The spatial ways democracy works: On the pedagogy of common places. Why,why now?

Abstract

Democratic practices have their places; democracy is spatial in its very nature. From this perspective, the study of democracy can be developed as an analytical description of the places where democratic dialogue is practiced. The issue of dialogue practices, which are of educational character and become one of the versions of public pedagogy, which is especially needed in the current time of the assault on public space, defines the profile of these studies. Hence, in the text, I propose a direction of thinking that draws attention to the educational value of democratic commonality and inscribes it in the pedagogical reflection around the common places. Finally, I describe an area of pedagogical thought and educational practices which I call the “pedagogy of the common places” – the spatial version of the public pedagogy. Specifically, the paper – by asking why, why now? and answering through discussing practices of the nationalization of public sphere, and the recent rise of nationalism in Poland – will explore how the educational, spatial perspective can be fruitful as sketching new forms of thinking and doing democracy.

Keywords

Democracy space becoming public pedagogy of common places

Introduction

On the contexts of the pedagogy of the common places: Nationalization of public sphere

This article on the pedagogy of the common places¹ was written in a context which should be briefly outlined at the beginning. This context can be represented by the current trend of nationalization which deeply changes the contemporary public sphere. There is also the modern phenomenon of homo munitus, which I perceive as a context showing contemporary reality as full of spatial divisions. It also permeated my thinking when presenting the concept of the pedagogy of the common places as the pedagogy “for (democracy) today”, for the time of the assault on public spaces.

Nationalization

As stated by Pierre Rosanvallon, in The society of equals, the first crisis of equality manifested itself in the years of first globalization (1880–1900), “in the rise of nationalism and protectionism along with xenophobic attitudes, which led some to propose principle of identity and homogeneity as answers to ‘the social question’” (Rosanvallon, 2013: 9). Now, he stated, “nationalism, protectionism, xenophobia: all these things are with us again” (Rosanvallon, 2013: 9). He argued that in order to understand the present, we must have the historical precedents in mind and he proposed “the re-examining the spirit of equality”, as it was forged in the American and French revolutions (Rosanvallon, 2013: 10). Agreeing with this position (in this text I am still referring to it broadly), I cannot but notice that the current returns to the past have become the “principle” organizing the contemporary social, political and cultural reality. This “habitual” formula of returning to the past has become a breeding ground for nationalism today. As Zygmunt Bauman explains, the contemporary past's turn (“the U-turn”) goes

from investing public hopes of improvement in the uncertain (…) future, to re-reinvesting them in the vaguely remembered past (…). With such a U-turn happening, the future is transformed from the natural habitat of hopes (…) into the site of nightmares: horrors of losing your job together with its attached social standing”, etc. (2017: 6)

Bauman noted that the impact of such a shift “is visible and palpably felt at every level of social cohabitation – in its emergent worldview and the life-strategies that this worldview insinuates and gestates” (2017: 7). He called it “retrotopia”, of which I will speak later in more detail. Another thinker who describes the contemporary past's turn is Timothy Snyder. He talks about current time manipulations, and perceives them as anti-history; he believes that neo-liberalism, like neo-conservatism, generates numerous examples of an anti-historical view of the past (Snyder, 2017: 115–124). He believes, rightly, that effects similar to those that bring closure within a socially shared sense of inevitability shape thinking in terms of eternity, a thinking characteristic of neo-conservative movements, in particular of national populists. This takes place when the past is perceived as a foggy space full of monuments of national martyrdom, each of which is equally distant from the present, while all are easy to manipulate. This is our contemporary space, like in Poland nowadays, extraordinarily full of memory places politically used via ritualized celebrations of national events, jubilees, etc. (Mendel and Theiss, 2018).

