lable at ScienceDirect

Emotion, Space and Society 1 (2008) 153–154

Contents lists avai

Emotion, Space and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/emospa

Book review

Help me to see!

‘‘Help me to see!’’ gasps a young boy to his father who has takenhim to see the ocean for the first time in his life. Eduardo Galeanohas titled this jewel of tricky wisdom ‘‘The Function of Art,’’ and it isa fitting summation of the effect of the work of J.K. Gibson–Graham.A Postcapitalist Politics is a virtual how-to manual for the creativeand resistant (and urgently needed) reinvention of economic iden-tity. I say ‘‘virtual’’ on account of being a popular educator who seesall radical theory as needing transformative and participatorycurriculum to support its dissemination into the networks of rela-tionships where we need to be living and acting with more justice,compassion and peace.

Along with a handful of friends I co-founded a popular educa-tion worker co-op (the Catalyst Centre) ten years ago. Amongstother things we were seeking an institutional and economic formthat recapitulated our popular education and social justice ethicsand practice. We wanted to ‘‘walk the talk,’’ as it were. The conven-tional choice of creating a non-profit with charitable status was oneform with which we had all had many years of experience. And wewere critical (and weary) of the limits of these economic relation-ships. We were suspicious that the very form of our work contra-dicted, in a few significant ways, the social change values weadvocated. While we had all learned to live with a variety of contra-dictions, we were, nevertheless, concerned that some of thesecontradictions were so severe that they undermined (if not neutral-ised) our change efforts. Worse still was the thought that our workwas worsening things. We did not wait to achieve our yearned-fortheoretical clarity and so we jumped into the mess and starteda new institution. We had hardly begun when we came acrossThe End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) and we were heartened tofind theoretical work underway that provided us both the insightand the language to describe the very work we were blunderingalong with. With this work we recognised that the seemingly all-powerful capitalist emperor ‘‘had no clothes’’. Gibson–Graham’scritical work of denaturalizing capitalism and identifying thecontradictions of capitalocentrism ‘‘helped us to see’’ an excitingdiversity of economic relationships where previously we hadseen only a proliferation of ‘‘alternatives’’ to capitalism – alterna-tives that we felt forever consigned us to the margins of politicaland economic change.

Even while our popular education work was aimed at support-ing (through curriculum development, research, facilitation,training and more) social change efforts in the world of non-profits,trade unions and numerous social change movements, we wereequally concerned with the changing of ourselves. We felt thatthe new political and economic relationships that we wereexploring through our collective work necessitated new ways ofbeing as citizens, co-workers, women and men and so on. Wedevoted an enormous amount of energy into imagining and prac-ticing these new identities. Once again Gibson–Graham’s

doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2008.10.003

A Postcapitalist Politics, about their research into and theorizing ofnew economic identities and diverse economic relationships, has‘‘helped us to see.’’

To discuss the abundant implications in each of the chapter ofthis book for our work would fill several more books. So I will limitmyself to two: the creation of new economic relationships withina perspective of diverse economies and the persistent challengeof upsetting capitalocentrism.

1. New economic relationships require neweconomic subjects

The proliferation of social movements following World War IIgave rise to two theoretical paradigms about social movements:resource mobilization theory (RMT) and new social movementtheory (NSM). The latter is a theory of social movements mobilizingfor change based on various identities (or subject positions) – mostnotably, feminism and also including gay and lesbian communities(more recently including designations such as queer and LGBT),people with disabilities, and others. While these movementsshare the disposition of organizing people based on certain identi-ties, they were (and are) themselves, diverse. How this diversityarticulates with traditional forms of social movement oppositionto dominating capitalism has been a source of vigorous debate,countless academic exchanges, and ongoing struggle within manysocial movements. Gibson–Graham have done nothing less thanprovide a means of mapping onto social movements a new formof diversity that holds the promise of creating new and excitingmeans of cooperation in the struggles to create more just politicaland economic relationships.

Quite simply, those of us raised in a capitalist economic systemhave had most of our desires trained and shaped to be best met bythat self-same capitalist system. And, while many people take upresistant positions to dominating capitalism, they remain fatallyvulnerable to serving a system that is deft at lauding its capacityto tolerate dissent (for that system needs dissent, of a certainkind, for inoculation against what it perceives as dangerouschange).

