Educational Commons in Theory and Practice Global Pedagogy and Politics Alexander J. Means, Derek R. Ford, and Graham B. Slater Educational Commons in Theory and Practice Alexander J. Means • Derek R. Ford • Graham B. Slater Editors Educational Commons in Theory and Practice Global Pedagogy and Politics Editors Alexander J. Means Derek R. Ford SUNY Buffalo State DePauw University Buffalo, New York, USA Greencastle, Indiana, USA Graham B. Slater University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah, USA ISBN 978-1-137-58640-7 ISBN 978-1-137-58641-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58641-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930199 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: © Joe Librandi-Cowan Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A. C ontents 1 Introduction: Toward an Educational Commons 1 Alexander J. Means, Derek R. Ford, and Graham B. Slater 2 Commons as Actuality, Ethos, and Horizon 23 Max Haiven 3 Reframing the Common: Race, Coloniality, and Pedagogy 39 Noah De Lissovoy 4 Reassembling the Natural and Social Commons 55 Jesse Bazzul and Sara Tolbert 5 Toward an Elaboration of the Pedagogical Common 75 Gregory N. Bourassa 6 Impersonal Education and the Commons 95 Tyson E. Lewis 7 #BlackLivesMatter: Racialization, the Human, and Critical Public Pedagogies of Race 109 Nathan Snaza and Jennifer A. Sandlin v vi CONTENTS 8 A Question of Knowledge: Radical Social Movements and Self-E ducation 127 Mark Howard 9 Educational Enclosure and the Existential Commons: Settler Colonialism, Racial Capitalism, and the Problem of the Human 145 Anita Juárez and Clayton Pierce 10 Common Relationality: Antiracist Solidarity, Racial Embodiment, and the Problem of Self-Possession 167 Gardner Seawright 11 Education and the Civil Commons 189 Jennifer Sumner 12 Educating the Commons Through Cooperatively Run Schools 209 David I. Backer 13 Big Talk in the Little City: Grassroots Resistance by and for the Common/s 231 Mark Stern and Khuram Hussain 14 Revitalizing the Common(s) in New Mexico: A Pedagogical Consideration of Socially Engaged Art 249 Michelle Gautreaux Index 271 A e bout the ditors editors Derek R. Ford is an educational theorist, teacher, and organizer and is Assistant Professor of Education Studies at DePauw University. Informed by Marxism, post-structuralism, queer theory, and critical geography, his research examines the nexus of pedagogy, subjectivity, and revolutionary movements. His most recent book is Communist Study: Education for the Commons (Lexington, 2016). He is chair of the Education Department at The Hampton Institute and an organizer with the Answer Coalition. He can be reached at [email protected] Alexander J. Means is an Assistant Professor of Social and Psychological Foundations of Education at SUNY Buffalo State. He is the author of Schooling in the Age of Austerity (Palgrave, 2013) and Toward a New Common School Movement (Paradigm, 2014) with Noah De Lissovoy and Kenneth Saltman. His work examines educational policy in relation to political, economic, cultural, and social change. Graham B. Slater is Marriner S. Eccles Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Utah, where he is completing a Ph.D. in the Department of Education, Culture, and Society. His research examines the relationship between neoliberalism, market-based school reforms, and the security and social welfare of communities excluded (particularly by race and class) from meaningful, liberatory, and quality forms of education. His scholar- ship and reviews have been published in Journal of Education Policy, Educational Studies, The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, and Policy Futures in Education. vii n C otes on ontributors David I. Backer is a teacher and a writer. He is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations in the College of Education and Social Work at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Jesse Bazzul is an Assistant Professor of Science and Environmental Education at the University of Regina. He feels that comprehensive atten- tion needs to be given to the way typically depoliticized fields of study such as science education work to constitute both political and ethical forms of life. Gregory N. Bourassa is an Assistant Professor of Social Foundations at the University of Northern Iowa. His research focuses on autonomist Marxism, educational biopolitics, and the intersecting operations of race, class, and power in schools and society. Noah De Lissovoy is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies in Education at the University of Texas at Austin. His research centers on emancipatory approaches to education and cultural studies, with a spe- cial focus on the intersecting effects of race, class, and capital. He is the author of Education and Emancipation in the Neoliberal Era (Palgrave), Power, Crisis, and Education for Liberation (Palgrave), and co-author of Toward a New Common School Movement. His work has appeared in many journals, including Race, Ethnicity and Education, Critical Sociology, Harvard