In such conditions, we have lost faith in all utopias and we have forcibly felt the instability of the present; we are full of fear of an unpredictable future and are unable to prefigure it. Bauman writes about this in his Retrotopia, when describing the paradigmatic principle of the modern world. This rule is close to utopian thinking, but it reverses its order. Retrotopia grows out of utopia, but, differently, it focuses on the past. This is accomplished within what Bauman understands as the territorially sovereign topos, which means within the conditions of using cultural commonplaces (in the Greek sense of topos). Culture, indeed, is always created locally (in geographically defined places, “among” people), but it has the ability to spread, and every local knowledge is involved in global flows. Thus, retrotopia has become a principle of reality in which utopia, as a place that is known and brings all of us a vision of the future, has lost any meaning. Hence, today we can speak of a retrotopical structure of collective memory, of memory that is a place permeated by the present that fabricates the relevance of what is past. This production can validate and bring to view varied social practices, including destructive ones that dismantle – for example – the democratic foundations of social life. There are many examples of this phenomenon. One can even say that everyday life – in many parts of the world with national populists at the helm – provides them to excess. Anti-historical rhetoric, which is a mockery of constructive historical knowledge, continues to bring popularity to leaders such as Donald Trump ( “Make America Great Again!”), Viktor Orban (operating with fears aroused by visions of an imaginary past, that they will come again, that they will take us away again, etc.), or Jarosław Kaczyński, Polish dominant party's leader who encourages Poles to abandon “the national micro-mania” and to be more proud as Poles (“get up from their knees”), for they are “historically” capable of great things, as great, for example, as the “Jagiellonian Poland that once stretched²”.

Homo munitus

One of the contexts of my reflection developed here is the thought of homo munitus, a barricaded human whom I see, against the dominant tone of analyses (Rosanvallon, 2013), not as a person who lives in a gated community that encloses the rich and the poor on both sides of the fence. While writing this text, I meant the image of maps that portray European cities in course of transformation of their neighborhoods (Zwiers et al., 2005). In the 1970s, the maps looked like colorful patchworks that represented the dense diversity of socio-economic statuses of people of various walks of life and income living in neighboring houses. They mixed and met in their daily lives, co-creating the city that was their shared lifestyle, as the classic of urban sociology, Louis Wirth puts it (1938); or, in other words, the city of flows accentuated in more contemporary works. During the following decades, the maps lost many of their colors. In 2010, they are almost entirely composed of two, clearly separated colors. The spatial polarization of wealth and poverty reaches its zenith. People of different status, class, race or ethnicity live in cities that seem to be composed of two planets, one rich, and one poor, with almost no connections between them. No gates or fences are needed nowadays. The homo munitus barricades herself with a thick cushion of people like himself; gated community is no longer the main concern when people discuss social cohesion. The leitmotiv is, instead, the binarism of urban structures and insular lives in cities that look like fractured not only on wealth distribution maps, but even with bare eyes, from airplanes. One can immediately recognize the wealth of mansion districts and the fields of Grenfell Tower-like³ poverty. And between… well, what is there in between? Are there just billboards that make ugly neighborhoods invisible? Or can there be places that bridge that dreadful gap?

I am trying to conceive of the pedagogy of common places as oriented towards this very question. The multifaceted, physical and symbolic, emotional and spiritual place that one may hope to find between the zones of separation can become the Derridean khôra for commonality. It may be a place that awaits revelation of its meaning (like, in Homer, a field is waiting for the duel of Achilles to reveal the meaning it will gain from this event) (Derrida, 1993). A place for educational challenges – a place for pedagogy that contemporary cities/world need. Krzysztof Nawratek once wrote, and I share his conviction, that “the city can change its dwellers”, and that such change “simply needs more time and a better pedagogy” (Nawratek, 2012: 70). The article focused on pedagogy of common places aims at meeting this challenge in regards to democratic space which can educationally change us, its co-producers.

