Policy Futures in Education Volume 9 Number 6 2011 www.wwwords.co.

uk/PFIE

A Critical Pedagogy of Recuperation

NATHALIA E. JARAMILLO Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand PETER McLAREN Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand FERNANDO LZARO University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

ABSTRACT Using the term recuperation from their experiences working alongside activists in the occupied factories of Argentina, the authors illustrate how occupied spaces were transformed into recuperated sites of pedagogical, cultural and artistic production. Focusing on the IMPA factory (Industrias Metalrgicas y Plsticas Argentina) located in Buenos Aires, this article examines how the unique visions and alternative arrangements created by workers, intellectuals and artists became reality and how such visions and arrangements were indivisible from the struggle for worker selfdetermination. The authors note that the pedagogy of recuperation, while drawing its inspiration from the struggles of the occupied factories, schools and cultural centers of Argentina, is in the last instance a transnational pedagogy of resistance, one that is multi-voiced, epistemologically decolonized and decolonizing, and dedicated to fostering oppositional and alternative spaces of reciprocity and struggle.

Introduction
Las crisis dan siempre que pensar. Son en el fondo fecundas porque siempre vislumbran un nuevo modo de concebir lo que nos pasa. Irrumpe una nueva, o, mejor, una muy antigua verdad. [Crises always give us something to think about. They are ultimately fruitful because they always bring to light a new way to approach what happens to us. They rush us into a new, or rather, a very old truth.] (Kusch, 2008, p. 13)

The central theme animating this essay is the development of a critical pedagogy of recuperation. We take the term recuperation from our experiences with what have been called the occupied factories of Argentina, factories that have undergone on the part of the workers a collective refusal to leave the premises when the owners decided to close the factories down, following the economic collapse of the country. What initially became occupied spaces were transformed into recuperated spaces of work, and in the case of IMPA (Industrias Metalrgicas y Plsticas Argentina, located in Buenos Aires), sites of pedagogical, cultural and artistic production as well. The authors of this article met on the recovered company IMPAs grounds in 2009, at the invitation of Fernando Lzaro, one of the founding members of the secondary school housed in the factory. As we approached the IMPA factory on a damp and chilly night in September, we met several of the workers and students who had come together to discuss the history of the recuperation and their ongoing struggle with the state to maintain ownership of the factory (this group included a middleaged woman who had just ended a 30-day hunger strike in defense of IMPA). We walked through the production line and examined the small aluminum tubes these workers produce to package 747
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Nathalia E. Jaramillo et al (among other things) toothpaste, epoxy glue and hair dye. We were led up the stairs to the classrooms, a haphazard arrangement of student desks with sporadic displays of student work hanging on the factory walls. And as we wound our way back down to the factory floor, we entered the large open space dedicated to artistic and theatrical production, part of el centro cultural, the cultural center that had given IMPA widespread recognition throughout broad swaths of Buenos Aires European-inspired urban enclaves. The IMPA experience, and the work of recuperated factories across Argentina in general, offer us a unique look into those unconventional spaces where, in this life-and-death agon for workers worldwide, visions of alternative arrangements among workers, intellectuals and artists become reality; where individuals gather as a collective voice, indivisible from their struggle for self-determination, speaking the ineffable and enacting horizontal forms of organization that fulfill the social, economic and cultural necessities of everyday life. Here, a cross section of the citys working and middle classes have not only grasped the paradigmatic sociality constituting individuals, they have also revitalized the arts as a way of sustaining a critical community. The first recuperated secondary school for young people and adults in Argentina was set up in 2004, at the premises of IMPA. This was preceded by the cultural center that opened in 1999, following the recuperation of the factory in 1998. Initially, the workers proposed the cultural center in order to give place to the people who found themselves placeless, in a cultural economy that sequestered the production of art for wealthier members of society (Benito, 2010). But, as former student and participant Karina Benito (2010) notes in her study and analysis of IMPA, the opening of the cultural center was also a strategic move, a way for the workers to shield themselves politically from the assaults against their cooperative work on the factory floor. The workers not only produced commercial products, they produced art. The sheer novelty of societys popular classes engaging in the production of art gave them widespread visibility among the countrys media elite, thus allowing them to communicate an aesthetic dimension to their historical and political struggle as disenfranchised workers (Benito, 2010). This aesthetic dimension to social struggle is similar to Brookfield & Holsts (2010, p. 151) description of art as a way to express and develop subjugated knowledges and cultures in the process of fighting their subjugated status. They furthermore note that artists and cultural workers often work most successfully when they emerge out of or alongside and are deeply immersed in broader social movements (2010, p. 151). They cite the example of the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, who followed in the footsteps of his fellow countrywoman Violeta Parra in resurrecting and promoting the culture of the Chilean popular classes (peasants and workers) within the broader social movement that led up to the election of socialist president Salvador Allende in 1970. Jara was a central figure in the cultural manifestation of this movement in music, theater, film, poetry, literature, and murals all of which involved promoting and advancing the cultural expressions of the popular classes. In the case of IMPA, bringing together the spaces of work, culture and education generated a synergistic and multi-pronged effort as part of a broader social movement during the economic collapse of the country, to support the workers struggle and to advance the needs of the community. In the simplest terms, the secondary school and the cultural center became part of a general working-class movement. From one day to the next, artists, educators, students, and workers began to occupy the same space, diminishing the social distinctions among them. Together, these individuals began to see themselves as cultural workers, as public pedagogues, as subjects of social transformation who shared in a vision and struggle to occupy and recuperate social, cultural and pedagogic spaces of factory life. In this sense, IMPA became a resource for discovering the nexus between personal experience and history. Art production in the IMPA factory was also symbol-generating; no other factories had similar levels of artistic and educational activity (McCormick, 2005). The artists who participated in the cultural centers activities had an opportunity to produce concrete acts of solidarity and cooperation with assembly-line workers (McCormick, 2005). The economic crisis that resulted in the recuperation of the factory provoked the workers and artists to become deeply imbricated in communal responsibilities, and to generate new questions, both epistemological and existential, about what it meant to convene on the factory floor and to bring together segments of society that had too often been separated by the social division of labor. It is in this vein that the late Argentine philosopher Rudolfo Kusch declares that a crisis presents us with a new, or rather, a very old truth. For Kusch (2008), the truth resides in the thinking of the popular classes: 748

