The Exilic Classroom: Spaces of Subversion

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

This paper explores the possibility of the classroom as an exilic space of subversion in which we can pursue anarchist notions of personal transformation, relationships and society. Classroom environments in higher education institutions in Britain, particularly following the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework in September 2016, are premised upon relationships shaped by specific external standards: Employability, the instrumental pursuit of degrees, provider/consumer exchange, among others. Any notions of personal transformation are economic, and the broader goal is the pursuit of economic gain for individual, company and country. In an act of subversion of these external standards, I propose theorising the classroom as an exilic space: a temporally and spatially bracketed space in which participants and their relationships are not beholden to these various external referents. Instead, I put forward the exilic classroom as an anarchic space in which the interactions of the participants are not pre-defined but are formed in the process of the interactions themselves. In theorising the exilic classroom I draw on the work of Obika Gray, and push his notion of exilic space further by integrating the works of Michel de Certeau, Jamie Heckert and Gustav Landauer to help propose a classroom defined as a positive subversive everyday space that is not bound by its opposition to wider structures. The creation of such an exilic classroom assists the participants in stepping out of their expected roles as ‘provider’ and ‘consumer’, or ‘teacher’ and ‘student’, and allows the creation of a space of possibilities for our relationships
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Philosophy of Education
Volume51
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)510-523
Number of pages14
ISSN0309-8249
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.05.2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Intricate Letters and the Reification of Light
  2. Towards Ecosystems for Responsible AI
  3. Why the measurement of species diversity requires prior value judgements
  4. Telomere length is a strong predictor of foraging behavior in a long-lived seabird
  5. Changes in the Work Situation and Attitudes in East-germany After the Introduction of Capitalism
  6. Progress and challenge for magnesium alloys as biomaterials
  7. A Decision Support System for Crew Rostering in Public Transit
  8. Entangled Identities
  9. Mindfulness as self-confirmation? An exploratory intervention study on potentials and limitations of mindfulness-based interventions in the context of environmental and sustainability education
  10. Explorations in social spaces
  11. Transgressive Use of Technology
  12. A switching model predictive control for overcoming a hysteresis effect in a hybrid actuator for camless internal combustion engines
  13. Putting inquiry-based learning into practice
  14. Organizing for innovation through accelerators: An introduction
  15. Sustainability in Business: Integrated Management of Value Creation and Disvalue Mitigation
  16. Pathways towards sustainable and just futures with and for disabled populations
  17. Who wants to take an intelligence test? Personality and achievement motivation in the context of ability testing
  18. Diversity and specificity of host-natural enemy interactions in an urban-rural interface
  19. CSR communication on corporate websites compared across continents
  20. A new and benign hegemon on the horizon?
  21. High temperature deformation mechanisms and processing map for hot working of cast-homogenized Mg-3Sn-2Ca alloy
  22. Incremental analysis of springback and kinematic hardening by the variation of tension during deep drawing
  23. Impact of prescribed burning on the nutrient balance of heathlands with particular reference to nitrogen and phosphorus
  24. Advancing Decision-Visualization Environments—Empirically informed Design Recommendations
  25. A single PD plus gravity compensation control for global asymptotic regulation of robot manipulators with actuator constraints
  26. Augmented space
  27. Notting Hill Gate 3 Basic