Democracy takes place

To make the argument that democracy is taking place, I will begin with the traits of practices that are commonly called democratic, including knowing how to resist and how to engage in dialogue. Gert J.J. Biesta wrote that “(t)he experience of resistance is (…) an experience that we are somewhere, not just anywhere” (Biesta, 2017: 14). To resist means to practice democratic dissensus in our existence which is both in and with the world. Biesta argues that this existence

is possible and literally takes place. We might refer to this middle ground as dialogue, as long as we do not think of dialogue as conversation, but as an existential form, a way of being together that seeks to do justice to all partners involved. (Biesta, 2017: 14)

Dialogue for Biesta is – a method of sustaining energy and constant attention – a way to be together. Dialogue is therefore obviously relational and, as such, becomes similar to Rosanvallon's notions of equality and commonality, which “make” democracy. As Biesta writes, this “possible” and “literally” taking place in the world and with the world refers to dialogue as an existential form, again: “a way of being together”, which strives to treat all engaged partners fairly. So dialogue is not a conversation, but – again and again – “a way of being together”. Biesta further explains that this way of being together cannot resemble a contest, since

a contest is an existential form aimed at bringing about winners and losers …[that]… comes to an end once someone has won, whereas dialogue is an ongoing, never-ending challenge. An ongoing, never-ending ‘Aufgabe’ (a task – author's note) we might say. A contest requires a confined burst of energy; staying in dialogue requires ongoing and sustained energy, attention and commitment. (Biesta, 2017: 14–15)

In this approach, I see the essence of practicing commonality and, consequently, creating a common place. This is happening in a dialogue whose meaning is as an expression of existence in the world and for the world, an existence that literally (physically, materially) takes place. In other words, dialogue is a way of being together in a place, realizing existence in the world and for the world.

The justice made in such a dialogue – practiced by all involved partners – is its irreducible feature, pertaining both to individual and collective self. This aspect of understanding dialogue makes it a fundamental foundation and the main form of pedagogy of the common places, that is, its theoretical category and also the main operational concept.

Everything that I wrote about dialogue so far concerns democracy. A dialogue such as this, understood as a democratic dialogue, is a tool and a basic, everyday form of practicing democracy. That is why I say that democracy has a place, that it is spatial. The arguments for this position can also be found in terms of equality and democratic commonality, which are elements of the concept of the “equal society” of Pierre Rosanvallon (2013).

According to Rosanvallon, achieving equality means sharing the spirit of equality that takes place in mutual relations. As he argued, in order to overcome coming crisis of democracy, “we must recapture the original spirit of equality in a form suitable to the present age” (Rosanvallon, 2013: 11). It seems that this is a challenge of an educational nature I am trying to take it up by proposing a pedagogy of the common places; a pedagogy, which focuses on a democratic commonality that is relational and spatial.

Rosanvallon (2013) understands equality “as a relation, a way of making a society, of producing and living in common” (p. 10). For him commonality means public good, something which is fragile and vulnerable to appropriations. It may emerge as flow when people constantly relate in some way and construe common knowledge – even if that is constructed by way of exchanging glances on a bus. Aristotle calls it community of thought, the intellectual commonality of the city – koinópolis (see: Eikeland, 2008). The local knowledges strengthen the holographic nature of the city: the city is like a point in which all differences – characteristic of diverse ontologies that jointly compose the fabric of communities and individualities – focus to create one image. This is how I see koinópolis, intellectual commonality that generalizes all communalities. It retains all differences, and at the same time generalizes them to give them a common form. It is in koinópolis that democratizing dialogue can take place; “democratizing” means here that its participants must strive for justice in order to have voice: to be equal with others (Biesta, 2011).

However, the same tendency that, at least potentially, makes us, in the cities, more and more similar one to another, explains why there are citizens whose experience can be described with a metaphor of a fallen social ladder. Specifically, people who do not differ too much from each other, because the democratized culture allowed them to have a common appearance, try to build a difference through their place of residence. They live always “somewhere else”. Referring to Mannheim, one may show how “democratizing similarity” contributes to enclosures and homogeneous communities; how homo munitus grows from the desire of being apart from those unlike himself rather than of being higher than where one is now (Mannheim, 1956).

