Insubordinate Space

Abstract

As the system of education turns on itself under the conditions of neoliberal disaster, “common sense” dictates the amputation of certain areas of research in favor of increasingly authoritarian, colorblind, and extractive approaches to knowledge production. These efforts attempt to establish all other sites and perspectives as “insubordinate spaces” and thus targets of repression.

And yet insubordination and accompanying spaces for rethinking the politics of education and expanding political education persist and proliferate. Insubordination is a tool, as Barbara Tomlinson and George Lipsitz articulate, that has “transformative and redemptive power when mobilized against exploitation and hierarchy.” Protests in the streets and across the educational system have expressed frustrations over the lack of progress on educational conditions, and staged opposition to new policies that criminalize bodies and minds.