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315Brogan, A. Subversion in the Classroom. Anarchy in Thought and Practice, Fina.Pdf Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Brogan, Andrew (2018) Subversion in the Classroom: Anarchist Thought and Practice in Higher Education. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent,. DOI Link to record in KAR https://kar.kent.ac.uk/75259/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html Subversion in the Classroom: Anarchist Thought and Practice in Higher Education Andrew J. Brogan Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political and Social Thought from the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, September 2018 Word count: 95,994 (excluding footnotes and bibliography) Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 2 Prologue: A Dusty Hill 4 1. Introduction 19 What is Critical Pedagogy? 21 Critical Pedagogy and Neo-Liberalism 38 Higher Education in the UK 40 A Critique of Critical Pedagogy: Predetermination 46 2. Talking Methods 60 From Methodology to Method 67 Autoethnography, Education and Politics 76 Hermeneutics, Autoethnography, and Me 80 3. Critical Pedagogy and the State 86 Democracy in Critical Pedagogy 87 The Critical Citizen as Agent of Change 93 Democracy, the Citizen, and the State 96 Never Mind the State: Anarchy in Thought and Practice 99 4. Critical Pedagogy and The Teacher 104 The Teacher as an Intellectual 104 Relations in Education 109 Postanarchism and Subjectivity 114 Care of the Self 118 Parrhesia 124 Care of the Self, Parrhesia, and the Teacher 127 5. Anarchy in the Classroom 130 The Practice of Everyday Life 130 Exilic Space 138 6. Interactional Moments 149 Introductions 156 Drawing 168 Engagement 176 Miserable Sessions 183 Role Play 189 Conversations 197 Critical Thought and the Media 203 Personal Choice 210 Student Perceptions 213 7. Subversion in the Classroom 219 References 241 Acknowledgements There are four people without whom this project would not have been possible. First, my wonderful wife who provided endless support, cups of tea, and excellent editing advice. The hours we spent together with a pair of scissors and tape literally cutting and reforming chapters made this thesis what it is. She is always the first person to listen to me ramble on about ideas, to read drafts of my work, and to help me when I feel like I’ve hit a wall. There is only one name on this thesis, but I could not have done it without her. The second and third people are my parents. Their support has been unwavering no matter what I’ve done along my journey to this point: from moving to Arequipa, to doing a MA, to completing my PhD they have been there every step of the way. As trite as it may sound, I would not be where or who I am today without them. Finally, my supervisor. His wealth of experience working with PhD candidates meant he knew when to push, when to challenge, and when to back off. He opened me up to new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new ways of teaching and has been central to my growth as a person in more ways than I think he will ever know. I cannot begin to thank these four people enough and a few words here seem woefully lacking to convey just how important they are to me and the thesis in front of you now. - 1 - Abstract This thesis is a critique of critical pedagogy which questions several of the key political assumptions behind critical pedagogy’s calls for social change. Over the past decades critical pedagogy has become established as the progressive response to dominant approaches to education, first addressing issues of economic oppression and then expanding its analysis to include race, gender, sexuality and more. The wide range of authors contributing to critical pedagogy reflect this growing field of analysis and despite the variation in background and focus, all authors are united by a central tenet: education is political, and education can help to change the world for the better through greater justice, equality, democracy, and freedom. In recent years critical pedagogy has turned its attention to neo-liberal approaches to education which emphasise individual competition, personal gain, and free market economics, positioning itself as the progressive and critical response to neo-liberal education. The aim of this thesis is to question the assumptions behind this call for greater justice, equality, democracy, and freedom, and to argue that rather than offering a progressive response to neo-liberal practices of education, critical pedagogy leaves key structures of neo-liberalism unquestioned. Building on anarchist theory and practice, and specifically on areas concerning the subject, governance and subversion developed following poststructuralist insights, I argue that rather than critical pedagogy offering a response to neo-liberalism, the unquestioned assumptions of critical pedagogy reveal a vision of social change and individual transformation which is constraining. Developing my critique through an anarchist reading of critical pedagogy’s reliance on the state, and Foucauldian reading of the attempt to govern the individual subject, I propose and explore a subversive approach to educational theory and practice which operates in the gaps and tensions created by the education systems. My exploration occurs in the context of a UK higher education institution in which I was teaching as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for three years, and I examine the tensions and difficulties of working in a neo-liberal Higher Education (HE) institution while simultaneously pursuing an approach to education entirely alien to it. To this end I utilise autoethnography to capture, re-tell, and analyse specific experiences from my teaching practice, using a - 2 - combination of Gray’s work on exilic space and de Certeau’s work on la perruque (‘wiggery’) as a lens to establish the possibility of subversion in constrained and constraining systems like neo-liberal HE. I contend that the anarchist thought and practice developed in this thesis offers a possibility for subversion which avoids the pitfalls of critical pedagogy by creating and developing moments in which we take responsibility for our actions, our (trans)formation as a subject, and our relationships to others in ways which are unaccountable for by neo-liberalism and critical pedagogy alike. I conclude the thesis piece by arguing that no matter the practices of governance we are subject too, be they neo-liberal in nature or emanating from critical pedagogy, there always exist moments and means of subversion. - 3 - Prologue: A Dusty Hill A nine-year-old community spread over a dusty hill. A volcano standing guard in the background. Ceaseless sun that turns the ground to dust and sand. Water brought in on lorries, stored in tanks. A handful of rogue electricity pylons. No sewage system. Single brick, two room homes. Incomplete rooftops waiting for the next floor. Thin windows in metal frames. Concrete floors. Small shops in front rooms. Gas canisters for cooking. Heavy supplies brought up the hill on foot. Warm days and cold nights. Freezing temperatures. The rainy season. Dirt pathways collapse in a muddy slide. * * * I sit on the water tank as the bucket fills below me. I enjoy this quiet moment up here in the community, looking back down the foothills to the city below. I’ve been working in the community for a charity for around six months now and whilst I feel like I’ve found my feet on the day-to-day running of the project, I’ve also began to feel a tension between my interpretation and understanding of what we’re doing, and the charity’s. “To break the cycle of poverty”: as a tagline, a mission statement, that’s a hard one to argue against. Who wouldn’t want to break the cycle of poverty? Whatever that may actually mean. It’s the wrong question to ask myself, really. There’s something more complex here, something connected to the role I’m playing in the actions of a charity which has this as its mission statement. At the beginning of my time with the charity, six or seven months ago when I first met the founders, I was swept along with the idea of being involved in “making a difference”, in “doing something good”, without really thinking any further or deeper about what such a role entailed. I didn’t get past the clichéd phrases. Increasingly, in the last few weeks I’ve become aware of this tension, and looking back I’ve noticed this in the contents of my journal. The charity runs a project based in a primary school on the outskirts of Arequipa, Peru’s second city. The city proper is a beautiful place of white stone buildings, cobbled streets, churches, and squares, and is a popular stop-over for tourists travelling to and from Bolivia or Chile, or on their way to Lake Titicaca and Cuzco. It has also become an increasingly popular place for internal migration, with people moving closer to the city in search of work.
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