motta sara_c teaching global and social justice as transgressive spaces of possibility.pdf

8/14/2019 Motta Sara_C Teaching Global and Social Justice as Transgressive Spaces of Possibility.pdf

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Teaching Global and Social Justiceas Transgressive Spaces

of Possibility

Sara C. Motta

School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK;[email protected]

Abstract: In this article I reflect on introducing critical pedagogy into social justiceteaching in an elite UK university as part of the Nottingham Critical Pedagogy Project.I de-essentialise Freires conceptualisation of the human subject and her desire for

transcendence with the introduction of Deleuze and Guattaris politics of desire. Thisenables an adaption of critical pedagogy from its original context of popular politicsto the individualised elite setting of our project. Our pedagogical objectives becomethe opening of spaces of possibility which decentre the dominant regime of truth ofthe neoliberal university and enable imagining and becoming other. This involvesdisrupting normal patterns of classroom performativity in terms of student as consumerand lecturer as producer of commodities, transgressing dualisms between mind/body,intellectual/emotional and teacher/student. Our pedagogical praxis is therefore inherentlypolitical as by radically disturbing commodified subjectivities we foster processes that leadto unanticipated, maybe even unspeakable, transgressions.

Keywords: critical pedagogy, subjectivity, otherness and hybridity, university, Delueze

and Guattari, Paulo Freire

British Higher Education is in crisis; a crisis manifested through the intensification

of the erosion of spaces of critical thought and practice and its colonisation by

an exclusionary commodification which is managed through an increasing logic of

authoritarianism. Yet we can view this crisis as a moment of possibility; a moment

in which whilst there have been decades of eerie depoliticisation, decomposition

of collectivity and erosion of both the desire for, and belief in, social and political

change there is now a visible underside of negation, a no to the destruction of the

public university, manifested most forcefully in the rebirth of a student movementin 2010.

This movement enacts a politicisation of education. It is an urgent call to

critical scholarsin opposition to those that claim education can and should be

apolitical (see Fisher 2008)to politicise our practice as researchers, educators and

intellectuals.

This piece is written as an embrace of this call to politicise education. It situates my

practice in and outside of the classroom as inherently political, which whilst often

complicit in the reproduction of the neoliberal university can also be created as a

transgressive space of possibility of other ways of making knowledge, understanding

the world and creating ourselves and our society.

My reflections here are the result of my participation as co-organiser of the

Nottingham Critical Pedagogy Project in the Centre for the Study of Social

AntipodeVol. 45 No. 1 2013 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 80100 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.00995.xC 2012 The Author.Antipode C 2012 Antipode Foundation Ltd.


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Global and Social Justice as Transgressive Spaces of Possibility 81

and Global Justice (CSSGJ), University of Nottingham. Whilst these are individual

reflections they have their origin and their stimulus in the ongoing critical dialogue

with my co-organisers and other participants in the project (for details of the project

see Bell et al 2010). They are also part of an ongoing attempt to make sense

of being a single mother woman of colour in an elite university in which many

of my colleagues and students whilst recognisable are also very much othersto me. I am trying to learn to see white (masculine) middle-classness and move

beyond my rigidities, fixities and essentialising frames of seeing. I am also trying

to de-essentialise homogenisation of academic experience and subjectivity as white

(masculine) middle class and affluent. Both these I hope can contribute to critical

praxis in this particular space and time [however uncomfortable and almost counter-

intuitive that may be for me (and others)].1

I argue that it is important to recover and reinvent critical pedagogy (CP) and

do this by engaging with, whilst transforming, Freires conceptualisation of CP

as a political act that is central to the formation of communities of resistance and

revolutionary subjects. I build on his work by suggesting that in an elite commodified

context of higher education it is necessary to reconceptualise the nature of the

subject; away from an essentialised subject that desires transcendence and an end

to oppression and towards a conceptualisation of subjectivity in which desire can

be channelled into subjectivities that dontdesire social transformation. I do this by

using the politics of desire (ontology and epistemology) of Deleuze and Guattari. For

these thinkers desire and plurality are the ontological basis of being and therefore

being in the world necessarily produces and is produced by a plurality of knowledges

and subjectivities even if the structuration of desire in capitalism is premised upon the

creation of hierarchies, unities and fixities that block this multiplicity. For Deleuze andGuattari therefore there is no essentialised desiring subject prior to its articulation in

power relationships.

On this basis I also critically interrogate our analysis of contemporary British

university (and by implication broader society) with a focus on how the

structuration of desire increasingly occurs through the development of alienated

social relationships and disciplinary practices of self. Thus implicating both elite and

subaltern in the reproduction of contemporary structures of domination also implies

that both exist in alienated social relationships with truncated desires. This suggests

that the task of CP is not to replace one privileged viewpoint (that of the oppressor)by another (that of the oppressed) but to open up the possibilities of a multiplicity

of ways of being and doing that are transformatory and transgressive.

Therefore it becomes possible to adapt and make useful CP in an elite higher

education setting with a majority of that community (student and staff) not desiring

social and political transformation. In such a setting, arguably, the pedagogies we

develop are not pedagogies that construct collective communities of resistance (as

we are not with organised social/political communities who desire transcendence)

but rather pedagogies of possibility that open transgressive spaces of affective and

intellectual possibilities of imagining and being other. This is an inherently political

process. By deconstructing commodified social relationships and subjectivities and

opening up the possibility of being, thinking and living otherwise as students and

lecturers we practically negate the hierarchical power relationships through which

contemporary higher education is produced.

C 2012 The Author.Antipode C 2012 Antipode Foundation Ltd.


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82 Antipode

Critical Pedagogy: Theory and/as PracticeOne of the problematics faced by critical educators attempting to develop CPs in

an elite university setting is that this setting differs from those out of which CP and

popular education emerged and has often been practiced. These settings were either

embedded in popular class political struggle or came out of experiences of being

and/or working with subaltern students entering into higher education settings inwhich their histories and experiences were invisibilised by the hidden and not so

hidden curriculum (Freire 2006; hooks 1994, 2003; for contemporary examples of

CP in the classroom with non-traditional students and marginalised communities,

see Canaan 2002: Ryoo et al 2009). This difference in context pushes for the need

to critically reflect about the underlying theoretical assumptions of CP, particularly

those about the subject of social change and the nature of social change, and those

concerning the transformative possibilities and limitations of CP (Boler 1999). If

we are not working with oppressed subaltern subjects can CP be made relevant

and meaningful? If we are not working with organised or semi-organised subalterngroups can CP make an emancipatory political impact?

The task of beginning to develop answers to these questions involves recovering

and reinventing CP (Singh 2010). This is premised upon a dialogue between theory,

practice and history which involves contesting the attempt to co-opt CP into a

commodified education practice by conceiving it as a set of methods without its

critical philosophical and political underpinnings and content. Conceptualising CP

in this way transforms it into easily adaptable tools, which can be recuperated

within the status quo and developed as a commodity with which to sell the novelty

of ones course (Boler 1999, 177179; Mclaren and Da Silva 1993, 2009). In this

context critical reflexivity about the world becomes transformed into individualisedunderstandings of self and other. This can reinforce the idea that social problems are

the result of individual choices and behaviour. When reflection is stripped of critical

content, in this way, the dialogue that results easily becomes communication around

hegemonic common sense ideas. This undercuts the creation of the conditions for

comprehension of the world through encouraging an openness to otherness (in

terms of theories about the world, and ways of being and seeing the world). Thus

recovering and reinventing CP for our times and our context involves theorising

practice and practicing theory which is based simultaneously in experience and

philosophy, in working and thinking, in action and reflection (Shor 2009, 289,293294).

Such a desire to unite the theory and practice of CP was one of the premises from

which we developed the CP project. In this paper, as part of this broader process,

I seek to theorise the concreteness of teaching social justice2 in an elite university

setting, focusing on how we conceptualise CP, how it has and is being developed

in our setting and the barriers faced in attempting to develop such a praxis in an

increasingly commodified and de-intellectualised institutional environment. I focus

on the insights of Deleuze and Guattari, particularly their politics of desire (as an

ontological and epistemological orientation), Freires pedagogy of liberation and bell

hooks teaching to transgress which can help conceptualise how one might actualise

such as praxis in the classroom. I use them dialogically; constructing connections

that I hope contribute to our reflexive praxis as critical educators. I particularly focus



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on the axis of otherness and voice as I have found these the most conducive

for developing an analysis and strategy of CP in the teaching of social justice at

undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The Unfinished Nature of Humanity and Desire as theGrounding of Life or To Live in the Borderlands MeansYou. . .3

Deleuze and Guattaris positive ontology is concerned with unfettering the

possibility to experiment with what a life can do and where a life might go.

Ontology is here conceptualised in terms of difference and singularity; as becoming

and process. Fixity, sameness and closure, to differing degrees, work against this

ontology of life as being is grounded in the life force and desire that transverses

life. As they argue: [Life is a] streaming, spiralling, zigzagging, snaking, feverish

line of variation [that] liberates a power of life that human beings had rectified and

organisms had confined (Deleuze and Guattari 1999: 501).

Life, our lives, are therefore complex, unfinished and indeterminate. Their

philosophy is often called a philosophy of immanence in which the possibilities

of moving beyond the present are found within the present itself (Bell 2010:5).

They are concerned with what a life can do and what a body can do when we

think in terms of becomings, multiplies, lines and intensities, rather than essential

forms, predetermined subjects, structured functions or transcendent values. They

are therefore concerned to transgress fixed and hierarchical forms of subjectivity. In

an elite higher education setting this ontological orientation suggest strategies that

transgress and problematise closed and hierarchical subjectivities of the student asconsumer and the lecturer as deliverer and producer of knowledge as a commodity.

However this transgression should not, cannot, move towards the positing and

practice of other fixed homogenous subjectivities but rather towards openness and

plurality.

Deleuze and Guattari develop their opposition to fixity around a notion of an

opposition to state philosophyways of thinking and being that seek to stop

the flow of life and congeal into fixities and transcendent forms. As they argue

transcendence enters as soon as movement of the infinite is stopped (Deleuze

and Guattari 1994:47). The rational subject of enlightenment philosophy is anexample of state philosophy as it presents a unified subject and concurrent fixing

of desire. For Deleuze and Guattari this creates beings unable to think the new

and overcome the present alienated structuration of desire. They conceptualise

instead the schizophrenica subject transversed by a multicity of active forces who

cannot think change but who knows it immanently (Bell 2010:7). However this

subject is not merely a force of immanence. Rather they conceptualise productivity

of desire as in the tension between immanence and transcendence. As they argue

everything stops dead from a moment, everything freezes in placeand then

the whole process will being all over again (cited in Bell 2010:7). Such border

thinking (Mignolo 2001) suggests that it is in the slippages of certainty and in the

faultlines of conformity that a productive tension between becoming and being

and between a subject of state philosophy and a more nomadic subjectivity can be



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84 Antipode

created (Anzaldua 2007).4 In an elite higher education setting this suggests a focus

on the cracks and margins of fixity, homogeneity and monologue as places from

within which to create productive spaces to transgress, however momentarily, our

complicity as subjects of the neoliberal university.

This ontological orientation affirms that we arealwaysmultiple, intertwined and

becoming and not singular, separate and fixed (Minha-ha 1989). It opens upthe possibilities of becoming other(s) beyond the avenues, relations, values and

meanings that seem to be laid out for us. In our context this suggests moving

beyond the state subjectivities of contemporary higher education. However this

capacity to recognise such plurality and openness and to reach beyond ourselves is

not inevitable but rather is a potentiality, a possibility.

To concretise how we open up such transgressive possibilities we need to

conceptualise the specificity of how desire is structured to reproduce hierarchy,

monologue and closure in British academia. This enables the identification of the

cracks, margins and tensions from which to develop transgressive pedagogical

practices. The contemporary structuring of desire within the university is transversed

by neoliberalisation and marketisation. This is not a new process, for the university

within capitalism always commodifies and alienates intellectual production. Rather,

it can be argued that we are witnessing an increasing colonisation of higher

education by market rationality which is produced through the construction of

particular commodified and alienated subjectivities and social relations (Harvie

2000).

This is manifested in the increasing surveillance, monitoring and ranking of

teaching, research and administrative practices within the university space (De

Angelis and Harvie 2009; Levidow 2002). Our labour as researchers and teachers istransformed into a product that is ranked according to the tick boxes of evaluation

sheets and the values embedded within international journals. The mechanisation of

mind and commodification of thinking and learning tends to devalue that which is

other; that which is outside of the dominant norm as it is not marketable, popular

or acceptable within the dominant frame of knowing and knowledge (De Angelis

and Harvie 2009). The increasing professionalisation and standardisation of teaching

methods and of our relationships with students create mechanisms of surveillance.

Such mechanisms discipline the educator and researcher but also the student who

is ranked and valued against pre-established criteria of assessment, ranking ofuniversities and grade evaluation and predetermined performance criterion. This

process contributes to disabling the hearts, minds and bodies of our students and

ourselves (Darder 2009:568).

The docile student as consumer and potential worker and teacher/researcher as

proletarian subject are forged in a way in which we internalise in our thoughts and

desires many of the criteria of ranking and forms of education as product leading

to practices of disciplining the self (Gill 2009). Teachers get affected by negative

student evaluation results. Researchers lose their self-esteem when they receive grant

rejections, rejections of their articles and questions in their activity reviews about

the value of their products. Students enter into self-doubt when their marks are

low or when they are not accepted for highly ranked universities and courses (Gill



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2009). In such a context the rational behaviour of the student is to learn to the

test, to request education as a product and to resist when education as otherness

and openness in content and form are delivered. The rational behaviour of the

academic worker is to produce according to the values, timings and measures of

commodification. An authoritarian logic of competition, hierarchy and separation

enter into the dynamics of reproduction of student and academic community.This dehumanises learning, teaching, research and writing. It produces a set of

internalised practices of evaluation and discipline that reinforce the naturalisation

of such alienated relationships of knowledge in our practices of self and towards

others (hooks 1994). Such an environment makes it increasingly difficult to legitimise

critique as a denaturalising of what is, of who we are and of what is possible and who

we might be. Our desires and subjectivities (as students and academics) increasingly

become the self-reinforcing basis of the commodifcation of higher education and

alienation of our creative capacities.

For Freire when confronted by such a situation of oppression and alienation

subjects should inherently desire change that brings transcendence of their

oppression; they shouldwant to historicise reality. This is because in his ontology

the human subject essentially seeks and desires transcendence (1994:39). However,

for Deleuze and Guattari such desire for otherness can become channelled into

practices that create subjects lacking a desire for change and transcendence, as

is occurring in our present context (Bell 2010; Deleuze 2001:27). This seems

to conceptualise more accurately the erosion and eradication of such desire for

transcendence which characterises neoliberal subjectivity. It suggests that hope and

the desire for transcendence (premised as they are on imagining otherwise) are also

not givens but potentials, possibilities.Critical educators are therefore embedded within an increasingly dehumanised

and alienated context produced, albeit with resistances, by their own alienated

desires and self-disciplining practices (within ourselves and others) which work

to decompose a desire for otherness, uncertainty and openness. Therefore our

subjectivities and desires are not separate from the construction of reality. Rather,

they are the essential creative capacity, often turned back against itself, of that reality

(Boler 1999). What does this imply therefore about the nature of knowledge and

the knowing subject and how this might impact upon our practice and orientation

as critical educators in such an educational context?

Knowing SubjectsThis ontological basis and conceptualisation of contemporary higher education

suggests that a key orientation of our praxis should involve recognition of our

complicity in the reproduction of the commodified university. This fosters the

development of a practical affirmative critique of academic and student subjectivities

constructed as openness to otherness. As bell hooks took from Freire, we cannot

[therefore] enter the struggle as objects in order to later become subjects

(1994:46). Social justice cannot be studied and learnt objectively but is premisedupon the mutual recognition of ourselves as subjects and subjects implicated in the

construction of reality.



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86 Antipode

This ontology and epistemology also implies that there is not a truth to be

uncovered through CP but rather an opening to a multiplicity of truths. This

suggests a transgression beyond Freires universalisation in proletarian seeing

that he viewed as the basis of revolutionary truth towards a Deleuzian opening

to a plurality of ways of critique, thinking and changing the world. Within this

conceptualization a task of CP within the university space is not to replace oneprivileged viewpoint (that of the oppressor) by another (that of the oppressed) but

rather to develop an orientation towards a radical opening of our imaginations and

practices of self. This is particularly relevant in an elite setting of higher education

as it implies that elite and subaltern are complicit in the reproduction of alienated

social practicealthough this recognition is not the same as eliding the significant

differences in their positionalities in the hierarchy of structuration of desire. Therefore

both have truncated desires and are implicated in the construction of the other.

Accordingly, truth claims and practices which create a closed and universal

knowledge and knowing subject, or Royal Science, block this life force from

becoming other and our potentiality to hope and reach beyond ourselves. Such

closures stop movement and becoming in their transcendent predetermination of

becoming into being (Deleuze and Guattari 1994:47; Robinson unpublished). When

desire is channelled in this way it reinforces inequalities, domination and blockages

in our capacities and potentials (Rickert 1986:360).

Knowledge in such transcendent and universalising frames becomes an object that

fixes the world. It is a thing that can be known by a particular class of personthe

teacher/intellectualwith skills and training in established methods and theories.

The knower is in an external and passive relationship to that which can be known. As

Freire argues, a person is [assumed] to be merely in the world, notwiththe worldor with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator (2006:75). This passivity

is deepened in the knowers relationship with the learner who is infantilised and

objectified; a subject to be filled with knowledge just as the knower once was.

In this epistemological frame education, or banking education, as Freire argues,

becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and

the teacher/researcher is the depositor. Such educational practices conceptualise

knowledge as a noun, or thing (as opposed to a verb, or process) which construct

teaching space as: striated spacean arrangement in which life is organized

according to hierarchical, transcendent principles: a Euclidean space in whichlinkages are defined and can only be effected in one way (cited in Bell 2010:9).

This fosters a naturalisation of reality and attempts to homogenise our

subjectivities and desires by reinforcing passivity as opposed to critical enquiry (Freire

2006). The patterns of knowing and doing posit a centre of true knowledge against

which all other truth claims and practices are to be evaluated. Thereby creating

hierarchies of subjects and ways of seeing/being, silencing and de-legitimising the

many in the practice of universalising a one when in fact the dominant frame

is itself only a particular way of seeing and being in the world (Andreotti 2010;

Mohanty 2003; Robinson 2011:5; Santos 2001, 2002).

In sum, a universalising and closed epistemological frame (and concurrent

ontology) denies all, elite and subaltern, teacher and student, our capacity to

develop our own concepts, ways of seeing and questions. For Freire we are denied



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the right to speak formulate our language and articulate our words (1998, 2006).

This creates a kind of subordination in both dominant and peripheral ways of

seeing to a preformed reality that denies our agency and capacity to construct and

reconstruct the world and ourselves.

Overcoming Silences and Exclusions by Learningto Read the World Through Other Eyes5

Accordingly, an epistemological orientation of our practice is to decentre dominant

frames of knowledge. To achieve this it is necessary to make transparent the process

of its construction and its positionality, its particularity as opposed to its absoluteness

and universal status. The existence of the norm is premised upon the existence of

the other; both of which are fictions of homogeneity and sameness which deny

the actual and potential complexities of our being. Thus the denaturalisation of the

dominant way of seeing and being is a relational process. This involves unpacking

the assumptions, silences and exclusions of the dominant frame; a deconstruction

of the crust of conventionalised and routine consciousness (Dewey 1954:183) as

well as making visible other ways of seeing and being in the world.

Freires understanding of pedagogy, as a pedagogy of liberation and a practice

of freedom can help us to unpack this orientation. For him the oppressed whilst

presented as marginals whose voices are excluded from dominant knowledge

frames are not marginals as . . . they have always been insideinside the structure

which made them beings for others (2006:74). Similarly Deleuze and Guatarri

(1986) talk of a minor literature or in our case what we can call a minor praxis (Katz

1996). This suggests the necessity of organising our teaching, curriculum designand implementation around invisibilised practices and subjects, that which is unsaid

and the outlaws. Such an epistemological orientation enables a deconstruction, or

in their words a deterritorialisation, of dominant regimes of meanings and practices.

Yet as Justaert argues this philosophical practice involves becoming minoritarian,

a passion for the marginalised (2010:156). This does not mean the marginalised

look for acceptance into the dominant frame. Rather as JanMohamed and Lloyd

(cited in Delaney 2001:5) suggested, it involves the minoritys attempt to negate

the prior negation of itself whereby individuals are reduced to a generic status

of being minor (or to being inferior, underdeveloped or childlike). Such anepistemological practice is one of [minor literatures] most fundamental forms

of affirmation. For Deleuze and Guattari the process of becoming minor is

political and collective (1986:16). It is not about reaffirming minority identities

but creating collective ways of seeing the world and being in the world that break

down hierarchies, fixities and dualisms; a becoming minor in which all become

minoritarian (1986:1822).

This ultimately involves the creation of nomad science6 which is founded on the

excluded, the underside of society, history, politics, the others. Centrally for us

working in elite higher education settings this involves the dominant losing their

dominant identity. Central to this process is realising this frames particularity, its

implication in structures of power and oppression over others but also how the

subjects who hold this frame of seeing and being in the world too have their



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88 Antipode

creative capacities alienated. Domination and power become demystified as not

merely something out there but something in here.

Engagement with other theories, epistemologies, histories and practices can

support the development of critical awareness of the situatedness of our beliefs,

thoughts and subject positions. The curiosity about otherness and ourselves that

potentially results is not based on a regurgitation of certainties and common senseassumptions. Rather it is constructed through intellectual, embodied and emotional

experiences which force us to question our taken for granted certainties. For Freire

this helps forge epistemological curiosity; an orientation to explore the unknown

based on critical awareness (Freire 1997).

Yet this is not a process to construct dualisms and fixities of discrete knowledges

and experiences which results in the breakdown of communication, dialogue and

seeing. Rather it is to experience that no-one is purely one thing that labels like

Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting points,

which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind

(Said l994:336). Thus our orientation is not to replace one privileged frame by an

other privileged frame but rather to demystify, demythologize and denaturalise

ours and others subjectivities (see Chatterton 2007 and Cook 2000 for a very similar

discussion conceptualised as border pedagogy).

This reminder that we are not purely one thing is also a reminder to the critical

educator in the elite institution that we cannot homogenise the experiences and

perspectives of our students. We need to be open to surprise, to the uncomfortable

and unexpected. We need a similar orientation to openness that we are expecting

from our students. To do this means to situate ourselves in the classroom (hooks

1994). As Pearson argues this is a praxis of freedom that in contrast to a politicsof control or regulation . . . is a politics of desire that allows for . . . the generation

of the maximum freedom of diversity and novelty. . .but the new is always in the

context of social critique (1998:411).

Pedagogies of PossibilityPedagogically this is embedded in the development of critical literacy in which the

medium is the message, bringing the way in which we learn (and create knowledge)

to the centre of our knowledge (and political) practices. The critical content of anylearning experience cannot be separated from the method or process through which

the learning occurs. Thus as Audrey Lourde argued, The masters tool will never

dismantle the masters house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his

own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change (Lorde

1984:112). Therefore the process of constructing knowledge needs to be reclaimed

and remade as a critical act of opening possibility through developing pedagogies

(as method and content) with students (Freire 2006).

Accordingly, knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention.

Freedom becomes the . . . freedom to create and to construct, to wonder and

to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible,

not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine (Fromm 1964:5253 cited in Freire

2006:68). The critical educator recognises that people are thinking beings that make



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and remake the world. Thus pedagogy cannot distance itself from the world but

rather must embed itself in real world experience. It must be problem posing and

student centred (hooks 1994) critically engaging with lived experience of students

and of others. This is particularly relevant in an elite setting where otherness

is often excluded in terms of student and academic profile and experience. It is

a means of bringing the agency of the student to light and thereby highlightingthe ongoing and collective nature of learning, knowledge and the construction of

reality. This also involves bringing in the subjectivity, experiences and desires of the

teacher.

Such pedagogies challenge the dualism between teacher and student so that

both are simultaneously teachers and students (hooks 1994). As Shor explains

Critical teaching is not a one-way development not something done for students

or to them for their own good . . . a critical process is driven and justified by

mutuality (2009:291). Knowledge is therefore no longer an object possessed by

the teacher given to the student. Rather knowledge becomes an ever-changing

open constructed process. We become a learning community. Arguments based

on the authority of the teacher are no longer valid, rather validity comes from the

usefulness of knowledge for problem solving, for Freire knowledge which is on the

side of freedom (2006:80) which affirms men and women as beings in the process

of becomingas unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished

reality (2006:84) and for Delueze and Guattari knowledges which enable processes

of becoming other, of liberating desire (Kouba 2008).

Such orientations foster a flattening of the plane of hierarchy and suggest the

possibility of creating smooth spaces of horizontal pedagogy. Here we can begin

to open the possibility, collectively and individually, of becoming meaning makers,concept builders and creators of reality. To do this implies a mutual recognition of

us as subjects, an openness to otherness and a dialogical form of communication

(Shor 2009:290292). This kind of dialogic situation is only possible when all have

the right to name the world. This also implies a process of ongoing curriculum

building in which the teacher learns in-process how to design a course for the

students, the critical teacher also learns how to design the course withthe students

(Shor 2009:291).

True dialogue, however, is premised upon a sincere desire to engage with

the meanings, experiences and desires of students and bring ourselves into thisprocess, embracing, not silencing, our complicity and contradictions (Freire and

Brito 1991). This takes humility, tolerance, historical patience and a joy and love

of life and being. As Freire argues, it is impossible to teach without a forged,

invented, and well-thought-out capacity to love (Freire 1998:3 cited in Darder 2009,

506). As the intellectual is not here separated from the personal and the affective,

experiences that rupture divisions between mind and body, subjective and objective,

emotional and intellectual can be conceptualised as constructing trangressive forms

of becoming other. These experiences result in hybrid ways of seeing the world

which help to open up the possibility of breaking down dualisms that divide the

subject from her creative capacities, particularly acute in the neoliberal university

(Boler 1999; Freire and Brito 1991).7 As Moreira (2008:7) argues (citing Dimitriadis

and McCarthy 2000:55), Hybridity in this stance is a radical disturbance of both



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This space has been essential in building collective knowledge and experience

to develop our understanding of CP as a means of forging transgressive spaces

of possibility in our practice as educators and researchers. Importantly we are not

attempting to homogenise the praxis of CP in our centre or with our colleagues,

but rather open up spaces for experimentation and a reaching beyond ourselves.

However, the axes of otherness and voice have been key thematics that have takenon central relevance to our own praxis as critical educators in our setting. Increasingly

we have stretched our conceptualisation of opening spaces of otherness to include

the embodied, affective, collective and spiritual as well as the conceptual and

intellectual. Particularly relevant for conceptualising and thinking through the role

of subjectivities in the classroom and how power is embodied and affective has been

the work of feminist and queer critical educators in the social sciences such as hooks

(1994), Oberhauser (2002) and Mohanty (2003). Useful in terms of thinking beyond

dualisms and fixity of either dominant or subaltern subjectivities have been the

autonomist traditions found in Chatteron (2007) and Robinson (unpublished 2011),

and in conceptualising the role of the spiritual and sacred in CP (Andreotti 2010;

Ryoo et al 2009).

We have attempted to adapt these influences to our historically and

geographically distinct setting of an elite British university. One of the most

consolidated experiences has been an MA module which I convene, Local power in

a global era that forms part of the MA in Social and Global Justice. This experience

provides a useful insight into the possibilities, limitations and risks of introducing

transgressive pedagogies of possibility into this setting.

Local power in a global era was devised with a commitment to contest the royal

science of politics, which creates a monologue of knowing subjects, ways of knowingand knowledges which legitimise hierarchical and alienated forms of organising

power and society. From its initiation it included in its content other theories, other

epistemologies and other histories of struggle as a means of developing critical

awareness of the positionality of dominant theories and representations of politics

and our positionality within such a dominant way of seeing and being. As Meysalun8

reflected after finishing the module:

We read about alternative approaches and interpretations of politics and ways of doing

and reinventing politics. For each week, among the suggested readings, there were

different authors, cases, approaches of a particular topic. This variety gave us the

opportunity to see different angles of a given topic, question them and also question

our own views about the topic. Moreover, this variety allowed the identification of the

aspects that are taken for granted in the analysis of a topic, the assumptions, and how

they may conflict with other views. I think the identification of these aspects and the way

in which the themes of the module were developed during the seminars, provided us,

students, with a tool that is crucial in order to achieve positive outcomes in any relation

we engage in the multipolar, multicultural and pluralistic society in which we live today.

However, our discussions in the CP working group brought to the forefront of

this process the means through which this decentring of dominant frames was

practiced. It suggested that there was more to critical education than challenging

ideas and shifting conceptual and intellectual understanding. Rather it suggested the



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92 Antipode

centrality of practicing a democratic education which created affective, intellectual

and embodied individual and collective experiences (of both student and teacher)

that actively practiced such decentring and transgression. In many respects it

became re-orientated to a border pedagogy beyond dualisms and fixity, and

towards openness, plurality and hybridity as suggested in a deluezian inspired

Freirian pedagogy conceptualised previously and found in the contemporary criticalreflection of scholars such as Cook (2000) and Chatterton (2007).

The way that I developed the course therefore focused on opening spaces of

possibility to think and feel otherwise which involved conceptual work linked

to the uncovering of assumptions that underlie particular views of the world

(particularly informative has been the Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry, or

OSDE methodology).9 This was used to foster individual and collective identification

and reflections about ones own assumptions about the world. The inclusion of

oral histories and social movement narratives as reading materials facilitated the

disruption of dominant representations of political knowledge.

This helped to open the space for the inclusion of mine and students individual

histories and experiences into the learning space, giving personal experience validity

as knowledge and using this as the basis for theoretical reflection. Importantly, and

often with great difficultly, I also had to bring myself into the space putting myself

on the line by making my positionality, experiences and desires visible. As hooks

argues experience, whilst often painful, is a basis for transgression of the dominant

frame of knowing and knowledge and the building of community, particularly when

it is collectively theorised. As Morgan, a student in the same cohort as Meysalun,

reflected:

They did a truly extraordinary job of getting a diverse group of people to come together

in a collective learning environment. In some modules, I feel that its a competition

to talk as much as possible and prove to the lecturer that youve done more work

than anyone else, which perhaps motivates by fear but does not ensure a positive or

productive learning experience. This module was refreshingly different. We were honestly

and eagerly encouraged to share not only our thoughts on texts but also our own

experiences, which created a real atmosphere of community and brought the topics of

collective learning and different forms of knowledge into much clearer perspective.

The building of solidarity and opening of spaces of possibility to think and create

knowledge differently from the dominant frame as expressed in this students

reflection is inherently affective and spiritual, premised on others ways of seeing

and listening to each other but also transgressive our performative commodified

roles of students and lecturer (Ryoo et al 2009).

The formation of a democratic, horizontal and dialogical space was more than

about fostering discussion (which can often become a space for competitive

performativity). It involved enabling active listening and respect between all

members of the classroom space. The physical space of the classroom was important

to this with us working around a round table, looking at each other with no centre

space to which I belonged; disrupting the authority of the teacher as the knower. Thegroup was often broken down into smaller groups and encouraged to move around

the space, and at times we went outside, transgressing the rigidity of fixity and



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stillness of normal classrooms and bringing in movement and physical fluidity to the

space. The breaking down of dominant embodied patterns of being in the classroom

helped to foster a breaking down of boundaries and hierarchies, increasing feelings

of trust, relaxation and commitment to each other as a group.

Fundamentally this transgression of space of the commodified and hierarchical

classroom and our opening up of possibilities of otherness in terms of whichknowledge is valid, what is the meaning of politics, and who creates theory (and

society) were the inclusion of activities in which students embodied or enacted

the politics, theories and experiences being discussed. This included the use of role

play, drawing and art, consensus decision making and the running of a participatory

budget. As Morgan continues:

It was truly awesome to put our theories into practice through group exercises in which

everyones thoughts were considered. One of the most illuminating experiences for me

was trying to chair our mock participatory budgeting meeting. Our class really came

together to represent a wide spectrum of community viewpoints, which shows howengaged everyone was with the material, and it was seriously difficult to come up with

a practical solutionwhich, though frustrating, is often the reality of such situations.

While that particular exercise is just one example, it really helped me conceptualise the

ideas of the module and experience different forms of knowledge (both from our class

representation thereof and the way in which the seminar was conducted). I very much

felt that we were all learning together and appreciate that Sara and David did not ever

give us the impression that we were just students or that some of us had less to offer

than others

Not only did the embodying and practicing of other forms of politics and

knowledge creation create an external opening to others knowledges and theory

but also facilitated the recognition of individuals and the group of their own

knowledges and their ability to collectively create knowledge. This transgressed

dominant subjectivities of student as individual and passive consumer as they

became, however momentarily, aware of their epistemological, intellectual and

political agency.

As Meysalun expresses:

the module convenor brought different experiences, situations, and practices with

which we engaged and linked to personal experiences and practices, and came out

experimenting different ways of doing and being, in groups, discussing, listening,

questioning, reflecting, expressing, living. I think that this approach helps to engage

the knowledge with our own experiences, and to experience it, reproduce it, recreate it,

reshape it through and within ourselves.

This creation of a learning space and community organised around the principles

of a Deleuzian-inspired Freirian pedagogy transformed that space by transgressing

its commodified, alienated and hierarchical construction. We did this by performing

our roles differently, by moving beyond predetermined and fixed closures and

towards open and multiple otherness. This created a transformatory experience

for participants within our moments in the classroom. Reflections from studentsalso suggest that it impacted and fed into the opening of possibilities of other ways

of being, thinking and doing politics in their everyday lives. As Morgan explains:



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94 Antipode

I really cannot overstate how much Ive learned from this module. My classmates and I

did not only learn major concepts within the field but, perhaps more significantly, had

the chance to engage with the idea of learning through collaboration (which was in itself

a key theme of our studies). As a result, Local Power in a Global Era has informed my

everyday thought rather than just my academic work. I am very grateful for their efforts

and wish other modules could be as inspiring.

Morgans comments suggest that such transformations involve the way in which

politics is understood, the asking of her own questions and perhaps a subjective

transformation in confidence and political imagination. Whatever the nature of

these transformations they embody the opening of spaces of subjective (and

collective) possibility. They transgress a reading of the world through the dominant

frame of knowing, creating and enacting politics and can result in an acute subjective

awareness of ones positionality in this dominant frame. They are therefore intensely

political.

As Meysalun expresses:

Moreover, it is important to locate ourselves, find ourselves in what we are learning,

otherwise, why are we learning it?. . .I think that the way in which this module on local

politics in an era of globalisation was given, made possible to answer some of these

questions, and made possible the location of myself, my reality, the reality around, as

a subject and object of knowledge, that is not fixed, but alive, changing, creating and

reshaping itself and other knowledge, not as ends by themselves, but as means and tools

of thinking, creating, being, evolving, living.

Risks of Pedagogies of PossibilityThe subject is impoverished in commodified higher education and the experience

of education is subsequently dehumanised. Thus the process of closing spaces

of possibility is produced through subjective, affective, intellectual and embodied

practices against self and other. The flip side of this is that practices of opening

spaces of possibility are subjective, affective, intellectual and embodied (Boler 1999).

This section, which reflects on the potential risks of introducing such pedagogies

of possibility into our practices, focuses on the affective, subjective and embodied

elements of this.

Researchers and teachers practicing such pedagogies of possibility need tocultivate a constant openness to openness in thought and practice and a willingness

to feel uncomfortable and surprised. We also need an openness to otherness that

might shake our own assumptions and an orientation to critical reflexivity and

epistemological curiosity. Thus the I, with our dreams, desires and fears, becomes

embodied and embedded in the praxis of teaching.

This places critical educators in a very vulnerable and risky situation with no

certainty of success. Working collaboratively as pedagogues is a transgressive act

of becoming other, of liberating ourselves from the confines of the individualised

and commodified university worker. Helping to forge spaces of possibility with

students can be an inspiring experience that forges relationships that transcend

the boundaries of the classroom and the university. It can be a surprising and

inspirational experience and yet often unsettling for both teacher and student. It



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perhaps involves the development of an anti-methods pedagogy which rejects

the mechanization of intellectualism. . .[and] challenges teachers to work towards

reappropriation of endangered dignity and toward reclaiming our humanity. The

anti-methods pedagogy adheres to the eloquence of Antonio Machados poem

Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar (Traveller, there are no

roads. The road is created as we walk it [together]) (Macedo 1994:8). Pedagogiesof possibility can be viewed as an act of love. As Freire argues, As individuals or as

peoples, by fighting for the restoration of [our] humanity [we] will be attempting

the restoration of true generosity. And this fight, because of the purpose given it,

will actually constitute an act of love (2006:29).

Yet as this praxis of teaching is a transgressive act of becoming other, it is already

minoritarian, other and may not result in academic accolades from peers or

acceptance and praise from students. Rather in times of dis-utopia, when desire

is turned back on itself then otherness can be seen as threatening, unviable and

dangerous (Amsler 2008). We can feel under enormous pressure to perform well

for fear of disciplinary consequences and de-legitimisation of our practices, both

through internalisation of mechanisms of discipline which lead to self-doubt, and

institutional silencing of otherness. This can lead to crisis and despair and to

the reverse of what we desired, not hope, but resignation. Moments of crisis and

confrontation are not by necessity destructive but it takes collective praxis, and

education of our fear so as to transform these moments into productive moments of

courage in the process of opening spaces of possibility in ourselves and our students.

As Shor and Freire, write, The more you recognise your fear as a consequence

of your attempt to practice your dream, the more you learn how to put into

practice your dream (1987:57). Pedagogies of possibility are therefore risky andtake courage to accept being, and desire to be, always minoritarian, always other.

The impact of decentring dominant frames of seeing and being in the world with

students who hold such frames is also an affective process. It can a result in active

resistance and antagonism as students, whose learnt subjectivity in the classroom

is one of student as consumer who demand teaching which provides digestible

sound bites that are easily regurgitated for assessment. What does not fit this

performance and regime of truth becomes threatening and potentially something

(and someone) to be rejected. As one student commented in anonymous feedback

on their third year course that I convened she is teaching us ideology. There isno space for other perspectives. It is a very dogmatic course. Such resistance is

also often classed, raced and gendered. Therefore teachers who are othernot

upper middle class white and malewill already be facing questions about their

authority which can be intensified in this context. However, such resistances can

also be a first step in questioning the regime of truth of higher education; a regime

of truth in which the educator is herself implicated. They can therefore contain

sparks of criticality which are nevertheless intensely uncomfortable, emotionally

and intellectually, for the teacher as their complicity in reproducing structures of

alienation are (implicitly) visibililised in these interactions (Boler 1999:144147).

Yet critical pedagogues need authority in the classroom, not to create

authoritarian relationships which close down critical enquiry and openness but

to foster the construction of such practices and dynamics. Thus the student as



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96 Antipode

consumer as a dominant student subjectivity can also be one of the greatest

challenges confronted in this process. Additionally, students desires and hopes do

not necessarily enter the classroom. They may rationally enter with an instrumentalist

and detached relationship to learning. Therefore by being forced to bring their

bodies, minds and imaginations into that space they too are placed in a position of

vulnerability that they may not desire. Alternatively, opening up spaces to othernesscan result in crisis as students surrounded by an individualised and depoliticised

environment recognise their alienation as a form of powerless not, as we might

wish, as a form of empowerment. Thus as critical educators we need patience and

also openness to this diversity of reactions. We need to take emotional literacy

and its complexities seriously as part of the work of radical education. As Boler

(1999:175176) argues:

The educator who endeavours to rattle the complacent cages, who attempts to wrest

us anew from the threat of conformism, undoubtedly faces the treacherous ghosts

of the others fears and terrors, which in turn evoke ones own demons. The path ofunderstanding, if it is not to simplify, must be tread gently. Yet if one believes in

alternatives to the reductive binaries of good and evil, purity and corruption, one is

challenged to invite the other, with compassion and fortitude, to learn to see things

differently, no matter how perilous the course for all involved.

