FIMS Publications
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2023
Volume
The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium: Reflections, Revisions, and New Works
First Page
111
Last Page
126
Abstract
In this chapter, we explore the labor of information literacy and its devaluation in professional discourse, which lends appeal to critical library pedagogy as means to reclaim agency in the classroom. We consider how discourses of agency and empowerment in critical library pedagogy fail to account for positionality, power, and context, with the result that critical pedagogy tends to center individual (heroic) efforts rather than collective action. Critical pedagogy thus becomes a decontextualized and disempowering fiction, a practice of “acting as if” the classroom were a safe space. Reframing critical library pedagogy as labor undertaken in solidarity with other workers offers another possibility for reclaiming its liberatory potential
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Citation of this paper:
Mirza, R., Nicholson, K.P., & Seale, M. Acting "as if": Critical pedagogy, empowerment, and labor. In A. Sanchez & Y. Mery (Eds.), The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium: Reflections, revisions, and new works (pp. 111-126). ACRL.