Educational Review, Curriculum Inquiry, and Journal of Education Policy. ix x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Michelle  Gautreaux is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. Informed by Marxism, social movement theory, and critical theories of education, her primary research explores the ongoing development of collective resistance to corporate education reform in Chicago, IL. Her work has been pub- lished in Educational Studies, Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, Critical Education and is forthcoming in Education Policy Analysis Archives. Max Haiven is a writer, teacher, and organizer and an assistant professor in the Division of Art History and Critical Studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in K’jipuktuk in Mi’kma’ki (Halifax, Canada). His research focuses on themes including the financialization of society and culture, social movements and the radical imagination, the politics and economics of culture, critical art practices, and social and cultural theory. He writes articles for both academic and general audiences and has been published in venues including Truth-Out, ROAR Magazine, Social Text, Cultural Studies, Cultural Politics and Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements. He is author of the books Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons (Zed Books, 2014), The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (with Alex Khasnabish, Zed Books, 2014) and Cultures of Financialization: Fictitious Capital in Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Mark Howard is an early career researcher working in the Philosophy Department of Monash University, Australia. Through the rubric of criti- cal pedagogy and social epistemology, his current research focuses on the theory and practice of radical communities, arguing that the knowledge of these communities is essentially epistemological, forming an authoritative and credible mode of analysis of the nexus of politics and the radical subject. Khuram Hussain is a former New York City schoolteacher and currently serves as an associate professor in the Department of Education at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, where he serves as a commu- nity organizer with Tools for Social Change. He completed his Ph.D. in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University. His current scholarship explores the radical origins of multicultural education and contemporary grassroots anti-racist movements that resist neoliberal school reform. His book, Imaging the Black Freedom Struggle: Political NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi Cartoons of Muhammad Speaks, 1960–1975, is under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press. Anita Juárez is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on educational policy, theories of settler colonialism, race and ethnicity, and the political economy of education. Tyson E. Lewis is an Associate Professor of art education and coordina- tor of the graduate program at the University of North Texas. He has published articles on critical theory and/or educational philosophy. His work has appeared in a number of journals including Rethinking Marxism, Cultural Critique, Symploke, and Cultural Politics. He is also author of four books: Education Out of Bounds: Reimagining Cultural Studies for a Posthuman Age (New York: Palgrave, 2010), The Aesthetics of Education: Theatre, Curiosity, and Politics in the Work of Jacques Rancière and Paulo Freire (London: Continuum, 2012), On Study: Giorgio Agamben and Educational Potentiality (New York: Routledge, 2013), and Inoperative Learning: A Radical Rethinking of Educational Potentialities (New York: Routledge, forthcoming). Clayton Pierce is an assistant professor in the Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University. His books include the award winning Education in the Age of Biocapitalism, On Marcuse: Critique, Liberation, and Reschooling in the Radical Pedagogy of Herbert Marcuse (co-author), and Marxism, Revolution, Utopia: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume 6 (co-editor). His most recent research article, W.E.B. Du Bois and Caste Education, will appear this fall in the American Educational Research Journal’s Centennial Issue. Jennifer A. Sandlin is an associate professor in the Justice and Social Inquiry Department in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University, where she teaches courses on consumption and educa- tion, popular culture and justice, and social and cultural pedagogy. Her research focuses on the intersections of education, learning, and consump- tion, as well as on understanding and theorizing public pedagogy. Through her current research projects, she explores The Walt Disney Corporation and the myriad ways its curricula and pedagogies manifest, and seeks to understand what it means to teach, learn, and live in a world where many familiar discourses are dominated by Disney as a global media conglomer- ate. She recently edited, with Peter McLaren, Critical Pedagogies of