(1) Introduction - Childhood Innocence and the Politics of Corporate Culture

"This book explores the seemingly separate but interrelated nature of three myths, all of which function to limit substantive democracy, the welfare of children, and socially engaged scholarship. The first myth, “the end of history,” assumes that liberal democracy has achieved its ultimate victory and that the twin ideologies of the market and representative democracy now constitute, with few exceptions, the universal values of the new global village." [mijn nadruk] (1)

"In short, the conflation of democracy with the market cancels the tension between market moralities and those values of civil society that cannot be measured in strictly commercial terms but that are critical to democratic public life. I am referring specifically to values such as justice, respect for children, and the rights of citizens."(2)

"The second myth, “childhood innocence,” is constructed around the notion that both childhood and innocence reflect aspects of a natural state, one that is beyond the dictates of history, society, and politics.(...) Marked as innately pure and passive, children are ascribed the right of protection but are, at the same time, denied a sense of agency and autonomy." [mijn nadruk] (2)

"The third myth, “disinterested scholarship,” embodies the legacy of an ever-expanding commercial culture that harnesses the capacity for public dialogue and dissent to market values.(...) This third myth suggests that teaching and learning are no longer linked to improving the world; the imperatives of social justice are surrendered to a fatalism that renounces practical politics in order to accommodate the academic culture of professionalism and the ideology of disin- terested scientific investigation." [mijn nadruk] (2-3)

"Buttressed by the pressures of disinterested scholarship and its attendant calls for neutrality, objectivity, and rationality, this approach offers little room to consider how ideologies, values, and power shape all aspects of the educational process."(3)

"What links these three seemingly disparate mythologies? Quite a lot, I believe: In their deployment they (1) excuse the adult world from any responsibility toward youth by appealing to a thriving economy and the natural order and by denying the political and cultural roles that educators and education play in children’s lives; (2) reproduce race, class, and cultural hierarchies; and (3) limit citizenship to a narrowly privatized undertaking. What all three myths ignore is the increasingly impoverished conditions that future generations of youth will have to negotiate. Childhood is not a natural state of innocence; it is a historical construction. It is also a cultural and political category that has very practical consequences for how adults “think about children”; and it has consequences for how children view themselves." [mijn nadruk] (5)

Noot 8

"I want to emphasize that in using the general term “adults,” I am not suggesting that the relationship between children and adults is defined generationally. On the contrary, while all adults are capable of abusing young people, the central issue of adult power cannot be abstracted from larger class, racial, and gender formations, nor can it be removed from the dynamics of American capitalism itself, which I believe should be at the forefront of any analysis of what many youth have to endure in the United States at the present time." [mijn nadruk] (173)

[Goede uitspraak. Dit boek gaat dus wel typisch over de situatie in de VS.]

"When adults cling to the idea that a thriving free market economy, with its insidious consumer-based appropriation of freedom and choice, provides the greatest good for the greatest number, they diminish “the role of politics in public life in favor of an exclusive focus on individual experience—on a politics of personal responsibilities and self-interest rather than one of the collective good.” This view makes it easier for adults to claim that social problems are individual problems. This claim, in turn, allows them to downsize the public sphere, eliminate government-funded safety nets for children, and substitute punitive policies for socially invested legislation. In this approach, the logic of the marketplace blames kids—especially those who are poor, Latino, or black—for an alleged lack of character while it dismantles social services that help to meet their most basic needs." [mijn nadruk] (6)

[Helemaal waar.]

