Toward a Critical Utopian and Pedagogical Methodology

Abstract

This paper seeks to develop a methodology suitable for identifying and conceptualizing the pedagogical aspects of utopian communities and autonomous social movements that engage in prefigurative political practices. The paper describes ‘critical utopianism’ as an approach to social change that is anti- rather than counter-hegemonic and has affinities with epistemological and political anarchism. In practice, critical utopias include a range of spaces such as intentional communities, eco-villages, housing co-operatives and the temporary occupied spaces of autonomous social movements. There is limited space in universities and academic discourse for identifying and thinking about utopias, and particularly the pedagogical processes of such movements, because they exist purposefully beyond established formal institutions of politics and education and engage in practices that transgress individualist and hierarchical assumptions. It is argued that even radical approaches to studying such spaces, such as critical pedagogy and public pedagogy can exhibit essentializing and recuperative aspects when applied to utopias. The paper therefore suggests a new methodology inspired by anarchist, post-colonial and Deleuzian theory.