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Ante todo la crisis no es del pueblo, sino que es nuestra, o mejor, de los sectores medios. por eso ante la crisis no caben las soluciones elaboradas minuciosamente por los estudiosos en nombre de un racionalismo de estudiante recien recibido, sino que es preciso entroncar con alguna constante. Y en America no hay otra constante que la de su pueblo. La base de nuestra razon de ser esta en el subsuelo social. [Above all, the crisis is not of the popular classes, but it is ours, or better, it is of the middle classes of society ... for this reason, the solutions presented by those who claim to be the fit students of rationalism do not fit, rather, it is about people establishing a relationship with what has been constant in social life. And in America, there is no other constant than the one presented by its people. The foundation of our reason in being resides in those classes who occupy the subsoil of society.] (p. 13)

The question of reason and rationality is of central importance to a pedagogy of recuperation. Being able to recuperate from the contagion of commodity fetishism and its instrumental sociality and rewrite knowledge from the standpoint of the workers, the under-classes of society, exposes the irrationality of crises initiated from above and the inherent possibilities when a pedagogy of transformation is enacted from below. Since the crises are historically specific to late capitalism, it is necessary to uncover the ways in which value is theorized within commodity production as an epistemological framework is assaying what it means to be a worker. It is in this spirit that we examine the role of artistic production within the pedagogy of recuperation, as a movement from below that is intended to establish an oppositional logic and epistemic framework for the formation of a relational cultural space (Bourriaud, 2002), one that has been crystallized from the sweat of human interaction. Argentina: economy, education and IMPA The profound economic, social and political crisis that emerged in Argentina during the 1990s was a direct result of extreme neo-liberal policies that yielded de-industrialization, the privatization of state-owned companies and social benefits (i.e. social security), massive unemployment, and the destruction of the social welfare state that had become central to Argentine life and politics that is, in relation to the Peronist initiatives that pre-dated the military dictatorship in the country. Over a very brief period of time, the gaps between the rich and the poor had grown deeper, leading to an intensification of the social crisis that was witnessed with the large-scale closing of factories and the dissolution of the banking industry during 2002. The recession of 1998-2002 (which saw Argentina lose 20% of its gross domestic product [GDP] and the poverty rate rise from 18.2% of households to 42.3%) can be traced to the convertibility system, under which the Argentine peso was fixed at a one-to-one exchange rate with the dollar and both the exchange rate and the economy were being maintained through increasing international borrowing, a practice which culminated in very extreme government austerity measures. Public response to these measures forced the resignation of the government in December 2001. Unorthodox economic policies helped play a part in the recovery including the central banks pursuit of a stable and competitive exchange rate and the governments willingness to accept double-digit inflation as a trade-off for rapid growth (Weisbrot & Sandoval, 2007). Massive unemployment (official estimates put it at over 20%; see Stiglitz, 2002) led thousands of workers to the streets; threatened with a sense of uncertainty about the future, they began to occupy the bankrupt and abandoned factories and put them to work. Various social movements and organizations emerged as a result. The Movimiento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas (MNER) (National Movement of Recovered Companies) was one of these, and its efforts were clearly delineated in the slogan, Occupy, Resist and Produce. By 2009, workers from this movement had occupied 200 factories, in a relentless struggle to recover the means of production. This impulse to protect the workers source of income constituted an important step in fighting against and resisting the devastating effects that the crisis of capital had brought to the nation. For those outside the popular classes, such turmoil would perilously hint at an uncontrollable social uprising. But for the workers, it signaled a shift in political and social praxis, and a dignified means of survival. As an initial strategy, the workers established cooperatives. This was a necessary and strategic move, given that the workers anticipated state and legal responses to their occupation of the 749

