The Ethics and Politics of Possibility: Principles and Practices of Prefigurative Knowledge and Research

Girton College, Cambridge. Photo by Mina Navarro.

From 8–14 August 2016, eight scholar-activists from around the world gathered to develop new theories and methods for understanding and practicing the ‘politics of possibility’ – in short, the ‘capacity to produce form beyond or against and beyond what is given’ when working towards deep transformation in thinking, being and everyday life (as suggested by Raquel Gutiérrez and Huáscar Salzar Lohman in ‘The community reproduction of life’). The week-long residential retreat drew together members of a new transnational author collective, ‘Women on the Verge’, who are working in universities, in communities and on a range of projects including Enlivened Learning and the Ecoversities Network (Costa Rica), a permanent seminar on ‘Community Weavings and Forms of the Political’ (Mexico), Connected Communities (UK), the Social Science Centre (UK), and rethinking the state, the criminalisation of politics, and autonomous social movements (US).

Since the turn of this century, there has been a (re)turn towards the ‘prefiguration’ of alternative futures through collective theorizing and action, which informs a multiplicity of grassroots, community and institutional struggles against social domination and for a politics of life. However, while many new ways of thinking and doing politics have emerged in this movement, we are still learning about their epistemological, political and ethical elements and thus ‘are seldom properly equipped to account for the “prefigurative” feature of collective action’ today. This means that we may not only be ‘unable to address new problems highlighted by…societies in movement’, but also risk widening the ‘knowledge gap between the apparently inescapable reality of global capitalism and its crises…and the newly emerging practices, values, and imaginaries beyond capitalism, colonialism and patriarchal society’ (quotations from the introduction to Ana Dinerstein’s forthcoming edited collection, Social Science for An Other Politics: Women Theorizing without Parachutes). This workshop took important steps towards closing that gap. The next question is, what does this mean for learning and for educators?

New film!

Kelly Teamey screening ‘Re-Learning Hope: A Story of Unitierra’

‘Re-learning Hope: A Story of Unitierra’ tells a story about Unitierra (University of the Earth) in Oaxaca, Mexico. The film, co-produced by producers Udi Mandel and Kelly Teamey with partners and participants from Unitierra, explores the emergence of this autonomous university and its ‘powerful critique of education and development’. It is a ‘hopeful example of how communities are taking control of their own learning and shaping an ecological path for their communities amidst a context of violence’. And, ‘amidst the multiple crises we are all experiencing, in our economies, political institutions and communities, Unitierra is promoting ways of living and learning together that is inspiring, showing us that another world is indeed possible’.

New book!

Look out for a new collection of papers in this project later this year, edited by Ana C. Dinerstein: Social Science for An Other Politics: Women Theorising without Parachutes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces, ed. by Robert H. Haworth and John Elmore, forthcoming from PM Press in 2017.

Chapter by Sarah Amsler: ‘What do we mean when we say “democracy”? Learning towards a common future through popular higher education’

From the PM Press website: “Contemporary educational practices and policies across the world are heeding the calls of Wall Street for more corporate control, privatization, and standardized accountability. There are definite shifts and movements towards more capitalist interventions of efficiency and an adherence to market fundamentalist values within the sphere of public education. In many cases, educational policies are created to uphold and serve particular social, political, and economic ends. Schools, in a sense, have been tools to reproduce hierarchical, authoritarian, and hyper-individualistic models of social order. From the industrial era to our recent expansion of the knowledge economy, education has been at the forefront of manufacturing and exploiting particular populations within our society. The important news is that emancipatory educational practices are emerging. Many are emanating outside the constraints of our dominant institutions and are influenced by more participatory and collective actions. In many cases, these alternatives have been undervalued or even excluded within the educational research. From an international perspective, some of these radical informal learning spaces are seen as a threat by many failed states and corporate entities. Out of the Ruins sets out to explore and discuss the emergence of alternative learning spaces that directly challenge the pairing of public education with particular dominant capitalist and statist structures. The authors construct philosophical, political, economic and social arguments that focus on radical informal learning as a way to contest efforts to commodify and privatize our everyday educational experiences. The major themes include the politics of learning in our formal settings, constructing new theories on our informal practices, collective examples of how radical informal learning practices and experiences operate, and how individuals and collectives struggle to share these narratives within and outside of institutions.”

Contributors include David Gabbard, Rhiannon Firth, Andrew Robinson, Farhang Rouhani, Petar Jandric, Ana Kuzmanic, Sarah Amsler, Dana Williams, Andre Pusey, Jeff Shantz, Sandra Jeppesen, Joanna Adamiak, Erin Dyke, Eli Meyerhoff, David I. Backer, Matthew Bissen, Jacques Laroche, Aleksandra Perisic, and Jason Wozniak.

“Though seemingly designed to extend the marketisation of universities, the government’s Higher Education Bill also opens the door for a radically different approach – co-operative universities.”

Read the new article co-written by  Joss Winn and Mike Neary (University of Lincoln, RiCES) and Cilla Ross and Simon Parkinson (Co-operative College), recently published on the Co-operative Party website.

Don’t miss this month’s Post-16 Educator , which hosts Joss Winn’s and Mike Neary’s ‘Letters from Utopia’, an epistolary communication from an alternative educational future which is grounded in their six years of research and practice of co-operative higher education.

Letters from Utopia

Co-operative Higher Education Research blog

Final project report, Beyond Public and Private: A New Framework for Co-operative Higher Education  (2016).

2016 marks the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia.