This review has been accessed  times since March 30, 2001
Cherryholmes, Cleo H. (1999). Reading Pragmatism.
New York: Teachers College Press.
168 pp.
$24.95 (Paper) ISBN
0807738468
$52 (Cloth) ISBN 0807738476
Reviewed by Gail Masuchika Boldt
The University of Iowa
March 29, 2001
Cleo
Cherryholmes suggests one motive for writing Reading
Pragmatism as the oft-cited criticism that
poststructuralism, deconstruction, interpretive analytics,
and new historicism, while generating powerful forms of
interpretation and criticism, do not provide an agenda for
action. Cherryholmes argues that pragmatism requires the
critical, anti-essentialist lenses of poststructuralisms,
but views pragmatism as taking up where these theories leave
off (p. 4). Turning to Peirce, Dewey, and his own previous
writings, Cherryholmes calls for a critical pragmatism
focused on aesthetics and power that supports deliberate,
reflective conduct (p. 7).
Critical
pragmatism as Cherryholmes reads it requires that the
pragmatist should consider her/his thoughts and actions from
the perspective of imagined outcomes. Pragmatists actively
anticipate outcomes from multiple perspectives and then
choose, from among the many possibilities, that course which
is most likely to lead to an aesthetically beautiful
outcome. Aesthetic beauty is defined as results that are
satisfying and fulfilling (p. 5). Cherryholmes argues that
human action begins with desire, and that humans choose a
way of life that we believe is most likely to bring us
desired outcomes.
In some ways... we have always been pragmatists in our
research and reading. We have been choosing our community
and a way of life in doing what we do. Among our conceits,
however, have been claims to an epistemologically (say
positivism or empiricism) or dogmatically superior (say an
immanent socialism) position in order to deny, evade, and
exclude the instabilities, uncertainties, terror and
responsibilities that accompany pragmatism. (p. 81).
He suggests
that given that we desire, imagine, choose, and act anyway,
a desirable move from a pragmatic perspective is to add a
deliberately critical component to this. Using critical,
non-essentialist tools, Cherryholmes' critical pragmatist
seeks to understand all positions as interested, to
understand his/her actions and agenda in a context of
history and power relations, to continually reinterpret and
criticize anew one's goals in new situations and in light of
multiple theories, conceptions, outcomes, and beliefs, to
always seek out new perspectives on one's goals, beliefs and
actions, and to revise, revise, revise.
A major
difficulty, of course, is that people have differing, often
conflicting ideas about about what a satisfying, beautiful
outcome would be. Cherryholmes is clear that he does not
accept that all outcomes are equally valid (p. 43). He
turns to Foucault for the argument that subjectivities are
social constructions and that what consequences we can
imagine, what critiques and actions we have access to, our
methodologies, and those things we desire and experience as
satisfying and fulfilling are not freely and equally chosen.
It is possible, [pragmatists] understand, that what
appears to be a freely chosen aesthetic or a rationally
calculated outcome may well be a highly determined effect of
power and ideology. Aesthetic conceptions and desires
are generated in unequal social transactions.
Therefore, revealing and criticizing power is required if
one is seriously interested in conceptualizing consequences.
(p. 37).
Cherryholmes concludes this section by stating
that in critical pragmatism "criticism is aesthetic and
artistic as well as intellectual and political" and
that obvious targets for pragmatist scrutiny are social and
political inequalities (p. 38). To make this argument, he
turns to a democratic ideal. Declaring this democratic
ideal as "social openness, inclusiveness, tolerance,
and experimentation" (p. 40), Cherryholmes contends
that democracy is necessary to pragmatism because it
promotes the diversity of experiences, ideas, interests, and
needs that pragmatists require to imagine multiple, diverse
outcomes and to provide on-going criticism for their own and
others' choices. Likewise, democracy needs critical
pragmatism insofar as pragmatism encourages the kind of
openness, experimentation, and spirit of change that
constitutes democracy.
Cherryholmes
makes many specific references to education. He is clearly
interested in questions of educational research, theory,
practice, and reform. With Reading Pragmatism , he
wants to provide a useful foundation and methodology for
analyzing actual teaching practices and claims that are made
about education in research and policy documents. To this
end, he demonstrates multiple critical readings using The
Taxonomy of Educational Objectives ("Bloom's
Taxonomy") and a piece of research entitled
"Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and
Comprehension-Monitoring Activities" by Palincsar and
Brown. Cherryholmes offers poststructural and
deconstructive readings of both texts as well as a possible
feminist reading of the Palinscar and Brown text. He
criticizes both texts by reading them on their own terms and
claiming that there are serious inconsistencies between what
they claim to want to achieve and the methodologies
employed. He projects and criticizes possible unspoken
results of the practices and theories set out by the texts,
e.g., the support of binaries and hierarchies, the reifying
of texts, and the reproduction of the status quo via social
reproduction of social class and beliefs about
authority.
Cherryholmes
states that research can and should be read as a form of
literature. He reproaches educators for uncritically
"trying to tell each other and the public persuasive
stories" (p. 100) that further dominant stories about
education and society. Stating that there are limits to
what "modernization" and
"professionalization" instituted through such
moves as "standards, accountability, control,
productivity, and specialization" (p. 101) can bring to
schools, he turns to Fullan to suggest a pragmatic picture
of educational change. He cites Fullan's position that
"rational procedures... have a long history of failing
to match up to the promises of education change agents and
reformers" (p. 104). He adapts Fullan's "themes
for the future of education change," calling them
"thoroughly pragmatic" (p. 104). These themes
include breaking down oppositional politics in favor of
alliances that work together toward implementing a few
principles. Solutions should be flexible and come from a
plurality of perspectives rather than monolithic or
universal, and should arise in a specific context. Change
is most powerful when the stakeholders find the change
personally meaningful. Finally, Fullan argues that change
often requires those involved to accept that change includes
contradiction, ambivalence, paradox, and dilemmas. For
Cherryholmes, these conflicts provide precisely the canvas
upon which pragmatists paint beautiful landscapes through
experimentation, reflection, community, conversation,
criticism, and revision.
Responses
As I have
reflected upon my response to Reading Pragmatism,
part of what I have struggled to articulate is the
paradoxical sense that the way that I think and act as an
educator seems very much as Cherryholmes advocates (or so I
flatter myself) and yet I experienced several points of
concern with ideas in the book. As I engaged in critical
readings of the texts Cherryholmes presented from
"Bloom's Taxonomy" and the reciprocal teaching
research, for example, I formed a slate of hypotheses and
criticisms about models of knowledge and learning that
seemed to underlie these documents. Reading Cherryholmes'
critiques, I found that we shared many of the same concerns.
Therefore, I couldn't help but feel an affinity for what I
took to be his views on beautiful outcomes in educational
research and practice. Cherryholmes' call for understanding
the beliefs and power structures that are supported by
specific practices, and particularly those that replicate
positions of dominance and subordination, represents one of
my most desired outcomes as a teacher. I want my students
to think critically about practices and ideals, to engage in
broad dialogue, to choose carefully, to take an experimental
approach with the courses of thought and action they engage,
to reflect, to get feedback from a diverse community, and
then to reevaluate and revise on an on-going basis. I
believe in the importance of regarding my own on-going
teaching practices as "rough drafts," with
revisions occurring as desired outcomes are measured against
actual outcomes. In spite of valuing much in common with
Cherryholmes, I felt a persistent discomfort with his effort
to establish pragmatism as an ethical framework for
deliberate, reflective conduct within critical theories and
practices.
To establish
the rationale for reasserting pragmatism, Cherryholmes
claims that his theoretical forbearers—post-structural
and deconstruction theorists such as Foucault and
Derrida—"do not have a project that looks to action, nor do
they seek one.." (p. 4) (Note 1) Frequently
Cherryholmes critiques his own categories and ideals, but
importantly fails to do so relative to the concept of
"a project that looks to action." If by "a
project that looks to action" Cherryholmes means a
blueprint for action such as he turns to in the final
chapter, then he is quite right in saying that critical
theories do not provide this. Given that any action or idea
can only be assessed in its local contexts, given that the
same action or idea can have multiple, often contradictory
outcomes even within a single person, and given that
contexts and structures of power change constantly, to
provide a project that looks to action would be
contradictory, misleading, and at times dangerous. In spite
of not having such a blueprint, most people who employ such
theories do, in fact, look to action. Most of the themes he
advocates in the last chapter—working in alliance,
flexible solutions arising in a specific context in which
the stakeholders are the major actors, a plurality of
perspectives, and the productive engagement of
contradictions, ambivalences, paradoxes, and
dilemmas—have been standard fare in many texts drawing
from critical
theories for several years. (Note 2)
Knowing that these possibilities for
reflection and action are available in critical texts, I
began to wonder about the intended audience for this book.
A sense that Cherryholmes' project was curiously
decontextualized bothered me throughout my reading and I
wished that he had offered a specific context for the
writing of this book. When other theorists have written
extensively about the need to take action, no matter how
temporary, uncertain, and partial, I wondered why
Cherryholmes felt the need to make this turn to pragmatism
as the "action portion" of anti-essentialist
critiques. I began to think that I had a better sense of
the context for this book after a relatively recent visit to
Michigan, Cherryholmes' home state. As is the unfortunate
trend nationwide, what I found there was tremendous pressure
put on educators at primary, secondary, and university level
for increasing standardization around content, pedagogy, and
student evaluation and promotion. These are concerns that
Cherryholmes points to in Reading Pragmatism in a
general manner, but the strength of these as very real and
present problems only became clear after being in Michigan.
Cherryholmes is concerned with teachers and researches at
all levels whose actions or inaction support, whether
unwittingly or otherwise, a status quo that creates and
perpetuates ugly outcomes. These ugly outcomes include
educators' participation in the perpetuation of political,
social, and economic inequalities and in the creation of
students who are bored, disconnected, and disempowered by
teaching methodology. They also include students who are
taught that there is one right interpretation, method, or
answer, that texts are authoritative, and that constructs
portrayed by texts and methods are natural and beyond
question.
The drive toward standardization that so many educators are
rightly suspicious of is powered in part by the
naturalization of its own discourses via reference to
objective measures, scientific research, and controlled
methodologies. Critical theories are messy. Critical
theorists typically attempt to resist standardized
methodologies, criticize objectivity and question research.
This refusal to be pinned down provides a fertile field for
proponents of standardization to discredit the work of
critical educators as non-scientific, soft, wishy-washy, and
dangerous. The pressures being put on critical educators to
conform and "get with the program" are very real.
In this context, Cherryholmes' use of pragmastism reads to
me like an attempt to gain or maintain a foothold by arguing
that critical educators do, in fact, have guidelines that
could impel a certain line of measured response. Conceding
this ground feels like a pragmatic move on his part.
Perhaps Cherryholmes believes that by making some
concessions, beautiful outcomes or at least less ugly
outcomes are likely to occur. Some of the reasons I fear
this to be a self-defeating strategy became clear to me as I
thought about what Cherryholmes had to omit to present his
argument.
The push
toward standardization in education is part of larger
conservative responses to the on-going cultural, ethnic,
and linguistic diversification of America which challenge
the very premises of what matters and what works in school
and society. Many Americans feel that the nation is in
crisis because it is losing some essential identity.
Standardization in school lays the burden of failure and the
necessity of change on those whose existence might
alternatively be read as a challenge to existing hegemonies.
Reading Pragmatism might be read as a plea akin to
"Can't we all just be reasonable?" aimed at
both critical educators and conservative proponents of
standards and accountability, but not particularly at those
who are already marginalized by discourses of rationality.
Cherryholmes' citation of Fullan's argument that "The
first move... is from a negative politics that imposes
change from above and resistance from below to a positive
politics of implementing a few principles" (p. 104),
seemed hazardously dehistoricized. I couldn't help but
think that there wasn't much precedent for expecting the
"above" to have the good will to heed the call of
pragmatism and criticize their own positions of power, and
that therefore it might in many cases be premature to call
for an end to resistances from below. Indeed, his appeal to
reasonableness, to analysis and reflection, and to
deliberate action seemed ill-conceived given that
economically, politically, and socially marginalized peoples
are epistemologically represented as those least capable of
reasoned, rational, reflective thought and action.