Nathalia E. Jaramillo et al factories that were, in theory, privately owned by the banks and corporations. In the process of establishing cooperatives, the workers established new forms of governance, new mechanisms of production, and a new culture of work. This culture emphasized direct forms of representation and governance, and horizontal systems of organization. Workers recuperated the means of production, thereby undermining the fundamental logic and hierarchy of privately owned factories. In rewriting the relationship between the public and private realm, the recuperated factories began to impact various aspects of social life. The wider community of families, youth, educators, researchers and artists became anchors and fundamental systems of support in the workers efforts. The community provided moral, personal, and physical protection as the workers faced eviction by the police forces and a continued sense of uncertainty [1] about the future. The educational and cultural efforts that accompanied the recuperation of the factories were a direct result of the economic crisis, but were also deeply entrenched in what sociologist Maria Teresa Sirvent (2001) calls multiples pobrezas (multiple poverty, or multiple necessities). As Sirvent (2001) notes, the onslaught of neoliberal economic and social policy (that promotes social relations in which personal independence [theoretical equality] coexists with objective dependence on relations of capitalist exchange [practical inequality]) allowed for a regressive system of sociability to emerge. Such a system is affected by the daily realities of living mired in poverty, in terms of physical/mental health, but it also invites a relational understanding of how ones place in an overarching economic system impacts other aspects of social life. For Sirvent (2001), the condition of multiples pobrezas is characterized by three inter-related realities: a need for protection from civic violence but also from the violence of being stripped of ones means of economic survival; a need for political or social participation; and a need for developing a critical understanding of society that can create the conditions for a critical sociality and transformative activity. It is partly against this layered and complex reality of social life in Argentina that educators and researchers decided to extend the occupation/recuperation of the factories to education [2] and to art. IMPAs secondary school and cultural center contribute to these efforts by demonstrating the importance of collective action and popular organization that had been all but eliminated during the neoliberal era. IMPA: La Fabrica Ciudad Cultural needs to be read in the context of the Argentine economic crisis, peoples estrangement from the means of production, and their separation from the political and social arms of government (see Sirvent, 2001), and in light of the political skepticism that had contributed to the growing reliance on the self for survival. Art and the Philosophy of Jos Carlos Maritegui During the initial phase of IMPAs recuperation, the workers found themselves in an intensely unpredictable political and economic environment. The artists had to understand this reality, and attempt to solidify the cultural centers activities in a way that would not only generate widespread appeal, but also support the workers evolving struggle and forms of participatory organization. The cultural collective took the form of an assembly for decision-making purposes; it delegated work to various commissions under the leadership of a coordinator (Benito, 2010). Artists volunteered their time and offered workshops in ceramics, percussion and drawing. Theater productions became common occurrences in the evenings, and the assembly selected its projects on the basis of ethics, not aesthetics, preferring work that seems to be in sympathy with the efforts of IMPA (Wikler, 2001). IMPAs educators-artists-workers animated the sentiments of Peruvian philosopher Jos Carlos Maritegui in their construction of artistic/educational spaces. For IMPA, Maritegui represents a source of inspiration and direction. Specifically, Mariteguis analysis of the production of art has framed the cultural center and its activities. In Mariteguis words:
It is convenient to speed up from the misunderstanding that confuses some young artists. There is a necessity of establishing (after rectifying certain rapid decisions) that not all new art is neither revolutionary nor really new. In the contemporary world, two souls coexist: revolutionary and decadent souls. Only the presence of the first one gives a poem or a picture the value of new art. We cannot accept as something new - an art that does not give us, at least, a new technique. It would be to take pleasure in the most fallacious current illusion. Any aesthetic can diminish the

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artistic work into a matter of technician. The new technician should correspond to a new spirit too; if not, the only thing that changes is the speech, the scenery. And an artistic revolution is not satisfied with formal achievement/conquest. The difference between these two categories of artists is not easy. Decadence and revolution coexist not only in the same world, but also in the same individuals. The artists conscience is the agonistic circus of a fight between these two spirits. Sometimes, the understanding of this fight escapes from the artist itself. But, finally, one of the two spirits prevails. The other one remains strangled in the sand. (Maritegui, 1926)

The artists-educators-workers of IMPA were essentially concerned with the broader applications of ideology in cultural spaces. The extent to which art was classified and validated and to which the very production of art supported the dominant ideology needed to be contested in order for new artistic practices and relations to emerge. Through art and education, the occupation of recovered factories became an important popular and communitarian proposal. Aesthetic production in this instance is not some neo-Kantian universal subjective contribution to knowledge via an objectivist theory of knowledge. It is about organized social struggles that can educate a society about alienation, exploitation, and power. It is also about the coming together of people from various backgrounds and class locations to create a mutually satisfying and relevant space for art within a larger movement premised on authentic identities and autonomy of communities. Imperative to this project is an understanding of the dialectic relationship between the historical and the material world. Such a practice prohibits the production of art from being encapsulated in the aesthetic dimension. Thus, we begin to understand the struggles that have led to standards of criticism in ethics, logic, art, science and the social sciences so as to develop our own criteria of judgment. Greatly influenced by Marxs writings, Maritegui (1971, 1981, 1996) developed dialectical theories of social change that were neither unilinear nor focused simply on class relations. Denouncing Peru as a colony of imperialism and arguing that Perus war of independence had in no way smashed feudal relations in the countryside, Maritegui developed a historical materialist analysis of classes in Peru (Angotti, 1986). While Maritegui wrote about land reform and critiqued the land tenure system of capitalism, it is crucial to recognize that in the panoramic sweep of his writings and activism, Maritegui was essentially a voluntarist Marxist, breaking from the mechanistic Marxism of many of his contemporaries who maintained a rigidly passive deterministic approach to revolutionary struggle. In many ways he was, in the words of Marc Becker, an intellectual at odds with the intellectual world of his time (1993, p. 31). In several of his writings and publications, Maritegui stressed the relationship between art, literature, and culture, and revolutionary political action. His journal, Amauta, examined developments in philosophy, art, literature and science with a clear political agenda. Influenced by the Tupac Amaru movement and Andean utopianism and millenarianism, as well as by his time spent in Italy during his exile, Maritegui agitated for an Indo-American form of socialism rooted in the historical reality of Latin America, and believed that the struggle for socialism must take into consideration the social, cultural and spiritual contexts in which people were located in their fight for human dignity and the fulfillment of their needs. Maritegui argued that although socialism, like capitalism, was born in Europe, it is not specifically or particularly a European doctrine. It is a world movement (Becker, 1993, p. 26). In his attempts to Latin Americanize Marxism, Maritegui took the position that the proletariat needs to be both intellectually and spiritually prepared. His was a redemptive utopianism, but not a form of abstract messianic utopianism; it was a utopianism of the concrete, of class struggle. He was essentially concerned with a revolutionary praxis as a way of protecting cultural identities from outside incorporation and commodification by the forces and relations of colonialism and capitalism. Whereas Marx stressed the role of the urban proletariat in the revolution, Mariteguis Marxism was rooted not only in consciousness as a reflection of and shaper of history, but in indigenous forms of Marxist thought, and he stressed the role of the peasant in the countryside in carrying forth the revolution. Marx also emphasized acquiring the proper theoretical framework before engaging in revolutionary activity. Rejecting dogmatic objectivism, Maritegui believed that revolutionary consciousness could be achieved in the very process of revolutionary struggle itself. Maritegui was an iconoclastic Marxist in that he did not believe the proletariat was a passive spectator bobbing and eddying in the wake of the laws of motion of capitalist development. Rather, within Mariteguis open, non-deterministic, and

