Edward Said and Education

In these powerful pages, Zeus Leonardo reminds us why he is one of the leading critical theorists of education of our time. He lucidly grapples with and articulates Edward Said’s field defining post-colonial project for education broadly and curriculum studies specifically. He also develops his articulation toward an educational criticism, one that asserts "our human powers with the ultimate goal of humanization." We would be wise to follow Zeus Leonardo’s contrapuntal lead.

Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania

On a journey with Edward Said, Leonardo reinvigorates the field of education with the urgency of anti-coloniality and anti-imperialism, and with the hope of freedom-seeking study and praxis. This book brings Said in conversation with de/postcolonial, critical race, feminist and educational theorists to engage questions of curriculum and the canon, the intellectual and the educator/expert, and co-existence in difference. Reading Leonardo with educational anthropology and Latina/x Studies, I am inspired by his call for an educational criticism that emerges from the optics of the marginalized – a reading that does not take anything for granted yet fosters a reading of the complimentary in our diverse forms of experience and resistance.

Sofia A. Villenas, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology at Cornell University

Edward Said and Education is a brilliant addition to our understanding of how to engage critically the field of education by drawing upon the work of Edward Said. Not only does Leonardo rethink the work of Said in relation to other theorists, and how his work contributes to advancing the field of educational criticism, it also rewrites how a critical understanding and engagement with knowledge, the role of the intellectual, and the politics of exile can help us understand both the crisis of education and its articulation within the larger crisis of a democratic ideal forged under the sign of colonization. This is a book that should be read by everyone interested in education, the work of Edward Said, and the place of theory in rethinking what might be called the politics of education.

Henry Giroux holds the Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest at McMaster University, Canada