The question then arises how to make homo munitus go out to the world, to the koinópolis, beyond the walls of the enclaves of poor or rich, behind which (s)he lives. This question opens a ground for pedagogical intervention that can inspire the creation and cultivation of common places, of living topoi and of physical places in the public sphere, which belongs to everyone as long as their visibility in the shared space endures.

Democratic education as spatial way of becoming public: On the interruptions which make common places

Democratic education is understood here close to the conceptions of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière as developed by Gert Biesta (2012). Therefore, it is assumed that – first – democratic education is public education.

As mentioned before, nation states are governed nowadays in a frame of retrotopia and they use the past as a utilitarian, educational value. In such practices, public pedagogy is done in attempts to educate the society on how to become a “good nation” (in other words, as modeling the society aimed at turning it into a “good nation”). Donald Trump's often repeated slogan, “Make America Great Again”, may be the label for this kind of public pedagogy. In the three interpretations of the idea of public pedagogy proposed by Gert J.J. Biesta, this one would be that of pedagogy for the public (Biesta, 2012). Two others, that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy of the public and that of public pedagogy as the enactment of a concern for the public quality of human togetherness, of pedagogy by the public, seem to be less represented in the time of the past's turn and retrotopia principle. This is why I focus on the pedagogy for the public. “The main pedagogical ‘mode’ in this interpretation is that of instruction. In this conception of public pedagogy, the world is seen as a giant school and the main role of educational agents is to instruct the citizenry” (Biesta, 2012: 691). Based on “the Polish case”, I present snippets of my country's reality observed in recent years during which Poland has been governed by the conservative, nationalistic “Law&Justice” (in Polish: “Prawo i Sprawiedliwość”, PiS) party. The following section explores the question of how their pedagogy for the public is done.

The Polish case: Nationalization of the public sphere as pedagogy for the public

One of the snippets, which I have mentioned, regards the tragic plane crash in Smolensk on 10 April 2010. A 96-member Polish delegation was killed while in flight to the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. Among the victims, were the President of the Republic of Poland Lech Kaczyński with his wife, representatives of the Sejm, the Senate, and many state institutions and social organizations: the army, the clergy and others. This is the beginning and the “end” is positioned on 10 April 2018, when – exactly eight years after the catastrophe – Jarosław Kaczyński (twin brother of the President who died in the plane crash, and the leader of the “Law & Justice” party which is dominant nowadays) announced it in public. Although the speech concerned merely the “Smolensk monthly” (every month since the catastrophe he organized mass rallies to keep its remembrance active), this “end” referred to “what has connected us thus far”, thereby announcing a new form of bond, the establishment of a community. It was he who made the foundational gesture of significance and singled out a period bearing a particular meaning; the meaning comprehensible in social circulation (functioning like the Greek topos), but with its participation defined and limited politically, and finally named by him. Retrotopia.

Before that happened, Jarosław Kaczyński first consistently ritualized the commemoration of the tragedy of 10 April 2010, including the initiation of the “Smolensk monthly”. He did so in such a way that the commemoration of his own utilitarian political interpretation of this tragedy was ritualized at the same time. In this commemorated, nationalistic interpretation,⁴ the principle of sharing (us – them) and the imperative of social consolidation of efforts to discover the truth about the causes of the disaster, camouflaged by the enemies, have been included. Every 10th day of the month in Warsaw's Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, a ceremony was held according to a ritualized order, located in a central place in the Polish capital. In the morning, a mass took place in the nearby Seminary Church; in the evening, another mass at the archcathedral, and after its completion, a March of Remembrance proceeded to the Presidential Palace where, every month, Jarosław Kaczyński spoke to the gathered crowd there.

