Visual Culture and Critical Pedagogy in “Terrorist Times”

Abstract

Instant access to visual images and emotional accounts of terrorism have secured them a vivid place in our memory and reinforced the idea that “we” have been targeted and are under immediate threat. Fear and the sense of belonging to an innocent, victimized, and threatened group, under attack from irrational, malevolent, and uncontrollable “others”, is a significant feature of “terrorist times” in Western nations. These identities and feelings are reinforced though visual images and the circulation of recurrent statements, polemics, rationalities, and representations. This article explores a discourse analytic approach to critical pedagogy. Such an approach engages with multiple forms of visuality to explore the discourses though which identities and truths about ourselves and others are established, challenged, and resisted. Discourse analysis exposes how knowledges and understandings come to be taken up as history, politics, justice, and the “truth”, while a critical approach to pedagogy highlights the hegemonic role of ideology and discourses in furthering dominant interests and knowledges. One might expect the new literacies approach undertaken in “multiliteracies” to assist in this task, this article identifies several key limitations, including the focus on design-based pedagogy.