Towards an Abolitionist Pedagogy: Epistemologies of Liberation in the Neoliberal University
Date
2022-07-01
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Abstract
With a growing recognition in the national consciousness of the presence of policing in schools, there has been much recent discussion of the need for change within educational systems. National organizations such as the Cops Off Campus Coalition work towards the removal of “all forms of policing and police involvement” from schools, locating these demands within such broader movements as prison and policing abolition, calls to abolish the military industrial complex, and the Land Back movement. These and other abolitionist organizations work towards anti-carceral education in recognition of the disproportionate policing of students of color, the surveillance endemic within both public and private educational institutions, and the broader harm created within communities as a result of police intervention. In this thesis, I engage with these traditions of education for liberation, by turning to pedagogy as a method of producing the kinds of epistemologies, curiosities, and freedom dreaming central to abolitionist praxis. This work will outline the tensions between academic and abolitionist practice, by looking to the field of critical university studies; trace the practice of freedom dreaming across historical and current activist practices; and sit with the uncertainties of abolitionist work, with the ultimate goal of beginning to outline the shape of a pedagogy that enables the epistemological elements of abolitionist thought.
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Abolition, Pedagogy, Critical University Studies, Epistemology