Over the course of time, the “Smolensk monthly” gradually changed, becoming more spectacular and more performative. Over this same period, resistance to the politically functional commemoration of the catastrophe also intensified. By the end of 2015, this resistance was clearly associated with the opposition to the way the government of Jarosław Kaczyński exercised its rule to the nationalization of public sphere, and to the devastation of the Polish judiciary by the “Law&Justice” party. In March 2016, the opponents of the Citizens of the Republic of Poland organization, with a banner expressing a quote from Lech Kaczyński's speech (meant to use the Party leader's twin brother's statement to undermine the course of politics performed by “Law&Justice”), stood in front of the Smolensk crowd, just opposite Kaczyński, under the Kordegarda state gallery located on the other side of Krakowskie Przedmieście. From now on, every month a “counter-month” was to be held.

During the 85th Smolensk monthly, the annoyed “Law&Justice” leader attributed the opposition's hatred to the symbolism of the white roses with which the participants of her counter-contest performed. The monthlies are accompanied by more or less spectacular relocations of counter-demonstrators from the place opposite Jarosław Kaczyński, performed by the police and the Government Protection Bureau. Place and memory, memory and place, there, in Krakowskie Przedmiescie, between the Presidential Palace and the Kordegarda Gallery, the subject of a fight, not only symbolic, but also physical. Spectacularly intermingled in this way, are opposing and instrumentalizing narratives of the past; rhetoric operates back over time and builds places: retrotopias.

During the 95th Smolensk Monthly, on 10 March 2018, Jarosław Kaczyński – as was said – as a result of “fatigue in the monthlies” and in connection with the intensifying election campaign (local government elections) – ended this monthly ritual. In his own way, he said that “we were committed to the truth and the truth won”; that

what's been going on for us for so many years, which was presented every month at Krakowskie Przedmiescie, and which was connected with a certain expectation, hope. But it ends because this hope has been fulfilled. That there, on Piłsudski Square, a monument to the victims of the Smolensk catastrophe is being built.⁵

With these words, Jarosław Kaczyński explicitly expressed the discretion of the fact that in the monument unveiled on 10 April 2018 (the monthly of the 96th, whose number is the same as the number of victims of the disaster), the eight years' circle of is closed; as the author of the work decided, that it is enough; that it just the end.

The above description of this eight-year performance, taking place in a public space and having evident educational character, made me feel confused. Although I assumed that this spectacle is part of the pedagogy for the public, it is clear from the description that we are dealing with the Biesta's third type of public pedagogy, about which I stated that it is less represented in the time of the past's turn and retrotopia principle. Evidently, there was the dialoguing character of the space which was produced in the monthlies and counter-months. This dialogue expresses “the existence for the world” (Biesta, 2017) and is oriented toward a form of human togetherness in which “action is possible and freedom can appear” (Biesta's meaning of “becoming public”, 2012). It was a dialogue which engaged the Rancièrean dissensus; a dialogue that is practiced not anywhere, but in its specific place (in the Polish eight years' spectacle: Krakowskie Przemieście street and the square nearby the Kordegarda state gallery). One could say that such a place is built by the people becoming educational agents who interrupt the given by staging dissensus. In accordance to Biesta: by those who are able “to introduce an incommensurable element – an event, and experience and an object – that can act both as a test and as a reminder of publicness” (2012: 693).

In the times of nationalism: Pedagogy of the common places or the public pedagogy of interruption

Interruptions, which evidently happened during the monthlies and the counter-monthlies, can be understood – according to Biesta – as the expressions of citizens' ignorance (Biesta, 2011). As Gert Biesta argued, democratic education is about supporting citizen's ignorance of a particular definition of what the citizen is supposed to be as a good citizen. Such knowledge is refused by the ignorant citizen, who thus “refuses to be domesticated, refuses to be pinned down in a pre-determined civic identity” (Biesta, 2011: 152). In the Polish case, which I described above, one could see two clashing groups of citizens, who are ignorant in this way and who cannot be reached, to make them aware of their subjectivity. Poles, like those who have been clashing in Krakowskie Przedmiescie for the last eight years, seem to be permanently divided into two strongly combating groups. You cannot see the end.⁶ It cannot be seen all the more because the orientation of the dominant political group educationally operates the national narrative (Biesta's pedagogy for the public). Paradoxically, in a time of growing nationalism, none of the sides of the conflict wants to give up patriotism. Some will not give up their love for their homeland because they agree with the national direction proposed by the rulers. Others, on the contrary, will not give up because they do not want to let the nationalist narrative take away their non-nationalistic love for their homeland.