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Nathalia E. Jaramillo et al subjective Marxism, the proletariat was an actor, a participant in a Myth, with Myth referring to a critical willfulness or a determination to act. Rejecting Marxism as a blueprint or formula for political activism, Maritegui writes of it as a code of ethics animated by a spiritual conviction: Every word, every act of Marxism ... has an accent of faith, of voluntarism, of heroic and creative conviction; it would be absurd to look for its drive in a mediocre and passive deterministic sentiment (cited in Becker, 1993, p. 45). Furthermore, Maritegui affirms, More than an idea, the revolution is a sentiment (Becker, 1993, p. 43). He also notes that more than a concept, it is a passion (Becker, 1993, p. 43). Maritegui believed that bourgeois reason had stripped civilization of its important ancient myths, and for people to be able to justify their needs, they need the myth of the social revolution, the revolution expounded by Marx and socialist writers. Mariategui was more impressed by the virile resoluteness of a writers spirit and struggle in the undertaking of an aesthetic project than with the skill or deftness by which a writer was able to exercise literary concepts or symbols. What he admired most about Vallejos poetry, for instance, or the writings of Gonzalez Prada, was what he admired most in artists in general: the search for revolutionary truth (see Chavarria, 1979, p. 127). It is safe to conclude that for Maritegui, revolutionary struggle was a process of educating the soul; it was, in a word, a performance. Revolutionary performance for Maritegui was a path towards achieving authenticity. One of Mariteguis leading Marxist assumptions is that economic and ideological transformation converges dialectically with emotion, with a revolutionary pathos (cited in Chavarria, 1979, p. 131) and his revolutionary vitalism centered around this voluntarist constellation the will, emotion, and pathos. This does not mean he wanted to psychologize Marxisms economic foundations away, but rather he sought to salvage Marxism from the economic determinists and, in essence, to renew Marxism. Mariteguis statement that for poor people the revolution will be the conquest not only of bread, but also OF beauty, of art, of thought, and of all the pleasures of the spirit (Becker, 1993, p. 137) we can see in IMPAs own artistic productions. Central to IMPA was a concern with building popular power among the community and extending the concept of recuperation to the realms of knowledge production itself, including the space of the classroom, the factory and the street. Power is intrinsically connected to politics and, as such, the educators extended the work of the cultural center into schooling itself, and sought to rewrite and reinterpret the psychosocial and educational paradigms that traditionally frame teacher-student, student-student, and school-community/work relationships. IMPAs coordinating team has been given the responsibility for bringing together pedagogy and politics, as educators and students organize their projects with various social organizations in the community. Selfmanagement takes on new meaning as the object of learning is not becoming an efficient worker through value-added assessment or the production of a skill set to satisfy an existing demand in the economy. Learning objectives are set up to establish new relations and connections among action, theory and practice. Here, the path to human development becomes paramount, the creation of spaces that permits the full development of human beings and the preconditions for that development, such as sufficient food, access to medical care, education and autonomy in decisionmaking. Work, instruction and education are integrated in the Gramsican sense, in order to link the formation of knowledge with action on the streets, and to integrate developing theory and practices in the artistic, cultural and educational spaces of the factory (Puiggrs, 2007). IMPA has, in essence, put into practice the pedagogy of recuperation. From Art to Education: recuperation as praxis What began as a factory with a cultural center transformed into a factory with both a cultural center and a high school, the beginnings of broader movement to extend the concept of recuperation to formal schooling. The very notion of recuperation implies a directed and protagonist movement to re-establish the presence of the working class in the public sphere. Central to this is an understanding that the presence of the working class in public activities is neither a privilege nor an entitlement. It is an expression of being and becoming within the larger optic of a developing a critical citizenry. By virtue of being located in a worker-led, cooperative 752

A Critical Pedagogy of Recuperation factory whose efforts extend into the broader community, the space of school becomes a potential space for a social movement.[3] Bridging the norms of schooling with the protagonist and proactive practices of social movements generates a participatory and evolving pedagogical space that is directed at confronting the challenges and crises inherent in capitalist society. Specifically in the case of IMPA, this implies a concerted effort to link student knowledge with workers efforts to recuperate the factories. This is similar to the efforts undertaken by the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). The MST establishes the appropriation of land as an indissoluble unit; in other words, the collectivization of land must be accompanied by the occupation of estates knowledge (Michi, 2001). That is to say, the MST makes education its responsibility in the construction of popular power not renouncing in toto the educative characteristics of schooling, but adapting education to the larger need of popular power. Education in this instance is put in the service of social and class transformation, for work and cooperation, for humanistic and socialist values, and for a continuous process of human transformation. Education is thus an indispensable part of the MSTs process (Michi, 2001). In both of these scenarios, there emerges another level of knowledge production that is undefined. In other words, there are no guarantees that the workers social movement will survive legal, political, or even economic challenges to its viability. The construction of knowledge within these conditions is precarious yet potentially transformative. It is transformative to the extent that the evolving intellectual and political formation of the students and workers yields new understandings and practices in the construction of a pedagogical space that is a priori destabilized at the current historical moment. It is motivated, in part, by what is not yet or what we would call the liminal unknown (see Jaramillo & Barros, 2011). In IMPA, there is an attempt by the workers to conceive the individual as a social and historical being. The current socio-political context establishes the relationship between teaching and learning; thus, change and transformation of context become central determinants of IMPAs pedagogical initiatives. More specifically, context includes not only the physical space of the factory or the indigent spaces of housing, but also the relations and the knowledge that are produced from the specific class location of IMPAs various constituencies. Here, the knowledge of the dominant social classes is not ignored; rather, it is seized by the popular classes in order to transform it in service of the popular majority (Lzaro & Santana, n.d.). At this point, a new pedagogical category emerges: students transforming a physical, social and intellectual space into a site of cultural production, and denouncing the intervention of the private sector and the hegemonic state in their activities. Interpersonal relations guide instruction and curricula (rather than vice versa), solidifying the power of decision-making among the popular classes. Thus, the pedagogy of recuperation implies a way of organizing governance, of teaching/learning, and of defending the popular struggle for autonomy from private or state-led interference. The pedagogy of recuperation does not create new physical spaces. The factory, building, neighborhood, city, and nation existed well before the popular schools emerged. These popular schools do, however, interrupt pre-existing spaces. They claim the physical space of the factory and the abstract space of schooling. Building upon the experiential base of community members, they establish knowledge and build awareness that throws dominant knowledge formations into conflict. This would not be possible without the counterpoint of the dominant society. It is against the existing social order that the popular classes are able to articulate their oppositional knowledge production. This knowledge from within, from the subsoil of society, is the fundamental mechanism for social transformation. Here, we are again reminded of the profound insights of philosopher Rudolfo Kusch. Following Kusch (2008), we find that there is a necessary distinction to make within knowledge processes. There is, for instance, the aspect of knowing (conocer) and thinking (pensar). Re-engaging popular knowledge in the public spaces allocated by the State and against dominant ideology requires bridging the gap between what is known and how we come to think about transforming and transcending the known reality. The known is a totalizing reality that configures how we come to identify our social existence and survival. The known in this sense, is incorporated in the subject based on how he defines himself based on his past experiences (Kusch, 2008, p. 39). The I Know forms the basis of existence. To know who we are and our position in society sets the stage for future knowledge. To think is different from to know, by virtue of the action that accompanies thinking. As stated by Kusch, thinking does not depend on judging between truth and falsehoods, which would require affirming or negating an already stated claim or object of reality. Thinking is a consequence of decision-making. The truth in thought is 753

Nathalia E. Jaramillo et al based in the possibility of making decisions and not in affirming an already stated claim or reality clause. To say anything different would invert the relationship between thinking and doing, in that thought/action would depend on an abstract affirmation of reality (Kusch, 2008, p. 49). For us, Kuschs words are particularly apropos for understanding the work of IMPA the educators, students, artists and workers. Knowledge is based on what the community knows through its experiences that is, I know that an economic crisis scoured my livelihood; I know that workers income is vulnerable and unstable. But knowledge is also based on the decisions that the community makes in securing its own welfare - that is, on alternate ways of thinking about how to make education meaningful and dignified and how to reclaim public spaces for human development and critical praxis. These actions of thought are based not on an abstract ideal of society, but rather, in the concrete actions and understandings of how the popular classes can and should intervene in their social welfare. Perhaps for such reasons, even against an increasingly progressive and liberal state administration, the educators of IMPA argue (following Paulo Freire) that old formulas by the state are applied to new ideas, reproducing the power of the dominant class.[4] For such reasons, the bodily, artistic, intellectual occupation of the street has been a central component to IMPAs (initial) pedagogical practices. In the act of denouncing the traditional, bureaucratic and hegemonic interests of the dominant classes in education (and in art, and on the factory floor), educators and students alike are actively producing other places and spaces for knowledge to develop. IMPA and other social movements constantly pressure the State and make it accountable to the popular classes; they are actively engaged in transformative dialogue and acts of contestation. The pedagogy of IMPA is politicized and protagonistic; participatory and fluid; vulnerable and in perpetual growth. Old concepts and old ideas are not completely abandoned. The notion of property is recuperated on behalf of the workers and students on their own terms, according to the collective philosophy of cooperatives and horizontal systems of governance. But these old concepts and ideas, strongly grounded in capitalist relations of production that led workers to occupy the streets and factories, are being decidedly rewritten and revalorized outside the epistemologies of ignorance associated with Eurocentric discourses of modernity (Malewski & Jaramillo, in press). In other words, they are being negated. In the process of negation (i.e. in negating the obstacles to their full development), the educators, students, workers and artists are engaged in a process of renewal and rebuilding. To the social-intellectual-economic architecture that remains intact, these groups are attempting to build on new edifices and facades, in an effort to legitimize and secure the spaces of popular education in the factories. From their efforts, we glean a number of praxiological and philosophical considerations for the field of critical pedagogy in general, ones that extend our thinking about the possibilities of studentteacherworker-governed and -constructed educational spaces. Following Mariteguis practice of an open, non-deterministic, subjective Marxism, we also believe that indigenismo must be central to the formation of revolutionary consciousness as we unite in developing a new emancipatory common sense. Such efforts are part of a larger decolonial project that leads us to the construction of a non-capitalist decolonial intercultural dialogue. But such a dialogue cant occur through ideas alone. It takes a praxiological commitment to helping the suffering and oppressed. Commitment as part of a pedagogy of recuperation in particular means focusing ones effort on bringing about social and political transformation. And achieving a certain level of critical consciousness is not the root or precondition of social transformation through committed revolutionary struggle, but the product of living ones commitment corporeally, ethically, and intellectually that is, living ones commitment through revolutionary praxis. An individual does not have to be critically self-conscious in order to struggle. It is in the very act of emancipatory struggle alongside and as part of larger groups seeking freedom from necessity that individuals become critically self-conscious and aware. We must not only struggle for solidarity with the oppressed, we must also struggle for the conditions of comunalidad. Comunalidad is a Oaxacan concept that serves as a type of cosmovision, and it deals with the complex intertwining of history, morality, spirituality kinship and communal practices (Meyer et al, 2010, p. 387). Out of this concept is cultivated the concept of reciprocity. We believe that reciprocity is a more appropriate term than solidarity, as it is inflected by the Aymaras concept of ayllu (we are reminded here of the way in which Maritegui articulated the Inca ayllu as a prototype of society) and by the Oaxacan term comunalidad. Solidarity is a selective 754

