'I'm More Afraid of the Four of You than I Am of the Terrorists': Agency, Dissent, and the Challenges of Democratic Hope

In the classroom, issues including 9/11 and the occupation of Iraq often bring affective and cognitive investments among students and teachers to the forefront. Dialogue, conflicting viewpoints, and critical questioning, all central components of healthy democracies, become fraught with allegiances to long-held and frequently unseen norms. This article grapples with the often-charged field that exists between the difficulty and promise of seeing differently, particularly related to issues such as 9/11. This article takes up the possibility that critical pedagogical frames aimed at questioning power and practicing democracy may be perceived by students as leaving no room for their particular form of agency. The author offers both theoretical and practical challenges to the discourse on cultural studies and critical pedagogy, asserting that in addition to careful critiques of power, students and instructors need a much more deliberate and accessible rationale for the reasons for that critique. (Contains 2 notes.)