Introduction

In a recent guest editorial in Discourse and Society, Billig (2000) argues that those of us who see ourselves as operating within a critical paradigm have a responsibility to continually challenge received orthodoxies, be they in the so-called mainstream, uncritical paradigms or within research and teaching that situates itself within a critical frame. His contention is that in a growing number of contexts, critical work can be seen to be approaching mainstream status as it establishes itself in the academic marketplace, and he proposes a perpetual vigilance in our practices to guard against the complacency that may come with even partial entry into the establishment (p. 292).

It was with these words in mind that I allowed myself to critically consider issues of empowerment, not only in my practice as a teacher of English as a second language (ESL) and academic literacy within what I call the corporatizing1 Australian university, but also from within my own positioning in and by the university and its new discourses. The title of this chapter intertextually speaks to an article that has acquired dominant status within the critical pedagogy community (see next section) and begins to ask whether, in the twenty-first century, our work can be empowering for ourselves and our students even as the sites within which we are working are being fundamentally reshaped by globalization and marketization. Higher education's restructuring not only of institutional identities as more entrepreneurial, but also of the professional identities of university teachers and those of their students through the marketization of public discourse has been highlighted by Fairclough (1995, p. 158).