The paper limns the separate and shared roles of critical pedagogies and Philippine Studies as critical epistemological tools in reinventing educational practice. Such critical approaches, as suggested, should begin with the acknowledgement and problematization of existing knowledges and power relations which are indissociable from existing social and political structures. The two areas amplify the politically problematizable character of educational institutions and practices (including of course the dispositif that is the educational system), while helping forge a dissident discourse aimed at critiquing and subverting hegemonic power and the knowledges that it seeks to legitimate. As praxis-oriented epistemologies, critical pedagogies and Philippine Studies highlight, among other things, knowledge as social construction and the imperatives of theoretical (re)production in this counter-hegemonic struggle. The paper posits, however, that the analysis and critique of power, practices, and institutions should necessarily involve self-interrogation of the teachers’—and the students’—own suppositions, and along with this, the further blurring of the teacher-student dichotomy. In other words, any critical or resistant epistemology, if it is to be empowering, should be in terms of a language of collectivity/solidarity while taking into consideration the diversity of subject positionalities. The reification of collective aspirations should always implicate the existence and variety of such identities which, in turn, could be understood within the context of collective histories and experiences.
ISSN 2094-4187 (Print)
Philippine E-Journals
