Pedagogies of Resistance: Counternarratives to Colonization

• In Event: Building a Sustainable Future Through an Understanding of Neoliberalism, Youth, Art, and Resistance

Abstract

Recognizing the discursive pervasiveness of neoliberalism in higher education and its restrictive conceptions of radical scholarship, this presentation will share an eco-critical framework and how that framework influences activist scholarship supportive of socially just and sustainable communities. In the face of the cultural, linguistic, and discursive limitations of a vision of “the academy” as the dominant source of knowledge, the work in this presentation shares public scholarship to collectively organize counternarratives to dominant curriculum within and among radical educators and activists in environmental education. Such radical scholarship features activist efforts that seek to escape the boundaries of our current historical conjuncture and valorize diverse wise ways of knowing, being, and acting. The unsustainable limits that accompany neoliberal institutions of schooling should compel activist intellectuals to think of potential futures mindful of existing resistance movements—a resistance wisdom supportive of diverse, inclusive, and sustainable communities. The current atrocities of social exploitation and environmental degradation demand the full commitment of eco-critical teacher educators, and educational researchers, to examine the cultural assumptions and limits of many currently dominant disciplinary frameworks.
Situated within a radical reconceptualization of teacher education, this presentation will critically take opposition with a moral imperative in teacher education and argue for educational programs that recognize the role of civil disobedience as direct action necessary for (re)imagining alternatives to the current confines of colonizing educational institutions. More specifically, the paper will confront difficult contestations of how, through diverse practices and disciplines, eco-critical reformations of teacher preparation programs require a resistance pedagogy committed to decolonization (Tuck & Yang, 2012; Daza & Tuck; 2014) if educators seek to contribute toward breaking the will of all our shared oppressors. Drawing from a variety of critical traditions including indigenous resistance (Mander & Tauli-Corpuz, 2006; Evering & Longboat 2013; Wilson & Yellow Bird, 2005) ecopedagogy (Kahn, 2010), queer eco-feminism (Gaard, 2011), and anarchism (Suissa, 2010; Haworth, 2012) the presentation will share examples of pedagogies that challenge the dominant ideology of schooling through creative and subversive forms of direct action in teacher education. This type of pedagogical engagement of resistance, or what activist-educators refer to as survistance—survival resistance—encourages us as to agentically explore a life disciplined by something other than “what is” – or the patriarchal, white-supremacist discourses and discursive practices of settler colonialism (Tuck & Yang, 2012; Calderon, 2014).
When educators engage in such pedagogies, there are opportunities to physically and psychologically break free from the constraints of traditional education and facilitate active engagements in working to fulfill our need and desire to work towards socially-just and sustainable communities. Importantly, our revolutionary work is not for the benefit of individuals or humans only; we must work towards justice and freedom for all living beings and future generations. This paper directly illustrates and shares examples of how educators who seek to find, and sometimes carve out, spaces and opportunities to collaborate build solidarity through creative alternative educational priorities and solidarities, inspiring us to imagine and challenge current perceptions of how we understand the world.

Authors

• John Joseph Lupinacci, Washington State University - Pullman

• Alison Happel, The University of Memphis