Critical Pedagogy and Emancipation

I visited Joyce several times shortly before her death, during a moment when she was in much pain and anguish, but still talking about the world and wanting to find ways to make sense of the suffering she and others around her were experiencing. Joyce feared her own intellectual efforts would either be forgotten, or worse, be colonised in ways that would distort her revolutionary intent. Together, we spoke about the manner in which the integrity of our life work, as radical intellectuals and as women who challenged the structures of oppression, could so easily be diminished, ignored, or disposed of, discarded into the wasteland of women’s silenced histories.

In her last days, Joyce feared that she had done too little with her life; that she had not given enough; and that most of what she had accomplished would be overlooked, with few recalling her personal, pedagogical, political and public struggles for justice and liberation. As I read through the chapters in this beautiful tribute to Joyce’s scholarship and her life as a radical intellectual, there is no doubt that her work will continue to inspire and provoke dialogue and debates across many fields, and that the many people she touched – in the UK, the US, Europe, Venezuela, Brazil and El Salvador – will think of her with great fondness and appreciation, remembering her humour, kindness, incisive questioning and that audacious spirit that still surrounds the memories of her life and work.

A few years ago, Joyce decided to leave the university in sheer disgust! She left for health reasons, precipitated by the immense stress produced by the inhumane accountability policies and practices of the neoliberal university. Similarly, Joyce witnessed many of her radical colleagues and comrades experiencing great physical and emotional distress, as they struggled to navigate with political integrity the contradictions of a dehumanising, elitist and competitive environment. This to say, Joyce did not leave because she did not love teaching or her students, but because she could no longer contain her frustration and disappointment with the instrumentalising and objectifying nature of her work life. She preferred to take her emancipatory political vision of public sociology, popular education, social movements and critical pedagogy out to the streets so that she could labour in a more directly engaged way.

Unfortunately, her illness and her retirement would coincide too closely, leaving her little time to carry forward many of her political dreams. Yet, even a few weeks before her death, she was wanting us to write together about the struggles people undergo when fighting with a chronic illness and about our many struggles as radical intellectual women who had experienced so many moments of alienation and marginalisation in our efforts to expose the hypocrisy of academic life, as well as the contradictions of the intellectual left – where, on one hand, we were tentatively respected as intellectuals but, on the other, unwelcomed for our refusal to shut up and stop our incessant questioning of societal structures and practices through which poverty, sexism, racism, ableism and other forms of human oppression persist unabated. The above speaks to the comradely intimacies of this radical intellectual. But to leave things there would be to ignore the manner in which personal, pedagogical and political intimacies deeply intermingled in her life. Because, for Joyce, her life was powerfully anchored in the personal intimacies of family.

Personal Intimacies

Joyce deeply loved and often spoke about her beautiful family. For over three decades, Joyce persistently laboured to make sure her family’s well-being was ensured. She took time to have long conversations with her children of the heart, Katherine and Keith, as well as their respective partners, Lauren and Ember. She adored being grandma to Lucas, Rosa, Lyra and Abrielle. And even today, the children remember glimpses of grandma and hold on to the stories and times they shared together. At a memorial gathering for Joyce, Lucas (her grandson) who was only 9 at the time, took out a letter that Joyce had written for him prior to her death and read it to us. It was a deeply poignant moment, when one cannot’ but acknowledge that some of our most powerful contributions, as revolutionaries, are not found in books or articles, but rather in the personal intimacies we bequeath to those we love.

For Joyce, these intimacies were powerful expressions in which love, politics and humanity were deeply comingled. I have had the privilege to have access to a beautiful scrap book that Keith and Lauren put together after Joyce’s death. In the scrapbook, there are so many heart-warming expressions of gratitude, appreciation, humour and pure love. There are soulful poems, songs and declarations by Dave Rogers, her life partner of thirty-two years. One particularly poignant one read,

You are the woman of my life. I love you more than poetry can say. You are part of me. Part of my body. Part of my heart. Part of my mind. Part of my conscious and subconscious (too much so at times!). You are part of my soul … you are the constant source of renewal in my life.

In so many ways, the beautiful intimacy that Joyce and Dave shared provided both sanctuary from the difficult political work and the many struggles they each encountered out in the world. It was a relationship born of struggle and uncertainties, one that unfolded in ways that owed much to Joyce’s tenacity to keep pushing things forward with Dave, with the children and with the wider family. For Joyce, this was an essential ingredient of loving them – and she did it brilliantly.

Joyce created a safe house without imposing rigid boundaries. Always happy for my friends to come round. Making concerted effort to get to know them all. Cussing at anyone who was slightly deserving of it. She labeled us the gonad lads … a title that we lived up to for many years. She told it how it was … if she has an issue with you, you better believe she was gonna let you know about it. But she wasn’t inflexible. She would listen, absorb and could have her views altered. Brilliantly brash. She swore like a trooper … A family woman, me and Katherine became her children, the family she always yearned for. Joyce was a uniquely special person. One of a kind. The mould was broken when Joyce was made. A fighter to the last breath … her fight inspired me to engrave my skin as a constant reminder: 1. To never give up; 2. To live life to the full; 3. That you can always exceed others expectations of you … I’ll miss your voice, your presence and your persona. I promise to make every moment matter.

Similarly, for Dave’s daughter, Katherine Rogers, Joyce was also an enormous influence, a pillar in her life, despite the difficulties they experienced in finding their way through the beginning years. For Katherine, Joyce’s emotional honesty and her great tenacity and persistence proved to be life-changing, while her political commitment shone a light that led the way. When Joyce died, Katherine wrote,

You came into our lives … in a flash of colour, volume and emotion … Bright clothes, big glasses, a huge smile and a directness and honesty that are your hallmarks. You brought with you your style, your food, your opinions and an emotional literacy … Thank you for always being there to talk, and for your emotional clarity and care for me … You never let blood ties hold you back. You believed that you were entitled to a relationship with me and Keith and you worked on it, fought for it. I want to thank you too for everything you have done for me, dad, and Keith. You have provided us with stability … you have provided us with a home for our feelings … You’ve created a family and a home for yourself and us. You’re amazing. And I will love you and honor you long beyond your body departing. I like to think your spirit will live on in all of us and in every soul you have touched.

10 years ago, when we found out I was pregnant, of all the grandparents-to-be, we were most looking forward to telling Joyce the news. As expected, she was over the moon, and so excited about her new role as Grandma. And she was, of course, as loving as involved a grandparent as you could wish. Something Lucas most definitely learnt from his Grandma is to question. He’s rarely satisfied with a brief answer to his many questions. Many, many questions! But thank you Joyce, for teaching my son to be curious, to care about injustices, and to not just accept the first answer he is given … I’m so grateful to have known you; so grateful for the 9 years you’ve dedicated to shaping Lucas and the other grandkids into the wonderful children they are.

As Lauren’s words indicate, Joyce’s radical spirit did not shy away from small children. She embraced her grandchildren with zest and joy. In his writing to Grandma, 9-year-old Lucas Rogers wrote,

My grandma was an amazing woman. She taught me about good guys and bad guys (like Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May). We would have amazing conversations (that sometimes had a hint of swearing). Not long ago … my grandma suggested we have a chat … We talked for hours on end about my favourite foods. My grandma liked dark chocolate and I liked Licorish and Turkish delight. Grandma always put my cards up on her wall, even if they were rubbish or a bit gruesome … For my 6^th birthday, my grandma and granddad took me to London on the train. It was the first time I had been to London and we went to the Natural History Museum. We went on the tube and we ate doughnuts. We went to a beautiful café whilst talking about sleepwalking (I sometimes sleep walk and my dad has to put me to bed … grandma had to put granddad back to bed sometimes) … we have even been in the newspaper together … because we were at the Free Mozambique rally. When grandma passed away it broke my heart inside. I will always remember her, I miss you grandma.

Her granddaughters also expressed loving remembrances of Joyce. Rosa called her grandma: The kindest woman in the world. The star of my life. Lyra, the youngest, offered drawings, To grandma. And, Abrielle, the oldest, wrote: