Researching Postcapitalist Possibilities: Pedagogy as Resubjectivation

The paper reflects on the pedagogical practices of the Community Economies Institute Summer/Winter School on the theme of Researching Postcapitalist Possibilities. It is based on three years (2022, 2023, 2024) of having run the ten-day program with 120 participants. We argue that even though the school’s curriculum covers the distinctive Community Economies approach what is perhaps more important are the pedagogical exercises and principles that we use to help transform how participants think of themselves as activists, artists, practitioners, and researchers, and how they understand their role in making other economies possible. We discuss how the school uses appreciative, experimental, and collaborative modes of working to provide participants with a taste of what it might mean to step aside from the critical mode that characterizes much academic training, and to adopt the stance of a researcher oriented towards engendering possibility in the world.