"White middle-class children often are protected by the myth of innocence and are considered incapable of exhibiting at-risk behavior. And if they do exhibit deviant behavior, it is often blamed on the “alien” influence of popular culture (now often synonymous with hip-hop) or other “outside” forces—well removed from the spaces of “whiteness” and affluence. Innocence, in this exclusionary rhetoric, is highly discriminatory and generally does not extend its privileges to all children."(8)

"Historically poor kids and children of color have been considered to be beyond the boundaries of both childhood and innocence; they have been associated with the cultures of crime, rampant sexuality, and drug use. In fact, they are quite often perceived as a threat to the innocence of white middle-class kids who inhabit increasingly fortress-like suburbs, shielded from the immorality, violence, and other “dangers” lurking within ever-expanding multiethnic cities." [mijn nadruk] (9)

"The myth of childhood innocence infantilizes both women and children while it simultaneously reproduces an extreme imbalance of power between adults and children, on one hand, and men and women, on the other."(10)

"It seems, however, that Postman mourns not only the loss of childhood innocence but also the loss of Victorian principles of stern, hardworking, white middle-class families unsullied by the postmodern technologies of the visual age. Curiously, Postman’s attack on the corrupting influence of popular culture says little about the media’s role in presenting an endless stream of misrepresentations about black and poor youth. Nor does Postman analyze corporate culture’s exploitation of childhood innocence and its sexual potential. Postman also ignores the way corporate culture positions young people as both the subject and the object of commodification, as objects to buy and be sold in the marketplace." [mijn nadruk] (12)

[Goed gezien. Postman deugt niet. ]

"Rather than acknowledge that the new electronic technologies allow kids to immerse themselves in profoundly important forms of social communication, produce a range of creative expressions, and exhibit forms of agency that are both pleasurable and empowering, adults profoundly mistrust the new technologies—in the name of protecting childhood innocence."(13)

[Dat is een nogal optimistische inschatting van de rol van sociale media en zo meer voor jongeren. Niet zo "empowering", lijkt me. Maar goed, het boek is van 2000. Nu weten we beter.]

"When adults invoke the myth of “childhood innocence” to describe the vulnerability of middle-class kids, they mention child molestation, pedophilia, and the sexual dangers of the Internet as the central threats. This type of discussion assumes that the threat to middle-class kids comes from outside the social formations they inhabit, from forces beyond their control. (...) This perceived threat to childhood innocence ignores the contradiction between adult concern for the safety of children and the reality of how adults treat children on a daily basis."(15-16)

"But little is mentioned about the violence perpetrated by those middle-class values and social formations—such as conspicuous consumption, conformity, snobbery, and ostracism—that reproduce racial, class, and gender exclusions. Nor is much said about how middle-class values legitimate and regulate the cultural hierarchies that demean marginalized groups and reinforce racial and economic inequalities. Rather than confront the limitations and bias of middle-class values, conservatives battle against the welfare state, dismantle many important child-service programs, and promote economic policies and mergers that facilitate corporate downsizing—without facing much resistance from the Democratic party. Moreover, the national media rarely acknowledges or criticizes those forces within American culture that chip away at the notion of education as a public good or the disastrous effects conservative educational policy might have for working-class families and their children. Similarly, dominant media invokes popular culture, but not the corporations that produce and regulate it, as a threat to children’s purity. Consider the following contradictions. Pornography on the Internet is held up as an immanent danger to childhood innocence, but nothing is said about the corporations and their middle-class shareholders who relentlessly commodify and sexualize children’s bodies, desires, and identities in the interest of turning a profit." [mijn nadruk] (17)

"Many critics view such images as further proof that children are under assault. They are less concerned about the ever expanding reach of corporate culture into every facet of children’s culture than they are alarmed by the growing sexualization of popular culture, with its celebration of the “smut” produced by gangsta rap (and its seeming vindication of a sexually charged music/video industry) and its potential to incite the ever-looming presence of the pedophile." [mijn nadruk] (18)

[Dat is inderdaad opvallend: nooit zie je een kritiek op het kapitalisme bij veel van die reacties.]

