Critical pedagogy, utopia and political (dis)engagement

This article offers a critique of contemporary Utopian pedagogy, focusing in particular on the concept of utopia underpinning it. Utopian pedagogy presents itself as a hope-driven practice of political engagement, grounded in the everyday, but animated by a utopian longing for something more and something better. What this article argues, however, is that the way in which utopia is conceptualised within utopian pedagogy places limits on its capacity for political intervention. Taking as an analytical frame the distinction between ‘utopia-as-process' and ‘utopia-as-system’, the article highlights, firstly, the way in which critical pedagogy now accepts, almost without reservation, the standard liberal rejection of utopia-as-system, and, secondly, the rather emaciated practice of politics that follows if one restricts one's understanding of utopia to an open-ended process of becoming. The article concludes by arguing that effective political engagement requires radical educators to abandon an uncritical adherence to liberal sensibilities and embrace both utopia-as-process and utopia-as-system.