Prefiguration and Emancipatory Critical Pedagogy: The Learning Side of Practice

The intersection of contemporary discussions about prefiguration and the field of education offers an interesting entry point from which to approach the orientation of imaginaries and practice in educational and social situations marked by injustice and exclusion. Critical pedagogy argues that education can be emancipatory and offers a collection of real-world mediations with which to pursue social justice through a sustained, critical approach to all forms of oppressive system, including those of neoliberalism. Contemporary social movement organisations may be required, in the terms of a Freirean approach to conscientisation, to identify ‘generative themes’ that have the potential to develop into liberating, emancipatory themes. Richard Day has provided a useful lens for interpreting this evolution, describing the shift from a vision of social transformation informed by the concept of hegemony to one inspired by ‘affinity’. This increasingly influential approach is based on progressive, horizontal modes of organisation and decision-making. It proposes a new reading of anarchism that is filtered through several poststructuralist and post-Marxist influences. Our chapter explores how, in theoretical terms, ideas and principles from critical pedagogy might enrich the prefigurative visions of specific social movement organisations that are committed to ecological transition, ecofeminism, and social transformation.