Transgressing frontiers through the radicalization of pedagogy

Pedagogy is central to geographical knowledge, where Kropotkin’s ‘What Geography Ought to Be’ has significantly shaped the face of contemporary geographical thought. At the same time, anarchists have developed very different political imaginations than Marxists, where the importance of pedagogy has always been of primary importance. Pedagogy accordingly represents one of the key sites of contact where anarchist geographies can continue to inform and revitalize contemporary geographical thought. Anarchists have long been committed to bottom-up, ‘organic’ transformations of societies, subjectivities, and modes of organizing. For anarchists the importance of direct action and prefigurative politics have always taken precedence over concerns about the state, a focus that stems back to Max Stirner’s notion of insurrection in 'The Ego and Its Own' as walking one’s own way, ‘rising up’ above government, religion, and other hierarchies, not necessarily to overthrow them, but to simply disregard these structures by taking control of one’s own individual life and creating alternatives on the ground. Thus, the relevance of pedagogy to anarchist praxis (understood in a broad sense, as in Paulo Freire’s 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed') stems from its ability to guide a new way of thinking about the world and as a space that is able to foster transgression.

Antipode, 2012

In recent years, human geographers have criticized the increasing corporatization, commodification, and objectification of knowledge production, and have looked to critical pedagogical frameworks that seek to counteract these forces. Anarchism, as a body of theories and practices, has a long history of engagement with radical pedagogical experimentation. Anarchism and geography have much to contribute to one another: anarchism, through its support for creative, non-coercive, practical learning spaces, and geography, for its critical examination of the spaces of education. In this paper, I evaluate the prospects for anarchist-geographic pedagogies theoretically, as well as through my own experiences teaching and learning about anarchism over the past decade in a liberal arts, higher education US environment. I argue for a combined critical anarchist-geographic pedagogical approach that appreciates the challenges of building alternative learning models within existing neoliberalizing institutions, provides the necessary tools for finding uniquely situated opportunities for educational change, and emplaces a grounded, liberating, student-led critical pedagogy.

Critical cartography is a methodology and pedagogy that begins from the premise that maps are embodiments of power. It advocates utopian possibilities for other mapping practices, providing tools for communities to spatially illustrate their struggles whilst reconstituting social bonds through collective knowledge production. Whilst critical cartographers gesture towards activist initiatives, a lot of the literature focuses mainly on theory and is light on alternative practices, failing to explore their pedagogical and transformative value. Furthermore, those literatures that do study practice tend to focus on ‘counter-mapping’, for example enabling indigenous communities to make resource claims. Such practices undoubtedly have progressive uses but have also been criticized for investing in dominant spatial practice and for perpetuating exclusions and hierarchies. This paper argues for a critical cartographic practice based on an anarchist ethos of anti- rather than counter-hegemony, drawing ideas of cartographic pedagogy as affect, affinity and performativity. Furthermore it argues that such practices already exist and ought to be expanded. Using David Graeber’s ethnographic methodology of ‘utopian extrapolation’ the paper will draw on material found in the ‘map archive’ of the 56a infoshop in London to begin to inspire and imagine an anarchist cartographic pedagogy.

Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, Special Issue, 44 (5), 1579–1754., 2012

VIDEO ABSTRACT: http://antipodefoundation.org/2012/09/11/anarchist-geographies-special-issue-guest-editors-video-abstract/ This edited volume proceeds from the perspective that as contemporary global challenges push anarchist agendas back into widespread currency, geographers need to rise to this occasion and begin (re)mapping the possibilities of what anarchist perspectives might yet contribute to the discipline. We develop an exploratory volume, where explicitly and unashamedly anarchist approaches to human geography have been allowed to blossom in all their wonderful plurality. Accommodating a diversity of positionalities demands an unconstrained and eclectic embrace, and accordingly we understand the potentialities of anarchist theory and praxis as protean and manifold. Through this unfolding and variegated approach, we seek to expose readers to a variety of epistemological, ontological, and methodological interpretations of anarchism, unencumbered by the strict disciplining frameworks that characterize other political philosophies, and purposefully open to contradiction and critique. Included articles: 1. Foreword: Looking Forward / Acting Backward - Myrna Margulies Breitbart 2. Reanimating Anarchist Geographies: A New Burst of Colour - Simon Springer, Anthony Ince, Jenny Pickerill, Gavin Brown & Adam J. Barker 3. Anarchism! What Geography Still Ought to Be - Simon Springer 4. The Pervasive Nature of Heterodox Economic Spaces at a Time of Neoliberal Crisis: Towards a "Postneoliberal" Anarchist Future - Richard J. White & Colin C. Williams 5. In the Shell of the Old: Anarchist Geographies of Territorialisation - Anthony Ince 6. Emotion at the Center of Radical Politics: On the Affective Structures of Rebellion and Control - Nathan L. Clough 7. Anarchy, Geography and Drift - Jeff Ferrell 8. Radicalizing Relationships To and Through Shared Geographies: Why Anarchists Need to Understand Indigenous Connections to Land and Place - Adam J. Barker & Jenny Pickerill 9. Practice What You Teach: Placing Anarchism In and Out of the Classroom - Farhang Rouhani 10. Afterword: Anarchist Geographies and Revolutionary Strategies - Uri Gordon

The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt

Schooling is a form of misopedy and a fundamental structure in conditioning societal acceptance of domination in other registers. The subordination of children begins with the misguided notion that they are incapable of autonomy, reinforcing a dichotomous understanding of adult/child or teacher/student. Schooling should not be confused with education. The former represents the interests of oppression, molding societal consciousness to accept the conditions of subjugation. In contrast, education in its idealized form is a process of self-discovery, an awakening to one’s potential, and a desire to see such abilities realized. To ensure the absence of coercion in education children need to explore for themselves, making their own decisions about what their interests are, and how those curiosities might be fulfilled. Presenting a broad range of opportunities is crucial, but the decision about what path to follow should be determined by the child. When bound to a classroom we often mistake obedience for education. Yet learning, as geographers recognize, best occurs 'through the soles of our feet' and when children explore the world through unschooling, they live into their creative potential, opening an aperture on alternative ontologies. Unschooling is, in short, one of the most powerful forms of anarchism we can engage.

This paper addresses the issue of how to teach anarchist geographies, as discussed by the current literature in this field. To this end, I analyse an exceptional archival source, i.e., the notes taken by a student of anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus during the classes that Reclus gave at the New University in Brussels. These notes are the only surviving document able to shed light on the short teaching experience Reclus had at the end of his career (1894-1905). Drawing upon Benedict Anderson's notions of " anti-colonial imagination " and of different " frameworks of comparison " , I show how Reclus tried to perform an anarchist geographical teaching by simultaneously embracing empathy toward cultural differences and universal feelings of justice and international solidarity. Therefore, he taught a non-statist geography by showing his students what James Scott calls " the art of not being governed " , addressing the examples of the egalitarian traditions of some non-European peoples, together with their anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial struggles. Finally, I explain how this case can help to elucidate the present-day debates on performing radical teaching approaches inside and outside the academy.

Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 2012

The late 19th century saw a burgeoning of geographical writings from influential anarchist thinkers like Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus. Yet despite the vigorous intellectual debate sparked by the works of these two individuals, following their deaths anarchist ideas within geography faded. It was not until the 1970s that anarchism was once again given serious consideration by academic geographers who, in laying the groundwork for what is today known as ‘radical geography’, attempted to reintroduce anarchism as a legitimate political philosophy. Unfortunately, quiet followed once more, and although numerous contemporary radical geographers employ a sense of theory and practice that shares many affinities with anarchism, direct engagement with anarchist ideas among academic geographers have been limited. As contemporary global challenges push anarchist theory and practice back into widespread currency, geographers need to rise to this occasion and begin (re)mapping the possibilities of what anarchist perspectives might yet contribute to the discipline.

Antipode, 2012

These are certainly fruitful times for anarchist intellectual publishing. Reading through the articles in this special issue of Antipode, I was impressed by the diversity and creativity of efforts to apply anti-authoritarian perspectives to the geographical discipline, whose notorious breadth of application ("everything is spatial") seems to offer unlimited possibilities for new avenues of research. I also began thinking about two related issues that seem to run across much of what appears in the preceding pages. The first concerns the anarchademic enterprise itself, and its possible contribution to the development of anarchist politics. The second concerns a more specific problematic, which accompanies the integration of poststructuralist insights into our understanding of anarchism, and the concomitant celebration of prefigurative politics in the present tense. What connects the two is the question of revolutionary strategies. Does the postanarchist shift of perspective require us to abandon strategy as a valid category for our struggles? If not, how are strategies supposed to emerge as a conscious artefact of such a decentralized and swarming movement? What is the role of anarchist intellectual labour in such an emergence? Finally, what considerations-however preliminary and open to debate-can be presented as its starting point, and what might a geographical perspective contribute to their elaboration?

Geography Compass, 2013

Anarchism and geography have a long and disjointed history, characterized by towering peaks of intensive intellectual engagement and low troughs of ambivalence and disregard. This paper traces a genealogy of anarchist geographies back to the modern development of anarchism into a distinct political philosophy following the Enlightenment. The initial rise of geographers’ engagement with anarchism occurred at the end of the nineteenth-century, owing to Élisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin, who developed an emancipatory vision for geography in spite of the discipline’s enchantment with imperialism at that time. The realpolitik of the war years in the first half of the twentieth-century and the subsequent quantitative revolution in geography represent a nadir for anarchist geographies. Yet anarchism was never entirely abandoned by geographical thought and the counterculture movement of the 1970s gave rise to radical geography, which included significant interest in anarchist ideas. Unfortunately another low occurred during the surge of neoliberal politics in the 1980s and early 1990s, but hope springs eternal, and from the late 1990s onward the anti-globalization movement and DIY culture have pushed anarchist geographies into more widespread currency. In reviewing the literature, I hope to alert readers to the ongoing and manifold potential for anarchist geographies to inform both geographical theory and importantly, to give rise to more practice-based imperatives where building solidarities, embracing reciprocity, and engaging in mutual aid with actors and communities beyond the academy speaks to the ‘freedom of geography’ and its latent capacity to shatter its own disciplinary circumscriptions.

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2017

This paper addresses the issue of how to teach anarchist geographies, as discussed by the current literature in this field. To this end, I analyse an exceptional archival source, i.e., the notes taken by a student of anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus during the classes that Reclus gave at the New University in Brussels. These notes are the only surviving document able to shed light on the short teaching experience Reclus had at the end of his career (1894-1905). Drawing upon Benedict Anderson's notions of "anti-colonial imagination" and of different "frameworks of comparison", I show how Reclus tried to perform an anarchist geographical teaching by simultaneously embracing empathy toward cultural differences and universal feelings of justice and international solidarity. Therefore, he taught a non-statist geography by showing his students what James Scott calls "the art of not being governed", addressing the examples of the egalitarian traditions of some non-European peoples, together with their anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial struggles. Finally, I explain how this case can help to elucidate the present-day debates on performing radical teaching approaches inside and outside the academy.