Conclusion: Minor Praxis and/as Transgressive Spacesof PossibilityIn this article I have explored the praxis of introducing CP into the teaching of social

justice in an elite UK university. I have worked to develop Freires understanding ofthe unfinished nature of human beings and their desire for transcendence towards a

decentring of this essentialised human subject which helps us to capture our times of

dis-utopia in which the subjects of the university (and society) often lack this desire

for transcendence. I have done this by introducing the politics of desire (ontology

and epistemology) of Deleuze and Guattari.

This helps us to engage with the contemporary structuration of desire

within neoliberal society and an increasingly commodified university space. Such

structuration can be conceptualised as (re)produced by our alienated creative

capacities, truncated desires and docile and commodified subjectivities. This impliesthat both elite and subaltern are implicated in the reproduction of contemporary

alienation and that both have desires that are truncated and domesticated. This

then enables an adaption of CP from its original context of either organised popular

politics and/or subaltern students entering formal education to the individualised

elite setting in which our group finds ourselves. Our objectives therefore become not

the construction of communities of resistance but rather the opening of affective and

intellectual spaces of possibility where imagining other becomes possible. Such

transgression decentres the dominant script and regime of truth of the neoliberal

university and is therefore inherently political.

The epistemological opening enabled by the introduction of Deleuze and Guattari

into our praxis of CP moves us away from positing an homogenising end objective

of CP which replaces one privileged frame of knowledge and knowing (that of the



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oppressor) by another (that of the oppressed). Rather it suggests that the positing of

a one in terms of epistemological truth is itself a reproduction of epistemological

blindness that silences other knowledges and ways of creating knowledge, limiting

both elite and subaltern to a frame that denies our capacity to be other and

continually reinvent ourselves and each other. The invention of other subjectivities

of being and knowing therefore enters into the heart of our pedagogical process.The pedagogies of possibility that help to foster this openness to otherness

that helps to destabilise the subjectivities created through an epistemology of

blindness and accompanying commodification of life (and the university) are

problem focused, student centred and involve the development of critical literacy.

This widens students and lecturers epistemological choices, transgressing current

boundaries of possibility. This thereby enables a consciousness of the effects of

their (our) frames of knowing and knowledges in the creation of alienation and

power over themselves and others. This involves disrupting normal patterns of

classroom practice and performativity in terms of student as consumer and lecturer

as producer and knowledge makers, transgressing dualisms between mind/body,

intellectual/emotional and teacher/student.

The risks and possibilities involved in this practice are numerous but as power

is reproduced through alienated subjectivities and docile bodies so its contestation

and its most powerful affects are embodied, emotional, intellectual and subjective.

Humanising the educational space and experience challenges the taken for granted.

It fosters the destabilising of the effects of power in our subjectivities creating

hybrid openings of possibility for imagining and being otherwise. These are the

transgressive potentials of this pedagogical praxis. However, rejection, derision,

self-doubt, de-legitimisation and fear are also likely outcomes. Learning to embracea desire to always be minoritarian takes courage. Developing courage involves

educating our fear collectively so that it can become a productive element of

the ongoing process of moving beyond ourselves and challenging alienated social

relationships in and outside of the classroom. As Freire argued,We must dare so as

never to dichotomize cognition and emotion. . .We must dare to learn how to dare

in order to say no to the bureaucratization of the mind to which we are exposed

everyday (1998:3).

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Andy Robinson for the intellectual, emotional and political supportthat he offers me in my journey to create transgressive spaces of possibility within neoliberalspaces in and outside of the University. Our discussions and my engagement with his workhave helped me to develop and refine the conceptualisation of pedagogy used in this piece.I would also like to thank the Nottingham Critical Pedagogy Group, David Bell, Heather

Watkins and Deirdre Duffy for being open to developing this project in the University andamongst ourselves. It has been a productive and meaningful intellectual, pedagogical andpolitical journey. I would also like to thank them for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Endnotes1 There is very little room for me to explore my positionality in this particular space andtime but I felt that this needed to be brought into the piece to perhaps help explain andcontextualise the tensions, both logical and subjective, within it.



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2 The methodological, epistemological and pedagogical perspective developed throughoutthe piece involves transgressing homogenising universalism, monologues of representationand privileged subject positions. It is premised upon negative critique. Therefore in definingsocial justice in the context of an elite HE setting there are two methodological steps. The

first involves deconstruction of dominant norms, practices and performances of social justicein the neoliberal university; practices and norms which elide and silence hierarchies on class,

race, and gendered axes and naturalise privileged subjectivities and relations of power overothers. The second is an open process of construction of our understandings, practicesand performances of social justice. In the case of the classroom and other spaces in theUniversity, this suggests that it is through pedagogies and practices of transgression thatthese terms are constructed and embodied. As they are based on a first step of deconstructionthey speak from and within the margins against the dominant frame.3 Anzaldua (1987:1).4 There are potentially many creative tensions between the work of thinkers such as Deleuzeand Guattari coming from the underside of the colonial north and that of those coming fromthe underside of the colonial south. There is no space to explore the resonances, dissonancesand productive avenues of a dialogue between these ontologies and epistemologies but it isa dialogue that I am sure will create many possibilities of thinking and being other.

5 See the fascinating project Learning to read the world through other eyes http://www.throughothereyes.org.uk/6 See Bell (2010) for a fascinating discussion of nomadic philosophy.7 Megan Boler argues for the importance of developing emotional epistemologies whichvoice and make public the experiences of alienation and oppression of student and teacher,and develop the emotional as an essential part of the construction of pedagogies of resistanceand practices of liberation. She argues for the need not merely to conceptualise this in termsof abstract concepts such as desire but to historicise emotions, emotional responses andreactions and therefore to historicise desire. This is something that is explored very superficiallyin this piece (for further discussion, see Boler 1999).8 In 2010, once the MA course, Local power in a global era that had been developed aspart of the CP project, had finished I invited the students to write some of their reflectionsand feelings about the course. I received two reflections which form the basis of the narrativescited in my discussion of the course.9 See http://www.osdemethodology.org.uk/ for further information and details.

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