Coté, Mark, Day, Richard J. F and de Peuter, Greig (2007) Utopian pedagogy: creating radical alternatives in the neoliberal age. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 29 (4). pp. 317-336. ISSN 1071-4413

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.

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