The Department of Childhood Studies welcomes Dr. David I. Backer, Assistant Professor of Education at West Chester University, to campus on Wednesday, February 5. Dr. Backer will present, “Enrique Dussel’s Pedagogics of Liberation: An Early Decolonial Theory of Childhood.” Please see below for the abstract.

All are welcome to this free event, which begins at 11 a.m. in the Artis Building, located at 329 Cooper Street. Registration is encouraged. 

Abstract

Enrique Dussel is considered one of the founding philosophers of liberation in the Latin American tradition, an influential arm of what is now called decoloniality. While he is astoundingly prolific, relatively few of his works can be found in English translation. Pedagogics of Liberation represents Dussel’s early thought on pedagogics, or the field of philosophical inquiry that examines face-to-face relationships where there are inequalities, including the child-adult relationship. The book provides a decolonial concept of childhood and youth, delimiting a liberatory pedagogics from an oppressive pedagogics by weaving together Latin American and European intellectual histories. In this presentation, co-translator David I. Backer will give a brief sketch of the book’s claims about this distinction as they relate specifically to childhood. https://punctumbooks.com/titles/pedagogics-of-liberation/