"In the post-Littleton climate, moral panic and fear replace critical understanding"(20)

"The deteriorating state of America’s children can be seen in the increased number of children living in poverty—20.5 percent of all children; the large number of children without affordable housing—more than 6.8 million; as well as in the large number of American children who lack health insurance. According to a 1998 study by the Children’s Defense Report all of these figures have increased since 1996. Not only are there twenty million children living in poverty in the United States, but the United States ranks in the lower half of Western industrialized countries in providing family support services." [mijn nadruk] (22)

"In what follows, I want to highlight the relationship between the ongoing assault on youth and the responsibility of educators to address this crisis. In doing so, I emphasize the need for educators to connect their work to the political task of making research, teaching, and learning part of the dynamic of democratic change itself."(24)

"I use the work of Gramsci, Freire, and Hall to illustrate the educational and performative nature of culture as a pedagogical and political practice. I also draw on their work to demonstrate culture’s value in developing a democratic politics that addresses the relations of power between youth and adults."(33)

[Ik vermoed dat met deze lange inleiding het meeste al gezegd is. ]

(37) Section I - Corporate power and the culture of everyday life

(39) One - Nymphet Fantasies: Child Beauty Pageants and the Politics of Innocence

[Ja, dat is inderdaad zo. Veel herhaling van de bekende standpunten in ieder geval.]

"On the contrary, the child molesters, pedophiles, abductors, and others who prey on children in the most obscene ways imaginable are the biggest threat to children. Here the notion of childhood innocence does more than produce the rhetoric of political opportunism; it also provides the basis for moral panic. Both conservatives and liberals have fed off the frenzy of fear associated with a decade of revelations of alleged child abuse." [mijn nadruk] (42-43)

"As the state is hollowed out and only its most brutal apparatuses—police, prisons, etc.—remain intact, children have fewer opportunities to protect themselves from an adult world that offers them dwindling resources, dead-end jobs, and diminished hopes for the future."(44)

Over JonBenet Ramsey, het zesjarige schoonheidskoninginnetje (rijk, wit) dat vermoord werd en de media daarover tegenover iemand als Girl X (arm, zwart).

"I argue that by critically examining the beauty pageant we can begin to see how the language of innocence obscures from the public’s view the appropriation, sexualization, and commercialization of children’s bodies. In pursuing this argument, I examine how the culture of child beauty pageants functions as a site where young girls learn about pleasure, desire, and the roles they might assume in an adult society. I also examine how such pageants are rationalized, how they are upheld by commercial and ideological structures within the broader society, and how they are reproduced, reinforced, and sustained in related spheres such as advertising and fashion photography—spheres that also play an important role in marketing children as objects of pleasure, desire, and sexuality." [mijn nadruk] (46)

[Dan hoop ik wel dat de auteur niet gaat ontkennen dat kinderen een eigen seksualiteit hebben of dat ze sexy kunnen zijn. Want zoals steeds is zo'n uitdrukking 'kinderen als object van plezier, verlangens en seks' bijzonder vaag. Voordat je het weet ga je op een andere manier zeggen dat kinderen onschuldige wezentjes zijn. ]

"Playing the role of an alluring sex kitten, JonBenet seemed to belie the assumption that the voyeuristic fascination with the sexualized child was confined to the margins of society, inhabited largely by freaks and psychopaths."(47)

[Een kind wordt dus opgetuigd om te lijken op een volwassen sekspoes, voor volwassenen die daar van genieten. Elementen van de wereld van volwassenen worden op een kind geprojecteerd. Maar is dit nu seksualisering?]

"The view of the home as a safe space for children also became questionable, as it became clear that the Ramseys imposed their own strange fantasies on their daughter and in doing so denied her an identity suitable for a six-year-old. Instead, they positioned her within a child beauty pageant culture that stripped her of her innocence by blurring the boundary between child and adult. Not allowed to be a child, JonBenet was given the unfortunate job of projecting herself through a degrading aesthetic that sexualized and commodified her. Collapsing the (hardly clear-cut) boundaries between the protective parental gaze and the more objectified adult gaze, JonBenet’s parents appear to have stripped their daughter of any sense of agency, independence, or autonomy in order to remake her in the image of their own desires and pleasures." [mijn nadruk] (48)

[Dat "berooft haar van haar onschuld" is een rare uitdrukking hier als je kijkt naar de slotzin die uitgaat van handelingsbekwaamheid van een kind. Dat is dan toch minstens een andere onschuld dan die van de conservatieven? Een "identiteit die past bij een zesjarige" gaat er van uit dat we weten wat dat is. "Ze mocht geen kind zijn" zegt ook iets van heimwee naar een bepaald soort kind. En dan weer eens die "objectiverende volwassen blik" die kinderen als seksobject neerzet? Ze wordt wel in een bepaalde rol gezet: vrouwen horen te behagen, sexy en mooi te zijn. Daar kun je bezwaar tegen hebben zonder zo'n kindbeeld neer te zetten als seksloos.]

