types of violence that exists locally, nationally, and transnationally. He calls for emancipatory politics to become a point of departure in specific and concrete situations opening up sites of struggle to imagine a concept of “democracy that is never complete and is constantly open to different understanding of its workings” (Giroux, 2007b, p. 30). Therefore, higher education can become a site where democracy is practiced in unique ways, in ways that do not just focus on the will of the majority or force the minority to accept the will of the majority as their own but reengage critical discourses through pedagogical and empirical practices, through opening up spaces for border crossings, physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and any other kind that might be appropriate. In support of this notion of border crossing, Giroux (2007)b states:
116Public intellectuals need to approach social issues mindful of the multiple connections and issues that tie humanity together; but they need to do so as border intellectuals move within and across diverse sites of learning as part of an engaged and practical politics that recognizes the importance of asking questions, making distinctions, restoring to memory all those things that tend to be overlooked or walked past in the rush to collective judgment and action. (p. 37)
