Global education actors like the OECD exemplify the ways in which the notion of diversity is so often engaged in contradictory ways. While its ‘Strength Through Diversity’ project suggests a celebratory embrace of diversity, its established commitment to global testing standards is arguably aimed at bringing national systems of educational thinking, policy, and practice into line with a vision for ‘One World’ (Auld et al, 2019, p.213). Similarly, the concern with numbers, impact, and ‘best practice’ in the Higher Education sector results in policies that ‘flatten and homogenise institutional forms and knowledge systems’ (Mills, 2022, p.475). While the social justice basis to much of the rhetoric in support of diversity suggests a commitment to finding ways to live together well for a sustainable future, the dominant neoliberal evidence-based, “what works” logic governing education seems to contribute to a vision of a singular, deterministic future. In this paper we argue that global education agendas around diversity are subject to ‘the perils of the one’ (Gourgouris, 2019) which results in a failure to address pressing societal issues and questions of human flourishing for the common good. 

In a previous paper, we explored utopia as method, inspired by the work of Ruth Levitas, as a possible approach to interrupt and resist the “what works” logic that does not seem to work. Through the exploration of utopia as method, and its three modes: archaeology, ontology and architecture, we attempted to create possibilities for engaging in futures-forming practices that are informed by principles of relationality, interconnectedness and solidarity. This orientation towards possibility instead of problem solving puts imagination and self-organisation at the centre. However, utopian agendas have often been criticised as imposing (singular) blueprints for a better world. Utopia, it is sometimes argued, imagines a transcendentalised, universal, future. In this paper, we wish to build on our previous work on utopia as method by problematising the ‘monotheism’ (Gourgouris, 2019) that underpins organisations such as the OECD. We argue that utopia, when conceptualised and enacted as a process and a method, can act to resist the homogenising effects of the neoliberal paradigm. Utopia as method can function as a catalyst for futures-forming practices in education, offering possibilities for the emergence of alternative futures across the diverse lived experiences of individuals and communities. We consider the vital role of imagination as an individual as well as a collective practice and self-organisation and autonomy as the mode and being of collective practices toward alternative futures. 

Our central question is thus: How can imagination and self-organisation contribute to the work of education researchers and practitioners who wish to engage in futures-forming practices? In our conceptual exploration, we draw on the work of Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Cornelius Castoriadis, Chiara Bottici, and Stathis Gourgouris, among others, to reclaim the imagination from the clutches of deterministic neoliberal thinking. Careful consideration of how we conceptualise the imagination, we argue, is required for education researchers and practitioners who wish to contribute to plural, participatory and inclusive futures, starting from actions in the present. Ethical and organisational principles rooted in anarchist philosophy, drawing on thinkers such as David Graeber and Rudolph Rocker, among others, helps us to formulate how autonomous self-organisation can be approached in the face of (neoliberal) authority, enabling a genuine commitment to diversity as a political and ethical response. We will offer an in-depth conceptual exploration and, together with the audience, work through the productive tensions that emerge from the much-needed futures-forming practices with which education researchers and practitioners should be concerned. 

This presentation, while drawing on global education policy (OECD), and other discourses and (personal) experiences of and in education, is conceptual in nature. It begins by further exploring the possibilities and tensions located within our previous paper on utopia as method (Van dermijnsbrugge & Chatelier, 2022). We then look to key literature from Gourgouris, Castioriades, Bottici, Komporozos-Athanasiou, Graber and Rocker, among others, in order to explore the possibilities afforded by particular conceptions of the imagination (the imaginal, the speculative), radical notions of autonomy (and self-alteration) and anarcho-syndicalist organisation. All of this is conceptually and practically explored in order to re-imagine education’s future-forming potential in an attempt to avoid the reductive perils of understanding and responding to the world as singular. Our method is inspired by what Said (1983) calls ‘secular criticism’ which acts to keep all ideas and agendas under interrogation, including our own. For Said, criticism needs to be secular as opposed to the presumption that certain ideas, structures, or institutions might be ‘sacred’ or beyond reproach. In undertaking this work, our aim is, as Said himself put it, that our criticism is ‘life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom’ (1983, p.29). Thus, the engagement with the central question “How can imagination and self-organisation contribute to the work of education researchers and practitioners who wish to engage in futures-forming practices?” is not aimed at providing a solution or ‘answer’. Instead, we seek to explore challenges, tensions, questions, and plural possibilities that are contingent and provisional, and also aim at formulating practical examples that can inform the practice of the audience.

Instead of a singular, deterministic imagination (see also Komporozos-Athanasiou, 2022), we argue for a plural, speculative conceptualisation and application of the imagination, whereby the present is a ‘site of radical possibility’ (Facer, 2016, p. 65) for alternative futures. This needs a re-imagining of the imagination, going against its instrumentalisation and reclaiming its purpose as a radical practice towards social change. Such change, Bottici (2019) contends, requires, ‘a complex view of the relationship between individuals, who can only exist within imaginary significations, and a social imaginary, which can only exist in and through individuals themselves’ (p. 436). Our turn to anarchist thinking is premised on the idea that history shows that, as Graber (2004) reminds us, in the “attempts to create autonomous communities in the face of power…such acts can change almost everything” (p. 45). Thus, we consider how to practically organise the work of futures-forming practices that involves “engaging in conflict with the people we love, with whom we share space or collaborate on projects of any kind - this is a form of care that we need to prioritize” (Branson, 2022, p. 2). Our exploration of anarcho-syndicates as one example of self-organised, autonomous communities of care that education researchers and practitioners can consider (see also Chatelier & Van dermijnsbrugge, 2022) seeks to affirm a commitment to navigating the complexities and difficulties of diversity. In agreement with Appadurai (2006), we wish to promote conversations ’across difference not just in a literal sense but ‘as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and ideas of others’ (p.84)” . This, we assert, is the core occupation of imaginative, self-organised education researchers and practitioners who wish to build alternative futures.

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