Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let’s face it, if you’ve read this book, or are thinking about reading it, chances are you’re probably on the radical side of the liberal/progressive side of the aisle. In fact, you probably don’t even consider yourself “liberal” because that word has been so tainted. Assuming that to be the case, there isn’t much in this book that you don’t already know. And in the unlikely event you are a more mainstream liberal who has stumbled on this book, there is nothing here that will alter your views to the left. (And of course there’s the possibility you’re a rightie, in which case you’ll just have a ball with this book.) I have moved radically leftward since my days of crying with joy at Obama’s first election (forgive me, I was eight months pregnant and filled with hormones). But even I found myself rolling my eyes a number of times at this book. It’s not so much that I disagree with anything that Giroux says per se, but it’s the way he says it. He clearly assumes he’s talking to a bunch of like-minded radical leftist, so he jumps right in with the jargon without bothering to explain it and pretty much goes off on a rant. The book is poorly organized and repetitious and, when it comes down to it, really doesn’t have much to say. For starters, he doesn’t even begin to explain what he means by his title or attempt to operationalize it in any way. I think of a number of things when I think of “organized forgetting”, such as taking Indian children from their homes, putting them in white, English-speaking schools and forbidding them to use their native language or learn about their native culture. Perhaps that’s something like what Giroux means in this context, perhaps not – he doesn’t really say, so we have to just assume we understand what he’s talking about. Further, Giroux also builds no systematic argument to defend his thesis (to the extent he has one). Assuming I’m roughly on track with the basic idea of what he means by “organized forgetting”, he gives few examples of how such things are happening in modern times nor does he make a coherent argument that these things are intentional examples of “organized forgetting”. Sure, Giroux has a litany of bad things that are happening in American culture – the surveillance state, perpetual warfare, restrictions in civil rights including and especially free speech/protest rights, education mismanagement, media violence and misinformation, etc. And sure, one can make one’s own connections about how these various forces might play into “organized forgetting”. But it’s not his readers’ job to make Giroux’s argument for him and he fails to make his own. People who are already on the same page with him may find themselves nodding in agreement, but there is nothing in the text to convince a skeptic, even an open-minded one. As mentioned, the book is very poorly organized. Nearly every chapter we get yet another recitation of the litany of ills from poverty to war to the media to education, but we keep losing track of the point of the chapter. Even in chapters that have a relatively concise focus, such as the chapter about the lockdown of Boston during the hunt for the marathon bombers and the one about the Chicago Teachers Union protest of the closing of 50 schools, there is very little discussion of the details of these events and how they relate to the thesis of the book. This book could do with a great deal of editing to hone the focus of each chapter and build a step-by-step argument. The book is filled with references to and quotes from other liberal and radical theorists such as Morris Berman, Zygmunt Bauman, Stanley Aronowitz, Angela Davis, Tony Judt etc., but again Giroux does a poor job of integrating those authors concepts and jargon within the context of his own argument. It seems he’ll throw out a concept or bit of jargon from one such theorist and just assume we all know what he’s talking about and move right along with his diatribe. Now, some of these other authors I’ve read, some I have not, but in either case, again, it’s not my job to build Giroux’s argument. It’s up to him to spell out how these theorists connect with and contribute to his point. To the extent there is a point to this book, it’s basically an attack on neoliberalism and the damage it has done to democratic society and any sense of shared, public space, public works and public good. Neoliberalism is about control by the elite, the “best and the brightest”, the rich and the powerful and true democracy is merely an impediment to efficiency. The ideology of the market economy trumps everything. The individual’s role in society (to the meager extent “society” exists at all) is to be a consumer and a worker – a cog in an economic system of incentives, costs and benefits. Human relationships and the struggle for democratic voice are not merely superfluous, but actively interfere with the efficient workings of the “free” market. To overcome these forces, Giroux basically says that we need to reimagine a pedagogy of hope and humanity. Various movements, from the labor movement to the women’s rights movement to the anti-war movement need to be united in common struggle to reimagine a form of government that addresses the needs of people as interconnected individuals. “Freedom” needs to mean more than just the freedom to be left alone; it needs to mean the freedom for all people, including and especially historically oppressed groups such as the poor, minorities, older and younger people, gays, lesbians and transgender people, to achieve their fullest potential within an interconnected society. Giroux spills a lot of ink on what is preventing this vision from coming to fruition; hence the frequent iterations of the litany of our nation’s and the world’s ills: militarization, growing inequality, poverty, the “carceral state”, the “surveillance state”, etc. But Giroux is hardly the first to say these things – most of the authors listed above, along with many others, have said the same and said it better. Where there is plenty of room for more ink is how to overcome these obstacles. Giroux’s solution, in his final chapter, basically comes down to hope. Really? That’s all you’ve got? I think we’ve heard that one before (and I’m no longer eight months pregnant and filled with hormones, so forgive me if I don’t cry with joy this time around). And even then, Giroux spends nearly three-fourths of the chapter telling us, yet again, why this hope is so hard to achieve and flourish (war, poverty, media violence,… stop me if you’ve heard this before). It’s sort of like how I imagine that a doctor in the Gaza Strip might feel right now dealing with a complicated case. He might very well properly diagnose his patient. He may even prescribe the proper form of treatment. But the specifics and the mechanics of exactly how to carry out that treatment under current conditions is the rub. The reality is that the neoliberal agenda is taking hold because the majority of people are buying into it. As Giroux says, it sounds like “common sense”. The trick is to try to get people to understand why that “common sense” is actually so poisonous. And that’s not easy to do. When you start telling people that the “common sense” things they believe in are oppressive, violent and racist, they tend to get rather defensive. You simply can’t go around accusing the majority of the population of being wrong or misguided or not understanding their own interests and expect to be taken seriously. You’ll find yourself labeled a nutcase and quickly marginalized. Given that the neoliberal agenda is so mainstream and “common sense”, and given that the corporations and the powerful elites control both education and the media, exactly how do we reach people to form these coalitions of hope that Giroux is talking about? When he has some actual, concrete answers to that question, I would love to hear them.