Unfortunately, both did not notice that the ideological machine, mixing the so-called traditional values and apotheosizing market freedom, has formed a new paradigm of the nation. In accordance with the assumption that a nation can be constructed as a corporate brand, so-called “national branding” was created (Olins, 2005; Szymik, 2018; and others). It develops, constructing nations “for the needs of those who have the power, the need and the money to do it” (Szymik, 2018: 92). The national branding experts working on their request invent the nations according to a simple instruction: “start with the flag, national anthem, national days, stadiums, airlines, language and several myths” (Szymik, 2018: 92). Nationalism that strongly uses “national branding” in the name of building the strength of the nation, seems to flourish in a particularly aggressive form in those countries whose brand in the economic sphere is weak. Poland has no brands such as German Mercedes or American Coca-Cola, etc. Polish branded nationalism (similar to Hungarian) seems to compete on the global market, offering “values” taken from history and refreshed in the current context.

Anyway, patriotism today, although understood differently, becomes a sharing element. And this is the starting point, and the announcement of the arena (khôra) for the pedagogy of the common places. It seems that public pedagogy, which is sensitive to the need for civic ignorance, which operates with interruptions and at the same time seeks the foundations for shaping commonality, is deeply justified and sensible in a reality dominated by national ideology and nationalist attitude. The point is that the common places, the places of disagreement – when used educationally, as a form of human togetherness in which “action is possible and freedom can appear” – could create the awareness of one's subjectivity and an equal position in the conflict. Thus, it could begin to work in the conflicted people for their more agonistic approaches, new positions, and new subjective representations, etc. For the last eight years, Poles who clashed in Krakowskie Przedmieście had much needed this type of educational work “among themselves”. Their dialogue only at times expressed the demand for equality for themselves by insisting on it for the others, and only from time to time they made this place a place of democratic commonality. Unfortunately, this place was often destroyed, when Rancièrean “politics as a police” was involved in the conflict, often in the police officers literally chasing one of the parties in disagreement (Rancière, 1999, 2010).

With all this in mind, I must say that the pedagogy of common places is perceived as the area of theoretical reflection and research and educational practice, shaped under the influence of spatial change, from which various forms of overcoming binaryness play an important role in social thought – Foucauldian “heterotopias”, Bhabha's “third places”, Soja's “Thirdspace” and his “Thirding-as-Othering” (Soja, 1996). In the approach to creating knowledge, the pedagogy of common places assumes that in the complex space (physical and spiritual, and emotional as well as intellectual at the same time) their recognition is undecidable (Feyerabend, 2010).

This is a strong epistemological directive, which, however, can also be understood as an expression of Gianni Vattimo's “weak thought” (pesnsiero debole) (1988). It is a kind of attempt to capture and describing such ways of experiencing existence that escape the traditional way categories of metaphysics, especially in its modern form. For a weak thought, being is not an essence; being is what happens, it happens but in this happening there is room for other forms of presence. Thus, the expression of the weak thought is the hauntology of Jacques Derrida (1994), who posed the question of other beings and other forms of presence and absence, or “ontology of affliction” by Catherine Malabou, which concerns what is, but remains opposed to being (2012). This also brings to mind Stephen White's (2000) notion of a “weak ontology”. Thinking about the pedagogy of common places, one can agree with his position that there is a need today “to call greater attention to the kind of interpretive-existential terrain that anyone who places herself in the ‘anti’ position must explore at some point” (White, 2000: 8). White understands this as his basic intention in developing the notion of “weak ontology” and the thinking he is interested in “resists strong ontology, on the one hand, and the strategy of much of liberal thought, on the other” (White, 2000: 7). It can be said that it is a manifestation of the pedagogy of common places, as an expression of a weak thought, operating with weak ontology and weak epistemology, against predictability that is characterized by purely liberal thinking.