A Critical Pedagogy of Recuperation and individuated term and does not speak to relations of equality, as it is essentially a one-way, unidirectional relation, which is by and large temporary. The concept of reciprocity, by contrast, is a set of practices that requires the other or others to make an equivalent response, and it is meant to be a permanent relation and inclusive of all members of the community (Meyer et al, 2010, p. 389). The left clearly needs to concern itself with ways of establishing a global comunalidad one that is constantly renovated in the context of human development and revolutionary praxis, what Marx referred to as the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or selfchange (as cited in Lebowitz, 2003, pp. 178-181). Here, it is important to link the reciprocity of global comunalidad with interculturalidad, which is a model constructed from below based on territorial and educational control, self-sustainable development, care of the environment, reciprocity and solidarity, and the strengthening of communal organizations, languages, and cultures (Meyer et al, 2010, p. 393). Here, we are reminded that our activism must be embedded within, and never separate itself from, the multivoiced hemispheric conversation on resistance, hope, and renewal (Meyer et al, 2010, p. 397). The concept of comunalidad resonates with ideas generated by the decolonial school of ethnic studies represented by such figures as Ramon Grosfoguel, Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo, Catherine Walsh, and Anibal Quijano. The decolonial school seeks to dismantle the epistemic hierarchies embedded in an institutionally globalized Eurocentric fundamentalism with its false objectivity and epistemic neutrality. In contrast to the ego-politics of knowledge produced within Eurocentric epistemologies, the exponents of the decolonial school seek to promote a geo-politics of knowledge and a body politics of knowledge in their production of systems of intelligibility. In addition to a decolonization of colonial and neo-colonial epistemologies produced by European settler societies, the decolonial school supports the production of knowledges from below, that is, knowledges produced by subalternized and inferiorized subjects. Not only does this approach open up pathways of resistance to the epistemicide resulting from the coloniality of power (Quijano & Ennis, 2000), but encourages an epistemic diversality in opposition to white male hegemonic identity politics, which are hidden as the norm within knowledge production (Grosfoguel, 2011, p. 84). In contrast to essentialistic and reductionistic approaches to identity politics, the decolonial approach reflects what Angela Davis (1997) refers to as identities in politics. Addressing the challenges facing the organizing practices of women of color, Davis explains that this political commitment is not based on the specific histories of racialized communities or its constituent members but rather constructs an agenda agreed upon by all who are a part of it. In my opinion, she writes, the most exciting potential of women of color formations resides in the possibility of politicizing this identitybasing the identity on politics rather than the politics on identity (1998, p. 320). According to Grosfoguel, identities in politics is a concept based on ethico-politicalepistemic projects which are open to all regardless of ethno/racial origin (2011, p. 85). Grosfoguel offers as examples the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico and the movement in Bolivia led by Evo Morales that are open to all people and groups who support and sympathize with their political proposals as well as those who criticize them in constructive ways (Grosfoguel, 2011, p. 85). In these movements, there is no correspondence between the ethical-epistemic identity of the project.and the ethnic/racial identity of the individuals who participate in the movements (2011, pp. 84-85). Such a position is not meant to disparage or deflect from the importance of race, ethnicity, culture, and history in fashioning a local, regional, or global political project, but to emphasize the importance of diverse and multi-voiced forms of alliance-building in a world ravaged by the globalization of capital and its divide-and-rule strategies and tactics. The pedagogy of recuperation, while drawing its inspiration from the struggles of the occupied factories, schools and cultural centers of Argentina, is in the last instance a transnational pedagogy of resistance, one that is multi-voiced, epistemologically decolonized and decolonizing, and that fosters oppositional and alternative spaces of reciprocity and struggle. It is a pedagogy that requires a commitment to new ways of being and becoming, to new forms of subjectivity and to the strategic and tactical imperatives necessary to build egalitarian forms of human sociability, expression, and production.

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[1] Special thanks to Alexis Rasftpolo for explaining this context in detail (personal communication, 18 May 2010). [2] The popular secondary schools of the recuperated factories set out, from the beginning, to be part of the formal education system. This was done out of necessity (economic and social); the popular secondary schools were also concerned with protesting against a State that did not contemplate/consider the interests of the working poor. But since the State has the sole authority of accreditation, it was necessary for the popular secondary schools to seek legitimization and validation from it. Given that the 2001 education census showed that 52% of the student population of Buenos Aires city and 75% of that in Buenos Aires province are considered at risk (of drop-out, etc.), the popular secondary schools appealed to the State because of their capacity to meet the educational needs of this marginalized population in the factories. For more information regarding the status of education in Argentina, see Sirvent, 2006. [3] Elisalde & Ampudia, 2007. [4] For more on this, see Freire, 1997, p. 31.

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NATHALIA E. JARAMILLO is Senior Lecturer, School of Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her most recent works include Immigration and the Challenge of Education: a social drama analysis in South Central Los Angeles (2012), Epistemologies of Ignorance in Education (co-edited with Erik Malewski, 2011) and Decolonizing Pedagogy (forthcoming). Correspondence: Nathalia E. Jaramillo, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92601, Symonds Street, Auckland 1150, New Zealand (n.jaramillo@auckland.ac.nz). PETER MCLAREN, formerly Professor in the Division of Urban Schooling,Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, is now Professor, School of Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand. The author and editor of over 45 books, Professor McLarens writings have been translated into 20 languages. He works with activist groups worldwide. La Fundacion McLaren de Pedagogia Critica and Instituto McLaren have been established by Mexican educators in Ensensda, Mexico and La Catedra McLaren has been established at the Bolivarian University in Caracas, Venezuela. Correspondence: mclaren@gseis.ucla.edu.

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Nathalia E. Jaramillo et al FERNANDO LZARO is the coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Program of Teaching, Investigation, Transference and Social Articulation: Social movements and popular education, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He also coordinates The Popular Education of Youth and Adults, Maderera Cordoba, Argentina, and is the co-founder and member of the Cooperative of Popular Educators and Researchers, a social organization that has been created following the experiences of the popular high schools in the occupied factories of Argentina. Fernando Lazaro is the author of numerous articles in education, holds graduate degrees in critical pedagogy and socioeducational problems from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is the principal of a high school. Correspondence: cinemavariete@hotmail.com.

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