Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

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points that reproduces or resists the mainstream constructions of memory and its knowledge
stored. Critical pedagogues also examine the connections (genealogy) between the different
discourses on memory and critique the ways in which certain memories are supported by particular
intellectual, economic, social, and historical contexts.
The examination and critiques are not meant to be mere exercises in academic logic. Foucault’s
analysis of discourse/text/practices, in this case of memory, called archeological genealogy,
is concerned with the relationships between power and knowledge. In addition, archeological
genealogy investigates how the relationships of power operate as conceptual frameworks that
privilege particular modes of thinking and certain practices about memory and excludes others.
Since symbolic systems of thought are the way humans organize and construct these frameworks,
critical theorists and pedagogues find the competing discourses and practices about memory the
site of unequal power relations and practices. “Moreover, power should not be thought of as a
negative force, something which denies, represses, negates: power is productive ...in fact power
produces reality ...domains of [knowledge, truth, belief and value]” (Storey, 1993). It is in these
competing domains that critical pedagogues find inspiration to teach using counter-memory and
re-memory-ing for social action.
Previously, I mentioned how and why modern constructions of memory were tied to scientific
rationality and the printing press. It is now time to elaborate on how critical studies and pedagogues
consider the role of postmodern technologies. Needless to say the most influential technology
that redefines what memory is and how a reconstruction of what and whose memory counts is the
computer. What the book was to the modern era, the computer is to the postmodern age. Even
in terms of encoding, storage and retrieval, the computer has changed, not only how we think
and act through memory but how we teach and learn. Without a doubt, it is the technology of
the future and when it comes to knowledge is power, it is the computer that offers the power.
On the one hand, we know it is the major source of knowledge for those who (individuals,
societies, institutions, etc.) own and control computer technologies. An even greater power, as
with book technologies, is for those who produce and control with the click of the mouse the
multiple memories encoded, stored, and retrievable in a computer. Just because this technology
can store and retrieve more varieties of knowledge and faster than books, what memories and
whose memories count are still major questions for critical theorists and pedagogues.
I’m reminded of several undergraduate students who were asked to do a library search on a
specific topic. We were in a 300-year-old university setting with books and documents dating
back to the 1700s. Of the twenty-nine students given the task to do a research project, everyone
of them headed to the computers. As a pedagogue of 40 years’ experience, I was alerted very
dramatically to the fact that the major source of knowledge for these postmodern students was
the computer. Indeed they also use the technologies of television, film, and music as sources and
occasionally parents, teachers, and books. However, the students still accepted these prosthetic
memories (Landsberg, 2000); memories we have without having lived the experience it represents.
For several reasons this is still problematic for critical theorists.
Memories, whether from body/mind/spirit experiences or second hand sources such as books,
computers, and film, still remain individualistic possessions and reproduced those of the dominant
group. The knowledge and values were researched and assumed to be the authorities as memory
and memories were being constructed by the text’s technologies. The way the students read the
texts and reproduced the knowledge in essays and assignments remained unchallenged. Without
alternative ways and the institutional spaces to challenge the knowledge, values, and structuring
of memories, identities, and content, they had succumbed to the Enlightenment’s philosophy of
scientific rationality, objectivity, and logical positivism. Moreover, they accepted the knowledge
and truth as essential (natural), stable, and for all people, for all times and spaces (universalizing).
The knowledge is stored in memory for retrieval on exams or decision making in the future. If