Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Cultural workers develop their work, in the short and long term, against the background of a terrible world scenario. This, as is hopefully clear, is the case especially in the ‘Middle East’, characterised by an ongoing genocide of a particular ethnic group and a war that can potentially escalate towards WWIII which, if this worse case scenario were to come to pass, may well be ‘the war to end all wars’ and the planet on which it is waged. This situation indeed furnished the global community with a series of pressing challenges.

One is to work collectively towards reviving the idea of an ‘Educated Public’ engaging in well informed debate, predicated on reason and feeling, to address questions from all standpoints and not simply ethnocentrically. Ethnocentrism and more precisely Eurocentrism  has been one of the limits of my own formation, including formal education, which, I would like to think, many conscientious people, committed to universal social and ecological  justice, are striving to break away from, though, like many other things, this remains an ongoing struggle.

The debate would be informed by robust research and respect for those agencies that provide it which must be supported and not be made the object of repudiation as had unfortunately been the case with Covid-19. In an age when it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, often through abuse of the intellect, human or otherwise, this becomes more urgent than ever. The quest for and pursuit of ‘truth’ remains a key imperative for critical education. Of course what constitutes ‘ truth’ remains a contentious issue, hence my placing the word in parenthesis. This does not negate the importance of engaging in such a quest,redicated on sound findings, that pushes the boundaries of knowledge and understanding further.

Education would necessitate communication under democatic conditions at all levels, as Jurgen Habermas, who passed away recently, is famous for having written, though recently arousing controversy, among many who revered him, for his jaundiced view of the ‘Middle East’ situation. Note that I place terms such as ‘ North’ and ‘ South’, ‘ East’ and ‘West’, ‘Near Eastern’ and ‘Middle East’ in parenthesis taking my cue from Nawal El-Saadawi in asking: ‘Middle East’ in relation to whom ( read : which imperial centre?). In this case, as she rightly points out, the answer is London. These are, needless to say, relative imperial constructions.

These constructions alas feature in such institutions as the U.N., with their own flaws and occlusions. And yet, concern about the rule of international law, as expressed by Francesca Albanese, a crag of sanity in the contemporary ocean of madness, leads me to call for  respect to be shown towards the UN – an institution created to sustain this global ‘public sphere’, in the aftermath of two catastrophic World Wars. And yet the irresponsible, uncouth US leader who is under the influence of a Zionist-driven state, declared guilty of genocide by the International Court of Justice, a  state that, in turn, depends on US congress support and funding, is barking ominously: Might is right and we the powerful can carry out our actions with impunity. The UN is a key institution which has served, through UNESCO, as an enabler of education, both formal and informal, and cultural preservation and activity over the years. The mega and filthy-rich barons who currently dominate the world in an era which Yannis Varoufakis arguably calls one of techno-feudalism, treat this institution with contempt. I consider urgent the need to nurture respect for those institutions such as the UN that can offer beacons of hope for democratic processes, despite the shackles cast along the way: e.g. vetos and the exclusive nature of such mechanisms as membership of the UN Security Council. One also has to contend with the classic Fascist playbook tendency to ride roughshod over its many resolutions.  Education, to the contrary, would, when conceived of in its wider sense, be seen as an essential ingredient of an inclusive, not simply bourgeois, international public sphere.

Cultural workers including educators, having social and larger ecological justice at heart, are therefore called upon to foster a critical education serving as an antidote to a world in which, as Thucydides wrote, in the ‘ Melian Dialogue’ in the History of the Pelopponesian War (416 BC): “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”  Under these situations, which have characterised hegemonic powers and their foreign expansionist policies for years, talk of ‘democracy’, and specifically ‘ Education for Democracy’, sound ever so hollow. This has implications, I would modestly suggest, for the teaching of history in our schools and other educational settings. And I say this while confessing to not being a professionally formed historian, though the historical dimension, alongside other dimensions,  remains an important one in my specialisation, Sociology. History repeats itself, though contrary to what Karl Marx declared in The 18th Brumaire of Napoleon III, it often ends in tragedy and rarely in farce.  I would suggest that it can show that when any government, which is popularly elected and acts in the interest of the sovereign nation that chose it, is toppled through colonial covert and overt actions, to gain access to precious resources such as oil, talk of ‘democracy’ sounds ludicrous. This is the case with Iran and  the toppling of  democratically eected, Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 following his attempt to nationalise oil. It was the case with Salvador Allende in Chile and his attempts at nationalising copper. Examples of such reactions to leaders who seek to nationalise resources are legion, found in all corners of the earth, perhaps dissuading several countries from digging for oil, even disregarding expert assurance of its existence, for fear of drawing imperial attention and  losing any shred of sovereignity they might enjoy. History and other social disciplines would show that the post WWII arrempts at ‘exporting democracy’ through military offensives rendered the concept a sham. It is, in many cases, such as Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, East Timor and Iran, and to name but a few, a ruse to simply accommodate the demands and geopolitical interests of some, notably the so called ‘seven sisters’ multinational oil companies, now reduced to just a giant foursome, following mergers and take overs. The case of Italian, Enrico Mattei,  in the early sixties comes to mind. Head of ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi- Italy’s National Fuel Trust which relaced the Fascist state’s AGIP), who coined the phrase ‘ le sette sorelle’ ( the seven sisters) and who entered into bilateral aggreements with former colonies, deemed detrimental to these seven corporations, Mattei disappeared  in thin air while flying back, in a private plane, from a commitment in Catania  Sicily. Was this an accident or cold blooded murdrr of the three persons on board the plane? The jury has, throughout all these years, remained out on this.

Critical educators and other social and ecological justice cultural workers can continue to resist the global machinations of Empire and stimulate dreams. We can offer, and many have offered,  a semblance of genuine critical democracy in the limited specific pockets in which we operate as has always been the case with, for example, given that I come from the adult education sector, popular education, often blurring the boundaries between different age groups in contrast to formalised ‘Western’ inflected conventional formal education. In popular education settings it is frequent to discover school age children learning alongside their guardians to eschew hazardous long walks to and from schools located at great distance from their homes, especially during turbulent times such as civil wars, risking treading over mines or being anduced to join the army or even being kidnapped for ransome. They would prefer to offer hands for work in the fields and join nonformal education settings in thd evenings. Popular education is a key source for learing in the geographical majority world, especially among beleagured communities such as Palestinian ones in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

Beyond the very valid areas of schooling, popular and higher education, we, as cultural operators see our task as more htan that, conceiving of education and culture in their broader contexts, the two being inextricably intertwined. Broadly oriented, educational and cultural work entails being concerned with the plight of everyone and everything, trying to  avoid the alas hegemonic idea of me ne frego, the Italian expression for the English: I do not give a damn. Not giving a damn for anything where there is nothing ‘in it for me’ or us as an interest group is the classic posture that derives from a Capitalist ethos distinguished by excessive individualism and atomisation. Don Lorenzo Milani and the School of Barbiana’s motto ‘ I care’, in the 1968 movement rallying classic publication, Lettera a una Professoressa ( Letter to a Teacher) would be the mantra critical cultural workers and educators  continue to pursue in their strides in initial, vocational, early childhood, the visual arts, drama, music and adult education. More strides continue to be made in such areas as community education and action and the all encompassing process of Community Development, engaging with the cultural/educational potential provided by local community hubs that exist within specific places, including village hubs.

Higher Education is a domain worth fighting for, treated unequivocally as the ‘enemy within’ in Imperial centers such as Washinton D.C, a term once attributed to Richard Nixon and echoed more recently by J.D Vance, as Empire brooks no dissent from well educated, informed and concientious sectors, some of whom have garnered the ability not only to know but also feel. People displaying critical consciousness and acumen rage with others, engaged in ‘dangerous’ work, to stem the tide of fascism that seeks to generate a chloroform society. I t is one featuring sociopaths, devoid of empathy and, in Hannah Arendt’s words, primed for totalitarianism and to display what she calls, in Eichmann in Jerusalem, ‘ the banality of evil’ the prlolongation of the title of her 1963 book. In reaction to all this, despite the neofacist mantra of ‘so what?’, the reaction Brazilians imputed to former President, Jair Bolsonaro and his ilk, connected to what they call ‘negacionismo’, critical cultural workers would remain steadfast to the kind of society that values research and teaching, the lartter based on discernment, critical consciousness and robust knowledge.

While critically embracing modern media and technologies, making genuinely democratic use of them for the benfit of all not the techno-feudal overlords and their proteges, one would have to hold ethical concerns uppermost. Concerns include those recently expressed by my Italian colleage, Dr Gisella Vismara: concerns about the human and rest of the environment cost of generative AI. Precisely the concern is for the plight of the many exploited workers in the ‘Global South’. They are often “underpaid and unprotected to label and ‘clean’ the data that fuels these systems”.  There is concern for the untold harm and massive environmental impact “caused by the energy and water resources these infrastructures consume.” University faculty like me and other researchers, in different research institutions or units, are encouraged to keep all this in mind when asked by publishers of our work, the product of our academic labours, also subject to exploitation, to sign the AI-related licensing opt-ins.

All of the foregoing would be pertinent to our efforts in critical education and cultural action over the forthcoming years. One would have to continue however to harp on what Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire and his team called the limit siotuations involved in such action. One would hopefully remain fully aware that, although indispensable for engendering  a democratic ethos, education and cultural action should not be accorded powers beyond their reach. They cannot change society and its structures on their own. They are each not an independent variable. They nevertheless each still constitute an indispensable variable.