Popular education has been formally developing political andpedagogical strategies for personal and social change for over 40years (and informally for a lot longer). While the work of Brazilianeducator and philosopher Paulo Freire has been profoundly influ-ential around the world and is largely responsible for the namingof the two related fields of theory and practice, respectively populareducation and critical pedagogy, it is also true that the term‘popular education’ refers to a heterogeneous assemblage ofcounter-hegemonic and resistant forms of educational activismthat is found predominantly in the field of so-called adult educationand within social movements for social and political change. Someof the many practices that could be included under this umbrella

Book review / Emotion, Space and Society 1 (2008) 153–154154

term include popular economics, anti-racist education, laboureducation, feminist pedagogy, queer pedagogy, peace and humanrights education, red pedagogy, environmental education andmore. One important disposition that these diverse praxes sharein common is the striving for a creative and dynamic relationshipbetween theory and practice within which the participants(including educators, researchers and organizers) both challengeand recreate their subjectivity. The language with which to talkabout this is complex. And it is an urgent task to find a means bywhich to communicate these ideas both more critically and popu-larly (in the sense of to, by and for the people). A PostcapitalistPolitics provides crucial support to this. Gibson–Graham bothmodel and discuss new ways of being that hold exciting potentialfor furthering popular education work.

The ‘‘joint persona’’ that Katherine Gibson and Julie Grahamhave created and which they use to communicate their ideas isa radical and disrupting gesture that acts, amongst other things,to resist the dominant notion that the fundamental maker ofmeaning is the (fragmented) individual toiling in the fields oftheory and practice and who wins successive battles in order torise in the estimation and recognition of colleagues and institutionsuntil she finds her place in the history of her field. The dominantstructure of academia mirrors that of capitalism (especially withrespect to the reputed invisibly handed ‘‘free market’’) in that indi-viduals compete through (blind) juried journals to contribute to theelite record of academic knowledge and truth, while in the capi-talist marketplace consumers compete similarly (albeit we live ina permanent ‘‘sale’’ economy). Of course, there are numerous resis-tant spaces within the dominant political–academico–economicsystems, without which there would be no space for such a projectof a ‘‘joint persona.’’ And the modelling of this collective subjec-tivity just might suggest, for some, similar experiments and prac-tices in new and resistant subjectivities.

Gibson–Graham provides crucial theory and language for thecreation of the kinds of new subjectivities that new (diverse)economic relationships need. They combine the Foucaultian notionof ethical self-transformation with the work of political theoristWilliam Connolly (i.e. on re-subjectivation) to articulate the needfor new practices of the self. I have researched, theorized and prac-ticed popular education for close to thirty years now and I daresaythat I have long-since seen popular education as a praxis of ethicalself-transformation, though I have lacked a language preciseenough to allow me to stand within the field and effectively presentthe loving challenge to the world of popular education to grow andchange to meet the ongoing and escalating crises (economic, social,environmental, etc.) of our world. The discourse within which APostcapitalist Politics exists has not been connecting with that ofpopular education. And I would be so bold as to co-opt, with respect,this work as a core contribution to popular education praxis.

2. Diverse economies versus capitalocentrism

There is a diagram of the ‘‘diverse economy’’ on page 71 that isa potentially powerful piece of disruptive theory. It challengesa hegemonic piece of common sense about the ‘‘market’’ which,in the mass media, is synonymous with the capitalist market. Butin their project of denaturalizing capitalism J.K. Gibson–Grahamrightly points out that the ‘‘market’’ is neither capitalist nor non-capitalist. Goods and services enter the market in many ways ofwhich capitalist is perhaps the dominant but is, by no means, theonly means. Goods and services also enter the market throughco-ops, the self-employed (who, arguably, are not in a capitalistrelationship since they are both producers and ‘‘exploiters’’ of theirown surplus), non-profit production and also, interestingly,through smuggling, theft and other illegal and extra-legal means.

This diverse economy chart (which is modelled using theexample of childcare on page 73) is a powerful tool that can beused for research, pedagogical and community organizingpurposes. It persuasively challenges the monolithic (and, since,Perestroika, triumphalist) notion that capitalism is the best andonly game in town. And alternatives are quaint at best.

Popular education aims to decentre (and denaturalize)common sense understandings of the world through the sharingand examination (critically, collectively and creatively) of theexperience of the participants (and communities) in order toseparate the bad sense from the good sense (the mix of which isthe disarmingly named common sense, of course). The processesof collective thinking, participatory research, community orga-nizing and social change activism (i.e. applying the learning inaction as an integral part of the learning) together make upa radical process of social change that recognizes the need fora permanent disposition of learning – i.e. ethical self-transforma-tion. To resist any system of domination without integrating thistype of learning (whether patriarchy, racism, colonialism, etc.)would risk neglecting the necessary work of creating somethingnew that is not merely (if necessarily) oppositional. The criticaland creative work that Gibson–Graham both model and theorizepoints the way to work that is not merely oppositional to capi-talism (and which cannot avoid giving energy to and, ironically,authorizing that very system) but that reframes economic work(diverse economies) such that it just might make the dominantcapitalist system irrelevant.

Chris CavanaghCatalyst Centre and Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University,

Toronto, CanadaE-mail address: mythcast@gmail.com

30 October 2008