Learning to learn from the Other: subaltern life narrative, everyday classroom and critical pedagogy

• Published in: Prose studies Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 261 - 270
• Main Authors: Pradhan, Jajati K., Singh, Seema
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01.09.2016; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Autobiographical literature; C. K. Janu; critical learning; Critical pedagogy; Critical thinking; Educational philosophy; Indian culture; Janu, Chekot Karian; Mother Forest; Narratives; other; Pedagogy; subaltern life narrative(s); Womens literature; India
• ISSN: 0144-0357; 1743-9426
• DOI: 10.1080/01440357.2017.1290601

The critique of education in recent critical humanistic scholarship has pressed for everyday classroom to embrace critical pedagogy that enables the learner to understand, interrogate, and transform not only the discursive functioning of classroom teaching and learning practices but also of everyday life practices in the larger social world. When society is marred with issues of class, race, caste, gender, colour, and of many other dehumanizing (human) problems, the practice of education can no more remain uncritical of what is going on, why, and in whose interest. Drawing on the philosophy of education of Paulo Freire and Gayatri Spivak, especially their critical pedagogical engagement with the subaltern Other, this paper makes a case for how critical pedagogy informs, performs and transforms education in everyday classroom and, in the case of subaltern life narrative(s) as teaching/learning material, how it enables the learner(s) toward critical learning: learning to learn from the Other in a dialogic praxis. To address this, we present C. K. Janu's life narrative Mother Forest: The Unfinished Story of C.K. Janu as a case study that documents the existential precarity of tribal lives in contemporary India.