Pedagogy in Catastrophic Times: Giroux and the Tasks of Critical Public Intellectuals

This article reflects on Henry Giroux's work as a critical public intellectual and the important role his work plays in fostering educated hope and insurgent possibilities during our present times of daily and longer term catastrophes. In addition to attempting to capture the experience of what it means and how it feels to read Giroux along with what Giroux is working to accomplish, the piece reflects on various forms of public pedagogy (anti-public and ‘public’ public), and the interpenetrating relationships between knowledge, power, politics and pedagogy. Furthermore, it examines the stepping in/stepping out nature of the approaches to theorizing and practicing, proposing and activating, and reflecting and insurrecting that inform Giroux's ongoing critical project. The piece includes a postscript: ‘Blues for Giroux’.