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ERIC Number: EJ768889
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-Sep
Pages: 20
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1071-4413
EISSN: N/A
Utopian Pedagogy: Creating Radical Alternatives in the Neoliberal Age
Cote, Mark; Day, Richard; de Peuter, Greig
Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, v29 n4 p317-336 Sep 2007
How might critical academics work within, against, and beyond the neoliberal order? How might the progressive intellectual act be understood today? How can and does the university do more than serve corporate powers and produce docile producer-consumer- citizens? How are people working to develop critical pedagogies appropriate to their local communities? To help the authors confront these sorts of questions they propose the conceptual tool and creative practice of "utopian pedagogy." They do not use the concept of "utopia" in the sense of rationalistic dreams of a future perfect society. Rather, they mean it to refer to an ethos of experimentation that is oriented toward carving out spaces for resistance and reconstruction here and now. Utopian theory and practice acquire a new relevance as something other than and outside of the hyper-inclusive logic of neoliberalism. With the untimely concept of utopian pedagogy, the authors hope to contribute to the debate on the current state of higher education, and to circulate struggles that show other educational worlds are not only possible, but are already living in the present. This article seeks to put flesh on the authors' key concept through a discussion of three interlinked themes: (1) universities in the age of neoliberal globalization; (2) non-hegemonic modes of intellectual and political activity; and (3) concrete experiments in utopian pedagogy. From free schools and co-research to open-source media labs and popular theatre, experiments in utopian pedagogy are (re)emerging in various places around the world, in response to an urgent need to critically analyze relations of power around nodal points of race, class, caste, and rational-bureaucratic (state) domination. Formed along lines of affinity, rather than as elements of a totalizing project, the intellectual subjectivities and educational projects that the authors describe and theorize in this article affirm a multitudinous capacity for working together against neoliberal hegemony, and for creating working, sustainable--and joyful--alternatives. (Contains 68 notes.) [Portions of this article appear in a forthcoming collection of essays and interviews that the authors co-edited, "Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).]
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/default.html
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada (Toronto)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A