"Images of six-year-olds cosmetically transformed into sultry, Lolita-like waifs are difficult to watch. They strike at the heart of a culture deeply disturbed in its alleged respect for children and decency. Whereas the blame for the often-violent consequences associated with this eroticized costuming is usually placed on young women, it is hard to blame JonBenet Ramsey for this type of objectification." [mijn nadruk] (48)

[Ook dubbel. Waarom vindt de auteur dat dat "difficult to watch" is, dat hier geen respect voor kinderen uit spreekt en dat het niet fatsoenlijk is? Dat is een waardeoordeel vanuit een bepaald kindbeeld.]

"The traditional moral guardians of children’s culture who would censor rap lyrics, remove “dangerous” videos and CDs from public circulation, boycott Disney for pro-gay and lesbian labor practices, and empty school libraries of many classic texts have had little to say about the sexualization of young children in children’s beauty pageants, a social form as American as apple pie. [mijn nadruk] " (49)

"All of these critiques raise valid concerns about the role of child beauty pageants and how they produce particular notions of beauty, pleasure, and femininity that are as culturally gender-specific as they are degrading. Such criticisms also prompt a debate about the nature of adult needs and desires that push kids into pageants, and how such pageants correspond with other social practices that “silently” reproduce roles for children that undermine the notion of child innocence and reinforce particular forms of child abuse." [mijn nadruk] (50)

[Het eerste is een waardeoordeel. En opnieuw wordt de kinderlijke onschuld blijkbaar aangetast. Alsof het een universele categorie betreft. Volgt een geschiedenis van de schoonheidswedstijden in de VS met indrukwekkende cijfers.]

"Trade magazines such as Pageant Life, which has a circulation of 60,000, offer their readers images and advertisements celebrating ideals of femininity, glamour, and beauty while marketing young girls in the image of adult drives and desires."(51)

"Many parents involved in these pageants do not seem concerned about the possible negative consequences of dressing their children in provocative clothing, capping their teeth, putting fake eyelashes on them, and having them perform before audiences in a manner that suggests a sexuality well beyond their years."(52)

[Dat laatste is eigenlijk onnodig en suggereert weer van alles. Hij heeft het blijkbaar alleen over de schoonheidswedstrijden voor kinderen tot 12 jaar. Maar je kunt net zo veel bezwaar maken tegen die voor volwassenen, al is seksualiteit daar op een andere manier een probleem. ]

"The popular literature that supports the child beauty pageant culture fails to acknowledge that “sexualized images of little girls may have dangerous implications in a world where 450,000 American children were reported as victims of sexual abuse in 1993.” [Michael F. Jacobson and Laurie Ann Mazur, Marketing Madness (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), p. 79]"(52)

[In dat citaat wordt gemakkelijk een oorzaak-gevolg-relatie gesuggereerd die er misschien wel helemaal niet is. Alsof overal pedofielen op de loer liggen of zo.]

"The most frequently used rationale for defending pageants is that they build self-esteem in children. (...) Self-esteem in this context means embracing rather than critically challenging a gender code that rewards little girls for their looks, submissiveness, and sex appeal. Coupled with the ways in which the broader culture, through television, music, magazines, and advertising, consistently bombards young girls with a sexualized ideal of femininity “from which all threatening elements have been purged,” self-esteem often becomes a euphemism for self-hatred, rigid gender roles, and powerlessness."(53-54)

"In short, rarely do the defenders of child beauty pageants address the consequences of stealing away a child’s innocence by portraying her as a sexualized nymphet. Once again, they have little to say about what children are actually learning in pageants, how a child might see herself and mediate her relationship to society when her sense of self-worth is defined largely through a notion of beauty that is one-dimensional and demeaning."(54-55)

[Ook weer een onnodig gebruik van dat "onschuld" idee.]

"The children in the 1977 pageants wore little-girl dresses and ribbons in their hair; they embodied a childlike innocence as they displayed their little-girl talents— singing, tap, and baton twirling. Not so with the more recent pageant shots. The contestants did not look like little girls but rather like coquettish young women whose talents were reduced to an ability to move suggestively across the stage."(56)

[Weer gevaarlijk normatief.]

"The program’s take on child beauty pageants was critical, yet it failed to consider the broader social practices, representations, and relations of power that provide the context for such pageants to flourish in the United States. Nor did it analyze the growing popularity of the pageants as part of a growing backlash against feminism reproduced in the media, culture, and fashion industries as well as in a growing number of conservative economic and political establishments." [mijn nadruk] (56)

"Innocence in this instance feeds into enticing images of childlike purity as it simultaneously sexualizes and markets such images. Sexualizing children may be the final frontier in the fashion world, exemplified by the rise of models such as Kate Moss who represent the ideal woman as a waif—-sticklike, expressionless, and blank-eyed.(...) What con- nects the beauty pageants to the world of advertising and fashion modeling is that young girls are being taught to become little women, while women are being taught to assume the identities of powerless, childlike waifs. In this instance, Lolita grows up only to retreat into her youth as a model for what it means to be a woman." [mijn nadruk] (60)

[Dit hoofdstuk — een eerder gepubliceerd stuk — heeft toch wel een heel ander standpunt over 'het onschuldige kind' dan de Introduction, vind ik. ]

(65) Two - Heroin Chic and the Politics of Seduction

Over Baudrillard en het postmodernisme.

[Een meteen wordt hier het taalgebruik vaag en abstract. Typisch. Een voorbeeld:]

"But the aesthetic of heroin chic legitimates not only a cynical disdain for human suffering, it also functions as a retro-aesthetic in which subcultural politics—however nihilistic and pathological—provide the new disposable marketing pose for making profits. Transgression in this instance either reproduces uncritically or sanctions what art critic Carol Becker has called “manifestations of psychic unhealth—malaise, racism, hypocrisy, despair.”"(68)

[Meteen naar de eveneens vage conclusie:]

"“Heroin chic” must be engaged in more general terms as symptomatic of a market-driven culture that encourages the larger society to view young people as symbols of social degeneracy while simultaneously treating them as both disposable and as an industrial reserve army of consumers. Heroin chic celebrates a society that mocks the poor, increasingly incarcerates its youth, and wages war against people of color. Its brief rise to prominence signals a broader, retrograde public discourse that shares its mocking indifference and celebrates its debased appropriation of the “Other” as an amusing spectacle. Heroin chic offers a postmodern form of cultural slumming as cheap titillation for its yuppie audience, whose members imagine themselves being reckless and edgy as they appropriate the behaviors, dress, modes of speaking, and experiences of those who occupy the most tragic margins of society."(81)

(83) Three - Kids for Sale: Corporate Culture and the Challenge of Public Schooling

"One of the most important legacies of American public education has been providing students with the critical capacities, knowledge, and values that enable them to become active citizens striving to build a stronger democratic society. Within this tradition, Americans have defined schooling as a public good and a fundamental right. Such a definition rightfully asserts the primacy of democratic values over corporate culture and commercial values. Schools are an important indicator of the well-being of a democratic society. They remind us of the civic values that must be passed on to young people in order for them to think critically, to participate in power relations and policy decisions that affect their lives, and to transform the racial, social, and economic inequities that limit democratic social relations. Yet as crucial as the role of public schooling has been in American history, it is facing an unprecedented attack from proponents of market ideology who strongly advocate the unparalleled expansion of corporate culture." [mijn nadruk] (83-84)

[Dit boek is van 2000. Inmiddels is wel duidelijk dat die aanval van het marktdenken geslaagd is.]

"The advocates of corporate culture no longer view public education in terms of its civic function; rather it is primarily a commercial venture in which the only form of citizenship available for young people is consumerism. In what follows, I argue that reducing public education to the ideological imperatives of the corporate order works against the critical social demands of educating citizens to sustain and develop inclusive democratic identities, relations, and public spheres. Underlying this analysis is the assumption that the struggle to reclaim the public schools must be seen as part of a broader battle over the defense of children’s culture and the public good. At the heart of such a struggle is the need to challenge the ever-growing influence of corporate power and politics." [mijn nadruk] (85)

[En die strijd heeft niet veel opgeleverd. ]

"Corporate culture can be seen not only in the placement of public schools in the control of corporate contractors. It is also visible in the growing commercialization of school space and curricula. Strapped for money, many public schools have had to lease out space in their hallways, buses, rest rooms, monthly lunch menus, and school cafeterias, transforming such spaces into glittering billboards for the highest corporate bidder. School notices, classroom displays, and student artwork have been replaced by advertisements for Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike, Hollywood films, and a litany of other products. Invaded by candy manufacturers, breakfast cereal makers, sneaker companies, and fast food chains, schools increasingly offer the not-so-subtle message to students that everything is for sale including student identities, desires, and values. Seduced by the lure of free equipment and money, schools all too readily make the transition from advertising to offering commercial merchandise in the form of curricula materials designed to build brand loyalty and markets among a captive public school audience. Although schools may reap small financial benefit from such school-business transactions, the real profits go to the corporations that spend millions on advertising to reach a market of an estimated 43 million children in school “with spending power of over $108 billion per year and the power to influence parental spending.”" [mijn nadruk] (94-95)

[Ik bedoel maar. ]

(107) Section II - Cultural politics and public pedagogy

(109) Four - Radical Education and Culture in the Work of Antonio Gramsci

"The defining principle of the current right-wing attack against higher education and public schooling is the dismantling of all public spheres that refuse to be defined strictly by the instrumental logic of the market. Hence the battle waged over education must be understood as part of a much broader struggle for democratic public life, the political function of culture, the role of intellectuals, and the importance of pedagogy as a political and moral practice in shaping various aspects of daily life."(115)

[En daar kan het denken van Gramsci blijkbaar bij helpen. Maar ik heb geen zin om me daar in te verdiepen.]

(137) Five - Paulo Freire, Prophetic Thought, and the Politics of Hope

"Within the new right-wing discourse on schooling, questions of excellence have been abstracted from issues of equity. At the same time, any reference to educating students for critical citizenship and civic courage has been mortgaged to the dictates of the marketplace and virtually eliminated in the call for vouchers and the celebration of individual choice. Schools now offer corporations new markets for advertising their wares as part of a broader effort to transform youth into subjects who simply buy goods rather than critical subjects actively participating in all aspects of social life."(145)

[En weer gaat het over hetzelfde. Nu met Paulo Freire als denker. ]

(157) Six - Stuart Hall and the Politics of Education

"What is surprising about the current attack on education, especially in light of growing commercialization and privatization, is the refusal of many theorists to rethink the role academics might play in utilizing the university (and public schooling) as a crucial public sphere. This public sphere would foster new notions of civic courage and action and it would address what it means to make the pedagogical more political in a time of growing conservatism, racism, and corporatism."(159-160)

[En nogmaals dezelfde kwestie.]

"For conservatives such as Harold Bloom, Lynn Chaney, Chester Finn, Jr., and William Bennett, culture has no politics; it is the repository of beauty and transcendent values, and the bearer of the most sacred traditions of Western civilization. Conservatives often denounce any notion of politics that questions this select reading of culture and its ethnocentric bias as simply a version of “political correctness.”"(160)

"Stuart Hall’s work provides an important theoretical and political service in face of the current onslaught against cultural politics and the attempts to discredit the role that educators might play as public intellectuals working in a diverse range of public spheres that extend from the university to the mass media. In what follows, I want to focus on some important elements in Hall’s work that constitute what I loosely call a theory of critical public pedagogy."(165)