Utopian pedagogy: creating radical alternatives in the neoliberal age

Abstract

How might we, as critical academics, work within, against, and
 beyond the neoliberal order? How might the progressive intellectual
 act and be understood today? How can and does the university
 do more than serve corporate powers and produce docile producerconsumer-
 citizens? How are people working to develop critical
 pedagogies appropriate to their local communities? To help us confront
 these sorts of questions we propose the conceptual tool and
 creative practice of ‘‘utopian pedagogy.’’ We do not use the concept
 of ‘‘utopia’’ in the sense of rationalistic dreams of a future perfect
 society. Rather, we 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
 we 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 our
 present.