Public Pedagogy in the Creative Strike: Destabilizing Boundaries and Reimagining Resistance at the University of Puerto Rico

• In Event: 66.061 - Cultural Production and Participatory Politics: Practices, Intersections, and Pedagogies

Abstract

In this paper, the presenter will argue that participatory politics were facilitated by creative forms of cultural production that were wielded by students in the first system wide strike in the University of Puerto Rico’s history. She shows that student-strikers enacted public pedagogy by acting in ways that asserted the fundamental interconnectedness between distinct social problems in order to destabilize the boundaries between protest space/public space, and actor/spectator. The paper is particularly focused on how disruption can be mobilized by social movement actors to foment public pedagogy. By way of conclusion, the paper reflects on the lessons non-hierarchical organizing, and the imperative to imagine alternatives to neoliberalism while eschewing rigid, a priori notions of ethical action.

Author

• Melissa Rosario, Bowdoin College