Revolutions Never Come with a Warning*: Reflections on Teaching Abolition in Unfriendly Territory

• In Event: Roundtable: Teaching Penal Abolition

Abstract

College and university courses dedicated to the topic of penal abolition are rare but that doesn’t mean the subject can’t be taught effectively. Drawing on Jacque Deridda’s work on revolutionary pedagogy, the author will reflect on the strategies and tactics she has used to incorporate an abolitionist perspective into sociology, criminology and gender studies curriculum – even in socially and politically conservative areas and institutions. The concepts of retrospective and prospective practice and the structure of pedagogy will be considered in relation to the idea that revolutionary ideas have the most impact when they can’t be anticipated. (*title adapted from the song Yell Fire)

Author

• Melissa Munn, Okanagan College