Postdigital cross border reflections on critical utopia

Abstract

Critical pedagogy is in crisis. To address this crisis, this paper reinvents Paulo Freire’s concept of utopia in and for our age of the Anthropocene. Understood as a system, postdigital critical utopia provides us with normative foundations and returns agency from invisible data and algorithms to human beings. Understood as a process, postdigital critical utopia unmasks the myth of neutrality and adds an important element of myth, religion, ritual, and faith. Understood as an orientation, postdigital critical utopia needs to be balanced by dystopia, integrate environmental considerations, and act with a combination of epistemical curiosity and hope. Theoretical and practical attempts at introducing advanced technology to reimagine new utopias now take place in media theory, hacking, activism, and small pockets of the academia. To transcend its own crisis and remain relevant, contemporary critical pedagogy movement must urgently join these attempts. However, catching up with technological development is only the tip of a much larger iceberg. In order to take the lead in processes of modernization, critical pedagogy movement needs to actively develop utopian visions and techno-administrative systems which may support these visions.