Feminist Pedagogy and Strategies of Denial: Enabling Difficult Confrontations for Intergeneration Solidarity and Survival By Dr. Joanna Boehnert Presentation at the "Critical Pedagogies in the Neoliberal University: Expanding the Feminist Theme in the 21st century art [and design] school session #AAH2019, Brighton, April 2019 I will use this paper to reflect on tensions between generations of feminists with a focus on strategies of denial and their toll on the goals of feminist movements. Feminists movements have historically worked (with varying degrees of success) to end the normalisation of denial of social injustices and symbolic, structural and/or actual violence. Feminist pedagogy must intensify challenges to various manifestations of denial responsible for reproducing patriarchy, oppressive social relations and ecocide. This paper will address denial in the face of divisive issues such as the ‘me too’ movement; the precarity faced by younger generations; and the intersections of patriarchy and ecological crises. It is based on my personal experience as a daughter of a feminist academic in Canada, as a student at art school and my current role as lecturer in design education oriented towards social and environmental justice. Solidarity and even survival depends on our ability to make confrontations with disturbing information a catalyst for change. The lessons learned from feminist struggles inform the work of confronting oppressions, including those on issues of environment justice. My experiences have led me to the conclusion that many, if not most, oppressive behaviours and attitudes are rooted in various types of denial and unconscious bias. Both are deep seated forces that prevent many of us (and especially those with more privilege) from seeing things that disturb our self-image. Feminist strategies such as transformative learning help us negotiate these difficult confrontations. These are needed now more than ever in higher education and beyond. Unfortunately, neoliberal modes of governance all but destroy opportunities for transformative learning.

1. Feminist Pedagogy & Strategies of Denial
Enabling Difficult Confrontations
for Intergeneration Solidarity and Survival
Dr. Joanna Boehnert
Lecturer in Design
School of the Arts
Loughborough University
@Ecocene + @EcoLabs

3. contents
1. Strategies of denial
2. Transformative learning and design
3. The personal and political in theory and practice
4. Liberatory movements and social change
5. Ecopedagogy in neoliberal art and design school

4. 1.
Strategies of denial

7. In States of Denial sociologist Stanley Cohen states that
a proclivity to deny disturbing facts is the normal state
of affairs for people in an information-saturated society.
Cohen’s book is based on wide-reaching cross-cultural
studies including Nazi Germany, South Africa, Israel/Pal-
estine, Rwanda and others zones of human rights abuse,
genocide and state sanctioned or institutional violence.

8. Denial can function psychologically below levels of
awareness; denial is a ‘high speed cognitive mechanism
for processing information, like the computer command
to delete rather than save’ (Cohen 2001, 5).

9. “...an unconscious defence mechanism for coping with
guilt, anxiety or other disturbing emotions aroused by
guilt. The psyche blocks off information that is literal-
ly unthinkable or unbearable. The unconscious sets up
a barrier that prevents the thought from reaching con-
scious knowledge” (Cohen 2001, 5).

11. “Instead of agonizing about why denial occurs, we
should take this state for granted. The theoretical
question is not ‘why do we shut out?’ but ‘what do
we ever not shut out?’ The empirical problem is not
uncover yet ever more evidence of denial, but to
discover the conditions under which information is
acknowledged and acted upon. The political problem
is how to create these conditions. This reframes the
classic studies of obedience: instead of asking why most
people obey authority so unthinkingly, let us look again
and again at the consistent minority – nearly on-third,
after all – who refuse to obey” (Cohen, 249).

12. According to Cohen, denial manifests in three different ways:
1) Literal (nothing happened)
2) Interpretative (what happened is really something else)
3) Implicatory (what happened was justified) (Cohen 2001:99)
These types of denial are further complicated by levels at which
they become evident within individuals:
1) Cognition (not acknowledging the facts)
2) Emotion (not feeling, not being disturbed)
3) Morality (not recognizing wrongness or responsibility)
4) Action (not taking steps in response to knowledge) (Ibid:9)

13. Confronting denial matrix
literal interpretative implicatory
cognitive
emotional
morality
action

16. 2. Liberatory education as breaking strategies of denial
2.
Transformative learning
& design

17. Transformative Learning - 10 Phases (Jack Mezirow, 1978)
1. A disorienting dilemma
2. Self-examination
3. A critical assessment of assumptions
4. Recognition of a connection between one’s discontent and
the process of transformation
5. Exploration of options for new roles, relationships and actions
6. Planning a course of action
7. Acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plans
8. Provisional trying of new roles
9. Building competence and self-confidence in new roles and
relationships
10. A reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions
dictated by one’s new perspective
Mezirow 2009:19

21. Epistemological position
Theoretical perspective
Methodologies
Methods for data collection
Design practice
PRAXIS
engaged P R ACTICE
ACTION
RESEARCH
DESIGN
RESEARCH
CASE STUDIES INTERVIEWS
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Multimodal Speculative Design
WHOLE SYSTEMS
PARADIGM
teach-in el poster el graphics 10 phases of el
Visual Communication Design
The Visual Communication of Ecological Literacy
TRANSFORMATIVE
Learning
SYSTEMS MAPPING
SKETCHES
QUESTIONNAIRES

24. 3.
The personal
and political
in theory
and practice

26. 4.
Liberatory
movements
and social
change

28. A perfect summer afternoon,
perfectly synchronised vans and
bikes and people descend on a
field overlooking Kingsnorth
power station. From the long
grass the first tripods and
marquees rise up, the central
point from which grows the
infrastructure necessary for a
thousand people to live, learn,
eat and play.
Tripods are erected first, a symbol of legal occupation and near impossible for police to remove safely with an activist perched on top.
Kingsnorth 2008
Taking the Site
CampforClimateAction08
K08
A portable wind turbine is erected. The site
is powered entirely by renewable energy;
wind, solar and pedal. Compost toilets being
constructed. There are two different kinds of
toilets, sawdust for solid and straw for liquid, all
the proceeds going towards growing next year’s
new potatoes.

32. 5. Ecopedagogy in
the neoliberal art
and design school

33. Levels of Learning and Communication
No change (no learning: ignorance, denial, tokenism)
Accommodation (1st order learning: adaptation and maintenance)
Reformation (2nd order learning: critically reflective adaptation)
Transformation (3rd order learning: creative re-visioning)
Stephen Sterling 2001, 78

34. The world is a c
psychological-ec
if it were divisib
intractable, glob
References
Fritjof Capra. The Hidden Conne
Stephen Sterling. Whole Systems
Stephen Sterling. Transformation
ples of organization
of life - is the first
p is the move
al knowledge to
social institutions,
design and the
Fritjof Capra, 2003
j.j.boehnert@brighton.ac
This poster can be down
Transformational Learning
Values, Knowledge, Skills
A: SEEING (Perception)
An expanded ethical sensibility or consciousness
B: KNOWING (Conception)
A critical understanding of pattern,
consequence and connectivity
C: DOING (Action)
The ability to design and act relationally,
integratively and wisely.
Stephen Sterling, 2009
SOCIAL
GOOD
DESIGN
Actions
Ideas / Theories
Norms / Assumptions
Beliefs / Values
Paradigm / Worldview
Metaphysics / Cosmology
* Transformative learning is rarely enabled in the neoliberal institution
where learning typically remains on the No Change level (denial and
tokenism), the Accomodation level (1st order learning - adaptation) or
occasionally the Reformation level (2nd order learning - critical reflection).