In the human subject seeing the source indicating the place (not the condition of its existence), this pedagogy is realized in the orientation of the commonality in the place.

Conscious of the unpredictability of multidimensional, variable subject structures, it remains uncertain and interesting to them, sensitive to them and ready for interruption, which can be education; education focused on the place and – as it was seen by the Polish pedagogue, Romana Miller – trialectizing the dialectical attitude of man and the world (Miller, 1981: 122). The episteme of this form of pedagogy therefore determines uncertainty, undecidability. Defining the field of cognition, the binary option “to or to” is absent in it, replaced by a trialectic version of “this and that and that”, which increases the unpredictability and spatial cognitive structure (Soja, 1996).

In this unpredictability, the path of creating knowledge, which I attribute here to the pedagogy of common places, is extremely difficult, but it can bring scientific and social benefits, quite easily mutually translatable, and at the same time it could be fascinating for those who follow it. This type of cognitive path always runs for the first time, “cutting into the language of the future,” as Paul Feyerabend (2010) repeated.

In summary, the pedagogy of common places is shaped in the conditions of overcoming binaryness, and the key is the active orientation on shaping the Rosanvallon's democratic commonality in conditions of interest in space and spatial dimensions of the analyzed phenomena, dependencies, processes, etc. One of the most current examples in this area may be a study of Thomson and Hall (2016), in which the analysis of the school is an expression of sensitivity to the spatial dimensions of everything that co-creates it. This “everything” intersects in the physical space of the school and in the places of others in which various actors who influence it meet; places of intersection of problems, interests, etc. related to the school.

The other founding ideas for common places' pedagogy are intermingling approaches within the conceptual grounding (following Gert Biesta's understanding of dialogue and social justice in education), and methodological considerations leaning towards Michael Burawoy's (2005) organic public sociology and intersectional studies. All these components are tuned to specific features of pedagogy of common places – specifically in the book that was mentioned (Author, 2017: 271–364). Through confrontation of these founding ideas and assumptions with the lived knowledge of people whom I described there (city-dwellers fighting against school closing and dispossessions), I could declare that this version of pedagogy is not only radical, critical, pragmatic and sustainable, but that it is marked with indignation, solidarity and sensitivity to ethos carried by philosophy and culture of given communities. I concluded this book on public pedagogy of the common places with an attempt to describe qualities characteristic of the pedagogue of common places as an ally of their communities. When I finalize this paper, I know that in the time of nationalism such an ally must become the public pedagogue – who “is neither instructor nor a facilitator but rather someone who interrupts” (Biesta, 2012: 693). We must interrupt educationally in the times of nationalism.

As a political, economic and social attitude, modern nationalism is, in fact, a modern nation grounded in retro-mania and retrotopic in its essence. Due to the current dominant version of market-oriented neo-conservatism, and operating with strongly accented militarism, this modern nation is a very dangerous “corporate brand”. A nation constructed on the order, functional and subordinated to global interests played in the political, military, economic and social sphere, serves these interests mainly through the attitude of its apologists, which it evokes and fuels. Nationalism, therefore, also appears as an “on order” attitude, fully functional towards global business. All this, with the strong emphasis on military solutions, brings the threat of “ultimate solutions”; it just smells of war.

Under these conditions, the importance of, and the need to care for, democratic commonality increases, manifesting itself in the cultivation of “what is common and shared”, what is “between us”, in the area of mutual relations in everyday life. In this context, I propose the pedagogy of common places as an attempt to search not for the antidote to these times, but the actual and future ways of the subjective and justice-based accommodation in the space they create; the koinópolis in which democratizing dialogue can take place.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the Editors of this special volume, Emile Bojesen, Matthew Clarke and Jordi Collet, for inspiring remarks and fruitful cooperation.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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