Scepticism about appeals to reason are read as further proof
of irrationality. This conceptualization of pragmistim
concedes the advantage to those who already hold the
discursive advantage and who are often least likely to want
to engage in discussion aimed at creating greater equity.
(Note 3)
Cherryholmes
provides other examples of omiting certain important
perspectives in his appeal to reasonableness. In his
citation of democracy as the foundation for making and
defending choices, he fails to acknowledge the body of
writing about some of the other, less beautiful effects
effects of democracy, particularly by critical race
theorists and post-colonial theorists. (Note 4) In
particular I noticed the absence of critical and
particularly post-colonial, diasporic, or race theory
critiques when Cherryholmes made the claim cited above that
we are all pragmatists since we all have been
"choosing our community and a way of life in doing what
we do" and then justifying that with claims of
dogmatically or epistemologically superior positions (p.
81). Comparing this to the claims of Radhakrishnan (1996)
below certainly begs the question of just who is constituted
and who is marginalized in Cherryholmes' claim about what
we all have been doing.
What concerns me here is the historical reality that, for
so many of us of the third world, modernity came through as
a powerful critique of our own selves and systems,
ergo as a higher and superior form of knowledge. It
was as if we had been made the Socratic Other; hence the
pedagogical authority of the modernist will to knowledge
that demystifies the native of her worldview and corrects
her into modernity. The dire consequences for the
postcolonial subject are twofold: (1) the capacity to
benefit from the critique is at the expense of one's
solidarity with one's own traditions, and (2) the acceptance
of another culture's provincialism is mandated as the true
form of universalism. ...[Modernity] has to act as a
civilizing mission on behalf of the entire world.
(Radhakrishnan, p. xix)
I don't believe that Cherryholmes' call for
looking forward to outcomes rather than looking back is
intended to wipe out the history that currently appoints
some to subordinate positions. In fact, he calls for such
critical uses of history and Foucauldian genealogies as
important tools in hypothesizing outcomes. Still, in his
failure to speak specifically, to contextualize his own
project with historical and present day examples, to seek
critically the limits of pragmatism, and to bring in a
plurality of viewpoints that might express reservations
about his platform, Cherryholmes has failed to convince me
that establishing his view of pragmatism as an ethical
platform is likely to produce outcomes I would find to be
particularly beautiful.
Notes
- I find Cherryholmes' citation of Lilla (1998) to support
this point to be odd. Lilla argues that precisely the kind
of analytic tools that Cherryholmes champions have lost
their appeal in Europe and not-so-subtly chides Americans
for their on-going interest in Derrida's analytics. He
offers a particularly sarcastic reading of Derrida's
discussion of justice in The Politics of Friendship .
Given that Cherryholmes' use of democracy is quite similar
to how Lilla critically describes Derrida's use of justice,
I don't understand Cherryholmes' decision to use the Lilla
article.
- See, for example Butler (1990,
1993); Grewal and Kaplan (1994); and Radhakrishnan (1996) to
name but a few.
-
See, for example, hooks (1994) and Ladson-Billings and Tate
(1995).
-
See, for example, Ladson-Billings (1995) and Spivak
(1999).
References
Butler, Judith. (1990). Gender trouble: feminism and
the subversion of identity. New
York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. (1993).
Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of
"sex." New York: Routledge.
Grewal, I. and Kaplan, C. (1994). Scattered hegemonies:
postmodernity and
transnational feminist practices. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: education as
the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Ladson-Billings, G. and Tate, W. (1995). "Toward a
critical race theory of education." Teachers
College Record 97(1): 47-68.
Lilla, M. 1998. "The politics of Jacques
Derrida." The New York Review of Books.
June 25: 36-41.
Radhakrishnan, R. (1996).
Diasporic meditations: between home and locations.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Spivak, G. (1999) A Critique of post-colonial reason.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
About the Reviewer
Gail Boldt is an Assistant Professor in the
Language, Literacy, and Culture
program at the University of Iowa. She is currently teaching
a graduate course entitled "Foucault and
Education." Her Ph.D. is from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Email: gboldt@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu.
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