Edited by Annette Krauss and Janine Armin

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Unlearning Routines of the Impossible

Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons

Minor Compositions/Autonomedia
 Unlearning
Routines of the
Impossible
7 Foreword
by Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide

1  1 Introduction and Acknowledgements: Practicing Unlearning

23 In the Vortex of Institutional Lives

with Ferdiansyah Thajib

41 Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet)

75 Wall Patrols

79 On Unlearning Sedimented Practices:

Stories Involving Everyday Whiteness and Quick Fixes
by Nancy Jouwe

95 Instead of Solving Paradoxes and Contradictions

123 Bodies to Think With

127 Hidden Curriculum

167 Letters: The classroom is burning,

let’s dream about a School of Improper Education
by KUNCI Collective & Study Forum

201 Tired in Archives

205  Re- and Un-Defining Tools: Exploring Intersectional Approaches to

Digital Search Tools in Library Catalogues
by Feminist Search Tools working group

22 3 Afterword: Unlearning as a Scaffolding for Living

239 Bibliographies
253 Biographies
256 Colophon
 Foreword
by Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide
As a German native, Annette Krauss only began practicing the English she had
been taught in school when she was in her twenties. She once shared with me how
this comparatively late age of learning our ever-expanding neoliberal lingua franca
has informed her approach to text. To this day, when a word is unfamiliar to her,
she breaks it apart to singularly address each piece of the still unfamiliar term
“split[ting] English open so its dark histories slide out” (Park Hong 2020, 97). Krauss
breaks a word wide open to explore its grammar and etymology before recon-
structing its parts in order to contextualize the new word’s composite meanings.
This makes reading, especially collective reading with Krauss, very slow—
furthered by her pedagogical demand that the group move at the speed of the
slowest person. I have compounded experiences of reading/learning alongside
Krauss in such group settings, namely in the context of her co-founded initiative
Read-in (2010–present). The collective reading project “experiments with the
political, material, and physical implications of collective reading and the situat-
edness of any kind of reading activity.” 1 Read-in was developed in the context
of the living research project The Grand Domestic Revolution: User’s Manual
(GDR, 2009–12) initiated by Binna Choi, former director of Casco Art Institute:
Working for the Commons, where I was working as a producer at the time. GDR
followed American architectural historian Dolores Hayden’s eponymous 1981 book
that considers the work of material feminists. In an effort to free themselves
from domestic servitude, they organized collective services at the turn of the
last century in North America. The white women proposed communal neighbor-
hoods with collective services such as common kitchens, dining rooms, laundries,
day-care centers, and new building types that challenged the physical separation
of household from public space and the economic separation of the domestic
from the political economy. Casco’s GDR in turn sought to challenge the notion
of social design and asked what a contemporary domestic revolution might look
like. In other words: the project investigated ways to recognize and value the very
labor, often performed by people from the Majority World we are socialized by

1 See Read-in, www.read-in.info/about.

7
“white supremacist capitalist [hetero]patriarchy” (hooks 1994, 298) to invisibilize.
The question invites reflexivity, positionality, and an undressing of oppressive
internalized norms to habituate more liberatory practices.
This reverse learning of individual contribution to patterned oppression is
some of what is at stake in Krauss’s long-term Unlearning project, with factions
that range from (un)learning Property Relations to Busyness/Business to Care
Networks. This project in some senses is a toolkit designed by Krauss and her
collaborators to respond to and transform out of the cycle of reproducing harm.
On an individuated level this may look like the mantra popularized by Grace Lee
Boggs: “transform[ing] yourself to transform the world.” Krauss’s pedagogical
toolbox is tested in institutional frameworks like the art academy, having recently
been teacher and course leader of the Master of Fine Art program at the HKU
University of the Arts Utrecht and now sharing a professorship at the Academy
of Fine Arts Vienna, and in the art institution—especially Casco Art Institute.
In both, how we transform ourselves and the institution away from harm is at
stake, where education is invoked as a practice of freedom across these domains.
Krauss identifies the separation between domestic and public domains, the
front and back end of the institution. This has been valuable for me as a curator
in addressing the trap of representational politics that take place at the front—
through exhibition making where art organizations are concerned. For those who
choose to hold institutions accountable, race and sovereignty scholar Karen N. Salt
makes a case for the role of the reviser to “shift the terrain by moving away from
the becoming to the disorganised, unfinishedness that we determine” (2022, 92)
This is transformation on the terms of the oppressed and marginalized.
Here is (part of) the bind: the institutions from which we imagine and practice
getting free of are not exempt from the “white supremacist capitalist [hetero]
patriarchal” harms one tries to shed. Naturally so because the subjects that are
involved in splitting open and revising institutional structures, uphold the structures
we need to be getting free from. And as scholars Marina Vishmidt and Kerstin
Stakemeier point out in their foreword to the 2018 book Unlearning Exercises: Art
Organizations as Sites for Unlearning: “The institution commons itself in a way
that both presupposes and projects the dissolution of the institution as currently
constituted. Yet in order to do so, it must both have and provide infrastructure.
So, what is the institution? Is it a concatenation of habits, of possibilities, and
ethics plus the power to put them into operation?” (2018, 7). During the weekly
Unlearning sessions at Casco, which shaped many of the exercises you will find

8
in the aforementioned book (ibid., 17–55), the team was also instrumentalized by
virtue of being in the institutional space. A constant tension lay within the fact
that we needed to double our labor in order to unpack our labor; our everyday
institutional tasks did not disappear, and were ultimately tied to the funding
bodies that subsidized our work and paychecks, which we were all disproportion-
ately reliant on. Looking back at the Unlearning Property exercise, which tried to
take stock of our respective, generationally determined resources, the exercise
could have resulted in differentiated engagement after addressing exactly how
white supremacist capitalist [hetero]patriarchy was at play in the room. Could we
have thought through a system of reparations? The (Un)learning project is thus
a prompt and invitation for the engagers to dig deeper, root, and situate their
individual political concerns.
A way forward—Krauss and I have many teachers in common from people
who have lived and taught toward an end—is to apply the methodological un-
packing that Krauss also insists on, to cross the boundaries of race, gender, and
status, a process by which we make community through the address of difference.
The trick perhaps is to also remember the fluency (Un)learning requires of us to
individually assess how we assert knowledge, when we stand still, and when we
engage. Community across boundaries requires trust built over time. It’s been
over a decade with Annette Krauss. Trust in turn affords us latitude with each
other as we learn to change.

9
10
 Introduction and
Acknowledgements: Practicing
Unlearning
The struggles, entanglements, and joys of practicing unlearning in predominantly
Western contexts connect the contributions of this book. Each text and author
holds a profound relation to the artistic, institutional, and collaborative work in which
I have been involved for more than a decade. As a whole, the publication echoes
its 2018 companion Unlearning Exercises: Art Organizations as Sites for Unlearning
co-edited with then Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons team mem-
bers Binna Choi and Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, and editor Liz Allan. That
book had grown out of a long-term collaboration with Casco and focused on
unlearning with regard to organization-specific exercises within an art institution.
It stands in a vivid dialogue with my PhD project completed in 2017 titled “Sites
for Unlearning: On the Material, Artistic and Political Dimensions of Processes of
Unlearning.” The follow-up collection that you are reading right now, examines
what it means to practice unlearning through building on correlating sites by
writing (about) them. Several collaborators have been invited back to contri­bute
new and previously published essays, while my texts as part of my artistic
practice set the stage for and follow some of the long-term projects of the last
fifteen years. Four forms of writing across timescales are included, and dis-
tinguished also by font: reprinted conversations that situate collaboration in action;
acknowledgements, citational info, front and back matter; new essays by colleagues
and revised treatments of the Sites for Unlearning (2011–present) artistic projects
that grapple with unlearning’s artistic, material, and political dimensions; 1 and short
scenes that conjure bodily capacities and rhythms while addressing “critical impulses
that hover unarticulated on our tongues and that flourish in what some are already
saying and others of us cannot hear” (Stoler 2016, 36). Finally, as I detail at the
end of this introduction, while these texts have been written in close collaboration

1 Hidden Curriculum (2007–present); Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given (2008–12); Site for
Unlearning (SFU) (Zwarte Piet) (2011–present) overlapping with Read the Masks (2008–12); SFU
(to Ride a Bike) (2012–present); SFU (My Library) (201 3–present); SFU (Art Organisation) (201 3–20);
Unlearning Center (2020–present).

11
with, or in the vicinity of colleagues, students, and friends, I attempt to work through
problematic issues concerning the “we” of and in the West, and in my own texts.
My unlearning work builds on the insights and energies developed in social
movements and alternative education, as well as feminist, de/post/anticolonial
address of everyday norms central to academic canons, forms of institutionaliza-
tion, and white innocence (Andreotti 2011; Fanon 1967; Spivak 199  3; Wekker 2016). 2
To the debates on what unlearning might be and do within these areas, I intro-
duce artistic practice. Unlearning here embraces a working through of normative
structures and practices that includes becoming aware, attending to, and getting
rid of taken-for-granted “truths” of theory and practice. As a crucial part, I in­
vestigate the potential of unlearning to unsettle dominant concepts of learning
that undergird practices of transformation and social change (Tuck and Yang 2014).

In the Vortex of Institutional Lives

with Ferdiansyah Thajib (2022)

This opening conversation with social and cultural anthropologist Ferdiansyah

Thajib sets the tone for working through in action, practices of collaborating in
relation to positioning, formal-aesthetic questions, and ethics. As we carve out
the particular tensions in our (working) lives at the time of writing, we examine
why we keep doing what we do, while aiming at “continually and collectively
doing things differently.” Frictions, openings, and dead ends are brought together
with the troubling conjunction of radical education, artistic production, and
institution-making in a European context. This conjunction is specifically apparent,
as Thajib and I elaborate on, in the context of the neoliberal financialization of
European higher education entrenched in coloniality.

2 Postcolonial, decolonial, and anticolonial theory and practices are understood here as processes
that try to deconstruct and undo unjust, hierarchical power structures and their effects, based on
centuries-long colonization through modernity’s imperial projects—hence the term modern-colonial.
The effects manifest themselves right up to this very day, e.g., in the unequal distribution of material
resources, in a white, Western dominance in academia, or, in extractivist processes and land
dispossession (to name only a few). While I aim at working with these terms in tandem rather than
in competition with each other, it is also important to distinguish between anticolonial, decolonial,
and postcolonial theories and practices because they adhere to different geographies and traditions
of thought (see, e.g., Bhambra 2014; Hiraide 2021). In this text, I insert postcolonial, decolonial,
anticolonial when I refer to a specific scholar from the postcolonial, decolonial, or anticolonial tradition.

12
Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet) (2011– present)

Titled after an ongoing project, this text revisits the project Read the Masks.
Tradition Is Not Given (2008–12) with artist Petra Bauer, activist group Doorbraak,
and cultural group Untold. Read the Masks attempts to resist the racist figure
Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) in the Netherlands, and practice unlearning without framing
it as such. I consider the struggles against Zwarte Piet, the roles that artistic
practice may take, and the question of how (if at all) I can think, write, and practice
solidarity while being embedded in Western coloniality.


On Unlearning Sedimented Practices:
Stories Involving Everyday Whiteness and Quick Fixes
by Nancy Jouwe (2023)

Nancy Jouwe offers a follow-up to “Site for Unlearning in the Museum” from
Unlearning Exercises. The cultural historian brings together palpable vignettes that
address white innocence (Wekker 2016) and the harm of quick fixes. In so doing,
she provides insights into her municipal work in the Netherlands addressing public
apologies for slavery, and antiracist training sessions by a white facilitator.

Instead of Solving Paradoxes and Contradictions (2013–present)

Following Unlearning Exercises, and Site for Unlearning (My Library) (2017–
present), this essay provides a practical grounding for unlearning in postcolonial
scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s working concept “unlearning one’s privileges”
(Spivak 1990, vii). Instead of trying to solve the paradoxes within one’s life, to
address the injustices in a globalized world Spivak proposes “learning to play the
double bind” by “learning to live with contradictory instructions” ( 2012, 3 ). The
essay situates the work of unlearning in bodily experience that is always already
material, raced, gendered, classed, and sexualized. The goal becomes intervening
in taken-for-granted understandings of un/learning that underlie aesthetic edu-
cation and artistic production.

13
Hidden Curriculum (2007–present)

This text revolves around the eponymous project on valid and invalid learning in
secondary school settings. Common sense understandings of formal and infor-
mal processes of learning are tackled to consider the importance of physicality
and the boundaries of academic and art environments. Framed by critical and
feminist pedagogies, Hidden Curriculum came to be a guide for the Sites for
Unlearning. These experimental gatherings involve unlearning something collab-
oratively. That is, studying unlearning with regard to existing articulations and
unpacking “learning economies” (Masschelein et al. 2006) derived from European
knowledge economies (Phillips 2018; Krauss 2018).  3 As elaborated in Unlearning
Exercises, the vulnerability of unlearning in institutions (corporate or otherwise)
is critical where unlearning can legitimize workforce flexibilization. At Casco we
studied and practiced unlearning with regard to institutional habits, complicating
how to write/practice/study unlearning in an art institution amid a fierce eco-
nomic regime. This approach directed the project toward social reproduction and
maintenance at the nexus of the back and the front of institutional frameworks,
which in turn has inspired future iterations of Hidden Curriculum.

Letters: The classroom is burning,

let’s dream about a School of Improper Education
by KUNCI Study Forum & Collective (2020)

This conversational piece revolves around tools and tooling in alternative edu-
cation. The letters provide a critical fabulation on how “improper” in “School of
Improper Education” can become a tool that challenges knowledge hierarchies
and builds toward a relational epistemology of truth.

3 In Unlearning Exercises, lifelong learning as a dominant learning concept in the strategic

implementation of knowledge-based economies in Europe since the 1990s is explored as a
progress-oriented accumulative model that pervades institutions. While writing these introductory
notes, Casco launched the Unlearning Center. As a companion in this critical endeavor, I understand
it as an educational, practice-led, and relationality-driven commitment that facilitates the process
of unlearning institutions toward commoning societies with art practices as a mode and tools for
unlearning. Within the im/possibilities of unlearning, Unlearning Center continues the collective
attempt to generate cracks of possibilities in the interest of unlearning.

14
Re- and Un-Defining Tools: Exploring Intersectional
Approaches to Digital Search Tools in Library Catalogues
by Feminist Search Tools working group (2021)

The Feminist Search Tools (FST) working group—consisting of members of Read-in

(Sven Engels, myself, Laura Pardo) and Hackers & Designers (Anja Groten), as well
as Aggeliki Diakrousi, Ola Hassanain, and Alice Strete—give insights into their
work with digital library catalogues and searching (for information), building on
a feminist legacy. Reflecting on tooling and tools, they elaborate on how library
categorizations are troubled by the trickle-down effect of capito-patriarchal
white institutions, leading to a desire for smooth interfaces and an aggregation
of algorithms. As the Feminist Search Tools project emerged from the Site for
Unlearning (My Library) (201  3–present) by the Read-in collective (2010–present),4
this conversation speaks to the collective’s feminist practices of reading and
citation.

Afterword: Unlearning as a Scaffolding for Living

To close the book, I round off with a project not covered in the other texts, but
which has co-shaped the work on unlearning: Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike)
(2012–present). As I note there, “The sites for unlearning attempt to bring together
the three elements described: the practice-oriented artistic approach of situation
making, a feminist understanding of knowledge production, and the questions and
demands posed by de/post/anticolonial scholarship.” The afterword can also be
read as a relational glossary of practices and ideas. As such, practicing unlearning
is articulated in relation to forms of organization, arts-based research, writing,
and collaboration. Unlearning grew out of these relations, which, as I note in the
afterword, attempts to intervene “in a Western standard notion of learning ...
at a small scale with an eye toward the big, in concrete (institutional) settings.”
They cannot be thought without “feminist, de/post/anticolonial” methodologies
that inform “this artistic investigation into unlearning, insofar as they address
academic canons, corporeality, coalition building, forms of institutionalization,
and everyday norms as a central part of their agendas.”

4 See also the Feminist Search Tools project platform in 202 3, www.feministsearchtools.nl.

15
The Different I’s and We’s

The collaborative work to which I am committed—and the ambivalences within

me and others that I stubbornly and lovingly attempt to acknowledge—consist
in neither a unified I nor we. Feeling and sensing relations as I go, I work through
where I and we write and speak from. This political maintenance work clarifies the
we that are speaking, pointed to, or forgotten. It spells out when an I desires to
speak and needs to be held responsible, but also has the capacity (in rare moments)
to surpass the individual self. Additionally, footnotes and project credits indicate
we’s and I’s in person. In the conversation with Ferdiansyah Thajib, a collective
voice (A + F) brings readers closer to a long-term practice of holding connections
and contradictions, where a fragile we becomes possible with an I (A or F)
coming in for situatedness. KUNCI’s “Letters: The classroom is burning, let’s
dream about a School of Improper Education,” reveals manifold temporalities of
pronouns as protagonists converse; the we in Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet),
Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike), and Hidden Curriculum stems from practicing
with specific groups of people over a duration. As the storyteller in the latter,
I decide to focus on this and not on that, and while these essays saw different
iterations, the reworking of these texts allows one to go back to collaborators,
but also for other people to contribute to thinking and reading together. You, as
reader, may join a temporal we among “epistemic allies” as Thajib and I call the
practitioners whose concepts, images, and toolings accompany us “in what seems
an (im)possible task”: creating a scaffolding for living as a practice of unlearning.
There are so many I want to thank for developing this with me.

Acknowledgements

I owe this book to many longstanding exchanges with friends, allies, and col-
leagues. Numerous collaborations go into producing and receiving the texts.
Relations have woven this book. So I take the opportunity here to find ways to
acknowledge each of these.
Specific credits can be found in the project-focused texts “Site for Unlearning
(Zwarte Piet),” “Hidden Curriculum,” and “Afterword.” These texts start with the
collaborative engagements that created the bodies of work on which this pub-
lication is based, and continue by naming individual contributors. My questions

16
have emerged from intense discussions about what an unlearning practice would
look like in various politico-aesthetic-educational-institutional formations; I am
only one among many participants.
The work with Read-in, a self-organized collective I have been involved
in since 2011, is close to my heart. Our ongoing experiments with the political,
material, and physical implications of collective reading (the wor(l)ds that we are
a part of) have been crucial in approaching what remains at the same time dear
and opaque to me: the practice of reading and its relation to unlearning. Thank
you to Hyunju Chung, Sven Engels, Elaine W. Ho, Serena Lee, Sanne Oorthuizen,
Laura Pardo, Ying Que, Marianna Takou, Maiko Tanaka, Hilde Tuinstra, and Leo
Vargas. Thank you to all the people engaging with us on the way; not the least
those who let us in to read and think together in their houses, or to discuss at
the thresholds of their front doors. www.read-in.info.
For the Feminist Search Tools (FST) research, Read-in joined forces with
the collective Hackers & Designers (www.hackersanddesigners.nl). The FST work
group consists of Aggeliki Diakrousi, Hackers & Designers (Anja Groten, André
Fincato, Heerko van der Kooij, and previous member James Bryan Graves), Ola
Hassanain, Read-in (Sven Engels, myself, and Laura Pardo), and Alice Strete. The
project’s findings, impasse, and twists are made accessible on a web platform
that brings together a range of prototypes, forms of tooling, and discussions
aimed at critically and creatively studying the digital search interfaces of library
catalogues. www.feministsearchtools.nl.
Not only with Read-in have I developed a soft spot for participating in read-
ing groups—especially when actual reading takes places during sessions. It’s a
way of enacting and experiencing what livings happen in a book, or between the
lines of a text that (sometimes) brings to life different energies across times and
spaces. I want to specifically thank Das Kollektiv, Linz, around whom, at the time
of writing, a changing group of readers have organized themselves to focus on
radical education for more than three years—especially Amalia Barboza, Sofia
Bempeza, Luzenir Caixeta, Kim Carrington, Tyan Fritschy, Natascha Khakpour,
Radostina Kostadinova, Niki Kubaczek, Gergana Mineva, Jan Niggemann, Rubia
Salgado, Isabella Schlehaider, Ruth Sonderegger, Damijan* Stranner, and Adriana
Torres Topaga. I am very grateful to Claudia Hummel; together we have orga-
nized many reading sessions of math school books and developed exercises for
reading, counter-counting, and listening. Also, thanks to the many other reading
groups whose hospitality I have dearly appreciated.

17
 First iterations and experiments of parts of this book began during the
Research Master of Gender and Ethnicity at Utrecht University (2010–1  3) and
my PhD trajectory (201  3–17), followed by the Elise Richter Peek 495 postdoctoral
grant from the Austrian Science Fund (2018–2  3), the latter two at the Academy
of Fine Arts Vienna.
Engaging with various institutional study environments, while going off on
my own paths in life and with my artistic practice, has continuously nourished and
challenged my thinking and doing around unlearning in institutional settings. The
manifold discussions during these periods have greatly contributed to the work
toward unlearning in this publication. Looking back at the time of the Research
Master and PhD, this period helped me co-build ethico-practical scaffoldings that
support (my) practices and work on unlearning since then; the postdoc consti-
tuted a time of maintenance, recalibration, and collective harvesting. I am very
grateful for the friendships that continue on from these periods through which
we revisit, witness, and un/learn from our different scaffolds of living.
The postdoctoral position enabled me—also during the Covid-19 pan­demic—
to find ways to continue the work on unlearning in different registers and con-
stellations, including: the Feminist Search Tools working group; collaborations with
KUNCI Study Forum & Collective, and specifically Ferdiansyah Thajib and the
conversational piece in this publication; the work with Casco Art Institute leading
to the Unlearning Center; and the research platform A Matter of Precedents at
Collective Gallery in Edinburgh. The many other contributions and presentations in
conferences, exhibitions, conversations, and other formats significantly shaped
my work toward unlearning.
The last five years were also shaped by my institutional work at the HKU
University of the Arts Utrecht as teacher and course leader of the Master Fine Art
(MAFA). This institutional environment has challenged my thoughts and practices
on unlearning and provided the possibilities to test and discuss aspects in the
HKU Fine Art department with colleagues, students, and alumni. I am specifically
grateful to the MAFA team, many guest lecturers, students, the Tools for the
Times study group facilitating ten Open Study Sessions on practicing inclusivity in
art academic contexts, and the MAFA research group investigating artistic ¨ edu-
cational∞
cational ∞relationalities in an art academy context. The discussions on art and
education, the experiments through and with it, as well as the continuous efforts
to question how we want to and can work together in this context have guided
many directions of thinking and doing around unlearning. Special thanks here

18
go to Tiong Ang, Christina Della Giustina, Ola Hassanain, Nancy Jouwe, Nuraini
Juliastuti, Katia Krupennikova, Falke Pisano, Domeniek Ruyters, Manju Sharma,
Henk Slager, and Julie Yu.
My engagement with unlearning cannot be thought without the people,
practices, and worlds at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in Utrecht.
To be able to experience, and be part of the discussions, struggles, and joy that
the work with Casco, its different teams over time, and ecosystem brings about
has crucially molded my engagement with what is around, through, and in me.
We realized together several assemblies on commoning art institutions with the
focus of unlearning art institutional habits. Together with Ying Que and the Casco
team we organized the assembly Elephants in the Room in November 2018 with
a focus on art-educative and decolonial questions. Thank you to members of the
network Another Roadmap to Arts Education, especially Lineo Segoete (Lesotho)
and Sofia Olascoaga (Mexico City), and members of the Global South network of
mid-scale art spaces Arts Collaboratory: Al Ma’mal Foundation with Aline Khoury,
Más Arte Más Acción with Ana Garzón Sabogal, and Visual Arts Network of South
Africa with Kabelo Malatsie. For the other Casco assemblies so far, I have had
the honor of participating in the steering group.
This publication follows, accompanies, and complements the earlier Unlearning
Exercises publication unfolding a web of connections through its core subject and
further contexualizations. I thank Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide for the foreword
in which she highlights some of these connections. I leave it to readers to wander
between these publications and invite you to join the emerging Unlearning Center
at Casco Art Institute.
I want to specifically thank the shifting team at Casco Art Institute over time
that has insisted on continuing unlearning, and finding ways to cope with the co-
nundrum in practice: Janine Armin, Cee Bakker, Ester Bartels, Steyn Bergs, Leana
Boven, Staci Bu Shea, Binna Choi, Luke Cohlen, Lara García Díaz, Roel Griffioen,
Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, Aline Hernández, Simone der Kinderen, Marleen
de Kok, Malcolm Kratz, Björn van de Logt, Niek van der Meer, Sanne Oorthuizen,
Rosa Paardenkooper, Jakob Proyer, Anne Punt, Ika Putranto, Ying Que, Deborah
Sielert, Whitney Stark, Marianna Takou, Suzanne Tiemersma, Mariejem Tordjo,
Judith Torzillo, Erik Uitenbogaard, Jason Waite, Sofie Wierda, and Amaia Yoller.
It is in this context that I came in contact with designer Rosen Eveleigh with
whom many collaborations around how to share the work on unlearning with a wider
public have arisen, among which the design for Unlearning Exercises Tear Pads and

19
publication, and now this book. Special thanks go as well to Janine Amin for her
brilliant work as editor at large, her encouragement, and keeping me in focus
toward this publication. Thanks to Stevphen Shukaitis and Minor Compositions
for not giving up on me and this project when Covid-19, and other life challenges
delayed this publication for years.
I want to thank KUNCI Study Forum & Collective, Yogyakarta for the ongoing
exchanges on unlearning at so many different levels, dimensions, and capacities,
including residencies, exhibitions, workshops, and informal conversations. Your
ways of working and living together, in legacy, and against all odds, have served
as a role model, and inspiration for me throughout. To include “Letters: The
classroom is burning, let’s dream about a School of Improper Education,” and
let it resonate with the other texts is a wonderful continuation of this history.
Special thanks to Antariksa, Brigitta Isabella, Ferdiansyah Thajib, Fiky Daulay,
Gatari Surya Kusuma, Hayyu Al Qayyumi, Hilman Fathoni, Nuraini Juliastuti,
Rifki Akbar Pratama, Syafiatudina, and Verry Handayani, and extended family
with Edwina Brennan, Chepas, Khairunnisa, Natasha Tontey, Wok The Rock, and
the collective Bakudapan.
I feel blessed that people came together to give feedback on the manuscript
of the book. The affection and generosity that I have received in the responses
guided the last phase and opened many more paths for the future. Thank you
Janine Armin, Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, Aline Hernández, Moira Hille, Ying Que,
Ruth Sonderegger, Stevphen Shukaitis, and Marianna Takou for your energies,
for taking time and care to ensure that this book takes the life it takes.
For the interest in my practice and the possibilities to discuss aspects of my
artistic work on unlearning in various contexts and collaborations, I thank: Sorcha
Carey, Siobhan Carroll, Kate Gray, Alison Scott, and Frances Stacey (A Matter of
Precedence, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2019–2  3); Cittadelarte in Biella (together
with Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, 2019); City of Women Festival Ljubljana
(Vesna Bukovec, Tea Hvala, Iva Kovač, Sara Šabec, and Skuc Gallery, Ljubljana,
2021 ); Aïcha Diallo, Annika Niemann, and Miriam Shabafrouz (Untie To Tie, to-
gether with Claudia Hummel and Ferdiansyah Thajib, Bundeszentrale für Politische
Bildung, 2021); Festival for Radical Education (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst
and Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK , 2021 ); Sigrid Adorf and Soenke Gau
(Die Kunst zu verlernen..., ZHdK, 2022 ); Moira Hille and Janine Jembere (Collective
Reading and Writing Session with Nuraini Juliastuti, MA Critical Studies, Academy of
Fine Arts Vienna, 202  3); Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide (A Lasting Truth Is Change,

20
together with Petra Bauer, at the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, 2022) ; Astrid S.
Klein and Ferdiansyah Thajib (Doing Entanglements Through Endurance, Schloss
Solitude, Stuttgart, 2020 ); Iris Laner (Kritik (in ) der Kunstpädagogik, Mozarteum,
Salzburg, 2022 ) ; Le19Crac (Adéline Lépine) with Travelling Farm Museum, and
Unlearning Center, Casco, 202  3; Hannah Mathews (Shapes of Knowledge, Monash
University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2019 ) ; Thomas Grisold, Adrian Klammer,
and Nhien Nguyen (The Learning Organization, 2019 ); Marion von Osten and Grant
Watson (Bauhaus Imaginista, together with Ferdiansyah Thajib, Haus der Kulturen
der Welt, Berlin, 2019 ) ; Michaela Glanz and Paul Reiter (Research Day at Academy
of Fine Arts Vienna, 2021); Henk Slager and Mick Wilson (EARN—European Artistic
Research Conference, together with Christina Della Giustina, Uniarts Helsinki, 2022);
Tom Holert and Sven Spieker (“The Heresy of Didactic Art,” ArtMargins, 2022 ) ;
Emily Pethick, Elke Uitentuis, and all participants (Sharing artistic ^ education-
al *social practices, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, 2021–2  3) ;
Lucie Kolb and Eva Weinmayr (Teaching the Radical Catalogue: A Syllabus,
Sitterwerk, St. Gallen, 2021–22) ; Véronique Boilard, Andrea Haas, Nina Höchtl,
and Julia Wieger (Dark Energies, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2019 ).
I would also like to thank the many interlocutors who have discussed ideas,
texts, and plans for experiments toward and around unlearning with me at various
stages of this long-term endeavor. Of course, I remain responsible for any mis-
conceptions despite their incisive comments. Special thanks to Anette Baldauf,
Petra Bauer, Maja Bekan, Mareike Bernien, Staci Bu Shea, Binna Choi, Gianmaria
Colpani, Christina Della Giustina, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh, Sven Engels, Anja Groten,
Ola Hassanain, Moira Hille, Claudia Hummel, Nancy Jouwe, Renate Lorenz, Sven
Lütticken, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Emily Pethick, Falke Pisano, Ying Que, Lilian
Scholtes, Ruth Sonderegger, Ferdiansyah Thajib, Kathrin Thiele, Hong-Kai Wang,
and Gloria Wekker. A final address and heartfelt farewell go to Marina Vishmidt,
a brilliant longtime collaborator and friend who tragically passed shortly after
I completed this manuscript.
I can only repeat myself in what comes: what would I do without my family
and friends? I am deeply indebted to you!
Last and foremost, Meret and Christoph—thank you!

 Annette Krauss
 Vienna, March 2024

21
22
 In the Vortex of
Institutional Lives
with Ferdiansyah
Thajib

This text is a lightly edited version of Annette Krauss and Ferdiansyah Thajib, “In The Vortex of Institutional
Lives,” ARTMargins 11, no. 1–2 (2022): 10–28, www.doi.org/10.1162/artm_a_00  31  3. Republished courtesy MIT
Press and—figures excluded—is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
We thank Staci Bu Shea, whose comments (also with regard to their work in hospice) have helped us in
shaping arguments throughout the text. We also thank the anonymous reviewer and editors of this special
issue for helpful comments. Thanks as well to a reading group at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, with Petja
Dimitrova, Moira Hille, Anna Lena Janowiak, Ruth Sonderegger, and Selina Shirin Stritzel. Research for this
conversational piece was supported by the postdoctoral grant Elise Richter Peek 495 at the Academy of Fine
Arts Vienna, financed by the Austrian Science Fund.

23
Annette + Ferdiansyah pedagogy, as we study together (in) learn-
Following on from a series of conversations ing environments.
that have been taking place sporadically In terms of format, the conversational
between us in the past years, the current piece takes place among three interlocu-
contribution serves as another opportunity tors: Annette, Ferdi, and a collective voice
to address ways of living multiple insti- (Annette + Ferdi), which acts more as a
tutional lives. In our respective contexts, meta-narrator (and provides the reader
these pertain to different types of insti­ with this lead-in). Additionally, this three-
tutions, ranging from art school/academy, way conversation is scaffolded, heckled,
to university, to art or cultural organization/ and haunted by a constellation of images,
collective. Here we explore ways of travers- metaphors, concepts, or models devel-
ing the boundaries and frictions between oped by various thinkers and practitioners
radical classroom practices and the insti- whom we consider our epistemic allies.
tutional processes and frameworks that we These intellectual contributions have not
speak and act within and against in the con- only been crucial in accompanying our
text of European higher arts education; all thinking process, working, and living, but
these environments are deeply entrenched they bring about real consequences in
in coloniality. We are drawn to radical class- what seems an (im)possible task. These
room practices that experiment with forms intertextual relations are continually re-
of sociality that go beyond the dominant, hashed throughout this conversation.
modern-colonial model of meritocracy that Hence, we invite you, the reader, to
dictates our lives in the academy and the la- brace yourself for a form of storytelling that
bor market. We are interested in un/learning has no clear end or beginning. We pre­sent
from accounts of educational practices in here a narrative device that allows us to
the lineage of pedagogues including Paulo move back and forth through scenes of
Freire, bell hooks, Ivan Illich, Sandy Grande, connection and contradiction, commuting
Eve Tuck, Gesturing Towards Decolonial along and bridging the artificial bounda-
Futures, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and ries between theory and practice, as well
Fred Moten/Stefano Harney. as folding in and out of bodily experiences,
All these thinkers and practitioners differential temporalities, and conceptual
share a perspective on education not as insights. Not only is this mode of articu-
the solution to a problem but as a part lation bound to our approach to writing
of the problem (while still they engage in this highly edited conversational piece, it
educational-institutional practices them­ approximates our critical thinking in the
selves). This is a relevant shift in our under­ act as a practice of vulnerability deeply in-
standing of the politics of education, and formed by our educational practices.

24
Annette Western institution-building, I try to find
I am interested to discuss with you, Ferdi, ways to think and do them together. The
how anti-xenophobic practices and dis- practice of separating or hiding away the
course are able to enter classrooms coloniality of Western institutional prac-
but not necessarily the administrational- tices and know­ledge has been passed
managerial levels of the art academies on over generations, largely in the form
I have worked and studied in. I experience of tacit knowledge. I am in the thick of it,
these institutions as places that time and because the modes of control of social
again fail to be sites where students and life, and of economic and political or-
staff can un/learn, and engage in anti- ganization that emerged and have been
racism and anti-xenophobic behavior. engineered in(to) the colonies actually
Equally important, I try to grapple with my directly had and still have an impact on
own complicities in this. How could we the ways we form institutions, schools,
approach these sites of failure without universities, ways of living and learning,
repeating the obvious? Namely, the insti- and how we relate to each other — hence
tutions that I am part of lack rigorous pol- the term “modern-colonial.” My intuition
icies and actions regarding, for example, is that the institutional boundaries and
the employment rates of Black, Indigenous frictions between classroom and the ad-
people, and people of color, or the gender ministrational-organizational sphere stem
pay gap, tokenism, Eurocentric curricula, from this separation.
or ableist and classist agendas, nor do they Let me explain my work situation dur-
have strategies to overcome the excuses ing the last four years. While I accepted 40
not to do so. While these are important percent employment as the course leader
facets that need to be changed, I see them of a Master of Fine Arts program at the HKU
also as violent symptoms of a centuries-old University of the Arts Utrecht, I also found
modern-colonial system that seem impos- money for a partial post­doctoral position at
sible to fix. the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, through
In this vein, I am searching for ways to which I navigate, for the time being, my ar-
tackle forms of coloniality entrenched in the tistic practice and the collaborations that I
institutions we are living with and work- am involved in. This complicated but privi-
ing in. Part of this is what Gloria Wekker leged constellation provides the econom-
describes as “bringing the history of the ic framework for being able to accept the
colonies and the history of the metropole invitation by Tom Holert and Sven Spieker
in conversation with each other” (2016, 25). for this conversational piece with you,
For example, instead of assuming a Ferdi. And I am very grateful that you are
separation between colonialism and interested in engaging in this experi­ment.

25
 The reason why I accepted the job in this mess out and being done with it. I am/
Utrecht is very much related to the sep- we are always already part of a specific
aration between the classroom and other (messy) situation, its orientations and pow-
parts of the institution. Course leadership er relations, as much as this situation is also
resides at the nexus between classroom made and shaped by me. I believe that to
and admin-orga-managerial work within attend to the spatio-temporal, embodied,
an art educational institution. I am very and inherent material relationalities is cru-
concerned, on the one hand, with study­ cial for my ability to co-shape this situation.
ing the structures, interpellations, and This is a sort of humbling and encouraging
demands from the institution (e.g., back mantra that I repeat to myself. Against this
office, top management) concerning what backdrop, I wonder how can I be involved
I am supposed to do and not do, and with in these struggles within and against these
my agency within this sphere. There are institutions, and how can we narrativize our
a lot of institutional energies channeled various involvements, implicatedness, and
into keeping the (artificial) boundary be- engagements differently?
tween the classroom and the rest of the
institution intact. While I am being asked Ferdi
on a daily basis to embody the artificial The messiness that constitutes my life­work
boundary in this specific job, I also try to can be visualized as a turbulent vortex,
find ways of re-politicizing it. This entails, formed through a cumulation of entangle-
on the other hand, together with a team, ments with whatever lies in our surround-
trying out the ways that organizing/teach- ings. These accumulated things continue
ing/learning this nexus can enter the work twisting and overlaying on top of each oth-
undertaken with the students without pawn­­ er, without stopping or providing any sense
ing off responsibilities to the students, but of clear direction.
including it instead as part of the study of One thread that would quickly pull
and work within social-political-aesthetic me into the vortex of structural problems
formations. in higher arts education, is what you said
Doing this work, I am always in the about “hiding away” the coloniality of
middle of a kind of messiness. It’s a messi- Western institutional practices. This as-
ness that I don’t see as necessarily negative pect is the freshest in my mind because
(Haraway 1994, 62), but it makes me dizzy. It not long ago I attended an online talk by
reminds me that I am always already part of Peggy Piesche,1 a Black feminist activist
certain relations, practicing certain habits in Germany who works for the Federal
of thinking and doing, that I am more or Agency for Civic Education (bpb). There
less aware of. It is also not about sorting she explained how intersectionality is

26
neither an option nor an opinion, it is a get sucked into and be burdened by the
personal approach. She invited us to think institutional vortex that should have ex-
about what is hiding in plain sight, not as a pired already, but somehow managed to
negative critique but an engagement with continue.
those who (or whose voices) are not at the But all of this reluctance actually
table. took me to a very different place. Later on,
Reading what you said about modern- I started to get invitations to give talks and
colonial institutions made me think of why workshops touching on issues of com-
in the past I tended to keep such institu- moning, listening, and other practices
tions at arm’s length. In the first years after related to unpacking colonial practices
moving to Berlin in order to complete my within wider institutions. Some of these
PhD, apart from working on my research moments perhaps fit with what you de-
focused on the affective lives of Muslim scribe as radical classroom practices.
queer people in Indonesia, I spent most of I worked with librarians, art school stu-
my time focusing on KUNCI Study Forum dents, and art teachers in art spaces and
& Collective’s work,  2 which is mainly public gatherings in various places. Again,
grounded in Yogyakarta. these invitations mainly came about due to
This is despite my various engage- my involvement with KUNCI, especially in
ments with different European institu- the School of Improper Education, which
tions as a member of KUNCI as well as was set up in 2016 as a refuge from hege­
with those related to my university study. monic forms of education.3
While I was fully aware of and affected by But as I took on this role, the ambiva-
the structural exclusions that you men- lence remained. There is something trau-
tioned, I had some qualms about trying matizing in witnessing how the endless
to change this situation. My priorities amount of critical labor that has been per-
then were more about staying afloat and formed by Black and Indigenous people
keeping my mental health supported. and by people of color, including myself,
I kept on telling myself that this is not my is continuously being appropriated by
fight, I won’t be staying here in Europe for modern-colonial institutions to ensure the
good, anyway. There was this pessimism institutions’ own flourishing. Calling these
(or was it realism?) that in retrospect ap- the “habits” of European arts education is
pears as a form of refusal — not wanting to perhaps an understatement, as it evinces

1 For event details, see www.pocolit.com/en/events/a-feminist-exploration-intersectionality.

2 See www.kunci.or.id.
3 See “Letters: The classroom is burning, let’s dream about a School of Improper Education”
by KUNCI Study Forum & Collective on pages 167ff in this book.

27
more of a prevailing logic. This logic is which operate like magnetic fields, con-
being rehearsed and refined both within stantly reshuffle our understanding of
the field of arts education and in broader center and peripheries and make us re-
higher education settings, and has been think the inside/outside dichotomy, espe-
construed in many guises. Stefano Harney cially when it comes to our own positioning
and Fred Moten (2013) describe how in toward modern institutions and, accord-
universities this process occurs through ingly, what these categories of inclusion
the subsuming of critical education into and exclusion mean and do. Attending to
perfecting professional education. While the force of vortices does not mean sim-
assuming color blindness and announc- ply being overwhelmed by them, it also
ing demands for diversity and equality, entails their active shaping and cross-
the hierarchization of differences that is ing of their elements. In the language of
inherent in the teleological functioning of critical pedagogy, the different elements
modern instit­utions ultimately always al- constituting a vortex have been identified
ready dictates whose lives are worth living as the four i’s of oppression: ideological,
and whose are not. institutional, interpersonal, and internal-
While perhaps what we have been ized oppressions. These are also the ma-
working on gestures toward more dissent- jor stumbling blocks that have turned up
ing spaces, how is it possible to sustain again and again in our exchanges. In the
these spaces if the colonial conditionings essay “Vistas of Modernity,” decolonial
of modern institutions remain unmovable? scholar Rolando Vázquez Melken evokes
But I am getting ahead of myself. For those as well the image of the vortex by focus-
who have been repeatedly subjected to ing on its double movement: the centri­
structural exclusion, the broader concern fugal (centering) movement of modernity
is: why do we want to inhabit institutions that enforces an eccentric movement that
that have refused us to begin with? “expels out of history into oblivion what it
devastates” (2020, XXII). We keep in mind
Annette + Ferdi Vázquez Melken’s imagery of the vortex of
The image of institutional lives as a vortex colonial difference here while thinking of
intrigues us both: the feeling of being the extent to which its repercussions spi-
pushed, sucked into, pulled, thrown out — ral into our ongoing struggles with multiple
sometimes gently, at other times not so institutions.
gently at all — while each of us is individu- In our May 2019 workshop at the
ally pushing, sucking, and pulling, but also HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt) in
gliding, drowning, resurfacing. This vortex Berlin, which was held in the framework
that intermingles with many other vortices, of bauhaus imaginista curated by Marion

28
von Osten and Grant Watson, we worked what we were doing — that it was so messy
with Andrea Fraser’s understanding of the that no clear results would come out of it.
institution as an entry point to discussing The irony here is that this was precisely
multiple institutional lives: “So, if there is the situation that we wanted to generate.
no outside for us, it is not because the in- The “messiness” in this sense becomes a
stitution is perfectly closed, or exists as an generative tool: rather than asking how to
apparatus in a ‘totally administered socie- cope with or clean up the mess, we ask,
ty’ or has grown all-encompassing in size what conditions of doing and living can we
and scope. It is because the institution is find there?
inside of us, and we can’t get outside of
ourselves” (Fraser 2005, 104). Annette
It is worth revisiting this statement I believe this situation could teach us
from our perspective of the messy experi- something about the unsettling nature of
ences of the vortex. While Fraser has tried dealing with messiness and uncertainty
to blur the boundaries between what con- in educational settings. In the workshop,
stitutes the inside/outside of institutions, we studied together with participants
we embrace and go beyond them by prac- where practicing simultaneous institu-
ticing self-positioning that emerges from tional lives might lead us, grappling with
complex entanglements. the local specificities (Utrecht, Berlin, and
Yogyakarta) and trying to resist compari-
Ferdi son. Not to forget, we introduced a broad
One of the things that stayed with me af- understanding of institutions (which is also
ter the workshop in Berlin was the moment important for this conversation) ranging
when we got heckled by the person who from formal, legal organizational entities
was sup­posed to be our discussion part- to customs, routines, and habitual pat-
ner. “It’s messy, even the workshop initi- terns that form the fabric of our lives. We
ators [Annette and Ferdi] admitted that!” searched for ways to expose and bear cer-
the man said. On the one hand, perhaps he tain contradictions, implicatedness, and
was just describing what he saw. He might messiness without wanting to solve these
have said this upon viewing the many piec- conditions too easily. I understood from
es of paper and thread that we used to map his response that he was offended by this
out the workshop participants’ input, scat- mode. It reminded me of other educational
tering them around on the floor. But what situations when I had under­estimated the
I could not avoid is the accusatory tone in affective power of having to deal with un-
his voice. It implicitly suggested that we, certainties and implicatedness. I did not
as the workshop conveners, didn’t know succeed in introducing a scaffold when

29
uncertainties, messiness, and contradic- One immediate concern was what
tions explicitly took center stage. While I this politics of invitation represented. Our
myself try to practice on an almost daily collective ways of doing have been con-
basis how to attend to these vortices, structed along a shared desire to find an-
I cannot assume the same will be true for other route of making and disseminating
collaborators or students. I think we might knowledge when all available means to do
have gone too fast and too slow at the so have been held hostage by elite insti-
same time. tutions for too long. The very existence of
the inviting institution has been reinforced
Ferdi by colonial practices, and these enduring
In hindsight, the Berlin episode made me legacies have made us wary. Furthermore,
think about the “call to order” that Moten although this invitation came with an inten-
and Harney talk about (2013) 4 — the idea tion to involve others for a better world, the
that a certain order needs to be established uneven power and accumulated resources
before knowledge can be produced. Their that condition this politics of invitation sig-
question, as well as mine, is, what happens naled the risk of making ourselves once
when we refuse this call to order? again vulnerable to exploitation.
This brings us back to refusing what All these forewarnings ended up pro-
has been refused to us. I am thinking now viding us with the impetus to accept the
about the demand for decolonizing art invitation, albeit tentatively. The decision
institutions and museums that has gath- was partly galvanized by the possibility of
ered force and momentum across Europe. reclaiming the framework of decolonization
Some of the steps for decolonial trans- that was being introduced by this institu-
formation have been taken, for example, tion. With this double burden, such an am-
by inviting non-Western artists to rework bivalent “yes” was doomed to be followed
museum collections or to become part of by a constant exchange of “no’s” between
strategies for diversifying the art institu- us and the host institution. The entire res-
tions’ representational politics. A few years idency stay has been filled with refusals
back, a similar invitation arrived through coming from both sides: “No, we can’t do
KUNCI’s email address, asking us to join this; no, there is no access to that; no, it is
a residency project themed around de­ impossible to make it happen; no, we don’t
colonizing knowledge. have the time or resources to do this,” and
so on. The final refusal from KUNCI came at

4 See also Annette’s reference to their notion of call to order in this book, namely in “Site for Unlearning
(Zwarte Piet)” from page 49ff and “Afterword: Unlearning as a Scaffolding for Living” on pages 223–37.

30
the end of the residency, when we rejected dis­­­advantaged families, have encountered
the idea of making the fruits of our labors made this all too clear. The problems that
into something the institution could keep as have been simmering in the background,
part of its property/collection. ranging from precarious housing situations
Another possible route of active non- and the loss of (side) jobs, to uncertainties
engagement, I think, lies in persisting with about residency permits and struggles to
the experiential values of knowledge, or pay tuition fees, have been laid bare. The
as another member of KUNCI, Rifky Akbar bigger institutions have offered little help
Pratama, describes it, “by keeping secret in response, aside from disciplining strat-
in practice.” This resonates with Édouard egies. The fierce struggle around the re­
Glissant’s (1997) notion of opacity, which he distribution of resources has become more
defines as an alterity that is unquantifiable, blatant. It is about time for these institutional
a diversity that exceeds categories of iden- practices to die.
tifiable difference. In my own practice, I op- With regard to time, although the vor-
erationalize this idea by insisting on telling tex metaphor seems to collapse time and
stories of becoming rather than being; by space, at its core this metaphor suggests
emphasizing the necessity of understand- speed, which is often distinguished as the
ing projects of decolonizing, commoning, temporal condition of the twenty-first cen-
antipatriarchy, and antiracism as unfinished tury. We counter this assumption by in-
processes that happen throughout our life­ voking a plethora of temporalities that are
span, which also go beyond the time we experienced in the vortex of institutional
spend within certain institutions, and per- lives within this conversation. Media theo-
haps even beyond the life course of the in- rist Sarah Sharma helps us understand the
stitutions themselves. temporal dimensions of institutional en-
tanglement. In her book In the Meantime,
Annette + Ferdi she focuses on how inequalities increase
In doing this conversation piece deep into “when the dominant way of apprehending
the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve been grimly time is guided by the discourses of speed-
reminded of the urgency of structural re- up. … [W]hat most populations encounter is
vision. As many others have said, the pan- not the fast pace of life but the structural de-
demic has worked like a magnifying glass mand that they must recalibrate in order to
on the conditions we live in on a global and fit into the temporal expectations demand-
a local scale, including the art academies ed by various institutions, social relation-
in Europe. The levels of distress that most of ships, and labor arrangements” (2014, 138).
the students, and especially non-European Yet, still, what does it mean to say that
students and students from socially it is time for certain institutional practices

31
to die, and what is the temporality of this in- knowing where it is headed: move either
stitutional death? Once more, we come up too fast or too slow and one gets swept
with divergent understandings of the roles up and up thrown around in the vortex of
taken and responses made when it comes change” (Ahenakew et al. 2020, 53).
to dealing with institutional death.
As a conceptual ground, we’ve Ferdi
looked at the ideas conceived by Vanessa The connotation of hospicing is perhaps
Andreotti and her colleagues, who later still too romantic, as it invokes forms of
founded the Gesturing Towards De­colonial care and support that are provided for
Futures collective.5 Their collective work those with terminal conditions, so their
explores the notion of decolonization and quality of life can be maintained before ar-
how the term is taken up and (mis)used riving at a “good” death. In my experience,
in the institutional practices playing out in the idea of institutional death has taken
soft-reform, radical-reform, and beyond- form in a far less pastoral manner. One of
reform institutional settings of higher ed- my closest encounters with institutional
ucation. As a radical form of decolonial death occurred in a workshop that I co-
practice, they refer to the practice of “hos- organized with the Visual Art Network in
picing” modern-colonial institutions, work- South Africa (VANSA) in Johannesburg in
ing toward the “necessity of enabling a 2018 as a part of our collaboration as mem-
‘good’ death through which important les- bers of Arts Collaboratory, a self-organized
sons are learned through the mistakes of network of twenty-five arts and cultural or-
the dying system” (Ahenakew et al. 2020, ganizations in Asia, the Middle East, Africa,
53). Attending to the already collapsing Latin America, and the Netherlands.
modern global capitalist system will take During the workshop, in which art-
more than accelerating its death before it ists and cultural producers from southern
is ready to go: “Hospicing enacts a willing- Africa participated, the term “aiming to die”
ness to learn enough from the (re)current came up often. It points to a complex layer
mistakes of the current system in order of experiences that were shared by some
to make different mistakes in caring for of the workshop participants with regard
the arrival of something new” (Ahenakew to the call to sustain one’s artistic practice
et al. 2015, 28) The vortex image is also and sociopolitical engagement amidst an
brought up by the collective when they de- art funding system that only pays heed
scribe hospicing as “the imperative to walk to measurements of success and growth,
steadily with the eye of the storm without while ignoring exhaustion, failure, and its

5 See www.decolonialfutures.net.

32
own exploitative orientation (Thajib 2019). a decision marked by the founding of the
These stories are also all too familiar School of Improper Education. Through
in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. As a collective the school, we learned with others (the
that has been in existence for around two school participants, mainly) about how to
decades, KUNCI has witnessed how other let go of our educational habits without
collectives and arts and cultural organiza- having to rush to come up with new ones.
tions in our local environment have strug- Fast forward to now, when the unfolding
gled with these challenges. Some of them dynamics in the school have further nur-
did not make it. In a way, it is a privilege for tured KUNCI’s ideas of dying. They have
us to have remained existing and to be able taught us about the need to continue
to share these stories now. But being able our practice with care, although without
to survive for almost two decades as a col- knowing what could be gained or pro-
lective has also brought to light questions duced at the end of it. This is the antithesis
about a possible end to our life course. of modern-colonial institutions’ avoidance
This question emerged around five of dying at any cost. How to hospice some-
years ago. Some of the KUNCI members thing that just won’t accept dying?
were growing older, moving to new places,
embarking on new fields of work or study, Annette
and building families. We asked, after work- I recognize what you describe so well.
ing for a relatively long time against the I have had the opportunity to be a part
status quo of past generations, how were (without being a team member) of certain
we positioned among the current genera- life circles (e.g., the midscale art organiza-
tion? Did the fact that we still existed after tion Casco Art Institute: Working for the
so much time implicate us in the status quo Commons in Utrecht) or long-term, self-
of the present time? The initial response to organized collaborative practices, though
this existential anxiety was the usual push in a European context. I witnessed pre­
forward: We should transform ourselves carious conditions, at the limits of physical
again (as this had been our common ap- and mental exhaustion brought on by an
proach in life). But then came follow-up immense pressure to perform and by aus-
questions: Why did we want to transform terity measures, including endless and
ourselves? Out of fear of being associated ever-­shortening funding cycles. The desire
with the status quo? So that we could stay and strenuous effort to survive is, I believe,
relevant? What would a “good” death look also supported by the conviction of carving
like for our collective life? out a space, however small or entangled,
This preoccupation inadvertently led that starts building other forms of working
us to delay the collective’s termination, together against and within the neoliberal

33
(or late capitalist-colonial) system. The sys- such an institution, but that these institu-
tem is ruthless if you don’t conform to the tions are in me.
cost-versus-benefit market logic that is so How can I push myself to see how
directly opposed to the time-intensive ac- I am implicated in that which is dying? It
tivities we are involved in. certainly frightens me; the scope is un­
Ferdi, the way you connect decolonial imaginable. And yet, who benefits from
work and hospicing brings up the question not having this discussion? My hope is that
of a “good” death, for whom? And who I am brave enough (despite and because of
avoids dying at any cost — can we unpack the privileges that I inhabit) to practice
this also for bigger institutions in Europe? “hospicing,” in the words of Gesturing
I find it very difficult to find people, al- Towards Decolonial Futures, because I
lies, who would allow for starting such a don’t really believe in a reform of this insti-
conversation about hospicing institutions. tutional system I am part of, nor do I believe
Is it too provocative? And don’t get me in the possibility of exiting the system. For
wrong, this has nothing to do with any me, hospicing entails careful palliative at-
kind of accelerationist programs and their tention, a care that needs to recognize that
grand, patriarchal gestures. Some of the this dying structure is inhabited by and in-
first reactions I would get when trying to habiting many of us, so we cannot not wish
initiate an (admittedly clumsy) conversation for it to continue.
were: “So you want to abandon and kill Part of this is then also hospicing a
the institution? Are you not afraid of losing modern conception of the “self” that has
your job?” Or the comment: “What a privi- molded itself to a merit-based, self-deter-
leged discussion! I have a family to feed.” mined or self-directed learning that inhabits
And very often, the conversation would classrooms and school policy reports alike.
then be over.6 The emphasis on the individual as a self-
Hospicing is another kind of work, I organizing, self-responsible, self-invested
believe. It is neither abandoning nor killing learner is presented as an end in itself,
the institution. So my question is, how can while at the same time it “pedagogizes” the
I — myself a descendant of Western insti- individual into a form of capital. This consti-
tutions — play a role in letting a system die tutes an intricate web between the learning
that I am part of? And by “being part of,” individual, labor, and capital, or, respective-
I mean not only that I am working within ly, between education, enterprise society,

6 See also Stephen Small and Brianne McGonigle Leyh moderated by Quinsy Gario, “Black Lives
Matter @ UU: Creating Change,” livestream, Event Series #2, “The Role of Higher Education,”
November 30, 2020, www.youtu.be/m6AZiASPlR8.

34
and the growth model of the knowledge our introductory lines here, on what we
economy (Krauss 2018, 90–97). mean by radical classroom practices. The
“self” in self-determined learning under
Ferdi meritocratic, neoliberal rule is grounded
Much of our work is aimed at going against in the individualization of learning and has
the dominant model, which characterizes little in common with the “self-determined
both learning and unlearning as individual learning” in the legacy of radical pedago-
processes. Instead, we aim at collective gies. The latter thinkers and practitioners
learning — for example, the cleaning togeth- can only be understood in their radicality
er that you and the Casco team did as a part when they are thought of in conjunction
of unlearning exercises (ibid.). In these ex- with their inseparable quest for social
ercises, what does a collectivity of people equality and justice. Their “self” is always
have to offer that individualization does not? already a collective self. Thus, we need to
Also, how do you navigate the current sta- ask what “conception of the self” (Wynter
tus of “collectivity” as a buzzword in the art 1994, 45) is presupposed in self-deter-
sector? mined learning and education, and who
is excluded from it. The massive transfor-
Annette mations that are happening in educational
I am doubtful of this hype, and of its attention ideologies, policies, and funding in neolib-
economy. We are talking about different eral times are nothing more than updated
timelines here. The hype surrounding col- versions of modern-colonial capitalism.
lectivity (and unlearning) hardly address- On a personal-political level, engaging
es an art academy or art organization as a with unlearning is a practice concerning
modern form of collectivity. The collectivity how to relate to each other, which certain-
that constitutes an art academy/organiza- ly is not without contestation and conflict.
tion prescribes how a group of people come Working collaboratively provides the pos-
together with specific (internalized) rules, sibility for allowing others to challenge the
habits, and conventions. For me, unlearning way I assume these relations too easily.
and collectivity are tied together on both This, in turn, might inform the way I engage
conceptual and personal-political levels. with hierarchies, differences, and conflicts
On a conceptual level, I try to debunk in these specific contexts. The cleaning to-
the implicit individual attribution that un/ gether we engaged in was an attempt to
learning seems to contain — as if it were up put this into practice, as many others have
to an individual to (consciously or uncon- done before.
sciously) learn or unlearn. Instead, we (un) To give some context: during the col-
learn as bodies (plural). This also ties in with laboration with the Casco team in Site for

35
Unlearning (Art Organisation), we helped discursive relationalities of a specific sit-
ourselves with a guiding question: how can uation in order to overcome social in-
we unlearn the separation between the so- justice. Decolonial scholarship (recently,
called back and front of an art institution? the already-mentioned work by Vázquez
Such a separation is the default structure Melken) 7 reminds us that next to the more
in most Western institutions. This question or less well-examined circulation of power
brings about a whole range of other ques- in the fields of capital, the nation-state, and
tions. How does this separation impact our gender, aesthetics is another field where
lives? How do we (not) sense and experi- power circulates. The arena of aesthetics
ence it? Why is one field hyper visible and regulates not only the way we represent
another rather invisible and inaccessible? the world but also how we experience our
How does the organization cover up the lives, our “selves” — the ways we sense,
latter field? How can we let these fields see, taste, and perceive the world, impact-
work in tandem? And who is the “we” that ing how we relate to each other.
is addressed here? Which “we” steps up in Against this background, for me un-
which situation? learning involves “becoming aware,” but
The collective cleaning exercise op- it is not limited to rational approaches. It
erated within this context and tried to ac- also attends to the affective, sensorial, and
cess these nodes. It came into being in collective registers of the body, as well as
resonance and company with the other un- to other nonrational approaches, faith, or
learning exercises, such as the ones con- fortune, including the overwhelming feel-
cerned with property relations, collective ing of impossibility. Unlearning has a clear
authorship, off-balancing chairs, and digital aim: namely, getting rid of my/our internal-
cleaning, to name only a few (Allan et al. ized, corporeal habits that per­petuate con-
2018). ditions of coloniality. In Site for Unlearning
Crucially, this work on unlearning (Art Organisation), we built on these con-
would not be possible without post­ siderations, with a specific focus on organ-
colonial and decolonial scholarship and izational process.
practices. “Unlearning one’s privileges,” Here, unlearning practices might al-
as post­colonial feminist scholar Gayatri low for small shifts that tackle internalized
Chakravorty Spivak (1990) put it in the habits of thinking and doing, institutional
1980s, remains rigorous today. I trans- routines, and deeply rooted colonial de-
late her demands into “attending to” the sires that determine how I perceive the
spatio­temporal, embodied, material, and world in a specific way. It is in this fracture

7 See also www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsdAzi-nj6U.

36
where unlearning introduces the possibility never be sure whether I play the system
of letting the system that I am part of die, or, in fact, the system plays me. Through
where the notion of hospicing links to hacking, there is a risk that I could make
unlearning. my everyday life a bit more bearable, and
therefore actually sustain the system or
Annette + Ferdi institution that I set out to intervene in. By
Theories of change introduce a perspec- contrast, I see the vigor of hospicing in the
tive or belief in how a situation can be way it involves my own colonial desires in
modified, corrected, or enhanced. Social order to let the system, and especially the
change and, even more so, theories about system in me, die. Hacking leaves these
such change are context-specific, evolving (colonial) desires untouched, I believe.
in a specific place and, even more so, with- Take the Hidden Curriculum (HC) pro-
in and over time. Using this framework, let’s ject. I set up this project as a collective
8

go back to what the Gesturing Towards study with secondary school students and
Decolonial Futures collective propos- teachers. Through it, we investigate in var-
es. Aside from “hospicing,” they discuss ious ways what a hidden curriculum — that
“hacking” as another decolonizing practice is, the things you learn alongside the of-
within an institutional setting of higher edu- ficial curriculum — could be and what it
cation. This approach requires one to “play might do at a specific school. We look on
the game” of the institution while trying a minuscule level at both the normalization
to bend the rules toward other ends than processes and the subtle, or not-so-subtle,
“winning” (Ahenakew 2020, 53). ways of subverting everyday life at the
school. We develop approaches meant to
Annette help delimit our experiences of what is (not)
I find the hacking approach very compel- possible. We study how the imagination is
ling, and many of us with institutional po- canceled in order to generate the subjectiv-
sitions aim to practice this kind of radical ities these institutions need in order to rein-
reform. While I believe in the necessity of itiate the status quo. At its best, I think, the
hacking with regard to the redistribution of HC project works as a continuous practice
resources, I am not convinced of its effi- of how not to accept one’s environment,
cacy when it comes to working toward a a system, as a given. This happens on the
different institutional system altogether — levels of both practice and the imagination.
the beyond-reform. Why? In their text, the I still wonder where hacking, let alone hos-
collective gives a partial answer: I can picing, comes in. Looking at the HC project

8 See “Hidden Curriculum” from page 127 in this book and www.hidden-curriculum.info.

37
as an insertion into a specific social institu- that we seek to overcome, especially when
tion with the desire to disrupt hegemonic the realities of individual suffering are
structures, there remains some ambiva- turned into a means of establishing hier­
lence that we might be both subverting and archical differences (the discourse of “I am
perpetuating the existing system. less or more privileged than you”), while
In the HC project I see yet another neg­lecting once again our collective re-
potential of hacking to corrode practices sponsibility for addressing the structures
from within an institution, where individu- that preserve this hierarchy.
al dissatisfaction meets an overwhelming When I listen to the stories of strug-
collective force against an institutional gle that are shared in various gatherings
system. Imagine the gravity, if many unim- and radical classroom settings, it becomes
portant practices could amount to an as- clear that the frustrations and exhaustions
surance that an institution does not have to of dealing with the impossibilities you have
be the way it is. Might a practice of hacking mentioned are often projected onto each
meet hospicing there? other — therefore individualizing — rather
Ferdi, I also connect the idea of hos- than being aimed against the structuring
picing to your work on both affect and lis- conditions. My knee-jerk reaction to this
tening. How would you frame this on the is to try to capture the swirling affects and
spectrum of existing practices within and wield them toward possibilities for a collec-
against modern-colonial institutions? tive action. But, coming back to the image
of the vortex, how much of this instinct is
Ferdi tied to the power to distance oneself from
Many of us continue to do what we are do- the entanglements that brought us togeth-
ing while being overwhelmed by the grief, er, and how much is at risk of recentering
hopelessness, and frustration of dealing agency for individuals?
with the ongoing violence of modern in- But as we have tried to simulate in this
stitutions. Routines such as collective lis- conversation, through vulnerable listening
tening and storytelling are invented both and storytelling, it is possible for people
to enable efforts to “chip, chip, chip away from differently grounded experiences,
the institutional walls,” as Sara Ahmed has practices, and living-working conditions to
poetically described it (Ahmed in Fitzgerald speak on an eye-to-eye level. Differences
2017), and to become spaces to tend to can become the thresholds that allow us to
the collective sores caused by continual connect with each other and, from there,
friction against these walls. But more often to imagine a common ground that is re-
than not, unfortunately, these moments re- fracted through situatedness and alterity.
produce some of the institutional violence Thinking along with observations made

38
by Nira Yuval-Davis (1999) and Veronica else needs to be done, but at the same time
Gago (2020), on transversal feminist works this “something else” can only be realized
that have outmaneuvered the dichotomy through continually and collectively doing
between “us” and “them” as well as the things differently from the ways they are
establish­ment of boundaries between the currently being done.
self and the nonself in building political
movements, I see this conversation in itself
as a vortex in which two singular position-
ings mingle without necessarily merging,
while at the same time pulling in various
directions from their respective histories,
contexts, and relationships.
It is in the spirit of transversely attend-
ing to one’s own experience with others
that listening and storytelling become pow-
erful tools. They help me to stay within the
realm of emergent yet suspended poten-
tial and to weigh how much we do what we
do — why we keep on doing what we do,
despite all the impossibilities — as a mat-
ter of endurance. Understood differently,
rather than simply fulfilling a “will to sur-
vive,” endurance takes the form of what
Elizabeth Povinelli describes as an “ability
to suffer and yet persist” (2011, 32). It per-
tains to practices of “keeping on going
with,” “staying with,” “waiting out,” “getting
along with,” and “withstanding” structural
violence while forging collective responses
to this damaging structure.

Annette + Ferdi
While the different practices we have elab-
orated thus far have done something to-
ward letting modern-colonial institutions
die, they have not done enough. Something

39
40
Site for Unlearning
(Zwarte Piet)

Earlier parts of this essay are published in Bauer and Krauss 201 3 and Krauss 2017, 6 3–77. The appearance of
Zwarte Piet and its sociopolitical entanglements, which have, at the time of writing, slowly changed over the
last five years (albeit only in larger cities), are a departure point for this research into unlearning. This
contribution in the book does not give a comprehensive history of the Dutch Zwarte Piet controversies, but
rather delineates the conditions of where and how to unlearn Zwarte Piet as a symptom of a much bigger
discussion on systemic racism, to form a more robust practice of unlearning.

41
 Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet) is an umbrella term for a collaborative artis-
tic research project involving interventions, institutional work, debates, and
texts since 2011. It profoundly builds on the project Read the Masks. Tradition
Is Not Given (2008–12) that began as a collaboration between Swedish artist
Petra Bauer, Dutch cultural and activist groups Untold, and Doorbraak, and
myself.1 We came together in 2008 to investigate the Dutch phenomenon of
Zwarte Piet (Black Piet) as a racist representation of blackness. The blackface
figure who assists Sinterklaas is the patron saint of children and a key part
of the annual Dutch gift-giving winter holiday. The aim of this work was to
better understand the institutional structures in Dutch society that uphold
this racist tradition, its entwinement with colonialism, and broader racist
structures of which it is a symptom, and to explore how to contribute to
re-opening this discussion. We studied the burgeoning — and abating —
debates and protests against Zwarte Piet over the last 60 years, forms of
resistance toward unlearning Zwarte Piet.
Read the Masks has oriented my work toward unlearning without fram-
ing it as such. Here, I continue to seek out where, when, and how I might
unlearn Zwarte Piet in relation to institutional conflicts around Zwarte Piet.
I look back at three bigger situations — first, the context of the Van Abbe-
museum’s Be(com)ing Dutch research and exhibition project in 2008 in which
Read the Masks was developed, including installation/announcement (fig. 1)
of a performance/protest march and debate (both 2008) and subsequent
film (2009, fig. 2–4); second, the involvement of Utrecht higher education
in the Zwarte Piet tradition; and third, a court case related to Zwarte Piet
in 2013–14. Working through these cases and experiences, I consider how
to write about and practice solidarity while being complicit in Western co-
loniality due to my heritage and work as an artist, and teacher at the HKU
University of the Arts Utrecht.

1 For detailed project acknowledgements see pages 53–54 in this text.

42
 Fig. 1 Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss, Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given,
installation/announcement view, Be(com)ing Dutch, Van Abbemuseum, 2008. Photo: Peter Cox

Zwarte Piet

Zwarte Piet is part of the Sinterklaas tradition, celebrated in the Netherlands

and Flanders from mid-November until December 5th when presents are
exchanged, brought by Sinterklaas via steamboat from Spain. The figure
Sinterklaas is similar to Saint Nicholas, whose name day is celebrated in other
parts of Western Europe on December 6th. The subservient companions
Zwarte Pieten (Black Petes) who accompany Sinterklaas have been until very
recently, mostly enacted by white people in blackface, with curly-haired wigs,
golden earrings, thickly painted red lips, colorful costumes, and imitating
Surinamese or Moroccan accents (Wekker 2016, 140). The hierarchical
relationship between the white Sinterklaas, a bishop atop his white horse,
with his black helpers walking alongside and entertaining the crowd with
supposedly funny, but also scary acts, is widely encouraged. Zwarte Piet

43
 dolls, sweets, and images can be seen every year in store windows alongside
brightly packaged holiday merchandise. Among its many descriptions, one
of the earliest is in the children’s book Sint Nicolaas en zijn knecht (Saint
Nicholas and His Helper, c.1850). Amsterdam-based teacher Jan Schenkman
offers a figure strikingly similar to the contemporary one and introduces the
steamboat as part of the tradition. These depictions have had a storied impact
on how people view blackfaced figures in the Netherlands. They extend to
a wider position on racialization and what anthropologist Gloria Wekker
calls “white innocence” of “Dutch self-representation” (Wekker 2016, 16–18)
in considering these figures as welcoming and friendly, or, covered in soot.
The Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet tradition is not a marginal event enjoyed
only by some groups, but rather one of the main societal and cultural events
in the Netherlands that permeates many societal sectors (economy, schools,
popular culture, and so forth). Back in 2008, a poll of several thousand people
across the Netherlands taken by the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural
Heritage revealed the Sinterklaas tradition was the most “beloved tradition,” 2
followed by setting up the Christmas tree, and Queensday.
Since 2011 the position toward Zwarte Piet changed considerably in
the broader public, initiated through ongoing protest by a broad alliance of
antiracist groups and organizations in the Netherlands denouncing the racism
of Zwarte Piet and irreversibly changing the landscape so that municipalities,
schools, and shops have increasingly banned the figure. Nevertheless, as of
2022, one third of the Dutch population remained convinced that Zwarte
Piet should not be changed, down from 50 percent in 2020, 61 percent in
2017, and 93 percent in 2011.  3

Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given

Read the Masks consists of different elements and stages, involving an instal-
lation/announcement for a performance/protest march (2008, fig. 1), debate
(2008), and a film (2009, fig. 2–4). It publicly started off in the framework

2 Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP), “Pakjesavond traditie nummer 1,” November 1, 2008.
3 See Milan Driessen and Asher van der Schelde, “Opnieuw meer Nederlanders voor verandering uiterlijk
Piet,” i&o research, December 2, 2022.

44
 Fig. 2 Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss,
Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given, film still (choir), 2009

45
 Fig. 3 Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss, Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given,
film still (Annie Fletcher, Glenn Codfried, and Sven Lütticken), 2009

Fig. 4 Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss, Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given,
film still (Gloria Wekker), 2009

46
of the exhibition Be(com)ing Dutch, the final event of a two-year project on
Dutch identity, nationality, citizenship, and social cohesion curated by di-
rector Charles Esche and curator Annie Fletcher at the Van Abbemuseum,
Eindhoven, May 24 – September 14, 2008. For the Be(com)ing Dutch exhibi-
tion, the installation/announcement (see fig. 1) of placards and banners carried
historical slogans from the last 60 years of protests against Zwarte Piet in
the Netherlands. These had been used as book titles, film quotes, speeches,
and more, and were ready for use in the upcoming march/performance on
August 30, 2008, along the seasonal route of the November Sinterklaas parade
in Eindhoven.
The festive speeches, spoken word performances, and other interven-
tions by critical voices, aimed not only to mimic the yearly parade, but
to counter it and resist through public acknowledgement. We wanted to
stage and present the differing positions about the tradition in the streets of
Eindhoven to re-open a discussion about these. A few days before, Read the
Masks was picked up by many of the bigger newspapers and internet fora in
the Netherlands. The articles and subsequent comments that emerged were
often very critical of the project — many bluntly racist, some defending the
tradition as it was, and some threatening violence against those involved and
the museum. Due to these fierce reactions from the Dutch news, on social
media, from politicians, and the more general public, the Van Abbemuseum
felt compelled to cancel the performance/protest march, which once more
triggered intense discussions around national identity and freedom of speech.
As a response, Bauer and myself together with the Van Abbemuseum
and the Dutch art foundation Fonds BKVB organized a debate in autumn
2008 on Zwarte Piet and our project, titled Zwarte Piet Of Niet? Kunnen
We Er Over Praten? (Zwarte Piet — Yes or No? Can we talk about it?). The
debate took place at the Van Abbemuseum, was open to the public, and
contributors included musician and producer Blaxtar, director Charles
Esche, curator Annie Fletcher, researcher John Helsloot, moderator Chris
Keulemans, researcher Jos Mangnus, TV personality Prem Radhakishun,
artist Felix de Rooy, and ourselves. Reflections and discussions were shared
on the role and impact of Zwarte Piet in Dutch society, xenophobia, and
the relation between art and politics. Subsequently, together with many col-
laborators,4 Petra Bauer and I made a film in response under the same title
as the project, which would become the most visible part of Read the Masks.

47
 It considers Zwarte Piet in a broader societal picture, the violent reactions
toward protest against it, and institutional responsibilities including why
the project could not leave the walls of the museum. The film features com-
ments from stakeholders such as anthropologist Gloria Wekker who gives
an account of Zwarte Piet deeply rooted in the so-called Dutch cultural
archive,5 and a symptom of white innocence, radio maker Glenn Codfried
giving insights into resistance practices through Mart Radio program in De
Bijlmer Amsterdam, Felix de Rooy talking about his work as filmmaker and
specifically his experience in curating the exhibition Zwart over Wit at the
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in the 1980s. The film shows Annie Fletcher
and Charles Esche discussing the heated events and media responses follow-
ing Read the Masks in the context of Be(com)ing Dutch at the museum, and
art critic Sven Lütticken reflecting on the cancellation of the project.6 In the
film, a choir recites a script based on press commentary, and the outcry in
Dutch (social) media and politics about the project and its audacity to cri-
tique the racism of the figure of Zwarte Piet. More resistance strategies are
exchanged that range from everyday individual actions such as boycotts and
the refusal of Zwarte Piet in elementary schools, petitions, radio programs,
street protests, etc. to a history of actions against Zwarte Piet written on a
blackboard (see fig. 5). The film is freely accessible online,7 directed toward
those working on similar questions and building for future actions.

4 By then our close collaborators (Doorbraak and Untold) had taken a step back; they, however,
committed to supporting the project by participating in certain events and as feedback partners.
5 Following Edward Said, Gloria Wekker describes the cultural archive as a “repository of memory”
that “is located in many things, in the way we think, do things, and look at the world, in what we find
(sexually) attractive, in how our affective and rational economies are organized and intertwined.
Most important, it is between our ears and in our hearts and souls, […] but its content is also silently
cemented in policies, in organizational rules, in popular and sexual cultures, and in common sense
everyday knowledge, and all of this is based on four hundred years of imperial rule” (Wekker 2016, 19).
6 Gloria Wekker made an in-depth analysis of the emails that we and the Van Abbemuseum received
and dedicated a chapter to it in her book White Innocence (2016, 1 39–68). Sven Lütticken explored
the project in relation to concepts of autonomy (2011); for the perspective of a curator of the Van
Abbemuseum, see Ten Thije 2017.
7 See Bauer et al., Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given, 2009, video, www.vimeo.com/5 3495267.

48
Call to Order: A Question of Unlearning

What calls me to order?

What calls my body to order?
What calls my desires to order?
What calls my obedience to order?
What calls my agency to order?
Who calls anyway?
What calls?
To which order?
Why call?
— (Baldauf et al. 2016, 85) 8

The Van Abbemuseum’s role within the project — its support for and actions
against — occurred at various levels. Many staff members were critical about
the project early on, making having conversations with those same members
a necessary part of Read the Masks. We worked closely on this with curator
Annie Fletcher, our contact person, who was supportive of the project and its
inherent critique of Zwarte Piet. Yet the fierce reactions that saw the perfor-
mance and protest march canceled were not the first time that the museum
(or its staff) called us to order. Borrowing from Stefano Harney and Fred
Moten’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (2013), “call to
order” does not only refer to serious interventions, but also to restoring public
order with regard to threats against the museum, its staff, its reputation, and
economy, in addition to us and our collaborators. Moreover, “call to order”
also comprises more subtle, yet no less effective, actions for restoring a status
quo. In this instance, the museum yielded to violent, populist, and economic
forces endorsed by a majority holding onto a white monolithic national cul-
ture; prime minister Mark Rutte in 2013 was still saying, “Zwarte Piet is nou
eenmaal zwart, daar kan ik niets aan veranderen,” meaning, effectively, that

8 The questions were generated in the context of the research project Spaces of Commoning at
Academy of Fine Art Vienna during Vienna Art Week, November 17, 2015, and as a response to a
public discussion that we organized with Stefano Harney around the notion and practice of study
featured in Harney and Moten’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (201 3).

49
 Black Pete is black, and there’s nothing that can be changed about that.9
The museum was officially pilloried in parliament by right-wing populist
Geert Wilders who urged depriving the Van Abbemuseum of city funding if
they continued to support such a project; moreover, the museum lost quite
a substantial number of “friends of the museum,” who regularly supported
them (also economically). “The complicity between cultural and economic
value systems is acted out in almost every decision we make” (Spivak 1985,
83). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s claim in “Scattered Speculations on the
Question of Value” is still relevant till today, and describes well what hap-
pened during this period. Spivak refers to the capacity of capitalism to capture
culture and tie it to economic value; here, it is brought in direct proximity to
racism and reveals the effects it has when all three aspects (culture, economy,
racialization) are addressed in public. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley summa-
rizes it aptly as follows: “the secret to capitalism’s survival is racism” (2022).
The decision to cancel this specific part of the project was taken unilaterally
by director Charles Esche, who in the same meeting, articulated the museum’s
future commitment to the project, complicating the situation.
Alliances, however messy, are entangled with calls to order. These
fragile relationships are time-based agreements that are built on difference,
hierarchy, and power-based conversations. I have always considered the Van
Abbemuseum a critical agent and ally who has shown commitment to the
project despite or because of the calls to order and how they can be read
as disciplinary, supportive, or protective (of staff) actions. Members from
Untold and Doorbraak pointed out that we needed to take the momentum
and continue as it was not about two artists whose project got canceled,
as frequently portrayed in media, but about having critical voices against
Zwarte Piet reach the news again after years of absence. In 2008/2009, no
other museum in the Netherlands on the scale of the Van Abbemuseum

9 See statement by Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Zwarte Piet during a press conference on October 18,
2013, NOS, www.nos.nl/artikel/5640 38-rutte-piet-is-nou-eenmaal-zwart. For a more detailed discussion
of Rutte’s statement, see Van der Pijl and Goulordava 2014. In 2019, Rutte announced that the Zwarte
Piet tradition needs to change, “Dutch PM Rutte sceptical about Black Pete tradition,” BBC, June 5,
2020, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-529 3762 3. However, he was silent on the violence against
people within the anti-Zwarte Piet action groups, see “Waarom praat u niet met Kick Out Zwarte Piet,
premier Rutte?,” NRC, November 22, 2019, www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/11/22/waarom-praat-u-niet-met-
ons-premier-rutte-a 3981 324.

50
would commit to hosting an artistic project critical of Zwarte Piet. This is
remarkable now given it seems that many stakeholders in the cultural world
in the Netherlands can hardly imagine ever not having been against Zwarte
Piet. One of the project’s trajectories involved highlighting a long tradi-
tion of invisiblizing and silencing critique around the figure of Zwarte Piet.
When it comes to museum culture, the exhibition Wit over Zwart curated
by Felix de Rooy in 1989 in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, constitutes
one major exception to that. However, as De Rooy explains in the film, cri-
tique of Zwarte Piet also encountered severe calls to order. One example was
the response to Wit over Zwart by Dutch Minister of Welfare, Health, and
Culture Hedy d’Ancona, who, while visiting the exhibition, acknowledged
the racism of displayed folklore objects, toys, and advertising widespread in
the US and other European countries, but publicly rejected the claims that
Zwarte Piet was racist, and accused De Rooy of blatant exaggeration.10
After the cancellation, the news peaked again. However, the discussion
around racism and Zwarte Piet disappeared and shifted toward two (white)
artists whose right for freedom of expression was denied. This change of
debate was remarkable, and Gloria Wekker made us attentive to some of
its nuances. White academia and people from the cultural scene had hardly
commented on the media stir around our critique of Zwarte Piet, and now the
comments, Wekker observed, were almost solely directed toward freedom of
expression, pushing aside debates on racism again. Commentary on freedom
of expression was linked to artists’ rights to autonomy, which, separated from
racism,11 either rendered complaints of racism illegitimate, or assigned them
to activist claims outside the museum’s domain. This was also reflected in the
media coverage of the conflict. Whereas the project’s participation in disputes
on racism appeared in the political sections of newspapers, the cancellation
and discussions of freedom of expression appeared in the culture section.
Harney and Moten remind us that a call to order is not only executed
in a reprimand handed down by a person in power for a particular activity
according to particular rules, but needs to be considered in much more subtle

10 See Bauer et al., Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given, video, 19 min 56 sec – 22 min.
11 These dynamics link tightly into the discussions on the impact of the deeply entrenched division
between what is called “artist critique” and “social critique.” See, for example, Krauss 2018, 74–92.

51
 situations, however complex and powerful, like the simple gesture of starting
a class and what this means for producing knowledge, and relationalities: 1  2
What I’m supposed to do is to call that class to order, which
presupposes that there is no actual, already existing organ-
ization happening, that there’s no study happening before
I got there, that there was no study happening, no planning
happening. I’m calling it to order, and then something can
happen — then knowledge can be produced. That’s the pre-
sumption (Harney and Moten 2013, 125).
The separation between claims for freedom of expression from those
against racism was another more subtle call to order, as was the demand
to decide whether Read the Masks was an art project or activism, residing
as it did within the porous boundaries between protest march and artistic
performance, artistic installation and announcement, cancellation and con-
tinuing. Harney and Moten speak to the difficulties of blurring deep-rooted
boundaries that call us “into a certain kind of identity. […] [I]n order to be
recognizable, you have to answer the call to order — and ... the only genuine
and authentic mode of living in the world is to be recognizable within the
terms of order” (124–25).
For this book, a call to order, as a practice that reaffirms the institution
in power on many also subtle levels, can be used to investigate the relationship
between regulating processes of a museum like the Van Abbemuseum, public
debates on art and activism, disciplinary mechanisms in secondary school
classrooms (as outlined in the text in this book titled “Hidden Curriculum”
on pages 127–65), and bodily incorporations of thinking and doing through
which I call myself to order. Traditions (like the figure of Zwarte Piet) func-
tion particularly well in these inconspicuous calls to order by re-instantiating
certain ways of living and perceiving through their quasi-naturalness (it has
always been like that) and reaffirming implicit knowledges through yearly
enactments on a private, public, institutional, bodily scale. A call to order
has a grip on my body, on thinking and doing, enacted through institutional
structures, bodily gestures, and discursive mechanisms. It is but one way to

12 I want to thank Simone Bader, Moira Hille, Marion Porten, and Ruth Sonderegger, for a particularly
fruitful exchange; together we prepared and participated in a reading-translating-workshop on Harney
and Moten’s take on call to order in the framework of the twenty-year celebration of maiz (2014)
in Linz, September 30, 2014.

52
understand how existent structures speak through my body. It is here that
calls to order and everyday racism (Essed 1991) are closely interlinked.1 3
Embracing both institutional racism and individual racism without separat-
ing them from each other, Essed describes institutional and individual racism
as “different positions and relations through which racism operates” (1991,
36). Accordingly, individual and institutional calls to order are about differ-
ent interpellations through which a specific order, status quo, or hegemonic
regime is enacted and sustained. Being attentive to versatile calls to order
in relation to everyday racism is instrumental in the study of institutional
processes and their habits and how unlearning processes can take shape.

Project Acknowledgements

Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given, installation/announcement of

performance/protest march (placards and banners) by Petra Bauer,
Doorbraak, Annette Krauss, and Untold, in the framework of Be(com)ing
Dutch, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2008.

Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given. Zwarte Piet Of Niet? Kunnen We
Er Over Praten?, debate, organized by Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss,
FondsBKVB, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, November 11, 2008. Panel included
Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss, Charles Esche, John Helsloot, Chris Keulemans
(moderation), Jos Mangnus, Prem Radhakishun, Kevin “Blaxtar” de Randamie,
and Felix de Rooy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqowU6_MDCE.

Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given, video, 72 min, 2009, by Petra Bauer
and Annette Krauss, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons,
Utrecht, 2009 (premiere); Momentum Biennale, Norway, 2009;
and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2011. www.vimeo.com/5 3495267.
Thanks to Miriyam Aouragh, Christoph Baumgartner, Meret Baumgartner,
Christiane Berndes, Marlena Blaauw, Nicole de Boer, Julia Boix-Vives,
Maayke Botman, Binna Choi, Glenn Codfried, Ernestine Comvalius, Ellen Dekker,
Doorbraak, Kim Einarsson, Charles Esche, Rik Fernhout, Annie Fletcher,

13 See “Afterword: Unlearning as a Scaffolding for Living” in this book on pages 22 5– 39.

53
Quinsy Gario, Ozkan Golpinar, Klaas van Gorkum, Mare Hamersma,
Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, Tim Heijman, Miguel Heilbron, John Helsloot,
Het Zuidelijk Toneel, Saskia Holmkvist, Claudia Hummel, Iratxe Jaio, Stefan
Jonsson, Joseph Jordan, Nancy Jouwe, Annette van der Laan, Charl
Landvreugd, Magnus Liistamo, Ingrid Lowell, Sven Lütticken, Michele Masucci,
Gemma Medina, Magali Meijers, Mara Michels, Wendelien van Oldenborgh,
Freddy Olsson, Merijn Oudenampsen, Emily Pethick, Kevin “Blaxtar” de
Randamie, André Reeder, Ivet Reyes Maturano, Felix de Rooy, Gabrielle
Schleijpen, Lilian Scholtes, Joy Smith, Anne Stam, Margo Tjonajoe, Steven ten
Thije, Untold, Michael Uwemedimo, Marina Vishmidt, Joe Vos, Otmar Watson,
Gloria Wekker, Harry Westerink, Marta Zarzycka, and Simone Zeefuik.
For more on Petra Bauer, see www.f-a-m.group; Untold is a cultural
organization aimed at addressing young people. Untold works with the history
and the present situation of Black people in the Netherlands, www.untold.nl;
Doorbraak is a radical-Left activist group that works against racism and
neo-imperialism within Dutch society, www.doorbraak.eu.

Intervention/Debates/Petitions 201 3–14 : Jerry Afriyie, Iman Al Sayed,

Cee Bakker, Gianmaria Colpani, Doorbraak, Feministisch Verzet, Annette Krauss,
Kritische Studenten Utrecht (Alexander Beunder, Sophia Beunder, Merel
de Buck, Loes de Kleijn, and Ying Que), Maartje Oostdijk, SFU (Zwarte Piet),
and Gloria Wekker.

Tools for the Times, HKU School of Fine Art student-teacher initiative,
2018–present; members have been Quincy Alwin, Megan Auð Auður, Roxanne
Bender, Saskia Benitez, Esther Bos, Nathalie van den Bovenkamp, Caithlin
Chong, Kiana Girigorie, Tessa Hendricks, Charli Herrington, Carina Jansen,
Annette Krauss, Lapis Lazuli, Amber van der Linden, Sarah McLacken,
Angel-Rose Oedit-Doebé, Ege Ozer, Sam Reekers, and Manju Sharma.
Thanks to @not.a.playground, Sarita Bajnath, Siem De Boer, Els Cornelis,
Quincy Gario, HKU Educate the Educators, HkuSalon, Nancy Jouwe, Shirin
Mirachor, Narges Mohammadi, Myrthe Naagtzam, Falke Pisano, and stranded fm.

54
Zwarte Piet and Tertiary Education

Next to the site of the museum, Utrecht University also called to order in
relation to Zwarte Piet, albeit in a different way than the Van Abbemuseum.
They firmly held onto the tradition of Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet, despite
societal discussion and changes. Additionally, from 2013 until 2015, through
several actions, meetings, and petitions (within the university),14 a group of
teachers, students, alumni, and associates at the university, including myself,
urged Bert van de Zwaan in his capacity as Rector Magnificus at Utrecht
University to refrain from the symbolic act of officially welcoming Sinterklaas
and Zwarte Piet during the yearly parade.15 The start of the tradition is
performed in an official, festive celebration with the mayor and the rector,
in this case Van de Zwaan who, as a representative of one of the biggest
universities in the Netherlands, endorsed this practice. The wide influence
of this symbolic act was felt far beyond the university. In some of the many
conversations I had with parents about Zwarte Piet, they defended Zwarte
Piet by referring to the university’s yearly participation in the tradition and
their knowledge authority. Rector Van de Zwaan refused to abandon the
university’s participation in welcoming Zwarte Piet right up until his retire-
ment in 2018, while city councils, schools, enterprises, and shops throughout
the Netherlands refrained from endorsing the figure. The university did not
publicly counter the figure, on the contrary, the rector’s decision had been
endorsed by many university teachers, staff, and students who sometimes
rejected our claims, calling us to order by diminishing our forms of protest,
in the form of public manifestations,16 petitions, and open letters. There
was some success, with Utrecht City Council refraining in 2020, meaning
the Utrecht University would stop also (Hoving 2020). The accompanying
discussions on white privilege, and unlearning within the university struc-
ture, have only slowly entered the university,17 whose longstanding support
of the Zwarte Piet tradition is but one example of how racism is perpetuated
by Dutch tertiary education.

14 Petition to urge university to refrain from Zwarte Piet, Kritische Studenten, October 25, 2014.
15 I want to thank those with whom I could take on the actions, discussions, and interventions
together. For names, see project acknowledgements on pages 53–54 in this publication. For more
information on the actions, see also DUB (2014) and Kritische Studenten (2016).
16 See the anti-Zwarte Piet speeches during public manifestation on November 1, 2014, Utrecht.

55
Fig. 5 Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss, Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given, installation view, blackboard,
alternative history, For Eindhoven, Van Abbemuseum, 2011. Photo: Annette Krauss

56
 Discussions also remain sensitive at the art academy HKU University
of the Arts Utrecht, where I had worked at the time of writing as a teacher.
From 2018 I participated in the BA Fine Art student-led initiative “Stop
Black Face & Let Us Talk About It.” Posters referencing Zwarte Piet at the
academy were repeatedly ripped down and smeared with racist slurs. As a
result, we initiated the student-teacher-led initiative Tools for the Times,18
which challenges xenophobic institutional structures and everyday racism
in art school. Still active through various working groups, the platform has
found institutional support to discuss how the academy can become more
sensitive toward diverse voices and act upon racist behavior. At the univer-
sity and art academy, sites of struggle in which racist structures are deeply
seated and upheld, unlearning cannot only be a practice of becoming aware,
as importantly unlearning is about keeping the focus on and enduring the
struggle with the aim of getting rid of racist structures.

Legacies of Protest Against Zwarte Piet

Right up until now, Read the Masks and Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet) refuse
attempts and calls to order that identify the projects as “unique” interrup-
tions in the Zwarte Piet debate, to instead build on an ongoing temporality
connected to past protests. The 2008 experience of lagging critical public
discussion did not mean there was a lack of critical voices. Rather, these voices
are ignored, ridiculed, or harshly shut down. The Zwarte Piet debate had
been smoldering for decades, and since 2011 reached a public visibility and
intensity through a series of impactful events including the violent arrest of
artists Kno’lege Cesare (alias Jerry Afriyie) and Quinsy Gario, Siri Venning,
and Steffi Weber for wearing T-shirts with the text “Zwarte Piet is racism”
while silently attending the Sinterklaas parade in Dordrecht in November
2011. The anti-Black Pete campaigns of action groups such as Zwarte Piet

17 Claims have been more successfully launched within the University of Amsterdam. Student protests
around the so-called Maagdenhuis occupation in 2015 resulted in the formation of a powerful group
of students of color (university of color). Their demands to stop any active participation that relates to
Zwarte Piet is but one of many claims for a more democratic and diverse university (Meulenbelt 2015).
18 See the Instagram account @toolsforthetimes, initiated by students Kiana Girigorie (who also started
Stop Black Face & Let Us Talk About It), together with Megan Auður and Sarah McLacken.

57
 is Racism,19 Stop Blackface/Zwarte Piet Niet, 20 the Black Archives, 21 and
Nederland Wordt Beter foundation,2  2 include street protests, awareness pro-
jects, community work, negotiations with municipalities, schools, and other
institutions. Since 2014, these initiatives joined forces in the group Kick Out
Zwarte Piet (KOZP), which began with organizing protests primarily in cities
chosen for the annual start of the tradition. Since 2017 they have organized
more than a dozen often simultaneous demonstrations and arranged for trans-
port, security, and other logistics for people to participate elsewhere in the
Netherlands. At the same time, KOZP and related groups have entered into
dialogue with municipalities and companies and developed study material
for schools and kindergartens. Their impact made it impossible to ignore the
racism of Zwarte Piet any longer, and linked it to a broader discussion on
racism in the Netherlands. Wekker introduced the term “second anti-racist
movement” to describe these actions and protests since 2011 (2016, X).23 In
summer 2020, KOZP, Nederland Wordt Beter, the Black Archives,24 and
Black Queer & Trans Resistance, organized a huge protest of around ten
thousand people in Amsterdam, inspired by the Black Lives Matter move-
ment in the US and in response to the killing of George Floyd by police on
May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic people showed
their solidarity with victims of anti-Black racism and protested against racism
in the US, the Netherlands, and more widely Europe. These action groups
made their vision, actions, and demands explicit in the Zwarte Manifest,25
which is a rich resource against racism across many sectors of society and
yet another document that stipulates the inextricable relationships between
the racist figure of Zwarte Piet and structural racism.
In 2007/2008 we took up the work of unlearning the dominant nar-
rative that these protests allegedly did not exist. It is there, where I see an
important part of the work of unlearning — the laborious work of searching

19 For a detailed timeline of important events since 2011, see Nederland Wordt Beter,
www.nederlandwordtbeter.nl/tijdlijn.
20 See Stopblackface, www.stopblackface.com.
21 See the Black Archives, www.theblackarchives.nl.
22 See Nederland Wordt Beter.
23 For “first anti-racist movement,” see “Begrippenlijst,” Zwart Manifest.
24 See the Black Archives.
25 See “Begrippenlijst,” Zwart Manifest.

58
and referencing previous actions, despite, or even because of, the dominant
narrative that jumps to the ill-informed conclusion that people had been just
fine with Zwarte Piet.26 This referencing-as-resistance asks for a different
form of attention economy, which resists art’s appetite for innovation and
spectacular new beginnings. At the same time it works against an allegedly
rational argument of white superiority fed by white innocence.
Through the evolving network of people, we were brought into contact
with stories, notes, documentation, and everyday practices against Zwarte
Piet, amounting to street protests, (academic) writings, films, performances,
and printed matter. For example, Rahina Hassankhan’s publication Zwarte
Piet: Al is hij zo zwart als roet (1988) and Lulu Helder and Scotty Gravenberch’s
campaign “Zwarte Piet = Zwart Verdriet” (1994–97) with the resulting edited
volume Sinterklaasje, kom maar binnen zonder knecht (Sinterklaas, come in
without your servant, 1999) that includes texts amongst others by Teun van
Dijk, Philomena Essed, Anil Ramdas, and Astrid Roemer, have provided
more examples for protest, discursive frameworks, and historical research.
Some of the interlocutors refer to everyday acts of resistance that include
speaking to parents in schools about the racial stereotyping of Zwarte Piet,
going to teachers, headmasters, and school boards, addressing people in
neighborhoods, or friends. Scholar and activist Patricia Schor points out that
these practices are very often met with retort: grim rejection, ridicule, or
abandonment. It takes courage to engage in these encounters, though they
are very often not regarded as being on the same level as publicly voiced
resistance (Schor 2013).
Wekker and Schor have pointed to the “gendered division of labor in
the protest against Zwarte Piet.” While public attention has predominantly
centered around mostly Black 27 men, everyday protest at schools is taken
up by mostly Black women (Wekker 2016, 157). After 2011, media coverage

26 The meticulous work of referencing has also been part of discussions with Quinsy Gario during
Read the Masks (see also Suransky and Jouwe 2015). In this conversation Gario refers to many
historical protests against Zwarte Piet (see also OneWorld 2019).
27 I write Black in title case following a discourse that proposes a capitalization to denote and support
the political term Black and Person of Color that exceeds provenance and appearance. The usage
of these terms relates to persons that do not identify as white, and do not exclusively relate to
European-Western-Christian cultures and their traditions and ideologies (see Amoo-Adare 2014, 8;
Kazeem and Schaffer 2012, 177).

59
of spokespeople in the protests against Zwarte Piet no longer only involve
men. Research by cultural historian Nancy Jouwe insistently highlights the
work of Black, Migrant, and Refugee women in the Netherlands now and
then. The composite term Black, Migrant, & Refugee Women’s Movement
refers to the work of “Dutch Black feminists and feminists of colour and
position them as the Dutch intellectuals, organisers, and activists who, as a
movement and as individuals, have been the key to developing an intersec-
tional theory and praxis” (Jouwe 2016, 3). In 2008, for Bauer and myself, the
gendered division of labor and visibility made us more cautious toward the
protagonists and their contributions in the subsequent film.
Quite early on in Read the Masks we agreed that our engagement would
also consist of collaboratively developing an alternative history of protest
against Zwarte Piet, drawing on individual memory, revisiting personal ar-
chives, and some scholarly articles. The resulting list of alternative protest
history became an unfolding archive of counter-practices over the past 60
years. In the museum, the alternative history of critical voices took form as
a fragmented list written with chalk or marker on black and white boards in
different settings. These boards have been indicators for placing where we
wished it to be, in institutions such as schools and universities, entering class-
rooms as much as the administrational-managerial levels. These are places
that time and again fail to be sites where students and staff can un/learn and
engage in antiracism.
Next to the wide-ranging activities of protest that the list documents in
form and scale, the protest references reappeared on the banners and placards
installed during Be(com)ing Dutch (see fig. 1). They were ready to be taken
up for the (later canceled) performance and protest march and used in the
film. They reappeared sporadically throughout protests since 2011. Read the
Masks does not use any rhetoric of “new,” but the fragile “ongoing,” tying
in the legacy of protests against Zwarte Piet. The attempt is to intervene in
the (modernist) understanding of art that invokes the spectacle of the new
and the idea of innovation through aesthetic and creative processes. The
work of contextualizing and referencing those on whose shoulders one is
standing is till today often met with discomfort or shrugging shoulders. By
problematizing the “new,” especially in relation to a historical temporality
of progress, my question is: how can we know what counts as new or the
beginning (or end) of a historical development? To answer such a question the

60
work by philosopher Amy Allen (2016) is useful in distinguishing problems
around historical progress as conceptual and political challenges. From a
conceptual perspective, identifying what counts as new, or as a development
can hardly be done without claiming a superior position of knowing how
to measure this development and where to start. Allen frames the political
challenge toward the idea of progress by referring to postcolonial, decolonial,
and anticolonial critiques.28 These critiques debunk the idea that European
modernity is the outcome of historical progress as accumulative learning,
which in turn is implicated in an imperialistic logic legitimizing colonization.
Putting progress in a nutshell, decolonial scholar Anibal Quijano character-
izes it as a foundational myth of Europe:
All non-Europeans could be considered as pre-European and at
the same time displaced on a certain historical chain from the
primitive to the civilized, from the irrational to the rational,
from the traditional to the modern, from the magic-mythic
to the scientific. In other words, from the non-European/
pre-European to something that in time will be Europeanized
or modernized. Without considering the whole experience of
colonialism and coloniality, this intellectual trademark, as well
as the long-lasting global hegemony of Eurocentrism, would
hardly be explicable (Quijano 2000, 556).
At the core of the acquisition-model of learning is a developmental in-
dividual understanding that supports the idea of progression and maturity
in the sense of a movement from immaturity to maturity, which creates a
hierarchy between the two. This form of learning progress is deeply en-
trenched with the colonial civilizing mission of Europe in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries that inscribes institutional processes, Western ways
of thinking and doing. It haunts Western investigations, aesthetic, educa-
tional, and theoretical conventions and our subjectivities. It is modernity’s
inscribed call to order, its aesthetic regime that plays out not the least in
a particular temporality that materializes in modernity’s obsession with
the new. I follow here also Rolando Vázquez Melken’s decolonial paths in
Vistas of Modernity (2020); he describes modernity as a system of aesthetic

28 For my use of the terms anticolonial, decolonial, and postcolonial, see footnote 2 in “Introduction
and Acknowledgements: Practicing Unlearning” on page 12 in this book.

61
order that not only works along a certain regime of representation, but as
importantly through a regime of experience. How we experience our lives
and environments in Western contexts is fed by a temporal undercurrent
that directs us through many subtle movements (or calls to order) toward
the now and away from precedence (Vázquez Melken 2020, 57–62). Vázquez
Melken calls for decolonial aesthesis, which he differentiates from modern
aesthetics as “the plurality of sensorial experiences and expressions that are
in excess of the modern order of aesthetics” (2019, 1). The modern-colonial
regime of experiences only allows for certain experiences and expressions to
emerge. These experiences are arrested as certain routines of thinking and
doing, which thus determine what one experiences as allegedly possible and
impossible. The attention of this publication is directed toward unlearning
these routines of the impossible toward a plurality of sensorial experiences
that make other worlds possible.
How does this relate to the central topic of this text? The fragile con-
tinuation of an always already existing legacy of protest against Zwarte
Piet activates unlearning through micro-interventions that problematize and
fracture the dominant temporality of the new and progress entangled with
historical learning processes. Moreover, it is an attempt to share on whose
shoulders I stand and acknowledge those who came before us.

Solidarity

From 2013 to 2015, a court case around Zwarte Piet took place amidst ongo-
ing heated public debates. As I was not directly involved, I can only approach
it through the court documentation, media reports, and scholarly texts to
discuss the ruling, with my particular interest in questions of solidarity and
connections across subject positions.
With the growing number of public actions by anti-Zwarte Piet groups
after 2011, a few municipalities started to have closed-door meetings with
opposing parties to discuss change. In the meantime, the NGO Dutch Centre
for Intangible Cultural Heritage (VIE) was in the process of including the
Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet tradition in the Dutch Inventory of Intangible
Heritage.29 The listing as national cultural heritage was a prerequisite for
the admission into the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list,  30 when

62
presenting the Sinterklaas tradition to the UNESCO in November 2012
(Rodenberg and Wagenaar 2016, 216–19). This process did not go unno-
ticed, and chairwoman of the National Platform for Slavery History Barry
Biekman, together with an alliance of Dutch Black organizations, wrote
letters to the UN Commission for Human Rights, and the UNESCO
Intangible Cultural Heritage section about the racist stereotyping of Zwarte
Piet and the impending admission of the Sinterklaas tradition including
Zwarte Piet.  31 In fall 2013, in response, and prior to a visit to the Netherlands,
Verene Shepherd, head of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of
African Descent,  32 established in 2002 to study racial discrimination and
make proposals for its elimination, stated: “the UN working group cannot
understand why people in the Netherlands do not see this is a throwback to
slavery, and that in the 21st century this practice should stop” (Balkenhol,
Mepschen, and Duyvendak 2016, 3). While the majority of Dutch politi-
cians tried to ignore the comments, the application for the national and
international list for the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list proved
unsuccessful in 2013. However, a Facebook site called Pietitie (alluding to the
Dutch word petitie for petition) was initiated in support of the Zwarte Piet
tradition, and within a few days this petition received more than 2.2 million
likes, equaling 13 percent of the Dutch population. A renewed application for
registering the Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet tradition in the national inventory
was successful in 2015.  3  3

29 See Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP), “Pakjesavond traditie nummer 1,” 2008 and Strouken 2010.
30 As consequence of the ratification of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible
Cultural Heritage by the Dutch parliament in 2012, the Dutch government has made the NGO VIE
“responsible for the safeguarding of intangible heritage, for the National Inventory list, and for nom­
inating immaterial heritage to the UNESCO Representative List” (Rodenberg and Wagenaar 2016, 718).
31 See “UN encourage respectful national debate on Dutch tradition” (201 3) and “Letter from UNESCO”
(201 3). The complaint stated that “the character and image of Black Pete perpetuates a stereotyped
image of African people and people of African descent as second-class citizens, fostering an
underlying sense of inferiority within Dutch society and stirring racial differences as well as racism”
(quoted in Balkenhol, Mepschen, and Duyvendak 2016, 3).
32 See the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (no date).
33 Dutch Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2015. While the registration of the tradition in the
national inventory enshrines the tradition and therefore also the racist character of Zwarte Piet, the
list entry also describes the tradition as dynamic and therefore up to change in the future in relation
to public controversies. There has not been a successful application on an international level to the
UNESCO Intangible Heritage List up until today.

63
 During the same period, a court case over Zwarte Piet was held for
the first time in the Netherlands in reaction to the dismissal by Mayor of
Amsterdam Eberhard van der Laan of a notice of appeal against the pres-
ence of Zwarte Piet in the yearly Amsterdam parade. The mayor granted
permission and subsequently a group of plaintiffs filed their complaint at an
administrative court in Amsterdam on the grounds that Zwarte Piet, as a
negative stereotype of Black people, infringes on people’s private and family
lives (Martina 2014). In July 2014, the administrative court ruled that the
mayor had disregarded the feelings of Black people and needed to reconsid-
er the presence of Zwarte Piet. This was seen as a big success among the
anti-Zwarte Piet groups. However, it was a temporary success. The case was
brought to court again, this time by the mayor, at the highest level of the
administrative court, de Raad van State (Council of State), which overruled
the plea of the plaintiffs and supported the mayor’s decision to allow for the
presence of Zwarte Piet with a defense of maintaining public order and safety
(Wekker 2016, 145).
In the case two aspects are striking with regard to how these congeal
certain relationships within the group of plaintiffs. First, the Amsterdam
ruling is based on Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights,
acknowledging an “infringement of the right to respect private life, [...] since
the figure of Zwarte Piet is a negative stereotype of Black people.”  34 Both
Alejandro Martina (2014) and Wekker (2016, 145–46) interpret this decision
as implicitly assigning the racism related to Zwarte Piet to the private realm
and by “treating racist oppression as feelings of hurt, avoids addressing it as a
structural problem” (Martina 2014). While the appeal to Article 8 itself might
narrow the claim of the plaintiffs to the private realm, as far as I know, within
existing legal frameworks there are hardly any alternatives to address public
dissemination of racist stereotyping at a structural level. Second, the Raad van
State court corroborated their own ruling by weakening the group’s appeal on
the grounds that “the rights [...] of white plaintiffs are not infringed, because
they are not personally affected by negative stereotyping,”   35 and therefore

34 Court of Amsterdam, 03-07-2014. ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2014:3888. Texts can be found at www.rechtspraak.nl.

My translations.
35 Raad van State, 12-11-2014. ECLI:NL:RVS:2014:4117. Texts can be found at www.raadvanstate.nl. My
translations.

64
cannot make an appeal to Article 8. The court did not only separate the group,
but also differentiated Black from white plaintiffs, categorizing who belongs
to one group or the other and exercising power to define on these terms.
Equally important, the ruling designated white people as unaffected by rac-
ism, which denies their implicatedness in acts of racism. The roles in the
appeal are firmly distributed: “White plaintiffs came to the defense of the
Black plaintiffs” (Martina, 2014). Wekker highlights the “politics of compas-
sion”   36 as the mobilization of a particular emotional relationship between
people in solidarity that simmers beneath this court’s decision. The ruling
reinscribes a century-long relationship between white and black people, by
re-establishing “whites as rescuers and savior of blacks” (Wekker 2016, 146)
and propagating a long tradition of imperialism. To summarize, if we regard
solidarity broadly as an agreement between and support for the members of
a group (for a specific cause), the court’s ruling presupposes (or calls to order)
a certain form of solidarity. Namely, it edges the white plaintiffs out into a
one-dimensional form of compassion and reduces solidarity to a hierarchical
relationship between those who suffer and those who watch.

The Politics of Solidarity:

Between Affective Disposition and Political Organization

When we worked on Read the Masks, I was frequently asked about my moti-
vation to engage in such a practice. Why would I be interested in intervening
and taking sides in discussions around Zwarte Piet, the history of slavery,
and its repercussions? In advance of any response from me, two different yet
related answers were repeatedly offered to me by the interlocutors. The first
were feelings of guilt I must have as a German, given the atrocities of the Nazi
regime. While I do not regard myself guilty of crimes Germans committed
during the Nazi regime, I take the responsibility in light of those crimes in the
sense that I must be “responsive” to it — a form of responsibility connected to
the past of specific societies of which one is a member. In a similar way with
Zwarte Piet, these forms of responsibility summon European histories of slav-
ery and produce what Michael Rothberg calls “implicated subjects” (2019).

36 In reference to the notion of “politics of compassion” developed by Balkenhol (2014).

65
 This implicatedness surmounts a supposedly finished past, and is imbricated
in the present with its haunting representations, socio-economic benefits,
and discursive underpinnings. Second, some interlocutors suggested my en-
gagement had to do with my child who they assumed was of color. This
assumption was spurred by my descriptions of how I learned of the enthusiastic
anticipation of Zwarte Piet from my child who attended primary school in
the Netherlands where the stories are interwoven with an elaborate daily
month-long curriculum.
My motivations to engage in Read the Masks have been many, but an
important one has certainly been my quest for antiracist practices of soli-
darity that are less structured by axes of domination. I am indebted to anti-
colonial struggles and their insistence on practice, that stress “a critical force
of opposition, which struggles against a colonialism that persists” (Hiraide
2021). Anticolonial work of coalition building and allyship that places the
urgency of resistance as collaborative action has been important for saying no
to Zwarte Piet, and starting a process of unlearning the effects of Black Pete’s
presence. Furthermore, being indebted to decolonial practices and scholarship,
I am searching for forms of solidarity inspired by what Vázquez Melken and
Arturo Escobar describe in a conversation as “practices that enable multiple
pasts and futures” (2020).  37 Instead, the forms of solidarity that I have encoun-
tered or practiced struck me as often faulty ones, as they provoke competing
memories and pasts, or do not live up to the complexities of our worlds. The
suggested explanations of my seeming motivation, together with the court’s
ruling are related to my investigation into other forms of solidarity, because
they present expectations of who — and under what conditions — is related
to certain events and subsequently how they are supposed to be practiced.
They are built upon specific ideas of being affected (or not) or being impli-
cated (or not), and as Rothberg demonstrates categorize people reductively
as victims, perpetrators, or passive bystanders (2019, 1–31). However, being
implicated is much more complex. In a conversation with postcolonial scholar

37 Enabling multiple pasts strongly resonates also with Michael Rothberg’s conceptualization of
“multidirectional memories” (2009) that become meaningful when different histories of extreme
violence confront and compete with each other. Instead, he puts Holocaust Studies in dialogue with
Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, relating memories of the Holocaust to memories of slavery and
colonization, but not equating them.

66
Paul Gilroy, novelist and cultural critic Toni Morrison incisively points to
such a complex and affective implication:
Slavery broke the world in half, it broke it in every way. It broke
Europe. It made them into something else, it made them slave
masters, it made them crazy. You can’t do that for hundreds of
years and it not take a toll. They had to dehumanize, not just the
slaves but themselves. They have had to reconstruct everything
in order to make that system appear true (Morrison 1993, 178).
What are these systems and reconstructions of “truths” that still uphold the
aftermaths of colonialism up until today in Europe? I am, as a white person,
included in this history of colonialism, the colonial past of the continent — its
society and culture — in which I live and of which I partake. It affects my
position, my psyche, and how I am positioned and implicated in this world.
I don’t read Morrison’s quote as an indictment of guilt. Rather, it pertains
to what anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot describes as a,
historical responsibility [that] cannot hark back to an origi-
nal sin that the collective-individual supposedly committed.
Rather, it needs to take into account the structures of priv-
ilege unleashed by a history of power and domination and
to evaluate the current losses induced by the reproduction of
these structures (2000, 183).
Trouillot and Morrison speak to the implicatedness in injustice without
directly executing harm in the common sense of a perpetrator. Rather, one
is implicated because one benefits from historical and present-day injustices.
Trouillot does not speak of privileges and responsibilities in an individual
manner (although being executed by individuals), but ties them to a history
of power and domination in which many have been involved. Morrison com-
plexifies implication even more by pointing toward the systems of truth that
we — as European subjects — have inherited, that still inhabit and affect us
till today. The court ruling enacts such a truth system and issues a particular
relationship between Black and white people by making a critical differenti-
ation between those who are affected by a racist act (and suffer from it) and
those who are not. A corresponding differentiation was suggested to me:
under which condition would I be able to engage in protest against Zwarte
Piet, its dimensions, and motivations?
To put it in other words, the court’s designation of white people as

67
 unaffected by racism is a fierce twist that denies being implicated in acts
of racism (besides perpetration). I suspect the speculations about my rea-
sons for being engaged in Read the Masks share these assumptions. Instead,
Morrison writes in the aforementioned text what is at stake: “They [i.e., us,
Europeans] had to dehumanize, not just the slaves but themselves,” the forces
of dehumanizing in acts of racism go both ways, yet in different registers and
truth claims. To paraphrase Morrison, acts of racism still make us — white
people — crazy today.
As I write this my discomfort increases. How can I prevent confusing
processes of dehumanizing with victimizing people and comforting white
tears? I attempt to do this by accessing varied registers and truth claims,
and investigating where the “modern-colonial matrix of power” 38 is at play
and calls to order in the denial of white people’s implication in acts of
racism (in both ways). The court’s ruling is pertinent; it fixes people in one-
dimensional positions and reduces their ways of relating, where white people
are “unaffected by racism except, perhaps by pity and compassion, which then
moves them to perform acts of charity towards Black people” (Martina 2014).
With cultural critic Lauren Berlant and anticolonial scholar Frantz Fanon,
I connect these observations to a bigger scale. The history of those who pity
assumes a passivity on the side of the distressed and renders the spectator an
“ameliorative actor” wherein European nations and institutions perform a
relationship of “ameliorative care” (Berlant 2004, 2–15). Fanon pointed to this
early on when he wrote that the continuation of conditions of coloniality
after the official end of colonialism has been instituted by European nations
through seemingly “unselfish programs of aid and assistance” (1961, 206).
These forms of coloniality are still ongoing and translated into structural
programs of “development aid” such that pity as compassion in Western
societies is inextricably entangled with often rehearsed articulations of the
“not yet civilized” or “underdeveloped,” as I problematize with Quijano

38 The term modern-colonial stems from decolonial theory (Quijano 2000) and describes colonialism
as constitutive of modernity and vice versa. Hence, this perspective sees modernity as not solely
emerging from European history, but takes into account the concept of coloniality, which refers to
the modes of control of social life and economic and political organization that emerged in colonies in
the Americas, Africa, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia from the beginning of the sixteenth century
that become worldwide in their influences as outcomes of colonialism, slavery, and emerging
capitalism (Gilroy 199 3; Mbembe 2014; Quijano 2000).

68
before. Postcolonial scholar Ann Stoler succinctly shows that this self-image
of compassion did not emerge despite slavery, but through it (Stoler 2004).
Unlearning here refers to Stoler’s project of redirecting our self-image of be-
nevolent aid to instead confront our complicity with and implicatedness in
the modern-colonial project. As I have tried to indicate, the implicatedness in
racism is much more complex, the stakes for unlearning much more intense.
The call to order to a certain form of solidarity (and compassion) that was
exercised through the court’s ruling had a ripple effect, and has re-instantiated
long-existing colonial relationalities between people.

Solidarity: Commitment Toward Difference,

Incommensurability, and Affect

The politics of solidarity located in the tensions between affective forma-

tions, solidarity concepts, and political organization are always already
situated in an embodied reality with fluctuating intensification, and mobili-
zations. Complex ways of implicatedness and structural responsibilities co-
constitute practices of solidarity as much as the politics of compassion, and
we cannot simply do away with feelings and emotions. Instead, Paul Gilroy
claims that compassion forms a political field in which there is “potential for
political action and pedagogy” (2009, 46). Against this backdrop I analyze
the relationalities within specific forms of solidarity. Earlier in this text, I
have considered the court ruling, and my own involvement in and against
racism, and now, I focus on critical approaches to solidarity instrumental
to my thinking — to further understand their inherent modes of oppression
and contribute to more robust practices of unlearning.
Can solidarity and compassion move away from affective dispositions of
guilt and pity to support forms of political organization that favor implicat-
edness and structural responsibilities? How can the increasing emphasis on
affective dispositions in Western societies, and their impact on concepts of
solidarity, be understood? Decolonial, indigenous education scholars Rubén
Gaztambide-Fernandez, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang are skeptical of sol-
idarity; Tuck and Yang criticize it as “an uneasy, reserved, and unsettled
matter that neither reconciles present grievances nor forecloses future con-
flict” (2012, 3). They attempt to scrutinize the impositions made by forms

69
of solidarity and — in reference to cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter — lay bare
presupposed concepts of humanity and cultural difference (Wynter 1994 &
2003). Gaztambide-Fernandez identifies three aspects crucial to solidarity
concepts: first, the inherent relational character among individuals or groups;
second, the forms of obligation that feed relationships or commitments to
come together for political action; and third, actions or duties between those
in a relationship of solidarity (2012, 8–10). What is crucial for Gaztambide-
Fernandez is the commitment to imagining and practicing difference instead
of working along similarities as a “pedagogy of solidarity.” Solidarity con-
cepts very often depend on similarities in characteristics, political interests,
social needs, or moral obligations. What is more important for Gaztambide-
Fernandez, “yet more rare and complicated to theorize, is a conception of
solidarity that hinges on radical differences and that insists on relationships
of incommensurable interdependency” (2012, 46). Tuck and Yang offer a
complementary view, that attempts at solidarity in the work of decoloni-
zation necessarily “unsettle innocence and recognize incommensurability”
(2012, 4). According to Gaztambide-Fernandez, all three aspects of solidarity
(relational, commitments to coming together, duties between the solidary
members) need to be investigated through their understanding of difference.
However, it is not just any difference that matters. By developing a genealogy
of solidarity concepts for education committed to decolonization, he urges
the investigation of the arrangements that impose differences through the
colonial project of modernity. He focuses on the impact of multicultural
projects and their concepts of difference. Multicultural projects have been
criticized by postcolonial and decolonial scholarship for their essentialist
views on culture with an authentic fixed origin that is unrelated to other
cultures that therefore are assigned differently (Hall 1992; Andreotti 2007).
Instead, Gaztambide-Fernandez suggests, in reference to philosopher Judith
Butler, to recenter “difference through a focus on the particularities of hu-
man interdependency rather than the generalities of human universality”
(Gaztambide-Fernandez 2012, 44). These interdependencies co-constitute
how we relate to each other. Thinking difference through relationalities
allows for the imagining of what implicatedness can mean and do.
The dedication to difference, relationalities, and implicatedness is what
links Gaztambide-Fernandez’s view on solidarity concepts to Spivak’s “un­
learning one’s privileges” (see “Instead of Solving Paradoxes and Contra­dictions”

70
on pages 95–121 in this book). Through their inexorable context-specificities
neither can decide beforehand what claims are relevant to a given situation
since they depend on the particularities and complexities of local desires and
needs. Bringing difference, relationalities, context-specificity, and implicat-
edness together has the potential to direct the attention to (socio-economic)
inequities and privileges that are obscured and neglected by present condi-
tions of coloniality.
The question of how to account for the increasing emphasis on affective
dispositions in Western societies and their impact on the concept of solidarity
remains. Gaztambide-Fernandez situates the role of affect within concepts
of solidarity in the tension between refraining from rationalist demarcations
(2012, 45)   39 and steering away from conflating solidarity with empathy (46).
But where do we go from here? As Berlant has intriguingly emphasized,
“affective formations,” such as feelings (of hurt) and pity co-constitute the
neoliberal condition in late capitalism. She argues that forms of solidarity that
used to be implemented in welfare state organizations as structural respon-
sibilities of the state, are now directed toward the individual (Berlant 2004,
2–6). Consequently, it has become much harder to base claims of solidarity
on structural inequities be they legal, civic, or economic. Instead, solidarity
circulates as, and is reduced to individual obligations fed by personal emo-
tions. This doesn’t mean that the state vanishes as such, but rather, as Berlant
further argues, manages a shift within the character of obligations; affective
formations become the heart of accompanying state policies. These state

39 An example of such a position is Hannah Arendt’s view on solidarity. Being suspicious of sentiment,
she separates personal emotions from the political domain, arguing that “politics based on
personal feeling becomes corrupted” (quoted in Canovan 1992, 197). Instead, she pleads for a politics
guided by principles, which need to be distinguished from personal morality (based on emotions).
Arendt therefore differentiates between pity as the “perversion of compassion” and solidarity, which
is directed “not at merely alleviating the suffering of the oppressed, but at more fundamental and
systemic change” (2006, 78–79). However, the introduction of Arendt is not without questions,
especially regarding her dubious relationship to race politics in the US at that time, as it became
apparent in her extremely negative comments on the black student movement in the US (1969, 44).
Arendt’s conviction to keep emotions, feelings, and desires out of the public political sphere is
contested. She crystallizes solidarity as a thoroughly rational concept and introduces a seemingly
clearcut separation between an embodied reality with needs and desires and a political public sphere
that is thoroughly rational (see also Allen 1999).
40 “Attendant [state] policies relocate the template of justice from the collective condition of specific pop­-
ulations to that of the individual, whose economic sovereignty the state vows to protect” (Berlant 2004, 9).

71
policies put center stage individual “economic sovereignty” (2004, 9) while
at the same time unhinging structural responsibilities.40
How is this all connected to the leading concepts unlearning, call to order,
solidarity? Keeping structural responsibilities in place where they still exist,
excavate, and re-establish them when they got lost, is something to fight for
when it comes to solidarity amid the excess of affective dispositions in late
capitalism. We cannot do this alone, but need to do this together. When groups
(in solidarity) step into this void, Berlant urges us to be aware of the affective
individualizing tendencies that call groups to order — in the end, the Zwarte
Piet court ruling focused on the individual — and Gaztambide-Fernandez
provides handles for a pedagogy of solidarity committed to non-dominant
difference when building coalitions and collective actions.

Practicing Unlearning in Five Ways

Unlearning a Call to Order

In this text, call to order functions as a lens to study practices that reaffirm
the institutions (i.e., also habits) in power. A call to order does not only refer
to serious interventions by people, institutions, or other entities having au-
thority and/or power, but also to inconspicuous practices that re-instantiate
certain ways of living and perceiving through their quasi-naturalness and
reaffirming implicit knowledges through recurring enactments on a private,
public, institutional, bodily scale. A call to order has a grip on my body, on
thinking and doing, enacted through institutional structures, bodily gestures,
and discursive mechanisms. The phenomenon of Zwarte Piet and its racism
are pushed into acceptance through many calls to order on different levels.
In this vein, unlearning calls to order unsettles the very processes through
which social forces and formations push me/us to accept a certain approach
to the world, and starts a collective process of renegotiation.

Unlearning Dominant Forms of Temporality

The authority of a call to order is also performed through a certain temporality,
wherein power lies in, for example, a start: in the subtle gesture of starting a
meeting, or the less subtle claim of the beginning of a historical period, and
the drive toward the new. Questioning taken-for-granted understandings of

72
time is dealt with in Read the Masks. Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet) builds on
this and explores the role of time that surfaces in a historical understanding
of progress, which depends on a certain development over time. The label
of “(under)developed” and the accompanying superiority and inferiority that
perpetuate conditions of coloniality, in the form of structural programs of
“development aid,” are part and parcel of this. Unlearning these relationships
built on developmental understandings (or underdevelopment) is a demand
in sites for unlearning.

Unlearning Individualized Responsibilities

Toward Structural Ones
Structural responsibilities with regard to legal, civic, and economic inequities
were obligations of the state or other collective entities in Western societies
during the twentieth century. In late capitalism, obligations tend to be shifted
by state policies and corporate privatization to individual responsibilities.
These agents forcefully deny acknowledging the accumulated privileges
through histories of domination. Nevertheless, these privileges perform cer-
tain relationships between people, objects, concepts, and practices in specific
contexts. They are not to be confused with those affective formations that
result from the denial of privileges, emphasizing individual responsibility
such as guilt or pity. Instead, state and corporate measures call the individ-
ual to order to take on the burden to realize one’s individual responsibility
accompanied by affective interpellations and personal emotions. The sites for
unlearning work on and fight for structural responsibilities while being aware
of one’s own implicatedness in oppressive structures, and what this means
and does for practices of solidarity, coalition building, and collective action.

Unlearning the Separation of Factual Violence

and Fictional Character
Practicing alliances and engaging in solidarity need to attend to the compli-
cations around structural and individual responsibilities. Carefully excavat-
ing both the differences and responsibilities in these specific relationships
(solidarity and coalition) might help to unpack aspects of the “coloniality
of power” (Quijano 2000). Moreover, approaching processes of unlearning
demands a rigorous turn to the implicatedness of European subjects in op-
pressive systems like colonialism and their aftermaths in forms of coloniality.

73
As “implicated subjects” we inhabit or benefit from regimes of domination
that we neither set up, nor control (Rothberg 2019). Practices of solidarity that
are dedicated to unlearning commit to a critical understanding of difference,
relationalities, implicatedness, and responsibilities. In this sense, I propose that
a collective practice of unlearning needs to build upon contradictions and
bear their incommensurability; on the one hand, they recognize how socially
constructed categories such as race have real and direct consequences for both
the material and symbolic conditions that affect individuals, groups, and
institutions, and how these relate to each other. On the other hand, practices
of unlearning scrutinize the social constructions of differences (such as race,
ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and social class) that always already con-
stitute our lives and appear as quasi-natural and normalized. Here, practices
of unlearning lay bare categories’ factual violence and fictional character
while engaging with both at the same time to further intervene in the world.

Unlearning Routines of the Impossible

The modern-colonial regime under which the Sites for Unlearning have been
practiced allows only certain experiences and expressions to emerge. These
experiences are arrested as routines of thinking and doing (in the form of
certain temporalities and not others, certain calls to order, individualized,
certain categorizations, as fact or fiction, etc.). These routines thus determine
what I experience as allegedly possible and impossible. The attention of the
collective work of unlearning is directed toward unlearning these routines
of the impossible toward a plurality of sensorial experiences that make other
worlds possible.

74
Wall Patrols

75
It began with a routine check by a technician who was busy fighting the
mold and fungi in our buildings — a common inquiry to reduce health risks
in educational institutions.
An inspector joined, and together with the technician, scanned a wall
with an infrared temperature taker. It was suspected as having fungal
infestation. The walls in this institution had been damp for years, and
this somehow explained the wall’s life force. We didn’t yet have any other
explanation for it.
As wall patrols became more frequent, my colleagues and I managed
to get hold of some of these scan reports. It was hard to believe what
we found. Over time, we became more skilled in reading them: hundreds
of legs are buried in the walls — never pairs, but rather a right leg, or left
foot, or parts of each. Yes, you’re reading this right: a leg, a foot, a toe.
Once I overcame my incredulity, I further learned about scan specifics:
the knee, shin, or calf of a leg, or a heel.
We tried (without much success) to find those whose legs had been
buried in the wall. As we did this, colleagues began to talk about un­
explainable pain in their legs. We suspected the walls might be causing
a kind of phantom pain, concealing they lost a body part. It was as if
their legs had gotten stuck in the institutional walls. Caught in the act
of crossing these walls. Many started to change their way of walking:
waddling, strangely dancing, stumbling, floundering, limping through the
corridors. To this day, this behavior is regarded as a strange anomaly at
the institution.
Institutions fight back, patrol borders and boundaries, devise tech-
nologies to freeze, catch, congeal crossings. Which of the many walls,
why this wall and not that, we don’t know — yet?
Crossing walls affected me as well. I bruised myself, as if the weight
of the walls snuck into me, causing inner damage. It showed itself through
irritations on my skin. Close up, the texture was like one of the walls that
I pass many times each week. I have been lucky to not yet get stuck. We
have learned to carry institutional borders within us. Still puzzled while
studying what our bodies are able to do, we dive into reports of predeces-
sors that hint at similar capacities. Dana traverses walls and the institution
of linear time, connecting to her colonial ancestry. Paulo learns to walk
differently while spanning institutional lives. Sara chips away at the walls.

76
 Meanwhile, we have developed little exercises since we do not use
infrared technology. We regularly listen to the walls. I lean close to one,
touch it with my ear and hands, calming down, breathing in, breathing
out. I attempt to become aware of, and register the sounds, the energy
waves, in combination with the temperature, and texture, emanating
from or through the wall. The body parts seem alive, sending signals,
communicating with the wall’s materiality, altering traversing waves. We
believe we can learn a great deal from the walls and their inhabitants
about the histories of institutional separation. We are about to demolish
one wall, attempting to set free some of the limbs that got stuck, bracing
ourselves for what might happen.

77
78
 On Unlearning
Sedimented
Practices: Stories
Involving Everyday
Whiteness and
Quick Fixes
by Nancy Jouwe

79
The notion of unlearning, on how not to, invites us in its most basic form to
look at ourselves purposely and to become aware, analyze, and make conscious
choices to not act, to not engage anymore in a particular way. For instance,
I unlearned to eat sugar, smoke, and drink alcohol. And contrary to popular
belief, I don’t have a miserable life right now. In fact, the opposite is true. But
while I was an avid smoker and a regular drinker, who equated drinking with
fun and friends, I would have thought it impossible to go without them. We
usually say stopped doing so and so but I see unlearning as something that in-
cludes a purposeful process, followed by the actual moment where one stops
and embraces a process involving positive awareness of this new reality.
Many of my peers as well as myself are reminded of the everyday of un-
learning quite often in these times. As we do this collective work of unlearning
in the arts, heritage, and museum sectors, and as we try to engage in a more
decolonial praxis (Jouwe 2018), there comes a time when the question pops up:
why are certain practices so persistent, and so difficult to unlearn? Is it being
comfortable in set ways, not wanting to really give up power and privilege, or
is it simply ignorance? By trying to take down walls and borders, we stumble
upon other, tougher ones. In the Netherlands, we have seen that taking on
slavery has finally become okay for institutions, while tackling race issues
is a much harder topic to grapple with. They are like sedimented practices,
old habits that never die. These everyday habits are institutional practices in
themselves (see “Instead of Solving Paradoxes and Contradictions,” on pages
95–121 in this book). To understand this is helpful in not getting too frustrated
while being involved in work that engages in antiracism or the transformation
of colonial habits. Prepare yourself to be in it for the long haul.
In this text, I continue my thoughts around matters of unlearning by
moving from museum spaces, as I did in my earlier article (Jouwe 2018), into
other institutional spaces. As someone who has been engaged in putting
slavery on the Dutch public agenda, I have seen how in one generation (i.e.,
twenty years), we as a mainstream Dutch society have moved from ignorance
and neglect around the topic to now understanding in growing numbers that
colonial slavery is Dutch history.
One could argue that we have unlearned to separate slavery history and
Dutch history in the Netherlands. Community organizers, activists, research-
ers, and artists from at least three generations have been involved in helping a
larger Dutch community to understand how deeply involved the Dutch were

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in the history of slavery, and that this involvement does not only pertain to
the Atlantic world but also involves Indian Ocean slavery. One could say we
are in the process of collective unlearning right now in 2023.
Here I want to zoom in on some particular aspects of this longer process.
I am interested in how we can activate unlearning practices in institutional
spaces that claim a focus on slavery history, colonial afterlives, and antiracism.
For the purposes of this piece of writing, I am especially interested in when we
hit walls together, so I will share two cases that involve sedimented practices
that function like old habits. Together the cases engage in different parts of the
process and different institutional practices all at once. The cases involve the
past, the present, and the future, and how we look at and deal with ourselves
and others, and the dynamics of a shared yet fluctuating we.
Before diving into the actual cases, I will provide some context. Further-
more, the notion of the institution is used here in two ways: as an organiza-
tional foundation (like the museum) and as an established practice. This article
comes with caveats for I do not assume for one minute to know it all. I am
simply sharing processes I have personally been involved in, after writing my
earlier article on unlearning five years ago. As such, the cases are acquired
through participatory action research. I was directly involved with both cases
discussed, reflected on them with others directly and indirectly involved, and
made notes or publicized about them in earlier instances.1

Dutch Dynamics on Slavery History and the Self

In the last twenty years, the Dutch colonial and slavery past in the Netherlands
has become a focal point in Dutch society, culminating in recent and un-
precedented formal apologies that were issued by several Dutch dignitaries.
The apologies based on commissioned research on the slavery history of each

1 The two cases took place in the period 2018–22. In case one I was involved as commissioned party,
in case two I was involved as co-organizer of the international meeting, which took place in Germany.
About case one, we wrote a long essay, which can be found online: Guno Jones, Nancy Jouwe, and
Susan Legêne, “Opdracht gestrand: Hoe de vraag naar de doorwerking van kolonialisme en slavernij
in Amsterdam en Utrecht leidde tot meer vragen” (Assignment Lost: How the question of the
afterlives of colonialism and slavery in Amsterdam and Utrecht led to more questions), 202 3, www.
research.vu.nl/en/publications/opdracht-gestrand-hoe-de-vraag-naar-de-doorwerking-van-kolonialis-2.

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of Holland’s biggest cities came from the mayors, and were followed by the
formal apology of Prime Minister Mark Rutte on December 19, 2022. Rutte
referred in his speech to this process as a comma, not a full stop — quoting
multidisciplinary artist Serana Angelista — suggesting a space for reparations,
without being very concrete.
As it turned out, the Dutch king could not stay behind. Ten kon drai
(times have changed) exclaimed King Willem-Alexander in the Surinamese
language Sranan Tongo during his formal apology speech for the history of
slavery. He did this as head of state in front of the national slavery monument
at the Oosterpark in Amsterdam on July 1, 2023. Rain was pouring down as he
spoke his words. The weather somehow accentuated the solemn importance
of the event with beautifully dressed invited guests listening in, while hiding
under their umbrellas. Many more visitors were standing behind fences and a
wave of cheers was audible after his apology mid-speech. The king included
a plea for forgiveness for the role of the House of Orange in the slave trade
and slavery, ending with the words Ten kon drai. He was the first monarch
in the world to apologize for the Dutch role and for the role of his family in
the history of slavery, making him one of the headlines in the international
press while his speech was aired live on Dutch public TV. The wave of apol-
ogies was, without exception, based on the commissioned research projects,
and garnered major media attention from primetime TV to long interviews
in daily newspapers to airtime on popular radio shows.
For Dutch society, this all-out attention functioned as a collective, rapid
growth spurt in 2020–23. It was quite a transformation within the Dutch
mainstream, after a century of silence or silencing or downplaying (depending
on who you speak to) of this history of the Dutch global slave trade. With
political pressure rising locally in other Dutch cities, now both provinces
and even the state were following suit, including more apologies and research
publications. These events have proven to be historic, to say the least.
I have argued elsewhere that this could not have happened if it wasn’t
for key people on the ground: activists, local politicians, and community-
organizers, often from Afro-Caribbean descent (and other postcolonial com-
munities), who pushed for this narrative to finally be heard (Jouwe 2023, 42).
The global Black Lives Matter 2020 demonstrations strongly amplified this
process and probably for the first time in history, a Dutch prime minister
publicly stated that the Netherlands had a race problem.2 A sense of urgency

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within Dutch society ensued that had already had to come to terms with a
decade of protests against the Dutch blackface tradition of Zwarte Piet (Black
Pete). Now the afterlife of slavery really came into the discussion.

Case One: On Unlearning Quick Fixes

Several of the earlier mentioned research projects on slavery in Dutch cities

and provinces served conclusions as well as recommendations that emphasized
the importance of research on racism and current race relations. Centralizing
and acknowledging the interconnectedness of the history of slavery and co-
lonialism with today’s race relations including racism, was not a given for
many Dutch people who were simply not used to looking at their country
nor themselves as being capable of racist practices and who were just getting
used to the idea of slavery history being Dutch history.
But coming to terms with the realization of deep involvement as a nation
with the history of slavery also means working on the afterlives of slavery, as
African American scholar Saidiya Hartman has explained. She speaks on the
American case mostly but has influenced different institutional and transna-
tional fields (Hartman 2022). With the notion of “the afterlife” she created
space to think through the impact of slavery in current societies and how it
resonates in everyday lives of descendants of enslaved people, both materially
and immaterially. Her work has had impact on artists, scholars, activists, and
curators, in places including the Netherlands. 3

2 Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte stated during a national press conference on June 3, 2020:
“Dat is ook een Nederlands probleem. Ook hier is racisme. Ook hier is discriminatie. Dat is niet alleen
een Amerikaans fenomeen” (That’s also a Dutch problem. We also have racism here. We also have
discrimination here. That’s not just an American phenomenon). My translation.
3 At the Tropenmuseum (tropical museum, now Wereldmuseum) in Amsterdam, the semi-permanent
exhibition Afterlives of Slavery (October 6, 2017 – May 25, 2021) used Hartman’s coinage to think
through ways in which slavery has also impacted the Netherlands. The museum’s website explains:
“The exhibition places the enslaved and their descendants centre stage. To initiate a sometimes
difficult but productive dialogue, the Tropenmuseum has sought out personal stories from past and
present that bring the history of slavery and its current-day legacies up close.” See Afterlives of
Slavery, press release, Tropenmuseum, October 3, 2017, www.tropenmuseum.nl/en/afterlives-slavery.
A leading daily Dutch newspaper made the headline “Tropenmuseum-gaat-voorop-in-dekolonisatie”
(Tropenmuseum takes the lead in decolonization), Leendert van der Valk, October 12, 2017, NRC, www.
nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/10/12/tropenmuseum-gaat-voorop-in-dekolonisatie-13460466-a1576878?t=1697286498.

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 Local politicians picked up on the recommendations by calling for mo-
tions to have research done on current-day race relations and racism in their
cities. With these motions being accepted — a sign of the times — public serv-
ants now had to get to work and I was invited to become involved in setting
up such research for two cities who decided to work on this research together.
I teamed up with Dr. Guno Jones and Prof. Susan Legêne, both hav-
ing rich and important track records when it comes to these histories and
their resonances, and both affiliated with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Jones and I had discussions with our point persons of the municipalities to
get clarity and wrote and rewrote a project plan, a process that took over a
year. Point persons changed as well as the research question. Suffice to say
that from the get-go, the process of working on this with the municipalities
proved to be complicated.
As clearcut as the process of doing historical research had been — which
Jones and I had been directly involved in — as difficult and unclear was the
process of setting up this research with the municipalities involved. Our con-
clusion was, after a year and a half of going back and forth without consensus on
how to proceed, that we needed to step out. Instead, we decided to discuss the
intricacies of this process in a long essay (in Dutch), co-written by Jones, Legêne,
and myself. We offered it to our municipal clients for input as well as transpar-
ency, after which we finalized our piece. Here, I highlight only some aspects.
The research questions the municipalities (hereafter: client) wanted cov-
ered, stayed unclear for quite a while and after formulating one, the research
questions again changed. First, we were to look at the current impact of the
history of slavery, then we were asked to focus this research question on the
policy terrains of the respective municipalities. This was followed by the client
wanting to move the research from the impact of slavery history to coloniality,
a key concept within decolonial scholarship.
Our position as researchers was that a translation of our research into
relevant policy areas should only be made afterward by the client, not us.
Secondly, we adhere to decolonial scholarship, but this shift to coloniality,
given the timeframe of a year and three months we had left, was not wise in
our opinion. More fundamentally, a concept like coloniality had far-reaching
implications, and did the client really want that? A domain-oriented approach
that would feed into local policymaking (as the client would have it) clashes
with the concept of coloniality because coloniality implies a certain lens on

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society, where modernity and coloniality form a pair with coloniality speak-
ing on the violence and the erasure of stories, which involves an analysis that
refers to all kinds of life areas and levels being impacted. The result would
be a reductive analysis that would not do justice to coloniality as a concept.
As I shared in my earlier article on unlearning:
Coloniality is different from colonialism in that coloniality
does not need colonialism to function, its logic exists by way
of continuing the “hidden process of expropriation, exploita-
tion, pollution, and corruption that underlies the narrative of
modernity, as promoted by institutions and actors belonging
to corporations, industrialized nation-states, museums, and
research institutions.” 4 In other words, coloniality is the un-
derlying logic of colonialism that continues beyond it (Jouwe
2018, 133).
As a result, by choosing coloniality we anticipated that — especially given
how the process had unfolded up to then — the client would be served with
research too difficult to swallow, both in terms of conceptual approach as
well as content and recommendations. And it also clashed with our primary
concern as researchers, of doing justice to this multiformity without prior
division into policy areas. Moreover, I felt that choosing coloniality was about
tapping into a fad, something trendy to try out. In short, we simply felt they
had not thought this through.
Another point of contestation was our methodology. We wanted to work
with vignettes, which entail small stories or examples from real life that give
insight into the practical workings of, in this case, everyday racism. I have
used vignettes in my earlier piece on unlearning. It is an accepted and much
used methodology in the scholarly field of social sciences. But the client did
not think it a good idea for reasons that to this day remain unclear to me
personally. They simply stated that they did not think it worked well nor
would it be convincing methodologically.
Looking back, we reiterated that knowledge about the past cannot simply
be translated into policy in the present just like that. The clients’ demand
for policy recommendations — understandable in itself — does require histori-
ographical understanding on their part. All actors involved — politicians, civil

4 As explained by Rolando Vázquez Melken, during the Decolonial Summer School, Middelburg, June 17, 2015.

85
 servants, we as researchers — move in a context where there is great exter-
nal pressure and an unstable political tide, locally as well as nationally. It
seems very likely they needed a quick fix. But looking for a quick fix in
order to tackle an infrastructure of ideas, practices, and habits based on
racial hierarchies, once sedimented into colonial policy, is exactly what
we need to unlearn. Quick fixes won’t work, not with this.
As researchers we did not succeed in creating consensus and clarity
on the research trajectory and we could have done things differently.
During the process it became noticeable that there was a lack of trust
toward us as researchers (for example, questioning our methodology,
wanting to build in extra milestones) and we could have stepped out
earlier. But we were intrinsically motivated and wanted to stay with
it. We also could have stood our ground much stronger. It is not clear
if that would have helped though. The shifting of point persons (both
white and POC), while dealing with two municipalities at the same
time did not work well on the levels of communication and content. The
municipalities were operating from a position where external pressure

86
influenced a delicate process and topic, while the people involved setting it
up did not always understand the implications well enough. At times, I felt
they were in over their heads.

Case Two: On Unlearning the Comfortability of Whiteness

Since the publication White Innocence (2016) by Gloria Wekker, who wrote
an ethnography on the Dutch white dominant self, a heightened awareness
that a white ethnicity even exists, has ensued in larger Dutch circles. The
publication helped raise awareness that white people practice whiteness while
not necessarily being aware of that fact. Moreover, whiteness in a Dutch
landscape comes with a presumed stance of innocence, which means — among
other things — being incapable of being racist. The next case shows how white
innocence can work. It involves two women, who, for the purpose of ano-
nymity will be called Sandra and Debby. Sandra is a young Black non-formal
educator on antiracism. Debby is an older white woman who does work on

87
Militia Company of District VIII under the Command of Captain Roelof Bicker, Bartholomeus van der Helst,
c.1640–4 3 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). In the documentary New Light. Rijksmuseum & Slavery (2021)
by Ida Does, we see Eveline Sint Nicolaas, a white woman who is a curator of history at the
Rijksmuseum since 1998. She explains that only recently has she been able to really see the Black boy
in the middle of the painting. She had unlearned to see him as a mere prop in an early modern painting.
Now, she cannot unsee him.

88
colonial history and antiracism. They have different nationalities yet both
are European.
A few years ago, Sandra and Debby met for the first and only time dur-
ing an international gathering on antiracism, colonial history, and non-formal
education (of which I was a co-organizer), where Debby gave a workshop,
with Sandra participating. For the purposes of this paper, I asked Sandra to
reflect on what transpired during the workshop, because I wanted to cen-
tralize her voice. This is why Debby was not interviewed; she did not com-
municate nor display a practice of reflection about the workshop with those
involved afterward.
Sandra, a student at the time, explains:
During that workshop, the trainer, Debby, was explaining an
exercise we should do. It was a roleplay, bringing a picture to
life, that of a slave and a master. The master was seated in a
chair and the slaves were sitting or standing next to the mas-
ter. A group of three was to reenact it. When I heard about
the assignment, I felt myself resisting. I felt I was exceeding
my boundaries. I anticipated that it would be very painful,
especially being in a slave position. I did not see a need for
myself — as someone who has experienced racism as an Afro-
German — that I could learn something from this, and I also
felt no need to go through the pain of doing this. I immedi-
ately said that I am not going to do this. I had such strong
feelings about it that I wanted to leave the room. A discus-
sion followed. Debby acted very surprised about it and said
that it had never happened before. I tried to explain why I did
not want to do the exercise. Debby responded by saying that
I could be in the power position. Another participant, who
was white, noticed that I was very serious about it and also re-
fused to do the exercise.
I was very confused and unsure during this time. I felt I was
not heard when I said I had experienced racism. Later I realized
this moment was racist, but at the time I felt I was maybe ex-
aggerating. I got very angry. I thought, I cannot be normal in
this group. Now, there is conflict, there is no more harmony
in the group. The other two participants were also there, and

89
 I felt that if I was not in the workshop, there would not be a
problem. Meanwhile, Debby explained why she did what she
did and that it was a good exercise. I doubted myself, because
Debby was the professional. I felt exposed, being the emotional
one. I did not come there to have a conflict. Racism happens all
the time, but I had hoped to be in a safe space in this workshop.
Sandra reflects,
I even felt guilty, which is typical of racist situations. When I
talked to Debby myself, Debby did not get it, but when white
people explained it, Debby did understand. She seemed only
capable to listen to white voices. It is violent that Debby thinks
she can do this exercise. Why does she do this? Debby is clearly
not aware of the power imbalance that already exists.
After the workshop, the next program item followed, which was a thirty-
minute walk outside, toward a museum. The rest of the group was still un-
aware of what had happened. During the walk to the museum, Debby tried
to talk to Sandra several times. During those interactions Debby tried to ex-
plain why the exercise actually did work well and that it simply was the case
that Sandra did not understand it. Sandra did not really engage actively, still
struggling with her emotions.
At the museum, the group went in to listen to a series of talks. While
that happened, Sandra stayed outside together with the white ally while still
shaken. She explained what had happened to one of the coordinators of the
training. Debby noticed it happening and tried to join the conversation. This
made for another awkward situation.
Slowly, the news spread with other members of the coordinating team,
including people who knew Debby, who then decided to intervene and try
and hold space. One went to Sandra to listen to Sandra’s story and give space
and emotional support to her while the other sat down with Debby to get
clarity on what had gone wrong since it became obvious that Debby did not
read the situation well.
The next day, the coordinating team had a crisis meeting over the inci-
dent. The coordinators (including two POC and one white person) decided
to give everyone some space to process what had happened. The next day was
also the last day and with only a morning session left, the case was discussed
briefly in the round-up session. Sandra:

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 During the round-up session, with all present, Debby said she
understood what she had done wrong and said sorry. To me
that apology was not authentic. The apology in the group was
performative, like, see, I have paid my dues. Debby should have
apologized to me face to face, one on one. And Debby should
have explained what she was sorry about exactly. The wrap-up
round continued, and Debby did not ask for a response from
me. So, there was no space and I felt forced to say, I forgive you.
Sandra notes that she has since been able to transform the traumatic event
into something she has learned from and which she uses in her work as a train-
er. Debby has remained in a position wherein she does not seem to really grasp
what she did wrong and never talked about it again with the people present.
There are a couple of things to consider while reflecting on this case.
Debby’s position could be read as someone who remains in the habit of main-
taining white innocence, where she “did good” as a white antiracist trainer,
as if that was enough. The fact that she was called out by a younger Black
person, did not make her question herself, on the contrary. She remained
confident she was on the right track and actually felt the need to reiterate
this several times, adding to the emotional discomfort of Sandra. Only after
Debby was called out by white people, did she engage with the critique in a
more self-reflexive manner, albeit temporarily, it seems.
This case also shows that when white people engage in antiracism work,
it does not automatically mean they understand that their own racial position
brings a power dynamic they should be aware of. Being on the right side
(because of antiracism work) seemed to have brought a certain comfortability,
which elevated Debby to a position that is beyond recourse. Debby did not
accept criticism from a young Black person, only from those the same age
and/or same “race”. Is this because Sandra is younger and therefore assumed
to be inexperienced? Or is it because Sandra is Black. Or both? As noted by
Sandra, she knows very well what racist practices look like, having experi-
enced them in everyday instances in Germany. Her intersectional position
already has made her quite knowledgeable on this. She came to the workshop,
assuming a safe space where she could actually share and learn together with
others in the group.
What is also noticeable is that whiteness has been externalized by Debby.
It would have been useful for Debby to position herself as a white woman in

91
the workshop and openly state what that means or could mean, making it
clear both to herself and the participants what whiteness entails and that she
herself is exercising power simply for being white and being the workshop
leader. Unlearning to automatically be on the right side of a situation per-
taining to antiracist work, is clearly not a given, as this case shows.
Lastly, I want to focus on something Sandra remembered: “Debby acted
very surprised.” Debby’s act of being surprised is interesting to see for how
could she even be surprised by Sandra’s reaction? Christina Sharpe in her
brilliant publication Ordinary Notes (2023) calls this a “culture of surprise.”
Sharpe writes:
The machinery of whiteness constantly deploys violence — and
in a mirror register, constantly manufactures wonder, surprise,
and innocence in relation to that violence. That innocence-
making machine rubs out violence at the very moment of its
manufacture. Michel-Rolph Trouillot tells us: Naivité is often
an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that
power is exercised, naiveté is always a mistake (2023, n217).
Sharpe refers to Michel-Rolph Trouillot, who wrote the influential text
Silencing the Past (1995), an analysis of the silences in our historical narratives
and what these silences reveal about inequalities of power. Sandra’s knowledge
base was silenced in this case. And while Sandra clearly was not alone, she
did feel isolated and felt that she at the time lacked the words/confidence to
push back at the violence done to her.
The group including the coordinating group has learned from this case
and could have handled things differently. Steps that could have been tak-
en were, for instance, to divide the group into a POC/Black and a white
group that would hold space and figure out what was needed. This could
mean several things, such as talking through what has happened and what
that means, vis-à-vis the general theme of the gathering, which was about
non-formal non-racist education. But it could also have meant sharing expe-
riences or doing breathing exercises. A space would have been opened for
healing, sharing, and reflecting. For Sandra it could have given the support
she could have used from a larger group. This could have helped her to gain
confidence in standing up to Debby instead of feeling she needed to accept
her apology. For Debby it could have given space to reflect and more actively
open a process to unlearn harmful practices of whiteness. Debby could have

92
practiced active listening and actually used Sandra’s input to become a better
workshop facilitator.

In Conclusion

While I entered spaces where unlearning practices in institutional spaces that

claim the importance of slavery history, colonial afterlives, and antiracism
were to be activated, I encountered walls, sedimented practices that function
like old habits. The cases presented in this text involve the habit of the quick
fix and the comfortability of whiteness. These individual cases are offered
because it helps in diving into personal experiences to make abstract matters
tangible. Both show habits that are tough to let go of or to be conscious of
while being engaged in sensitive processes.
The cases are interrelated because they both have to deal with issues of
race and racism and this is often so uncomfortable for people, that one wants
to move to solutions quickly, looking for quick fixes, such as a policy research
document or a mere apology done in a closing session. But we need time to sit
with the problem, because the questions that come with it are: is the problem
understood, in what ways is everyone involved implicated, can we reflect on
our own respective roles? In both cases these “sedimented practices” or “old
habits” prove to be unproductive during the process.
Learning is uncomfortable, but so is unlearning. And if you do not know
that you actually need to unlearn something or worse, don’t want to, change
will not happen.
In both cases the goal was to create awareness as well as transformation
through knowledge production and knowledge sharing, while in fact some/all
of the stakeholders involved in creating a productive space where this could
take place, lacked the conditions to actually do so. I personally have gone into
a process of unlearning — thanks to both these cases — to stay loyal to a fault.
As said, this involves the past, the present, and the future, and how we
look at and deal with ourselves and others, and the dynamics of a shared yet
fluctuating we. It tells us something about where we are today as a Dutch na-
tion, while learning more about where we came from. When we dare to un-
learn, we have a better chance of making it together.

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94
 Instead of
Solving Paradoxes
and
Contradictions

An earlier version of this essay is published in Krauss 2017, 4  3–6  3.

95
 Paradoxes, contradictions, and binaries — my engagement with unlearning
is full of them. Paradoxes involve contradictory, yet entangled aspects that
persist over time. Even with the application of sound reasoning, and a desire to
solve them, paradoxes lead to somewhat unacceptable conclusions. Paradoxes
are not only part of abstract, logical reasoning, but also find their ways into
daily life and human interactions as so-called double binds, in which a per-
son is confronted with two irreconcilable demands or undesirable courses of
action. A binary can be a paradox, or more specifically, a double bind. As
someone who grew up in Western institutions and their schooling systems,
I encountered paradoxes in school subjects such as math, or natural science,
with the imperative that contradictions are there to be solved or expelled from
the equation. I came somewhat late to the suspicion that there might be a
connection between pushing paradoxes outside of a logical, rational approach,
and my disparate experiences of paradoxes and binaries in daily life.
In the introduction to An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization
(2012), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak describes binaries as practical and theo-
retical constructions that fix worlds as they take shape with all their injustices
and oppressions. To counteract binaries and intervene in global injustices,
she insists, instead of deciding for one side of the binary, we need to “learn
to live with contradictory instructions” and “play the double bind” (2012,
2–34).1 Why is a critical focus on binaries important at all? Feminist, post-
colonial, and decolonial scholarship, to name a few, have long shown that
distinctions, such as those made between man/mind/culture/able/white/
center and woman/nature/exotic/disabled/other/margin are anything but
neutral, and imply asymmetrical, hierarchical, yet entangled patterns that
have dominated Western thought and life.
As feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz puts it: “Dichotomous think-
ing necessarily hierarchizes and ranks the two polarized terms so that one
becomes the privileged term and the other its suppressed, subordinated, neg-
ative counterpart” (1994, 3). For example, the disembodied and rational mind
has been privileged over the “animal,” “female,” and “other” body. We know
that the Cartesian body-mind split sustains patriarchal and racialized power
relations in which “the unmarked given or a priori category is reserved for

1 For rich perspectives on Spivak’s book, and the postcolonial double bind, see Castro Varela and
Haghighat 2023.

96
the mind and for the disembodied white masculinity as soon as body matters
arise” (Asberg 2009, 29). Spivak has written extensively about the necessity of
finding ways to deal with binaries that would be different from the reiteration
of racialized and hierarchical power relations — “unlearning one’s privileges”
(1990, 9) and “playing the double bind” (2012, 3) are two of them.
In the following, I attempt to link both concepts and examine their
potentials to approach processes of unlearning, relating these to what I call
routines of the impossible.

Unlearning My Privilege 2

Spivak coined the term “unlearning our privileges”   3 (1990, vii) in the mid-
1980s. As with many of her terms, she does not provide an exhaustive ex-
planation, but rather activates the term over several texts. Spivak describes
“unlearning one’s privileges” as the process of actively dismissing or getting
rid of “the conviction that I am necessarily better, I am necessarily indispen-
sable, I am necessarily the one to right wrongs” (2004, 532). Privilege here
is understood as an advantage, rank, or entitlement (often unrecognized)
that are based on, for example, social class, ethnic or racial category, gender,
ability. Unlearning one’s privileges cannot be adequately understood with-
out paying attention to Spivak as a postcolonial theorist deeply connected
to the project of deconstruction. She describes deconstruction as a practice
that insistently critiques the grand narratives of modernity, such as scientif-
ic rationality, progress, or emancipation of humanity (Spivak 1990, 17–18).
For her, a deconstructive approach reminds us again and again that “when
a narrative is constructed, something is left out” (ibid., 18). In manifold es-
says and lectures, she unpacks how a Eurocentric subject-position tied to the
narratives of Enlightenment and modernity is oblivious to and complicit in
unjust structures that European colonialism has inflicted upon the world,
and prevail in forms of coloniality till today. Moreover, Spivak questions

2 This text is thoroughly involved with specific terms by Spivak. Therefore, I decided to take two of
the key terms as subtitles. With this gesture, I attempt to indicate how these Spivakian notions have
gained a life of their own within some of the collaborative practices that I discuss in this book.
3 Spivak does not provide one unified term, instead she uses unlearning my/our/your/one’s privilege(s)
according to the contexts of the texts.

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 large programmatic solutions and excavates the limits of these narratives.
However, a deconstructive approach is certainly not about wanting to stop
narration as such. Most importantly, it is itself implicated in the impulse
to narrate and acknowledges that “we cannot but narrate” (ibid., 19). In the
same way, Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean identify Spivak’s adamant
attention toward the narratives that we construct as the acknowledgement of
a desire to narrate, while nevertheless uncompromisingly investigating our
omissions and exclusions (1996, 10–15). Spivak herself describes a deconstruc-
tive stance as a position in which one has to “persistently critique a structure
that one cannot not (wish to) inhabit” (1993, 284). In other words, she urges
the reader to acknowledge the desire to think in terms of origins and ends
with finding multiple ways into theories and narratives. What is important
here is to recognize that this is rather “a need than the way to truth” (Spivak
1990, 20). Since Spivak clearly does not object to narration, I interpret her
approach as vigilance in and a critique of how we relate to the narratives we
produce, inhabit, or are forced to be a part of. These narratives influence how
I know of, and act in the world; accordingly, they shape how I engage in social
practices and encounters on an everyday basis and see myself in relation to
injustices in a globalized world. They are therefore ingrained in the existing
modes of relating between ourselves and others. In this sense I understand
Spivak’s unlearning my privilege as a proposition for an intervention in the
ways we narrate and practice our relationships to each other.
According to Spivak, unlearning one’s privileges has been subject to
misunderstandings. She distanced herself from the term when it seemed no
longer workable for her.4 Working through one of these misunderstandings,
feminist philosopher Linda M. Alcoff (1991, 5–32) argues that unlearning
one’s privileges should not be confused with stepping down from one’s posi-
tion of authority in the sense of abandoning a socio-cultural position. Spivak
reminds us that this act might even reinforce a certain privilege rather than
disestablishing it. Professor for Pedagogy and Social Work María do Mar
Castro Varela (2008) argues along the same lines when interpreting unlearn-
ing one’s privileges as becoming aware of one’s privileges and using these

4 María do Mar Castro Varela (2008) states that in 2008, Spivak strongly distanced herself from
“unlearning your privilege” in a lecture at Humboldt-University in Berlin, precisely because of the
confusion the term provoked.

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privileges to face and work on social injustice. Hence, with unlearning one’s
privileges Spivak focuses on social, cultural, and economic positionings not
by refraining from them, but by exposing their inseparability from privileges
of identity, such as race, class, nationality, gender. In a deconstructive ap-
proach, she demands taking into account and investigating the structures of
my own productions, especially the processes whereby I naturalize personal
experiences and desires into generalized truths. As a consequence, I start
to question my seemingly instinctual responses and attractions as learned.
On this basis, unlearning one’s privileges can be understood and followed
as a relentless working and thinking through of one’s history, prejudices,
and assumptions in order to confront social injustices. While I agree with
this interpretation of unlearning as “using your privilege,” I do think it only
makes sense when, at the same time, it is brought together with a critical
practice of redistribution. Otherwise unlearning your privilege remains in
a state of limbo that is in danger of being instrumentalized as a self-reflexive
endeavor all too easily trapped in an academic exercise.

Attempts in Practicing Unlearning

How does unlearning my privileges relate to the specific sites for unlearning
that this publication speaks to? In the sites, the different groups have time and
again reinterpreted privileges as those (inherited) advantages, rights, ranks,
or benefits that to a great extent have brought each of us to the particular
point, position, and understanding in our lives at which they are situated
right at that moment in the site for unlearning.5 Obviously, this takes place
very differently according to the sites, hence the roles of the participants
(including me) in these, and what is at stake shifts respectively. In hind-
sight, I read the process of unlearning during Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not

5 As I have discussed in different forms in this book, these privileges are very often perceived as
quasi-natural, and therefore not perceived as learned and incorporated power relations that have
been passed on over generations in forms of knowledge, aptitudes, and attitudes. See also “Site for
Unlearning (Zwarte Piet)” in this book on pages 49ff for inconspicuous calls to order, “Bodies to Think
With” on pages 123ff for bodily thinking, “Hidden Curriculum” on pages 156ff for schooling and the
physicality of education, and “Afterword: Unlearning as a Scaffolding for Living” on pages 223–25
for the relationship between daily physical routines and worldviews.

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 Given (2008–12) as speaking up against racism and confronting it publicly
as detailed in the first essay in this book that contextualizes how I came to
unlearning, while trying to deal with my own complicities, to endure ridicule,
silencing, and threats, and excavating relations with many actors before us.
During Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet) (2011–present), also explored in the
aforementioned essay, I have tried to find my place and voice backstage in a
supporting role. This has been paired since with institutional work against
racism. Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike) (2012–present) has been a study
of the psychosomatic implications of unlearning, when it comes to the ques-
tion of impossibilities. What does it do to our bodies when being exposed
to an alleged impossibility? How do our diverse privileges play out in this?
Site for Unlearning (My Library) (2013–present) grapples with the role that
categorizations and reference systems play in the constellation of unlearning,
privileges, and ignorance. Moreover, the collaboration with the Casco Art
Institute: Working for the Commons team in Utrecht on Site for Unlearning
(Art Organisation) (2013–20) dives into the organizational questions of a mid-
scale art space in relation to unlearning. Here, we studied our own — and the
organization’s — habits, privileges, and complicities in overproduction, as this
may be present in busyness, and optimizing logics. We developed so-called
Unlearning Exercises, prefiguring an end to the illusion of limitless growth
in a concrete art organization and focusing on maintenance, reproductive
work, and questions of social justice.6 In all of the sites, the role of collec-
tivity, and how to work together are crucial. How can we keep attention to
non-dominant differences in the way we approach privileges? Who is “we” 7
in a particular formation of unlearning? And what is the role of habits (of
thinking and doing), and their relationship to temporalities that the sites
bring forward? For example, the team of Casco and I have studied Spivak
and tried to understand her approach toward our ends. This has been ut-
terly challenging. It has been difficult to establish situations to approach
(our) privileges and talk about them. Discussions around navel-gazing (also
from the outside as a reaction to the project) have frequently gotten in the

6 While reworking this text, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons launched the Unlearning
Center that attempts to carry forward, intensify, and redirect, what we worked with in the Unlearning
Exercises and subsequent book (2018).
7 See also the subsection on the different I’s and we’s in the introduction on page 16 in this book.

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way. There were those rare moments when we allowed ourselves to touch
upon differences of class, gender, race, and age within the group and their
impact on the work. A few of these conversations entered the transcriptions
in Unlearning Exercises (2018, 17–55).
In many of the sites for unlearning projects and exercises, we have ap-
proached unlearning my privileges in a first instance as becoming aware of
my automatic reactions and responses, developing context-specific exercises,
or approaches to interrogate these. These automatic responses are learned
and tied to one’s privileges through identity and other social divisions. They
are invoked by “structures of privilege unleashed by a history of power and
domination” (Trouillot 2000, 183), but now taken for granted and deemed
quasi-natural. As I understand Trouillot these privileges are far from being
individual, but rather through our historical implication we reproduce them,
and sustain deeply ingrained assumptions and prejudices about race, gender,
nationality, etc. We therefore also engender a closing down of possibilities, “a
loss of other options, other knowledges” (Landry and MacLean 1996, 4) for
how to relate to each other. Spivak describes this as “unlearning our privilege
as our loss” (1990, 9, my emphasis).
With the sites, we ask how to address these taken-for-granted responses
and take them out of their seemingly individual attribution. In one recurring
experiment, in Site for Unlearning (My Library), we approached links between
automatic reactions and embodied institutional processes. The example of
sharing references, or teaching work speaks to these experiments: I spend
quite some time meeting students in groups or on individual bases, looking
at their work, exchanging references, and contextualizing this through other
artistic work. It is quite spontaneous work that takes place in workshops,
conversations, and studio spaces, demanding improvisational and associa-
tive skills. A few of us agreed to write down the references that we gave to
students. We studied the lists of references in terms of representation and
self-narrated axes of identities, such as gender, race/ethnicity, class, discipline,
in order to approach the ways we make connections, what we are attracted to,
in short, our own biases and omissions. In Site for Unlearning (My Library) we
have extended this work to lists of bibliographies, curricula, and the digital
catalogue of libraries.8

8 Feminist Search Tools Working Group, 2020, www.feministsearchtools.nl.

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 From a pedagogical perspective, we have tried to connect automatic reac-
tions and responses to our perception. This experiment entails the description
and analysis of what I see, and hear, of what I experience, and respectively
how I listen and respond.9 In reference to educational theorist Paul Mecheril
(2011) I call this approach “perceiving perception.” 10 It focuses on the (often
normalized) connections between “mere” descriptions and judgments, per-
sonal decisions, and embodied institutionalized norms and conventions.
“Perceiving perception” is neither meant as a solipsistic exercise, nor should
this seemingly impossible endeavor prevent us from doing it. Perceiving
perception is an approach taken to come closer to what Spivak urges us to do
by unlearning privileges. Becoming aware of and enduring this slow, labori-
ous, and uncomfortable process of excavating, confronting, and crossing our
biases and ignorance, in order to intervene in those (unjust) structures that
we cannot not wish to inhabit, we look to understand and imagine that these
desired inhabitations are part of a colonial capitalist heritage and history of
domination through Western societies.
In this sense, “perceiving perception” goes beyond a solely rational ap-
proach and includes affective, sensorial, and other non-rational registers.
It is here that postcolonial and decolonial scholarship and practices intersect
with unlearning.

Bridging Postcolonial and Decolonial Practice

In Vistas of Modernity, decolonial scholar Rolando Vázquez Melken studies

how aesthetics (as the field of representation and perception) manifests as
a power-driven arena of modernity/colonialism. This arena does not only

9 I thank Read-in collective and Claudia Hummel. In the context of the work within these two
collaborations, we have also developed further instances of this exercise; for Bookshelf Research,
2014–present, www.read-in.info/bookshelf-research/, see also “Re- and Un-Defining Tools: Exploring
Intersectional Approaches to Digital Search Tools in Library Catalogues” on pages 205–22 in this
book, and for “Difference As Arithmetic Exercise,” which looks at the text, image, and number
politics in secondary school math textbooks, Difference As Arithmetic Exercise, 2012–present,
www.differenz-als-rechenaufgabe.de/index_en.html.
10 “Perceiving perception” is a translation of the German term “Wahrnehmung der Wahrnehmung”
that Mecheril used in his keynote lecture to describe the role of aesthetic education at the conference
Kunstvermittlung in der Migrationsgesellschaft, 2011; see also Barut 2012, 84–86.

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regulate the way we represent the world but also how we experience our
lives, our “selves” — the ways we sense, see, taste, and perceive the world,
impacting how we relate to each other. Vázquez Melken calls for decolonial
aesthesis, which he differentiates from modern aesthetics as “the plurality
of sensorial experiences and expressions that are in excess of the modern
order of aesthetics” (2019, 1). Decolonial aesthesis is a practice that responds
by “humbling modernity [that] is not a shaming but an opening towards
the radical diversity of the Earth worlds” (Vázquez Melken 2020, 157). It
engages in “other worlds of meaning and sensing” (ibid., 173) from those that
modernity proposes, and acknowledges that an outside of modernity has
always existed. Practices of unlearning are inspired by this, and ask “instead
of producing spaces for canonizing, for the affirmation of representation, for
the celebration of contemporaneity and abstraction, what would it mean to
weave relations that cross the colonial difference, that are capable of listening,
of hosting and not representing other worlds?” (ibid., 172).
Exercises for “perceiving perception” are modest attempts or tools to
approach processes of unlearning. The exercises take place within the spec­
ificities of a concrete group of people at a specific place and time (here the
spontaneous reactions, feedback, and sharing of references to each other,
or to students in classrooms), in order to excavate institutionalized norms,
conventions, and desires that have inscribed themselves over time (for
example, conditions of coloniality). The sites for unlearning are dedicated to
tracing how privileges, personal experiences, and desires reverberate in macro-
dimensional structures in the form of rules and (for example, national,
colonial) laws, curricula — and, vice versa, how these macro dimensions get
inscribed in everyday routines and conventions.11

Unlearning and Intersectionality

To come closer to unlearning one’s privileges, I investigate the parallels and

differences in the approaches on intersectionality, a key contribution by Black

11 For more detail on the bridges between postcolonial, decolonial, and anticolonial theory and practices
in this book, see “ Introduction and Acknowledgements: Practicing Unlearning,” footnote 2, page 12
and “Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet)” on pages 4 1–74 in this book.

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 feminist scholarship and debates on analyzing forms of oppression and social
injustice. The term “intersectionality” was coined by feminist and critical
race scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) and further developed by feminist
scholar Patricia Hill Collins (1990). Emphasizing the importance of knowing
the genealogy of feminist ideas, anthropologist Gloria Wekker (2007, 64) and
others have shown that the concept can be found at work back in Sojourner
Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech (1851). Truth considerably predates the
coining of the concept of intersectionality, which emerged from the long
history of Black women’s struggle in the United States in the second half
of the twentieth century. Writings by the Black feminist Combahee River
Collective (1977/1991) and one of the first readers in Black Women’s Studies
with the indicative title All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But
Some of Us Are Brave (Hull, Bell-Scott, and Smith 1982) are often referred
to as having paved the way to conceptualizing intersectionality. The theory
maintains that different effects of structures of domination intersect and mu-
tually constitute each other in a person’s life. It therefore challenges “additive
models [...] [b]ecause the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of
racism and sexism, [and] any analysis that does not take intersectionality
into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which
Black women are subordinated” (Crenshaw 1991, 140). Crenshaw examines
US legal cases against employers brought by Black women, looking at how
in some cases Black women are protected by anti-discrimination law only
insofar as their experiences can be equated to those of “white women” or
“black men.” 12 The term intersectionality has been taken up not only within
Black feminist scholarship, but also later on within feminist theory, social
theory, cultural studies (Phoenix 2011), and contemporary feminist and social
justice activism. In this way, intersectionality has become a key analytical
tool for analyzing different forms of oppression through their connections.
Strongly related to Spivak’s notion of unlearning one’s privileges is her
encouragement to interrogate intersecting axes of positionality through her

12 For example, Crenshaw demonstrates how a judge rejected a charge of employer discrimination
against Black women because of an undifferentiated understanding of “woman” or being “Black.”
Since the employer had hired white women and Black men, the judge could not accept a claim of sex
and race discrimination. Crenshaw exposes how “woman” is taken to mean “white women” and how
“Black” is taken to mean “Black men.” Her claim is that Black women’s “intersecting” experience of
sex and race discrimination is different to that of white women and Black men (Crenshaw 1991, 41–4 3).

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critical attention to differences of power and the problematization of “single
issue” analysis. The discrepancy between these notions, however, is crucial.
Spivak does not lead the attention toward different forms of oppression in
the first instance. Instead, she is interested in forms of difference that lead
to a certain privilege on the side of the person, or a group of people who
investigate or engage with knowledge and social struggles. In this sense,
I suggest interpreting Spivak’s claim of unlearning one’s privileges as an
inverted form of intersectionality. This move demands an investigation of
the complicities and ignorance that are produced due to one’s privilege. It is
“[n]ot simply information that we have not yet received, but the knowledge
that we are not equipped to understand by reason of our social positions”
(Landry and MacLean 1996, 4). For example, in the introduction to the Spivak
Reader, Landry and MacLean address the readers of Spivak’s text explicitly.
They claim that whoever these readers are (and it applies as well for me, and
very likely for the readers of this very text), “we are likely to be privileged in
terms of educational opportunity, citizenship, and location within the inter-
national division of labor” (ibid.). However, it is not enough to acknowledge
that we produce omissions. Spivak demands that “we do our homework”
(1990, 62), which means to work hard to acquire some “knowledge of those
spaces most closed to our privileged view” (Landry and MacLean 1996, 14).
In a compelling passage during an interview with postcolonial scholar Sneja
Gunew (Spivak 1990), Spivak elaborates on what it means to do your home-
work. She recalls a situation in an undergraduate course, where one of the
male students positioned himself, saying: “I am only a white male student,
I cannot speak.” This gesture, as Spivak describes it, might have been a re-
sponse to the gaining ground of feminist and postcolonial studies in academic
classroom discussions. However, Spivak does not accept it, but instead asks
the student: “Why not develop a certain degree of rage against the history
that has written such an abject script for you that you are silenced?” Spivak
invites the student to develop a more complex position toward the si­lencing
that he experiences due to his privileging of being white and male. She further
encourages the student to “investigate what is it that silences you, rather
than taking this deterministic position” (ibid., 62–63). This marks a crucial
moment; it is not enough to recognize one’s privilege and to resign from one’s
authoritative position by being silent. Rather it is necessary to actively work
through one’s own privileged position that will finally influence how one

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enters struggles of social injustice and how one engages actively in change. In
this sense, unlearning one’s privilege can be described as a plea to “continue
working from within the contradictory, hierarchical position of profession-
als” (Andreotti 2007, 48), such as in the role of a teacher, researcher, or artist,
and to simultaneously investigate one’s own positioning, assumptions, and
complicities in order to “rework existing modes of relating” between ourselves
and others (Thiele 2011, 56).

Unlearning and the Double Bind

“Unlearning one’s privilege” is one of many influential terms and concepts

that Spivak has coined. Many of these terms involve the challenges of par-
adoxes, contradictions, and binaries: for example, her notion of the “sub­
altern” through which she famously argues that subalternity can no longer
be claimed once a “subaltern” has been represented. The paradox revolves
around the notion of representation and subalternity. Spivak sees the need
of representation to understand what it means to be subaltern. However,
representation of marginalized people will always be highly problematic,
silencing and distorting through its systems of mediation. Feminists have
read Spivak as an insistent critic who urges the “Western feminists [to] keep
being critically involved in making positions of marginal women visible”
(Ponsanezi 2009, 92), coupled with Spivak’s relentless question to the reader
as to which way they assume any relation to the subaltern (Spivak 1988,
291). Another example that relates to important questions in this book,
is Spivak’s suggestion of “strategic essentialism.” The paradox here is the
acknowledgement of the problematics of essentialism in identity claims and
their quasi-naturalization in categorizations such as race, gender, and nation-
ality, while at the same time recognizing how they might enable political
agency and connect subjects for resistance (Spivak 1993). Tying this to the
practice of solidarity in the contribution “Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet)”
on pages 41–74, interventions fall short if they only speak to the fictional
character of categorizations (as they are socially constructed), and are not
thought together with studying the factual violence these categories produce.

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Playing the Double Bind

In Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), Gregory Bateson investigates the notion

of the “double bind” in order to understand childhood schizophrenia with
regard to communication in human relationships.1  3 He argues that children
who suffer from schizophrenia are afflicted with a double take on the world
and can hardly deal with it. He describes, for example, the family relationships
of these children who are regularly given messages (e.g., emotional, verbal,
spatial, bodily) that at one level of communication assert something but at
the other level negate or conflict with this assertion. The receiver of the
contrasting messages (i.e., the child) can neither withdraw from the situation,
nor have they learned to respond to it. Bateson calls this a “transcontextual
situation” (1972, 250–77) and expands on this idea in noting that not everyone
has to suffer under this “double bind.” Instead, there are those who are able
to “play” with this “double take” on the world, meaning those, “whose life
is enriched by transcontextual gifts.” He continues that both “are alike in
one respect: for them there is always or often a ‘double take’. A falling of a
leaf, the greeting of a friend, or ‘a primrose by the river’s brim’ is not ‘just
that and nothing more’” (ibid., 272).
Spivak borrows Bateson’s concept of the double bind and broadens the
narrow borders of mental health that a particular understanding of it in the
context of a mental “disorder” has upheld. For Spivak the double bind has
become a “description of all doing, all thinking, all self-conscious living, up-
stream from capitalism” (2012, 10). The double bind depicts our globalized
present that is full of contradictions and inconsistencies; it is concrete and
abstract at once. Instead of wanting to resolve these, she demands from the
reader to learn to “live with contradictory instructions” (ibid., 3, 16). She
prompts us to not side with one part of the binary at the expense of the other.
Scholar Robert Azzarello comments on this as “the psychosocial and political
predicaments of the [Western] world we live in — politically democratic and
economically capitalistic — [that] is founded upon the internal contradictions
of the double bind” (2013, 67). Instead of surrendering to the psychosocial
and political predicaments, Spivak calls for a double take on the world in

1  3 For more perspectives on Bateson’s double bind in relation to Spivak’s take on it, see also Castro Varela
and Haghighat 2023.

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order to intervene in it. In a nutshell, for Spivak “learning to play the double
bind” is a tool for facing binaries. Spivak urges that one find different ways of
addressing the injustices of globalization than through a dichotomous siding
with, for example, modernity or tradition, modernity or coloniality, colonial
or postcolonial (or decolonial), individual or collective. Instead, she proposes
one learn “inhabiting the two ends of the spectrum” and “working at the limits
of the double bind of the abstract and the concrete” (2012, 4). Spivak attempts
to work at the limits of the double bind through an intervention in the can-
on of European Enlightenment literature. More specifically, she intervenes
in Friedrich Schiller’s perspective on aesthetic education in On the Aesthetic
Education of Man (1795). She understands her own intervention as a way
of “affirmatively sabotaging Schiller” (Spivak 2012, 2). Whereas a common
understanding of sabotage is that one works on a tool up to the point that
one cannot use it anymore, her idea of “affirmative sabotage” would rework
a tool, so one can use it for something else. The objects of sabotage in this
case are Schiller’s notion of the “play” and equally important, the “aesthetic.”
For both Schiller and Spivak, the practice of “play” provides the possibil-
ity to address the polarities such as body/mind, rationality/emotion, passive/
active. Both agree that this play, and hence, the training of the capability to
play, is crucial for any aesthetic education. However, they differ tremendously
from each other when it comes to the function they assign to “play” in society,
and what this play entails. Schiller identifies the aesthetic education of play as
the core engagement in experiencing true beauty and, resulting from this, true
freedom. For Spivak, play is the training of the imagination (in order to “play
the double bind,” to “unlearn one’s privilege,” to “let the subaltern speak”)
with the aim to address and contest the injustices of globalization due to the
dominant logic of capital and conditions of coloniality. For Spivak, training
the imagination is about activating transcontextual situations. She demands
one work at the limits of the abstract and the concrete at once. Through this
one may play the “double binds” of one’s worlds and change these.
The question still remains as to how Spivak imagines playing the double
bind. She does not really work out what actually happens between or at the
two ends, or the two poles of the double bind. She approaches this question
by excluding how one should rather not imagine it. It is certainly not, she
explains, Schiller’s way of playing that mistakenly “solves” the double bind by
“turn[ing] it into a series of balances” (ibid., 16). Denial is not a solution either,

108
which entails short-term single-binding that emphasizes “a single pole of the
swing of the double bind” (ibid., 18). The term “swing” is also problematic,
because it suggests again a movement or oscillation between the poles, one
by one. The danger of these terms (balances, denial, swing) lies in a quick
fix and therefore might prevent any further imagination around the topic.
Spivak herself also uses the phrase “inhabiting the two ends of the pole” (ibid.,
4), which comes close to Donna Haraway’s “holding on to both poles of the
dichotomy” (1988, 590). This resonance brings about Haraway’s feminist
practice of “situated knowledges” as an alternative to traditional models of
scientific objectivity (see “Afterword: Unlearning as a Scaffolding for Living”
on pages 233–35 in this book). Haraway contests the idea of the researcher as
an impartial and disinterested onlooker who “discovers” the truth about the
phenomena being studied. However, relativism is not an option for her either.
In order to dispose of the false binary of relativism and objectivity, Haraway
demands getting rid of what relativism and totalization have in common,
namely the “god tricks.” According to Haraway “god tricks” are illusions
“promising vision from everywhere and nowhere, equally and fully” (ibid.,
584). These “god tricks” are exercised through claims of objectivity (vision
from nowhere), and claims of relativism (vision from everywhere). Haraway
dismisses both and describes the feminist paradox as follows:
how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical
contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects,
a critical practice for recognizing our own “semiotic technol-
ogies” for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment
to faithful accounts of a “real” world, one which can be par-
tially shared and that is friendly to earthwide projects of finite
freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in
suffering, and limited happiness (ibid., 579).
She suggests practicing “situated knowledges” to both practice (scien-
tific) truth-claims/objectivity and simultaneously keep open the possibility
for different “truths.” With “situated knowledges” she combines a critique
of (scientific) knowledge practices with a commitment to the possibility of
knowing differently.
What links Spivak’s and Haraway’s approaches is their demand to hold
on to the two ends of the dichotomy. To relate this back to unlearning: What
Spivak and Haraway suggest as working and thinking of both polarities

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at once, I have learned to identify as paradox, or as impossibility. Instead,
unlearning one’s privileges as a relentless working and thinking through of
one’s history, prejudices, and assumptions, as well as perceiving perception
attempt to hold the possible and impossible, to be body and mind, at once.
These practices also connect to Haraway’s “situated knowledges,” and
learning to play a double bind, as they foreclose a too easy hunt, and lazy
solutions, yet are committed to intervening in the world. In other words,
juxtaposing playing the double bind and situated knowledges reminds me of
a clearly defined goal, namely generating in the here and now “knowledge
potent for constructing worlds less organized by axes of domination” (Haraway
1988, 585).
Spivak’s use of Schiller’s play has a yet further goal. Her intervention is
about “productively undoing another legacy of European Enlightenment — the
aesthetic” (2012, 1), which for her is infused with Schiller’s understanding of
aesthetic education. Spivak calls this intervention “ab-use” (not abuse). By
activating the meaning of the Latin prefix “ab” as “below,” but also “motion
away,” “agency,” “support,” as well as “the duties of slaves” (ibid., 4), Spivak
juxtaposes it with what for her is the “upbeat post-colonial task” (ibid., 27),
namely “ab-using” European Enlightenment in the sense of “affirmative sab-
otage.” She points to the intricate and difficult undertaking, when she writes
“Enlightenment came, to colonizer and colonized alike, through colonial-
ism, to support a destructive ‘free trade’, and that top-down policy breaches
of Enlightenment principles are more rule than exception” (ibid., 4). Spivak
attempts to intervene in the coloniality of aesthetic education, and here spe-
cifically in Schiller’s legacy, with the goal of undoing its premises and false
promises. She considers a reworked aesthetic education that will not only
enable us to know the contradictions of a globalized world. Rather, aesthetic
education trains the imagination for playing the contradictions (not solving
them) in the fight against injustices in a globalized world.
What is the role of the aesthetic here? And how does Spivak’s sabotage of
the aesthetic succeed, or not? Aesthetics, broadly understood as the study of
perception, and historically of taste and beauty, is a term and practice that is
intricately interwoven with European Enlightenment thought. Schiller wrote
On the Aesthetic Education of Man in 1795 and responded to the disenchant-
ment that he felt about the French Revolution. His main concern in the text
is how art and beauty are related to freedom, and by that, he extrapolates

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Immanuel Kant’s exposition on aesthetic judgment. For Schiller, no liberation
from tyranny and oppression is possible without a successful aesthetic educa-
tion that is able to provide a sense of beauty. Strikingly, he writes about this
correlation while fully ignoring radical demands for freedom at that time,
such as the demands for abolition of slavery (e.g., in the French empire), or
women as a driving force of the French Revolution. Schiller’s promise consists
of changing human beings in the long run through aesthetic education with
the assumption that this will then automatically (or intrinsically) produce
social change. His thoughts have extensively shaped up until today what is
known as aesthetic education in the Western world and excel in a stunning
career in schools since the nineteenth century.
In the last decade, Schiller’s proposition of aesthetic education and its
widely reaching scope of how to imagine social change has undergone deep
criticism, Spivak’s among them. Philosopher Ruth Sonderegger criticizes
Schiller, firstly for his naive assumption that art easily forms the character
of a person, secondly for his demand of lifelong aesthetic education that post-
pones social change in the interest of some utopian realm, and thirdly for a
narrow understanding and exclusionary coloniality of art in the singular.14
While Spivak highlights (does she affirm it?) “what all projects of ‘edu-
cation’ do, a need to establish a distinction from a homogeneous ‘animality’”
(2012, 8), and problematizes Schiller’s “injunction to feminize the aesthetic”
(ibid., 33), she does not pay much attention to the coloniality of Schiller’s
(and Kant’s) account of the aesthetic. Sonderegger and literary scholar David
Lloyd,15 share the sense that Schiller’s proposition of aesthetic education has
far too long been overlooked in its relation to questions of race and the civiliz-
ing logic of European colonialism. As Lloyd tells us, the aforementioned de-
ferral fuels “[t]he pedagogical aims of the aesthetic that Schiller will draw out
into a program of education, transforming the ‘raw man’ into the citizen. [...]
Within such a pedagogy, the developmental history that separates the
‘Savage’ from the modern subject is spelled out more fully than it is in Kant’s
exposition, and the terms of the racializing judgment of culture are established
in ways that are decisive for [...] a liberal discourse of colonialism” (2019, 59).

14 For a detailed discussion of Kant and Schiller on the aesthetic and aesthetic education see
Sonderegger 2010, 23–37, and ibid. 2023, 73–94.
15 Thank you to Valentina Desideri who introduced David Lloyd’s work during a workshop in 2019
within the Master of Fine Art at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht.

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 My point in bringing up Schiller here, is that this meanwhile widely
influential and institutionalized understanding of aesthetic education in
Western institutions has inscribed itself into the relationship between art,
social change, and institutions. Schiller’s aesthetic education is pivotal to an
underlying theory of change that I deem as colonial. Scholars of education
and social justice Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang understand a theory of
change as referring “to a belief or perspective about how a situation can be
adjusted, corrected, or improved” (2014, 13). Schiller’s aesthetic education
is a colonial theory of change because it operates its ideological function
and legitimization through the socio-psychological logic of human progres-
sive development. “This task” of forming the “raw man” into the citizen, as
Lloyd explains, “is not merely assigned to the aesthetic but first envisaged
in it” (2019, 10). In other words, this civilizing logic takes its force from a
seemingly intrinsic connection between aesthetic experience and education,
while art and artistic practices ride in the slipstream. As a colonial theory
of change it places the Western world (and in it some more than others) and
its modern ideology at the horizon and origin of societal evolution. The
aesthetic becomes an exclusionary technology of change that needs to be
taken seriously in a triple sense. Its colonial-civilizing logic, firstly, draws a
clear boundary toward the colonial other; secondly, it marks a demarcation
within the Western world toward lower classes and between genders; thirdly,
we should not forget that today, in Western societies, discussions around
aesthetic education and the arts are heavily tied up with what scholar of ed-
ucation Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez calls the “rhetoric of effects” (2013).
On the one hand, there is an obsession with the desired and to be proven
impact of the arts on things like academic achievement and other societal
outcomes. On the other hand, as Gaztambide-Fernandez in detail elaborates,
when there is trouble with proving any impact, intrinsic arguments are put
forward, focusing “on those aspects of learning that are supposedly inherent
to the arts, such as aesthetic experience.” Typical remarks would be that the
arts don’t have to do and prove anything. “They are their own good.” And
by that inevitably “reinscribing notions of the arts for arts’ sake” (ibid., 220).
This tendency can also be increasingly read in accreditation reports, on art
academy websites and in justifications for the relevance of art education on
an (inter)national level, as an “expressionist” legitimization of art and its
didactics (see also Biesta 2017). The role of art and its pedagogy is evoked as

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primarily enabling adolescents and young adults to express themselves and
develop their own language. As Gaztambide-Fernandez unfolds, the discus-
sions around arts for art’s sake very often conceal “how the concept of the arts
is mobilized to justify exclusion through notions of talent and artistic ability
that typically ignore or downplay the role of social context in determining
who is included and, by extension, excluded” (ibid., 223). It is here where a
discourse around arts for art’s sake meets the aesthetic as a colonial theory of
change. Schiller explicitly states the civilizing force of the aesthetic through
experiencing “true beauty” that then works as a socio-psychological force,
important for those who society regards as “underdeveloped” people not
quite ready for self-determination. In comparison the notion of arts for art’s
sake works with a similar logic (e.g., with regard to artistic talent), however,
it has to hide this very “function […] that reanimates a particular conception
of what it means to be a ‘good’ and ‘moral’ human being” (ibid., 221). To
put it in different words, the concept of the aesthetic (including its derivative
as arts for art’s sake, and for self-expression) has been constituted as a tech-
nology for othering, exclusivity, and based on superiority. These concepts
and their material consequences have inscribed the ongoing modern-colonial
project in Western institutions, and shape how artistic practices and aesthetic
education relate to education, theories of change, and enduring forms of co-
loniality.16 Turning the aesthetic, and by extension aesthetic education and
the arts, into a structural location is a task for unlearning. This involves both
unpacking these categories discursively, and intervening in their doings on
the artistic, educational, admin-organizational, and personal levels in an art
academy (see also the conversation with Ferdiansyah Thajib on pages 23–39
in this book). Studying their doings in the entanglement with sociopoliti-
cal, material lives, emphasizes relationalities and connections to worlds that
they/we are embedded in.
This inspires the sites for unlearning, namely the investigation together
with actors (in institutions) into how to unlearn what is given to us through the
legacy of modernity. The university or academy, the school, the museum, my
personal environment, and the art organization Casco are institutional arenas
in which to work for other relationalities within the worlds I am living.

16 The influence of Schiller’s aesthetic education has a magnitude that is further continued in European
policies on lifelong learning to which I turn in Krauss 2018, 74–92.

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 The sites for unlearning attempt to engage with the double take without
falling into paralyzed suspension. Crucial to the sites for unlearning and
their structural intervention is that we overcome the frustrations of an
impossible task. With a sharp attention toward what I call routines of
the impossible, the sites for unlearning investigate the impact binaries have
on our ways of engaging with impossibilities. This also includes affective
structures that are interwoven with imagining differently the way we in-
vestigate or study together. To approach what appears like an impossible
task — unlearning aesthetic education as a colonial theory of change — deals
crucially with finding out about (dominant) habits of thinking and behav-
ing, and here more concretely, which binaries are produced as an effect of
institutional settings, parameters, and philosophical legacies. The doings of
the aesthetic with its colonial legacy is one of these habits. These legacies get
(re-)enacted and sustained through living, working, and learning situations
and enter our thinking and behaving to form a state of routines — routines of
the impossible. This term is important as well when approaching the binary
of structure and practice that I have conjured in the last paragraphs and in
this book. Through holding on to both poles of the binary, with the term
routines of the impossible I attempt to take “structure” seriously,
not through an ontological difference that is separated from
action and practice, rather acknowledge structure as a specific
form of practice. More concretely, the term structure very often
prevents us from analysing what constitutes stability, perma-
nence, that which seems not available. When we talk about
structure, we actually render anonymous certain processes,
that are actually specific practices, and that are actively gener-
ated by entangled conditions and reproduced through specific
actors (Demirovic 2015, 282).17
To study and intervene in these routines of the impossible is for me a fore-
most task for the sites for unlearning.
Unlearning Schiller’s aesthetic education and its derivatives sounds like
such an impossible task. Is it though? Or, is it a habit that has been long
enough repeated, so it is deemed quasi-natural? How to intervene in this
habit? I propose breaking with the two attributions of the aesthetic at the

17 My translation.

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same time, both its developmental, individualizing, socio-psychological at-
tribution and its stand-alone characteristic. Instead, I propose to turn the
aesthetic into a structural (historical, affective, political, discursive) loca-
tion.18 This means to study it as “a materially, and always raced/gendered/
classed/sexualized category around which social institutions are constituted,
disciplinary sciences created, and legal apparatuses mounted” (Tuck and
Yang 2014, 4). In other words, I propose deconstructing the category of
aesthetic including its contextual realities and acknowledging and studying
its implications for identity and social life at the core of the double approach
(double bind) for unlearning. From this perspective the aesthetic is not only
a study of perception (taste and beauty), but is a term that captures bodily
experience, something that is absent in Spivak’s writing. To support this
move, I’d like to bring in again the decolonial scholarship on aesthetics of
Vázquez Melken (2020). As a reminder, Vázquez Melken carves out how the
aesthetic regime of modernity has not only inscribed itself in our Western
ways of representing the world, but as importantly in the very ways of how
we experience and perceive the world. This has consequences for practices
of unlearning that address and struggle with habits of thinking and doing,
namely I also need to include habits of experiencing and perceiving my en-
vironment and relationships.

The Relation between Habits and Binaries

What is the relation between the routines and habits that I fall back into
when engaging with an impossible task and the binaries with which I get
entangled? Spivak explores “habits” of thinking and doing with regard to
philosophical argumentation and critique, investigating the term “habit” in
Bateson’s and Antonio Gramsci’s writing. According to Bateson, a habit is
a “hard programmed” routine (1972, 279) that is repeated regularly and tends
to work partly beyond consciousness. Habitual behavior often goes un­
noticed because the person does not need to engage in self-analysis when
following particular routines. Bateson argues that we tend to not only exhibit

18 I owe the proposition of this shift to Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang in Youth Resistance Research and
Theories of Change (2014) who lift the category of “youth” out of their developmental character.

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a particular habit in a particular situation, but as a form of problem solving
for “whole classes of problems” (ibid., 279). Instead of trying to engage with
the specificity of each problem or situation we face, we exhibit the same
habit in order to solve a whole range of problems. Spivak is not satisfied,
from an epistemological perspective, with Bateson’s exploration of habit. She
proposes that Bateson, who is interested in the psychological aspect of habits,
falls short of a deeper exploration into the epistemological dimension of a
habit. He points to it, Spivak contends, but criticizes that he does not follow
up when he writes: “the economy consists precisely in not re-examining or
rediscovering the premises of habit every time the habit is used. We may say
that these premises are partly ‘unconscious’, or — if you please — a habit of
not examining them is developed” (ibid.).
For Spivak, what is crucial in habit formation is exactly what is missing
in it: “a habit does not question” (2012, 8). This means that habits lack the
critical capacity to interrogate themselves. She draws on Gramsci who is
interested in the prospect of democratic education and links it to the possibil-
ities of developing “new habits” (Gramsci 1971, 298). A democratic education
necessarily demands that “the premises of an argument must indeed be ‘redis-
coverable’, ‘re-examinable’, by the man of the masses as he is educated to be
a citizen” (Gramsci 2000, 318). However, Spivak claims that it is not enough
that an argument’s premise is re-examined, which is a common and neces-
sary scientific and academic exercise. She demands another effort within the
“training of the imagination” that in the best case entails a certain “aesthetic”
that “short-circuits the task of shaking up this habit of not examining them
[the premises]” (Spivak 2012, 6). Putting forth that the previously discussed
aesthetic education has entered the state of a habitually formed double bind
itself, Spivak suggests that philosophical — I add rational — argumentation is
rather powerless when it comes to intervening in habits of thinking, doing,
and experiencing. In order to intervene in habits, she demands producing an
“aesthetic short-circuit” (ibid., 6). As pointed out, I interpret this as studying
and intervening in routines of the impossible (including aesthetic education
itself).
I’d like to extend the thoughts around habits to stereotypes and in-
corporated knowledges. Whereas habit functions as a concept in the realm
of practice theory, the term stereotyping is primarily used in theories of
re­presentation. Stereotypes are understood here as expectations and beliefs

116
about the characteristics of members of a group, wherein the group is pri-
oritized over differences among the members (Andermahr et al. 1997, 263).
Work by British cultural studies (for example, Stuart Hall 2013) has been
influential in both unravelling deep-seated racial stereotyping in popular
culture, and questioning boundaries between art and everyday aesthetics.
What links stereotypes as simplified, under-complex forms of representation,
and habits as repetitive, often unnoticed ways of doing and experiencing is
their carelessness toward the particularity of a setting.19 While I do not want
to underestimate the necessity of the importance of routines and habits in
life, my focus lies in the effects of their inability to match the messiness of
the world in which we live, and the complexities of who we are.

Habits as Incorporated Knowledge

And lastly, let’s draw attention to habits as forms of incorporated knowledge.

For Spivak, the training of imagination to intervene in the injustices of a glo-
balized world (as a formation in which “aesthetic education” plays a role) takes
place in her scholarly field — literary studies. She weaves together literature,
literacy, and political intervention, making the case for literature as a place
for the impossible, and suggesting that the training of the imagination “can
only be figured in the ethical experience of the impossible. And literature,
as a play of figures, can give us access to this experience” (Spivak 2012, 352).
Here lies a certain predicament that I touch upon in the “Afterword”
(see pages 223–37) and I return to in the contribution on Hidden Curriculum
(see pages 156ff): the force of bodily knowledge. In my opinion, Spivak does
not pay sufficient attention to bodily knowledge. As an example, I draw on
Gramsci, who is an important interlocutor for Spivak. Gramsci investigates

19 These elaborations extend into the digital world and algorithms, which, according to the Merriam
Webster Dictionary, are finite sequences of instructions used to solve a class of specific problems
and are used in large-scale data processing. The algorithm’s capacity to work on big data, is paired
with its inability to work with ambiguity. Again, the grouping of problems is prioritized above their
particularities. In this sense, algorithms seem to include both characteristics of stereotypes and habit
formation in quite an excessive way. See also Krauss, Thajib, and Hummel, “Feeling Numbers,” 2021,
www.feministsearchtools.nl.

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scholarly reading and the bodily-disciplining capacities of the work-table,
asking: “Would a scholar at the age of forty be able to sit for sixteen hours on
end at his work-table if he had not, as a child, compulsorily, through mechan-
ical coercion, acquired the appropriate psycho-physical habits?” (1971, 37).
Learning to read over a long time and being immersed in texts is a capacity
of scholars that implies the discipline of the body and results in the routi-
nized behavior of studying. Thus, Bateson’s “hard-programmed routines”
are always also bodily routines. Engaging in literary studies presupposes
the acquisition of such a psycho-physical habit. Relating this to “aesthetic
short-circuiting,” this practice necessarily needs to include the physical di-
mension of habit formation in the complexity of human lives. Moreover,
I am drawn to the term “short-circuit” and its capacity to evoke the idea of an
intervention, and a force of disturbance by traveling unintended paths, and
bringing electrical poles to a maximum closeness. However, the term might
as well be misleading in its indicative temporality of short-term accelera-
tion, and abruptness within a closed system. Instead, a “hard-programmed
routine,” or “psycho-physical habit” are engendered over a long time and
constitute a multilevel phenomenon, as described before. Intervening in such
multilevel phenomena, a short-circuit may play a role, but will it be signif-
icant for a transformation on the long run? Most likely habitual processes
will be roused, but the probability of falling back into or continuing the
habits afterward is big.
What if these habits rather resemble a form of addiction? Bateson con-
jures this connection himself, when he juxtaposes the thoughts on habits and
double bind with the “logics of alcoholic addiction,” and more importantly
with his elaboration on the “strenuous spiritual regime whereby the organi-
zation Alcoholics Anonymous is able to counteract the addiction” (Bateson
1972, 315). In short, Bateson draws out how the addiction to alcohol is not a
single-leveled relationship between the drinker and “the bottle,” but the result
of a highly complex relationship between individuals, their “self,” and the
systems of which they are part. This complex arrangement is not prone to a
quick fix, and rather needs to consider change or transformation on multiple
levels, namely the relationship between people, how people regard their “self”
(e.g., in relation to values, social order, individual perception, body-mind,
more-than-human, to name a few), and how they see both in relation to the
worldly systems and processes with which they contend.

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 Although I am aware of the rather individualizing tendencies that are
implied in Bateson’s approach to addiction, I bring this up because devel-
oping a working definition of unlearning needs to include an attention to a
certain form of endurance and mettle to intervene in the force of habits and
routines in their multileveled complexity. A short-circuit might play a role in
it, but another temporality seems as important, namely that of enduring as in
keeping the attention over a long time, staying with, withstanding, persisting.
Moreover, Gramsci’s work-table indicates that investigating habits has
to include the question of who can afford to have which habits. Of course,
Spivak is not oblivious to the question of who her addressees are when she
insists on literary studies and literacy, but approaches this from another per-
spective. In her (academic) life she addresses both students of the humanities
at institutions like Columbia University, New York and students in schools
of rural West Bengal (who she tries to reach though her Memorial Literacy
Project). Motivated by what she calls “education for everyone” (2012, 122),
it involves people in the countryside in India who are most likely not born
into an environment that allows them to acquire psycho-physical habits for
future study at a recognized university. The question of who is addressed is
a necessary one to consider when approaching forms of domination in con-
cepts of unlearning. For example, the Hidden Curriculum project takes efforts
to transgress academic and artistic boundaries by placing the collaborative
research within secondary schools, while other parts of the research on un-
learning have stayed within artistic-academic contexts. I attempt to work in
both contexts and to investigate their impact at various levels. These projects
are experiments with what playing the double bind and practicing situated
knowledges can mean and do physically, conceptually, and practically for
approaching processes of unlearning.
By way of ending this text, let me sketch out several items. These high-
light certain aspects, insights, paradoxes, and outlooks that have emerged
through writing this particular section in relation to the attempt at approach-
ing practices of unlearning.

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Practicing Unlearning in Four More Ways

Unlearning as Inhabiting Spaces of the Impossible

Spivak persistently demands investigating how, as a researcher, one produces
and narrates truths. At the same time, she urges the acknowledgement that
this endeavor will hardly be successful, because personal experience and
desires are naturalized into the “truths” and their investigations — a double
bind. This deconstructive stance resonates with Haraway’s claim for par-
tial knowledge and her accounts for a critical positioning. Both Spivak and
Haraway encourage research, but also advise to work through the conditions
of research and its entanglements with socialpolitical, colonial structures in
their always remaining incompleteness. In other words, I need to fight against
the conditions of the place that I must inhabit. Moreover, Spivak’s unlearning
one’s privileges is not solely referring to research practices, but encompasses
relationships on an everyday basis. In both instances unlearning my privileges
necessarily involves that I work through the ignorance that is produced
through my privilege, while I acknowledge that this production neither stops,
nor can be entirely grasped. Spivak inspires a perspective on unlearning that
is crucial for what is brought forward in this book, namely transgressing
one’s own (research) environment and inhabiting spaces of the impossible on
an everyday basis. In this vein, unlearning becomes a scaffolding for living.

Codeterminancy of Learning and Unlearning

What emerged during the sites for unlearning is the proposition to actively
practice the codeterminancy of learning and unlearning. Spivak’s conceptu-
alization of the double bind encourages this move. The experimental settings
of the sites for unlearning constitute the framework and capacity to both
study un/learning in already existing articulations and practice unlearning
collaboratively in differently initiated forms. To intervene in the accumula-
tive and progress-oriented concepts of learning that are bent on exploitation
and domination is one of the tasks of performing the inextricable codeter-
minancy of learning and unlearning. The double take on the world with its
dedication toward the “concrete” and the “abstract” guides the experiments
with the aim to intervene in prevailing conditions of coloniality today.

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The Physicality of Unlearning
Unlearnin
A double bind depicts our globalized present that is full of contradictions,
inconsistencies, and injustices. For Spivak, playing the double bind is learning
to “live with contradictory instructions” (2012, 3, 16) where aesthetic educa-
tion provides the framework to “train the imagination for epistemological
performance” (ibid., 122). Whereas she locates imaginative practices in the
humanities, especially literature, philosophy, and literacy, she hardly gives
any consideration to what could be called the physicality of imagination, or
the physicality of aesthetic education. Studying the bodily-affective registers
including habits of thinking, doing, and experiencing, the sites for unlearn-
ing attend to bodily knowledge and the routines of the impossible that are
inscribed in our bodies. When we unlearn, we unlearn as bodies.

Unlearning Aesthetic Education

as Prevailing Conditions of Coloniality
Schiller’s programmatic writings about aesthetic education have widely in-
fluenced how change is envisaged through aesthetic education in Western
educational institutions, e.g., in the relationship between art, social change,
and institutions. As an undercurrent, the function of aesthetic education is
conceived as a catalyst for the development from the uncivilized to civilized
with the promise to reach full freedom. As a disciplinary strategy (for the
ruling class back then), the aesthetic has not only fulfilled a crucial pedagogi-
cal function to form the good citizen, but also a racializing concept of devel-
opment and progress has been substantiated. Since then these mechanisms
have inscribed themselves meticulously in policies, institution building, and
artistic practices. The practice of unlearning (in this text) is dedicated to lift-
ing the category of “aesthetic” out of its developmental and stand-alone (arts
for arts’ sake) habitual attribution, and study it as an always material/raced/
gendered/classed/sexualized category that has implications for identity and
social life, and how we experience the world — hence the concept of aesthetic
that captures bodily experiences.
Unlearning understood as becoming aware, attending, and getting rid of
taken for granted routines of thinking, doing, and experiencing, I highlight
the term “attending” as bodies and as a composite of keeping the attention
and enduring unlearning in order to meddle with routines of the impossible.

121
122
 Bodies to
Think With

An earlier version of this scene is published in Laure Prouvost, This Means Love (London and Eindhoven: Lisson
Gallery and Van Abbemuseum, 2021).

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I had already sensed it a few times. If I say a few times, I should probably
clarify I sensed it a hundred, a thousand times in different parts of my
body: somewhere near my elbows, down by my ankles, but also in the
upper left leg of a passerby, several toes of the woman sitting in front of
me, an armpit of a security guard. I sensed it in this crowd of people, their
cheeks, bums, backs. (And believe me, it was not easy to get used to.)
When did I start paying attention to this feeling? Not an easy ques-
tion. To be honest there was some suspicion involved early on... Would
“sensing” be the right word for it? Does this sound familiar to you, dear
reader?
Frankly speaking, I can hardly recall how unimaginable it was to
think — now that it is provisionally called “thinking” again — that I don’t
only think with or in or through my head. Rather, there are bodies to think
with. How am I connected to you, and how do you think through me, them,
us, and the other way around?
Between “now” and “then” lie pretty much 40 years — but also 400
years. Forty years ago, I was caught paying attention, which is next to
nothing in relation to all those years of colonial rule. And more importantly,
how did it happen in the first place that we — descendants of what used to
be called Western institutions — came to think and believe so stubbornly
that our heads and minds would provide the place for thinking?
Several of us are dedicated to tracing the different stories that have
so aggressively shaped our bodies and ways of living. And now, at this
very moment, I think, sense, reconnect again: above my right knee I sense,
and at the second rib in their chest.
Maybe some of you still remember the time when whole classrooms
were structured in a way that privileged the head to think. The tables
would split our bodies in two halves: an upper part, which was visible,
above the table and the rest of the body tucked away beneath the ta-
ble. The chairs would comfortably support these moments of mechanical
coercion. We would then continue carrying out this psycho-physical work
upon our bodies in daily life. We would direct small gestures toward our
heads that subtly persuaded us: this is how life has to be. Not many would
seriously question the visions around our thinking-heads that are written
into our bodies, for they have been normalized and sustained by histories
of thought. These visions inflicted violent consequences on people’s lives.

124
Does the way we think determine the way we sit? Moreover, does the
way we sit shape our bodies and our thoughts?
While there may not be easy answers, a notable twist occurred when
several of us realized that some thoughts were generated under the table.

125
126
 Hidden Curriculum

An earlier version of this text is published in Medienimpulse (Krauss 2015) and Krauss 2017. For many of the
students’ contributions, see the project website Hidden Curriculum, 2007–present, www.hidden-curriculum.info.

127
How might high school students understand, engage with, and ultimate-
ly investigate a “hidden curriculum” (everything learned in the context of
specific everyday school environments next to official curricula)? The art
project Hidden Curriculum (HC) (2007–present) responds to this question
with a series of 10 workshops since 2007 realized with students aged 13 to
23 in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and the United
Kingdom. HC claims that knowledge is not only reproduced in schoolbooks
and passed on to subsequent generations through the official canon, but is
generated by unintended, unrecognized, even undesired values, unofficial
abilities, and know-how. Students learn to depend on authority, feel the pres-
sure to perform, and observe standardized thinking and role models without
necessarily noticing these constructs are being taught. Yet these forms of
knowledge, those not generally fixed in school materials (at least not explic-
itly), are structural components of the daily school system.
HC looks at the coping practices students develop to deal with the sub-
ordination, hierarchies, and silent violence implicit in these hidden curricula,
as well as student actions that challenge enforced cultural values and attitudes
(e.g., punctuality, tidiness).
In the workshops, students comment on conventions and unwritten
rules in their direct environment and develop ideas together that respond
to what a hidden curriculum means and does using performance, interven-
tion, drawing, discussions, and interview formats. The thinking by doing
approaches attempt to situate hidden curricula within students’ own schools
and encourage investigation of those surroundings and sociopolitical struc-
tures that engender the practices that happen within them.
Practicing unlearning is informed by my ongoing work on learning the-
ories and practices. My main question has been what kind of models of
learning permeate research, teaching, and institutional practices, and how
they find ways into how social change is imagined, without necessarily be-
ing aware of it. Here specifically, I look at the collaborative investigation of
informal and formal learning practices in secondary schools — through the
HC project. Following an outline of the HC project, I detail the underlining
pedagogical and critical feminist theory in order to address hierarchies of
knowledge and the physicality of education in institutional frameworks.
Both have been critical in approaching the process of unlearning and the
ways we relate to each other.

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 Fig. 1 Chair Hierarchies, 201 3, video still (St Paul’s Way Trust School, London).
Courtesy Hidden Curriculum / In Search of the Missing Lessons, London

Hierarchies of Knowledge

Several trajectories have surfaced during HC, two of which I dive into here:
first, what is considered legitimate knowledge, in secondary school education;
and second, the physicality of education and its relevance to un/learning pro-
cesses. I begin with HC findings in the form of stills from student-produced
videos that situate the students’ proposals and practices, with analyses that in-
troduce particular approaches, discussions, and questions by different groups
of students toward a hidden curriculum.1
Fig. 1: Student Ruksana Bhanu distinguishes types of school chairs by
who uses them: the comfortable, spinning ones are reserved for teachers,
while students use the static and smaller chairs. She notes that I sat on a
“student chair” when I introduced the project, and self-confidently grabbed
a spinning chair at the next session — a gesture that the student herself would
not dare to do at her school. My use of the spinning chair and the ensuing
discussion around it became part of the investigation and to the students

1 See project acknowledgements on pages 1 35– 37 in this book.

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indicated that I entitle myself, as all other teachers, to use these chairs. She
continued to explain that I seemed to have a similar position to teachers in
the realm of the school. Bhanu extended her research to many other every-
day school objects. By identifying and thoroughly describing moments of
hierarchies, domination, and subtle gestures linked to objects and who uses
them in which contexts, Bhanu shows how these moments are determined
by, and at the same time frozen in, school objects and form a daily part of
her experience of power. Bhanu’s investigation — as with other students — in-
fluenced the discussion of the HC project and positions involved, specifically
my own. Her address of my privilege in using a teacher’s chair without
being aware, and my implicatedness in enacting a hierarchical relationship in
school on a micro level, offered not only a way for me to work through my
automatic reactions toward objects and their wider context. It also provided
an example for the student group of how a beginning is made to rework one’s
assumptions, and the collective-individual effort it entails.
Fig. 2: What are written and unwritten rules for you in school? In
response, students Bouchompoo Cook, Evin Alaa Hussein, Laila Al Rida,
and Kitry Seydou of the Quintin Kynaston School in London produced a
video about how they cope with the everyday requirement to wear uniforms,
beginning with a discussion in the girls’ restroom on how they bypass the
rigid rules of wearing them. Cook rolls up the hem of her skirt to make it
look shorter and her friend advises wearing “really cool” short pants under
the skirt that can be shown by tucking up the skirt when the teachers were
not around. The students extend their investigations and interview boys who
similarly reveal an attentiveness to their uniforms and explain subtle modifi-
cations. Both groups are very critical of the uniforms, titling the video: School
Uniforms Are Never Cool (2012). The category cool can in their view hardly be
attained by any school uniform. Despite contestation, the students find ways
to discuss implicit social rules attached to the uniform. They acknowledge
a certain relevance in wearing them to avoid fashion branding and clothing
competition between the students. Rida points out that subverting the cloth-
ing protocol (for example, making the skirt look shorter) could also be seen
as adhering to the social norms of a particular fashion. The students also note
the implementation and expression of social status and hierarchies through
the uniform itself. To untrained eyes, these uniforms all look the same, but
the subtleties of more expensive, precious fabrics do not escape the students’

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Fig. 2 School Uniforms Are Never Cool, 2012, video still, students from Quintin Kynaston School, London.
Courtesy Hidden Curriculum / (In)Visibilities, London

Fig. 3 Collectively Rocking Chairs, 201 3, video still, students from St Pauls Way Trust School, London.
Courtesy Hidden Curriculum / In Search of the Missing Lessons, London

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attention and form a distinct layer of social hierarchy in their everyday life
that is hardly addressed at school. Their knowledge about school uniforms
is extensive and untaught, and far exceeds my limited understanding of the
associated politics. The students investigated a hidden curriculum that exists
in these practices that are not explicit or addressed in coursework, showing
a sophisticated understanding of school life.
Fig. 3: The group developed the exercise Collectively Rocking Chairs
(2013) to look into how group conversations take place in their lessons and
analyze their organization. As some had already been studying school furni-
ture (see fig. 1) and were trying to redefine their use or function, the exercise
merged both investigations. By reusing a normally individual practice of rock-
ing chairs forbidden in school, the students’ collective exercise commented
on the norms of group discussions in school and instigated many further
discussions among students, teachers, and myself invited to join. Putting a
group discussion out of balance triggered reflections among participants
concerning mutual trust and body language during school discussions. Some
teachers expressed a sense of disbelief in the function of the exercise and were
hesitant to allow the chairs to rock. Most of the invited participants did not
dare to join because we did not have enough trust in each other’s capability
to support each other (as many of them voiced). However, once we engaged
in the exercise, it sparked many exciting discussions that related to the ques-
tions of how we work with one another and what the unwritten rules in these
relationships are. Collectively Rocking Chairs addressed a hidden curriculum
of implicit norms and unwritten rules and allowed students and teachers to
physically consider how they relate to each other spatially and bodily during
group discussions in class. The students also were able to investigate what
forms of trust different discussions need or presuppose and how this exercise as
compared to other forms of discussion relates to individuality and collectivity.
In the context of this writing, I am particularly interested in these pro-
posals in which groups of students investigate certain aspects of a hidden
curriculum as they relate to what is regarded as (legitimate) knowledge, and
what is not recognized as knowledge at all by students, staff, and myself
in school. These other unrecognized forms of knowledge are contained
within everyday school routines as a force the HC project sets out to col-
lectively investigate. In their comments on unintended, unrecognized, or
undesired knowledge, students investigated forms of authority and privilege

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(Chair Hierarchies, 2013), and how they learn to compare themselves with
others, compete, and distrust each other, including a discussion on abled and
not so abled bodies in everyday life in school (Collectively Rocking Chairs).
They discussed how they learn to anticipate what teachers want to hear and
see or how far they can go in order to pursue their own interests during
their everyday lives in school (School Uniforms Are Never Cool). In this sense,
research into hidden curricula crucially deals with the relations between
power, knowledge, people, objects, classroom, control, and society, and how
they are institutionalized in school. Investigating in a specific group how we
relate to each other through what we regard as learning (formally and infor-
mally), and how these relationships are produced, sustained, and reshaped,
has been the departure point for the sites for unlearning.

Setting the Framework

Over the years conditions emerged for the HC framework of workshops,

in negotiation with school principles, administration, students and teachers,
and collaborating art spaces. A key condition for schools was that workshops
with the students take place during regular classes, and not as most schools
proposed as an afterschool activity. Ideally, we held regular meetings each
week for no less than two or three hours, making sure not to take up only
art class time as was repeatedly suggested by the school, but to be included
in other subjects such as math, languages, and history and address hidden
curricula in subjects besides art. Teachers could then consider the project
and time within other subjects dedicated to HC next to art. Holding work-
shops outside regular school hours as schools frequently suggested would
have conflicted with the project’s aim to investigate hidden curricula during
school, requiring instead that they run parallel to or as part of other subjects.
For commissioning art organizations, HC attempts to stipulate the pro-
ject run not within their educational programs, but as an integral part of
the “main” art programs, while positioning the project as also educational
seems self-evident and is appreciated by art organizations and myself alike.
To consider HC as an artistic project in the “main” program was often
encountered with doubts and questions about its “real” artistic character.
Moreover, interlocutors in art spaces would argue that acquiring funding

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 for HC as part of the educational program would not only be easier, but
would provide spillover money for the main program. My request became
a regular entry point for discussions on the boundaries of what is regard-
ed as art, and the socio-economical aspects of educational projects in art
organizations in Western Europe. These discussions were embedded in
what is meanwhile commonly described as the “educational turn” in art.
Interdisciplinary researcher Susannah Haslam names these discourse-heavy
programs (re)presented in artistic productions “a two-fold phenomenon of
artistic and institutional practice“ (2018, 15).2 In the early 2000s when these
programs were getting underway, art education researcher Carmen Mörsch
carried out extensive research in this area, particularly the British funding
model’s impact on art and education discourse. She notes that the policy
measure “Value for Money” initiated by the Thatcher government in 1980s
UK that spread throughout the European cultural sector happened when
increased funding possibilities and high visitor numbers became connected to
establishing educational programs. This contributed further to economizing
the cultural sector and creating an excess in evaluation reports and assessment
strategies (Mörsch 2004, 61–70).
The entanglement of socio-economic processes and knowledge pro-
duction in school and art practice within these organizational frameworks
became crucial to HC, and figure prominently here to echo the significance
of these discussions at the start of each workshop series with institutional
stakeholders. At the same time (and not least through the attention that the
educational turn generated) HC tried to contribute to the debates around
institutional critique in art, here understood as the artistic inquiry into
the workings of art institutions. With an attempt to break open the hermetic
discussions of institutional critique within the arts, HC reconnects to insti-
tutional interventions in other fields, joining art and educational practices
dedicated to the collective investigation of conditions of power (O’Neill and
Wilson 2010; Mörsch 2019; Sternfeld 2009). On the one hand, the educational
turn opened up an exclusive understanding of art; on the other, it facilitated

2 See also Rogoff 2008; O’Neill and Wilson 2010; and a renewed perspective in Spieker and Holert 2022.
3 Writer and art critic Marina Vishmidt describes the idea of human capital as “essentially that of
applying cost:benefit analysis to ‘intangibles’ such as education, family, health or cultural interests and
viewing them as rational investments made by individuals in their employability, social mobility and
financial security” (2012a, 42). See also Krauss 2018, 74–92.

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the alliance between art production, institutional reform, and financialization
of education and art, which perpetuates the logic of human capital.  3 The
HC participants — students, schools, art organizations, and myself — touch
upon these aspects and study the project’s claims, context, conditions, and
histories that co-constitute the presence of hidden curricula in institutions.

Project Acknowledgements

Hidden Curriculum : produced by Casco Art Institute: Working for the

Commons (fka Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory), Utrecht: in the
context of a collaboration with students from Gerrit Rietveld College and
Amadeus Lyceum, Utrecht, 2007: Bouchra Aarab, Kaoutar El Abbassi, Rosa
Alferink, Karima Amaador, Pamela Bontrop, Wendeline Braaksma, Sjaak
Deloffre, Lisa van Eijl, Karen van Engelshoven, Matthijs de Fluiter, Ineke v/d
Hurk, Steffie Jansen, Felicity de Kruijf, Martijn Kwant, Daan Langelaan, Anne
Leeuw, Aafje Malschaert, Bob Mekking, Xamira Möhlmann, Ans de Nijs,
Vivienne Pickkers, Richard Scholten, Sonakshi Shankar, Wouter Slaterus, Sofie
Teissier, Kiki Verheyen, Etienne van Walsem, and Samira Zarraat; thanks also
to teacher Francine Claasen and artistic assistant Sandra Verkaart.

Hidden Curriculum / Disbeliefs : in the context of a collaboration with Lawrence

Lemaoana and Mary Sibande, Paris/Johannesburg, 2007.

Hidden Curriculum / Operational Disorder : in the context of a collaboration

between Theater an der Parkaue and Immanuel-Kant-Oberschule Gymnasium,
Berlin, 2008. Thanks to participating students Florence Bender, Julia Braun,
Thang Dao Van, Lisa Eisenach, Toni Fischer, Sarina Gustke, Markus Hey,
Cordelia Hieke, Anh Dung Hoang, Paul Kirchhoff, Anne Mösch, Lukas Mösch,
Maxi Naue, Stefan Schumacher, Carrie Sievert, and Huyen Trang Pham.

Hidden Curriculum / Can We Disturb? : in the framework of a collaboration

between Walden # 3 (curated by Christiane Mennicke and Ulrich Schötker) and
Carl-Orff-Gymnasium, Munich, 2009. Thanks to participating students Franziska
Beck, Katharina Best, Alex Ganzha, Victoria Hauzeneder, Veronika Hoderlein,
Susanne Lauterbach, Felicitas Riederle, Lukas Suadicani, and Valentin Voinot.

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Hidden Curriculum / Mobile : in the context of the exhibition The World in Your
Hand (curated by Miya Yoshida), with participating students from the youth
program, Kunsthaus Dresden, 2010: Helene Blickwede, Stefan Braune, Chiara
Detscher, Jeremy Detscher, Clara Girke, Sophie Herrmann, Marie Nitschke,
Lily Noack, Erik Schiebel, Nadine Schmieder, and Fidel Thomet.

Hidden Curriculum / (In)Visibilities : produced by The Showroom, London

in the context of a collaboration with students from Quintin Kynaston School
and Paddington Academy, London, 2011–12. Thanks to participating students
from Quintin Kynaston School, London: Evin Alaa Hussein, Sief Al Hakak,
Abdulaziz Alnassar, Laila Al Rida, Worood Al Rubaiyi, Sunbul Azizzada, Abdul
Basith, Bouchompoo Cook, Wei Jia He, Gracia Katanga, Shajia Lima, Hubert
Lubawy, Guendalina Marsili, Karim Masoud Calvo, Sara Mubeen, Prince
Sarpong, Ahmad Fadhil Saleh, Kitry Seydou, and Amin Seyed Nikkhou; thanks
also to teachers Tomasz Guzowski and Ewa Wisniewska and artistic assistant
Lily Keal. Thanks to participating students from Paddington Academy, London:
Nour Al-Dori, Yasmin Anshoor, Maryam Atta-Mohammed, Autumn Cohen, and
Bhuma Limbu; thanks also to artistic assistant Lily Keal.

Hidden Curriculum / In Search of the Missing Lessons: commissioned for

the Whitechapel Gallery’s Artist in Residence program with St Paul’s Way
Trust School and Cumberland School, London, 2012–1 3. Thanks to participating
students from St Paul’s Way Trust School, Tower Hamlets, London: Murad
Mohammed Ahmed, Nozir Ali, Muhammed (Sayidul) Alum, Rukshana Bhanu,
Jaber Chowdhury, Tonny Duong, Opeyemi Fakunie, Sayeeda Firdaus, Samatha
Hill, Aniqa Islam, Tarek Khan, Rhima Khanom, Samiur Rahman, and Rehena
Uddin; thanks also to teachers Samatha Hill and Paul Wye, and to artistic
assistants Paul Cook, Lily Keal, and Sandra Verkaart. Thanks to participating
students from Cumberland School, Newham, London: Stephanie Amaral Neto,
Samuel Awoyemi, Justina Balynaite, Mohitur Chowdury, Victoria Clark, Connal
Cocker-Dawkins, Kiezier Hamilton, Brogan Hanlon, Ishaque Ikram, Asif Islam,
Jay Kerr, Mirand Morina, Migle Nostramaite, Asiya Pathan, Asher Punzalan,
Natalie Quitos, and Ellesse Taylor; thanks also to teacher Elizabeth Millward
and to artistic assistants Paul Cook, Lily Keal, and Sandra Verkaart.

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Hidden Curriculum / and other ways of hiding in plain sight: workshop,
concept, and organization together with Svenja Engels and Ying Que.
Commissioned by IZK institute for Contemporary Art/Architecture Faculty,
TU Graz, 2018. Thanks to participating students from the Architecture
Faculty, TU Graz: Tina Berzak, Diana Bleban, Lisa Brolli, Lora El-Banna, Lamija
Filan, Klara Hermann, Kenan Isakovic, Sergej Kogal, Laura Kracker, Selma
Mehic, Jasmina Mehinagic, Veronika Novak, Iris Reppe, Johannes Rezk, Helena
Ruzicka, Phillip Sattler, Tilen Segrkovic, Ruben Tschernutter, and Ana-Mary
Vadlja. Thanks to Dubravka Sekulić and Milica Tomić.

Hidden Curriculum/Excuse Poems: commissioned by City of Women Festival,

Ljubljana, 2021. Produced by Mesto žensk/City of Women/in collaboration
with Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. Thanks to participating students: Špela Čekada,
Petja Golec Horvat, Tara Klemenčič Belšak, Pika Kovač, Dominik Križ, Laura
Penšek Kozmelj, April Kotnik, Natan Pajic, Filip Perpar, Ela Romih, and Sinja
Smokvina. Thanks to curators Tea Hvala, Iva Kovač, and Sara Šabec,
designer Vesna Bukovec, and to project assistant Anouk De Kruiff.

Studies on Hidden Curriculum in the Field of Education

The title Hidden Curriculum is borrowed from the field of education, an

important point of reference throughout. The debates about hidden curricu-
lum studies within education that date back to the 1960s were opened up by
Henry Giroux in the 1980s who pointed to their intersection with critical
pedagogy. Critical pedagogy is understood here as approaches to teaching
and learning that engage anyone involved, to analyze and question forms of
oppression, power relations, and privilege, and empower to speak out against
social injustices. In Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the
Opposition, Giroux defines the hidden curriculum as those “unstated norms,
values, and beliefs embedded in and transmitted tacitly to students through
social relations and routines that characterize day-to-day school experience”
(1983, 45). In accordance with this definition, educational theorists since the
1960s, mentioned hereafter, agree that education means more than providing
students with instructional goals and objectives. However, they differ signif-
icantly in analyzing why, how, and under which premises students in school

137
experience these unstated norms, values, and beliefs. Giroux’s four (historical)
approaches — traditional, liberal, radical, and dialectical perspective (ibid., 42–
113) — deal with the phenomenon of a hidden curriculum and have significant-
ly influenced further educational studies (Margolis 2001; Marsh 1997; Kentli
2009). I summarize and use Giroux’s understandings of a hidden cur­riculum
to examine the social questions addressed and their underlying assumptions.
The traditional approach can be ascribed to theoretical studies that in-
terpret society as an unquestioned state that school needs to prepare us for
(Giroux, 48), embracing the assumption that education maintains existing
order. A proponent of this approach, Philip W. Jackson, generally credited
with having introduced the term hidden curriculum to educational studies
in his book A Life in Classrooms (1968), identified social relations in public
school classroom life in addition to official curricula. “School might be
called a preparation for life. Power might be abused in school as elsewhere,
but its existence is a fact of life to which we must adapt” (Jackson 1968, 12). In
focusing on the type and transfer of knowledge within schools, how students
receive knowledge from teachers who receive it from state institutions that
represent society, Jackson observes that the hidden curriculum has a positive
function in transmitting school norms, conventions, and belief systems that
lead to consensus and stability within existing social structures. This high-
ly conservative attitude toward existing hierarchical relationships between
teachers and students and between schools and the larger society has led to
criticism of Jackson’s understanding of the hidden curriculum. While he
stressed its force in striving for conformity in the classroom, he is oblivious,
if not openly supportive as to the political significance of education (and as
a part of it a hidden curriculum) in sustaining hegemonic interests and injus-
tices in society, in relation to class, gender, or race inequalities (ibid., 52–53).
The liberal approach focuses on how dominant interests get legitimized
in school. It locates the hidden curriculum in specific social and cultural prac-
tices in the classroom that reinforce discrimination and prejudice, thereby
asking “the question of how meaning gets produced in the classroom” (ibid.,
50). Supporters of this approach have examined the socially constructed
nature of classroom situations and identified authorities and truth claims
that are taken for granted. Jean Anyon, for instance, who studied fifth-grade
classrooms in the United States, compared in “Social Class and the Hidden
Curriculum of Work” (1980) two working class, one middle class, one upper

138
middle class school, and an elite school, noting: “Differing curricular, ped-
agogical, and pupil evaluation practices emphasize different cognitive and
behavioral skills in each social setting and thus contribute to the development
in the children of certain potential relationships to physical and symbolic
capital, to authority, and to the process of work” (Anyon 1980, 90). Anyon’s
insights into how the hidden curriculum reproduces economic and social class
structures reveals the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion from knowl-
edge, and intentional and unintentional physical, evaluatory, pedagogical,
and interpersonal exclusions from curricula, which produce hierarchies. As
important as this approach is, the underlying assumption within it — that
the hidden curriculum is produced merely within the classroom — ignores
the social, political, and economic conditions of society outside the school
building that “create either directly or indirectly some of the oppressive fea-
tures of schooling” (Giroux 1983, 55). For the liberal approach, the hidden
curriculum seems to exist due to uninformed educators or lack of materials.
By focusing on these deficits, the approach suggests that the hidden curric-
ulum could be eliminated by simply providing different knowledge, which
does not take into account that knowledge itself is a site of struggle infused by
the truth claims and power struggles of the society in which it is embedded.
In the radical approach, theorists replace the consensus-driven traditional
approach with a focus on conflict. The liberal approach emphasizes generating
meaning by students and teachers in the classroom, juxtaposed with a focus
on wider social structures. Influenced by Marxist theory, advocates of the
radical approach criticize schools for serving capitalist structures and the state.
Consequently, they look into the schools’ embeddedness in an economically
driven society: “Schools are not agents of social mobility but reproduce the
existing class structure. They send a silent, but powerful message to students
with regard to their intellectual ability, personal traits, and the appropriate
occupational choice, ... which takes place through the hidden curriculum”
(Bowles and Gintis 1976, 31). The quote from the most influential examina-
tion of this field, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and
the Contradictions of Economic Life (1976) by Samuel Bowles and Herbert
Gintis, a book grounded in political economy, is key to the Marxist theory
of sociology of education. Bowles and Gintis regard schools as instruments
to transfer and legitimize the reproduction of inequalities and domination.
In what they term the correspondence thesis, they investigate how schools are

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internally organized with respect to the capitalistic workforce through its
structures, norms, and values. For Bowles and Gintis, the hidden curriculum
has to be seen as the process of instilling these behaviors and norms through
the normalizing, everyday features of school life. Their approach differs from
the traditional perspective and ties in with the liberal approach in its argument
against the seeming neutrality of school. They explain that what appears on
the surface as a necessary and neutral process of social reproduction in fact
serves the demands of more powerful institutions and dominant social groups.
My main criticism of the radical approach is firstly its focus on class relation
in which race and gender remain unaddressed. Secondly, the approach has
been criticized for its pessimistic structuralism that positions people as passive
recipients in the economic social system and therefore in knowledge processes.
Giroux’s own approach, the dialectical critique (Giroux 1983, 59), ac-
knowledges the different inquiries within the diverse field of hidden cur-
riculum studies, while criticizing them for cutting relationships between
schooling, capitalism, and knowledge production within and outside the
classroom. Giroux reformulates the term hidden curriculum by including
these relationships and reclaims their value as an important theoretical-
practical element in critical pedagogy. Giroux does not understand school
simply as a place where students are organized, instructed, and controlled by
the interests of a dominant class. For him students are not passive containers
for storing information — they creatively act in ways that often contradict
expected norms and dispositions. These contradictions or small acts of re-
sistance might open up spaces for students and teachers to critically reflect
upon and resist mechanisms of social control and domination. Ultimately,
education, including the hidden curriculum, has to be seen as being politically
able to create alternative cultural forms.
My understanding of the hidden curriculum resonates with Giroux’s
that criticizes the positivism of the traditional approach conforming to the
hierarchies of knowledge in society by using schooling. The liberal approach
contests these hierarchies, but exhibits a one-sided social constructivism that
supposedly eliminates classroom hierarchies. My understanding of hidden
curricula differs from the radical approach and its sole focus on class hier-
archies and reductive structuralism. Giroux’s method connects the critical
features of the previous approaches in a multidimensional one sensitive to
race, class, and gender. Furthermore, I add the diagnostic character that a

140
study of hidden curricula might bring about. Robin D. G. Kelley explains this
by stating that “[e]veryday acts of resistance can be understood as diagnostic…
They are telling what people desire, what causes pain, they are trouble spots,
where people are confused. […] [A]cts of resistance are revelatory, revealing
things about social relationships and power” (Kelley 2014, 87).
While appreciating Giroux’s work, I have two comments: one is se-
mantic and the second concerns the field of educational studies and who is
regarded a legitimate researcher. Like the other approaches, Giroux uses the
direct article when talking about the hidden curriculum. I propose, shifting
to a hidden curriculum implies that there is not merely one to direct these
social inquiries toward, neither is there one homogenizing understanding
of a hidden curriculum. Following Donna Haraway’s situated knowledges,
and the historicity of a specific knowledge claim, I look to strengthen the
situatedness of any hidden curriculum with regard to its context, conditions,
materialities, and agents.
The HC set-up does not only situate itself in the school context and
its hierarchies, but it also attempts to address the hidden curriculum stud-
ies in academia. The studies discussed previously have been undertaken by
academic researchers who decide what would be important to address in
relation to research on hidden curricula in education. The dimension of what
research on a hidden curriculum would look like from the perspective of
those directly involved (students, teachers) remains unaddressed. This pro-
duces a distance between those who have the power to investigate a hidden
curriculum in school, and those who might receive information about it,
running the danger of objectifying the students and their situation in school.
Already the writing of this very text about the HC project and the proposals
by the students tends toward such an attitude. It is an explicit tension that I
acknowledge. Students can claim their (non-)identification with the HC set-up
and their own research and contribute to establishing archival frameworks.4
This text, however, addresses also an academic public, mediating the project’s
redefinition of what knowledge and critical pedagogy engagements entail as

4 Throughout the years, many of the proposals, findings, and practices by the students have
materialized into an archive of short videos, audio sequences, and photos that have become an
extensive collection of material due to the engagement of different student groups during the
different workshop series. As developed and negotiated by different students and student groups
the archive is partly public and partly secret.

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an artistic, collaborative intervention in the secondary school system, in aca-
demic research, and the hierarchies of knowledge related to hidden curricula
in these areas. Following this path, a hidden curriculum is then an object of
study and a tool to address unexamined assumptions in discourse, practices,
and materials shaping school experiences. This study is not only confined
to academic research, but becomes part of an educational framework for
students and teachers alike. As Giroux reminds us, this research “has to be
grounded in values of social justice and personal dignity” (1983, 61), looking
at both the domination and contestation that marks everyday lives at school.
He further cautions that contestation has to be seen as contradictory in itself,
since it might challenge and reiterate existent power dynamics and “tend to
be reproductive” (ibid., 120). Consequently, a study of hidden curricula must
concern reproduction and transformation, as the students discuss in School
Uniforms Are Never Cool, troubling their own subversion of the uniform
with the idea that they might adopt other fashion norms, exposing it as a
tool for both equality and inequality.

Relating Feminist and Critical Pedagogies to the HC Project

Giroux’s multidimensional approach resonates with bell hooks’s contribution

to feminist, critical pedagogy. Although hooks did not explicitly frame her
writings on teaching and classroom experiences in relation to hidden curric-
ula, many aspects have structured the HC project. In Feminist Theory: From
Margin to Center, hooks unfolds an intersectional definition of feminism,
noting: “[R]ace and class oppression should be recognized as feminist issues
with as much relevance as sexism” (1984, 25). Forms of domination infuse
society and therefore also education, not only in questions of gender and
sex. hooks urges us to examine the “inter-relatedness of sex, race, and class
oppression” (ibid., 31) and “our role in their maintenance and perpetuation”
(1983, 25–26). What hooks insistently addresses since the 1980s is the limi-
tation of gender or class as a single-issue analysis. Power relationships, she
indicates, cannot solely concern gender inequalities, or class, but have to
address other inequalities in their interrelatedness (hooks 1984, 31).5
The exercise Collectively Rocking Chairs (fig. 3) highlights several as-
pects of this. After one workshop session in which the students involved

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the wider school community, a teacher, who had decided not to participate,
explained to me that this was because the school had problems with some
of the female students in the workshop not taking study seriously and the
exercise was another example of this. He added that he found it hard to
read the students and related this to them being situated within Bengali com-
munities in London, raising questions about gender and ethnicity. The male
students from the same communities, he said, were particularly receptive to
the attitude of the female students, which only increased their enthusiasm
for what he termed a nonsensical exercise — a recurring issue in the HC
project when the students’ playful ideas and pleasure in certain exercises
clashed with dominant expectations of what serious study entails. The sit-
uation provoked quite some tensions given students did not shy away from
scrutinizing the exercise as a comment on how classroom conversations are
held, and how these affect trust among them. I addressed the teacher on his
latent sexist and culturalizing remarks with regard to the female students,
without much response.
Convinced of the practical-theoretical dimensions of the exercise and
the pleasure of exploring them, other teachers introduced it in their classes.
Students and teachers would discuss its relevance to classroom conversations
and worked with each other practically and theoretically. The exercise en-
tered many workshop sessions in very different contexts, too, through which
collaborations and their spatial arrangements were discussed.6 Collectively
Rocking Chairs has been a great example of how an HC exercise can intervene
in the everyday life of school and challenge taken-for-granted set-ups. Last but
not least, the exercise enabled staying connected for some time with student
groups, by feeding back the afterlife of the exercises in other settings.
hooks identifies the production of pedagogic pleasure as an important
element to feminist politics in the classroom (1994, 7). Literary scholars Lena
Wånggren and Karin Sellberg compellingly elaborate on this difference from
other critical pedagogies that lack the notion of pleasure in classroom situ-
ations (2012, 542–55). Although hooks (and Wånggren and Sellberg) refers
specifically to academic classrooms, I consider the notion of pleasure crucial
for secondary schools’ everyday life as well. Not only can the classroom be

5 For more on intersectionality, see pages 103–06 of “Instead of Solving Paradoxes and Contradictions”
in this book.
6 See, e.g., Off-balancing Chairs, in Unlearning Exercises (Krauss in Allen et al. 2018, 24–26).

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exciting, but this “excitement can co-exist with and even stimulate serious
intellectual and/or academic engagement” (hooks 1994, 7). Regarding the lack
of interest and apathy that dominate stories and feelings about the classroom
experience, hooks regards the pleasure of teaching and learning indeed as an
“act of resistance” in complex classroom situations (ibid., 10).
In Teaching to Transgress hooks further elaborates on what she calls an
“engaged pedagogy,” “a way of teaching that anyone can learn,” which should
not be limited to enabling different kinds of learning for different students.
Most importantly, teaching has to be organized to include the teacher as
someone who learns in the classroom also. And this includes secondary
school and university classrooms alike. This kind of learning has to strive
toward reciprocity (ibid., 11, 61) and mutuality (ibid., 14). hooks is convinced
that “education can only be liberating when everyone claims knowledge as a
field in which we all labour” (ibid., 14). She understands education as an on-
going recognition that everyone influences and contributes to the classroom
dynamic (ibid., 8). Education needs to engage many and diverse teachers and
students to consider ideas, issues, and suggestions of reciprocity. In this way
the classroom may provide “a location of possibility” where we can “collec-
tively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress” (ibid., 207).
From the outset, the HC project aimed to develop a framework together
with students. Yet, as discussed before, classroom situations are imbued with
social hierarchies and imperatives for and between students and teachers,
and addressing collaboration as a reciprocal engagement in learning and
the problematics that surround it is necessary. By linking the question of
what with who investigates the hidden curricula and how, I try to remain
attentive to the danger of obscuring authorities or hierarchies, by locating
the production of knowledge in the social hierarchies in which we are entan-
gled. The continuous struggle of collaboration cannot circumvent conflict,
but find a way to hold tensions, and cope with it. It has been the work by
hooks (and here especially also her anticolonial pedagogy) and other Black
feminists whose insistence on bracing oneself for “obstacle, conflict and pain
in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (ibid., 26) has inspired me till
today. Disagreement and conflict have been a major challenge in the HC
project — as it has been in Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given, and the Sites
for Unlearning.7 To find ways together of how to relate, to hold the tension
and not evade it, these practices attempt to acknowledge power positions, and

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the differences especially also present in everyday situations. For example,
in Chair Hierarchies (fig. 1) as discussed earlier, Ruksana Bhanu addressed
my role in reinscribing hierarchies by using a specific chair, a school object,
prompting us to consider what was needed for the people involved to address,
to listen, to trust, to rework. Chair Hierarchies reminded us of our mutual
investment in this project, and that I can learn as much from the students as
they might learn from me or the project set-up.
Engaging in HC over the years, I have found great inspiration in activist,
educational, artistic, grassroots, and para-institutional initiatives in which
cultural practitioners, “locals,”8 workers, and scholars collaborate in studying
the complex conditions, contexts, and transactions of living, learning, and
working in their very different specific contexts. Early examples that I closely
followed, and helped me to develop a position in this, were Askan Alwan,
Beirut; Center for Possible Studies, London; Center for Urban Pedagogy,
New York; Chimurenga, Pan-African; Chto Delat, Petersburg; KUNCI Study
Forum & Collective, Yogyakarta; maiz, Linz; Metronome Press, Paris;
Raqs Media Collective, New Dehli; Silent University, London/Stockholm/
Hamburg; Ultra-Red, UK/US just to name a few. All these initiatives man-
ifest very differently in terms of scale, economy, ways of working, purpose,
visibility. Yet, their work, either directly and indirectly related to education,
is dedicated to spaces of organizing in which political dynamics are opened
up, and where the process of organizing itself is activated as context-specific
learning and experience. This is certainly also part of what has meanwhile
become popular under the term “study,” 9 as a mode of practice that “can
function as both a mode of artistic and knowledge production as well as an
exercise of self and group organization reflecting on the ethical, class and
power configurations of its conditions” (Graham 2016). Not surprisingly
many of these initiatives have also drawn on methods, methodologies, and
discursive frameworks of feminist, anticolonial and critical pedagogies among
which have been hooks, Giroux, and Paulo Freire who I turn to now.

7 See “Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet)” on pages 41–74 in this book, and Allan et al. 2018.
8 With “locals” I point toward both those whose lives and specific work takes place to a great extend
in a specific geographical place, and those who are locals to a specific context, such as a particular
institution (aka the students/teachers/employees/workers of a particular school, or a university,
hospital, factory, etc.)
9 See the elaborations on Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s “study” in Unlearning Exercises (2018, 197–98).

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 hooks’s feminist, engaged pedagogy and Giroux’s dialectic critique share
a critical and antiracist approach that challenges a hegemonic canon, both
grounded in the work of Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire
fighting illiteracy in Brazil. In “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1970) he de-
velops his understanding of critical pedagogy as a political struggle for jus-
tice and equality by forming critical consciousness — the ability to read the
sociopolitical structures of one’s context and consequently to fight against
the injustice within these. According to Freire, students and teachers have
to become aware of the politics imbricated in education as this is never (po-
litically) neutral. Freire’s contestation of educational neutrality echoes Pierre
Bourdieu’s studies on education. Since the 1960s/1970s Bourdieu has argued
that schools institutionalize dominant cultural capital through the meanings
and rules that constitute the day-to-day workings of classroom experience. In
his writings, cultural capital refers to those systems of meanings, linguistic,
and social competencies, and elements of style, manner, taste, and dispositions
that the dominant class permeates society with as being the most legitimate.
Social capital is an important part of Bourdieu’s theorizing of habitus (1977,
53–65) — namely these types of incorporations that form the political identity
of our bodies activated through subtle everyday routines of thinking and
doing.10 While appearing to be neutral, schooling reproduces the unequal
distribution of cultural capital (and habitus).
According to Bourdieu, the most important and, in relation to school,
most effective part of the cultural heritage, the disinterested education and
language, is transmitted in an osmotic way without any methodical effort
and influence. This reinforces the conviction of the members of the class with
the most cultural capital, that those forms of knowledge, aptitudes, and
attitudes that have never been perceived as results of learning processes, are
solely owed to their “natural talents” (Bourdieu 2001, 31). Whereas Freire
provides useful insights and practices when working with disadvantaged
groups and the working class in Brazil where he developed his literacy
programs, Bourdieu’s theories enable us to understand the middle and up-
per class in Western European societies. According to sociologist Beverly
Skeggs, Bourdieu offers tools to identify “authorization, exchange and use of

10 For a further discussion of Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital, habitus, and schooling see Giroux 198 3,
188–90; see also pages 156ff and 223ff in this book.

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distinction. [...] He can show how the bourgeois perspective is implemented,
how interests are protected and pursued and how authorization occurs”
(2004, 30). This is especially helpful when trying to identify mechanisms
of exclusion within school education and the moments of learning that are
unvoiced in the classroom.
On the struggle around neutrality in schooling processes, I return to the
student-teacher relation, one of the most contested relationships in schooling
to which Freire, hooks, and Giroux dedicate a lot of attention. Freire famously
criticized traditional educational systems for their banking concept of educa-
tion in which the student is an empty container that can be filled by the teach-
er, which “transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control
thinking and action, leads men and women to adjust to the world, and inhibits
their creative powers” (1970, 77). In this model, Freire identifies the teacher as the
active subject and the students as passive objects: teachers, as the ones who are
supposed to know, are the epistemological authority in this system; students’
pre-existing knowledge is ignored, apart from what was expected to be deposited
into them earlier. The banking paradigm relegates students to being “ad-
aptable, manageable beings. ... The more completely they accept the passive
role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as
it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them” (ibid., 60).
Naturalizing the teacher-student relation in terms of who has and provides
knowledge and who does not, fixes structures of authority in school. Instead,
Freire positions students as active participants in educational processes, such
that learning is no longer a process of one-way transmission of knowledge from
those who know to others who need. Rather, the relation between teacher
and student becomes mutual, which, nevertheless, does not mean the shar-
ing of knowledge happens in the same way. Knowledge is not something a
person has, but something that has to be engaged with from all sides within edu-
cation. Hence, an active and mutual relationship is never entirely controllable,
and explains why Freire, hooks, and Giroux refuse an entirely oppressive
structuralism and pessimism toward school. This relation has to be seen as a
process not ruled only by structural necessities, but which bears the potential
for contestation and ideally provides a platform for teaching to transgress.
There is a slightly different yet comparable articulation of critical ped-
agogy in Jacques Rancière’s famous statement that “the most important
quality of a schoolmaster is the virtue of ignorance” (2010, 1). In his book

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The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Rancière
criticizes common education in which the teacher thinks he or she knows
exactly which steps have to be taken and which examples are easy enough
for the acquisition of knowledge. This is very similar to Freire’s critique
of education. Whereas Freire, hooks, and Giroux focus on the passivity of
students, Rancière looks at how knowledge (re)produces an authoritarian
distance between teachers and students. This authority does not only exist
in the difference of knowledge, but also in the power of the teacher to define
the distance between student and teacher, and hence institutes a hierarchical
relationship of knowledge. Rancière introduces the historical case of Joseph
Jacotot, a French teacher in the early nineteenth century exiled to Belgium,
as a counter to these supposedly given relations of superiority and inferiority
that amount to “enforced stultification” (1991, 7). As a professor in Louvain,
Jacotot had to teach French without being able to speak Flemish. He decided
to use his own ignorance as a teaching method. Without any explanation,
he gave his students a French text to read along with its Flemish translation,
which had several implications. First, he brought two languages into relation
with each other without explanation. Second, he removed himself from the
center of the classroom as the one who would normally transmit knowledge.
To his surprise, the experiment worked well. The students learnt French and
crucially, developed their own methods of learning, relating the two texts in
a way that would best help their learning processes.
What is important here is not the teacher’s knowledge, but the active
delineation and use of ignorance to establish a different way of relating as the
center of the educational process. This practice of equality is what Rancière
regards as the important moment of emancipatory education. Equality
is practiced here as starting point rather than destination. Wånggren and
Sellberg link Rancière’s, Freire’s, and hooks’s engagement with pedagogy by
suggesting that “the ‘ignorance’ of the teacher is pivotal in a classroom dy-
namic that emphasizes the importance both of redefining ‘knowledge’ and of
mutual classroom engagement” (2012, 546). Moreover, this form of ignorance
is not to be confused with the one we can learn about in the discourse on
white innocence and racism. By following Charles W. Mills’s epistemology of
ignorance (2007), Gloria Wekker (2016, 17) describes ignorance as one of the
main traits in the claims of innocence. While the “not-knowing” is certainly
present in both descriptions of ignorance, Wekker’s description includes a

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distinct “not-wanting-to-know,” which is detrimental to classroom practices.
Instead, I understand Rancière’s ignorance as striving for delineating what
I, as a teacher, do not know, in order to then find out together with the stu-
dents — an explicit “wanting-to-know” that includes the students.
It is a form of decentering oneself as a teacher in the classroom that has
consequences for the way students’ positions are understood and related to,
but also for how knowledge is conceptualized in the classroom. It supports
an understanding of knowledge that is not treated as an external body of in-
formation whose production appears to be independent of particular human
beings. Knowledge cannot then be regarded as neutral as it is the result of a
human activity situated in human norms and interests. This relates back to
the elaborations on hidden curriculum that emerged from the interaction be-
tween sociopolitical and economic conditions of schooling (inside and outside
it) and a student’s specific learning situation at a certain place and time. It is
not necessarily I as teacher, artist, or researcher who would know about it,
but the students themselves who are able to find out. Following Rancière, I
address three critical elements in acknowledging ignorance with respect to a
collaborative investigation and experiment around hidden curricula. Key to
this experiment on ignorance is interrogating the premises that affirm roles
and maintain hierarchical relations in the project.
In the following I discuss some of the reactions of involved teachers,
and students, in relation to the framework and conditions of the HC project
important for collaborative research in an attempt to challenge processes of
thinking and doing. Some teachers were quite doubtful and voiced critique
in the sense that my attitude was irresponsible, considering that I wanted
to work together with young people and “did not know what to do.” Some
demanded a clear step-by-step plan, had problems with a student-led struc-
ture, and requested a defined outcome — a tangible product as security for
everyone involved. The teachers were not only touching upon the reproduc-
tion of an authority structure by eliminating porosity in the student-teacher
relationship, but they were also preoccupied with eliminating unforeseeable
situations in educational settings. This provoked tensions, since the set-up
included openings for uncertainty and instability toward deliberately not
knowing. In regular educational settings this is seen as risk — intellectual, but
also social and practical. It runs counter to the predictable outcomes in the
structuring of school lessons, and school life in general. The school structure

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 and the acting participants in it aim for stability and certainty in predictable
outcomes. In Teaching to Transgress hooks demands from engaged pedagogy
that instructors face their deep fears about “loss of control of the classroom”
(1994, 34). This is not surprising since the “prevailing pedagogical model [is]
authoritarian, hierarchical in a coercive and often dominating way, where
the voice of the professor is the privileged transmitter of knowledge” (85).
With students, the approach of not knowing sometimes led to tensions
in the student workshop groups as well, especially when we tried to figure
out how to continue certain processes. We had to come to terms with the
fact that there was neither an infallible, secure way of proceeding, nor a clear
outcome. Some of the students approached me with a somewhat angry sense
of impatience that I should finally tell them what a hidden curriculum really
was. It was understandable that the students turned to me, since I brought the
questions and the project to them. However, they seemed to not take seriously
my declared ignorance about it or did not know how to cope with it. Many
students conceived our discussions as “one of these strange student-teacher
games” 11 in which a teacher asks a question although she already knows the
answer, but acts as if she doesn’t in order to motivate the student. The stu-
dents recalled these experiences when teachers obscured their position of the
knowledgeable as a motivation to ask certain questions. These as-if-ignorance
(as I call them) reinstate in a forceful way the hierarchies between those who
are supposed to know and those who are not. There is a danger of internal-
izing the as-if-ignorance and interpreting situations for them to be fulfilled.
hooks describes these kinds of situations also in terms of students resisting
their responsibility to engage in classroom situations, “since the vast majority
of students learn through conservative, traditional educational practices and
concern themselves only with the presence of the professor” (ibid., 8). She in-
stead encourages students (and sets the framework accordingly) to turn away
from the teacher’s voice and presence, and to listen to each other.
The hierarchies of who is allowed to know and who is not are reiterated
between students themselves. In many situations, especially at the beginning
of the workshops, the students tried to reinstate my role as the project ex-
plainer when they had to make decisions on, for example, what they should
dive deeper into, or where to go in the building to proceed with some ideas.

11 Conversation during HC workshop, Utrecht 2007.

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When trying to force me to decide was somehow thwarted, students posed
questions to their own group: Who is speaking? Who is entitled to speak?
And who, they assume, has the knowledge to explain? These produced quite
some tensions between students, and not the least between students and me.
My role in the HC project, and the group dynamics changed a lot de-
pending on location. In school students frequently addressed me as an artist
or — as one put it — “different from the teachers.” Another student pointed
out that the reason for this could be that the project allowed them to climb up
on cupboards, as opposed to having their teachers try to get them off them.
During the project I became aware of many moments like this that would
come to define their perception of my role within school. This included the
way the students sat on the tables when we met, or how we used mobile
phones in the building in order to organize ourselves during the sessions.
In school, I inhabited the role of the “ignorant” artist more easily, since
I did not know the environment, processes, and routines. When the students
went to art spaces involved (for example, Casco, Utrecht; The Showroom,
London; or Whitechapel Gallery, London), I increasingly adopted the role
of an instructor or tutor. The students were entering an environment they
were not used to and looked to me for guidance on how to relate to it.
Working within such different kinds of (power) structures is challenging,
since I am part of them if I want it or not. I try to find ways to question them,
interrogate the premises that affirm certain roles, and at best start a process
of renegotiation. By trying to reduce my role as an authority figure, I see how
implicated I am in its reproduction, simply by entering the institution of a
school or an art space. Within the workshops we tried to find out how the
students’ ideas can become constitutive of what ends up happening there.
This corresponds with how I understand Rancière’s “practices of equality” as
a collaborative process. It does not mean that inequality can be diminished or
eliminated by taking a radical position and hoping the rest follows. Rather, as
Marina Vishmidt commented in a conversation around the HC project: “It’s
a contingent process of experimentation in the social field that posits equality
as a desire that can be actualized, and then figures out how, and why it fails
when it does” (Krauss, Pethick, and Vishmidt 2008, 34).

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 Hidden Curriculum Exercises

2 Chair Exercise

3 Investigating the School Building

4 Sharing Tricks

5 Tricks to Actions

6 Performative Situations

7 Public Actions

b Language Exercise

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 c
Language to Action/Reflection

d Excuse Poems

Archive to Reflection/Action

Archive to Action/Reflection

Degrees of Publicness

The Power of School Objects

Collecting Chairs

This map features various methods, suggestions, and ideas developed during the Hidden Curriculum (HC)
project between participants and Annette Krauss. It gives insights into the many threads and interrelations
that make up the collective study of a hidden curriculum in school. An earlier version of the map was
developed as a wall drawing for the City of Women Festival, Ljubljana 2021.

153
2* Chair Exercise 6 Performative Situations
At school, tables and chairs are the pieces of furniture The students find ways to intervene in everyday pro-
that are used on a regular basis by everyone. Students cesses at school. These actions include switching
are asked to interact with a school chair in a way that lockers, riding a bike through the different floors of the
differs from how they usually use it. school building, and moving all the plants in the building
to block a corridor. By placing obstacles impeding the
3 Investigating the School Building ways people usually move around the school building,
The chair exercise is expanded to encompass the these actions prompt teachers, other staff members,
whole school building. The students set off to explore and other students to reconsider their habits.
the build­ing and find ways to approach it that differ
from how they usually navigate it. The students ex- 7 Public Actions
change on which spaces they find, which interactions The students move their explorations into public space,
they try out instead. The students further seek gaps looking for ways to counter the normal flows of the
within the building, finding verbal language and doc- city and study the ways that public space is regulat-
umentation for these “in-betweens” or “non-spaces,” ed, attempting to test it by making slight changes to
that are, e.g., not used, inconvenient, uncomfortable, the “curriculum.” For example, what happens if some­
forbidden, or hidden. one is waiting for the bus standing upside down?
What could the distances between people in public
4 Sharing Tricks indicate?
What would the equivalent of these in-between or
non-spaces be as an action (or in everyday life)? The b Language Exercise
students are invited to reflect upon what they have The students are asked to find synonyms, translations,
done during the workshop and relate it to their ac- or collocations for the words “hidden” and “curric-
tions elsewhere. The students can access the HC Ar- ulum.” They present the terms to the whole group
chive: an archive of tricks and daily practices in which and come up with a new composite term, suggesting
students from other schools share some secrets or a specific perspective on hidden curriculum, such as:
coping mechanisms from their daily lives at school. undercover study ... secret agenda ... unknown plan
As many of these videos have been made in other ... mysterious rules ... invisible lessons ... out-of-view
countries, they set off a discussion about differenc- system ... Some of the new terms not only guide the
es in school systems, in particular between what is study groups, but also inspire the retitling of the work­
allowed or not allowed in schools in other countries. shop series. Every HC workshop has its own additional
The students contribute their own story, image, or title such as Operational Disorder ... May We Disturb You?
video clip to the HC Archive. ... In Search of the Missing Lessons ... (In)Visibilities
... Beyond Common Sense ...
5 Tricks to Actions
The HC Archive is a starting point for a brainstorming c Language to Action/Reflection
session in which the students develop their own ideas Some students understand the term “hidden curric-
about how to transfer these tricks into other actions. ulum” literally as hiding spaces in school. They set
The purpose of this is for the students to find their off to visit these spaces and share them with each
own particular fields of interest that raise questions other. On their quest, they find many more spaces
about the broader topic of their exploration: hidden that give subtle readings of a hidden curriculum with
curriculum. In small groups the students develop regard to the school building, such as unused spaces,
their own study project within this framework. These or forbidden, unnoticed, inconvenient, and inacces-
range from interviewing the janitor to get to know sible ones.
his views on what goes on in the school, accessing
all forbidden rooms, to sitting in on a test in the d Excuse Poems
year below and observing the dynamics, energy, and Students recurringly study excuses in school. They
practices during it. are guided by the questions: In which situations are
excuses used in school? Why are they used, and
which forms do they take? And what is the relation

154
between excuses and existing norms and conven- The Power of School Objects
tions? How do excuses (invented or not) subvert, but The students are asked to expand the study of
also affirm rules in school? Students collect excuses (re)using school objects like chairs and tables by ex-
and create the so-called Excuse Poems. ploring power structures. Students develop their own
exercises, such as Collectively Rocking Chairs. By re-
Archive to Reflection/Action using what is usually an individualized practice that
A substantial amount of time in the HC workshops is forbidden in school, namely rocking chairs, the
is dedicated to the study of the findings of previous students’ collective exercise comments on the norms
workshop participants. This way, the students learn and conventions of group discussions in school. Liter-
about the approaches of earlier participants and get ally upsetting the balance of a group discussion, the
inspired by their work. The material also sets off dis- students trigger reflections on mutual trust, power
cussions about differences and similarities in school rel­ations at roundtable discussions, and body language
structures, in particular, between what is allowed or during school discussions.
not allowed in schools in other countries, what every-
day life in other schools looks like, and what coping Collecting Chairs
mechanisms, tricks, and secret actions are used there. For the presentation of the findings of the HC work-
shops, each student is asked to borrow a chair from
Archive to Action/Reflection their home. The chairs are collected from their homes
In some HC workshops, participants archive ideas and assembled in the space of presentation (school,
and suggestions for the next school to try out. A few art, or community space). The individual choices of
groups of students took up one of these suggestions, the students creates an odd array of different kinds
such as the idea of playing “hide and seek” with video of seating in relation to the school furniture present-
cameras inside the school. They develop their own ed in the space. Visiting family members often re-
interpretation of the idea. fer to the furniture as a further motivation for their
passing by.
Degrees of Publicness
Early on in the HC project, we had discussions with
groups of students about the publicness of certain
contributions that they made. The discussion ad-
dressed, e.g., the sensitivity of certain videos, such as
those featuring secret actions and tricks that were not
yet known to teachers. We agreed to review all the
contributions created in the course of the HC work-
shops from the point of view of their accessibility, ask-
ing how public each contribution should be. This led to
the following specifications. The contributions: a) are
only shared within the current workshop group; b) can
be shared with future workshop participants; c) can
be shared with a wider public.
The degrees of publicness are most visible in
the “tricks and secret actions.” Whereas a whole se-
ries of numbered contributions between #1 and #44
in which students share their actions, are accessible,
some contributions (and some titles) are missing
and not shared with the public. These contributions
remain secret.

* How would we relate to each other, think, live, and work with each other if we started counting from
two instead of one, not pretending that we know where and how things start, when our selves are
always already two, if not multiple ...?

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The Physicality of Education

Since the first workshop series in 2007 students showed a strong interest in
using performative strategies and body-related interventions as a thinking
by doing process. These research methods became extremely important to
the project, as they address the role of the body in schooling situations, im-
plicit hierarchies, and questions of governance. Or, to put it differently, the
circumstances yielded an orientation toward the physicality of education,
namely the participants’ practico-physical interaction with their immediate
material and discursive environments.
Fig. 4: Students and I interacted with school chairs in a way that went
against our usual use of these objects. The students documented our findings.
The so-called Chairs Exercise (2012) is a practice in how the physicality of
education has been approached in the HC project.
Fig. 5: Students set off to investigate the school building, finding ways
to approach it that differed from habitual ways they had navigated it. They
tried to gain information about the different spaces, using no tools except
their bodies — measuring with the width of their arms or the length of their
bodies. Taking the title of the project as a proposal, they looked for hiding
spaces, and eventually sought out gaps within the building that were unused,
inconvenient, uncomfortable, forbidden, and hidden spaces. They later called
these In Between Spaces (2007). They physically entered into these spaces and
documented their findings.

Fig. 4 Chairs Exercise, 2012, photos, students from Quintin Kynaston School, London.
Courtesy Hidden Curriculum / (In)Visibilities, London

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 Fig. 5 In-Between Spaces, 2007, photos, students from Gerrit Rietveld College
and Amadeus Lyceum, Utrecht. Courtesy Hidden Curriculum, Utrecht

An important aspect of the HC project has been that the students get
to know each other’s methods, approaches, and findings. This forms an im-
portant thread of discussion and exchange within the project and between
different groups of participants and schools across places and times. In this
sense both proposals (fig. 4 and 5) are linked to Collectively Rocking Chairs
(fig. 3) and Chair Hierarchies (fig. 1), and emerged from many discussions
and actions revolving around the use of chairs in school. The students invest­
igated how they sat and how to a large extent this is due to implicit codes
in everyday practices rather than intentional choice. In one session, a group
of students discussed the relations between chair, table, and body: “When
sitting at a table our legs just fit underneath it. Nobody pays attention to
the space under the desk, neither me, nor the teachers. That’s really irrel-
evant. What is important in school are the books, the papers on the table,
our hands and head. That’s the way school makes us sit at the table.” 12 In
the everyday experience of school, both the space under the desk and the
students’ bodies including their legs go unacknowledged. The way of sitting
renders the body part seemingly irrelevant for school, invisible. However, it
is especially these parts of the furniture and the body that became interest-
ing for the students as a part of a hidden curriculum at school. The students

12 Written down during a workshop session, Utrecht, 2008. My translation.

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extended these investigations to the whole school building. By investigating
their daily routines in walking, standing, and using different parts of the
building, they became aware of the building and tried to find parts, which
they did not use, or had not thought to use (fig. 5). The students made space
in school tangible, drawing attention to a hidden level of complicity between
spatial arrangements, bodies, and daily routines of behaving and thinking.
The preoccupation of schooling with mental processes reflected back on
the students’ description of how the spatial settings in school emphasize the
upper part of the body (especially heads and hands), whereas the rest of the
body stays unnoticed and hidden under the table.
Working with implicit regulatory activities in the context of school
recalls Michel Foucault’s well-known concept of the human body’s capacity
for “docility” (1977, 136), which refers to the acquisition of social abilities
that are not biologically given, but which are learned. In Discipline and
Punish (1977), Foucault describes how by the end of the seventeenth century,
forms of discipline were directed at the individual subject in the context
of prisons, schools, and hospitals. The aim was to optimize the powers of
the individual body, specifically its usefulness. According to Foucault, the
production of a docile body, a useful body, not only involves direct bodily
regulations in the form of punishment — important too are “tiny, everyday,
physical mechanisms” that he calls “disciplines” (222). In comparing school
with a “learning machine” (147), Foucault collects the tiny everyday forces
that control and condition bodies in school, such as spatial distribution in
the form of cellular arrangements (classrooms, tables, benches, and chairs) or
temporal distributions in the form of rhythms produced through timetables.
Through these disciplines the subject both gradually internalizes externally
imposed control and at the same time these disciplines socialize an individual
as a subject.
Foucault addresses the relation between externally imposed control
mechanisms and internalization processes through the principle of visibility
that he sees as productive in many areas in society, particularly clear in his
use of the panopticon. The panopticon is designed as a circular building
with an observation tower in the center of a space surrounded by a wall of
prisoner cells. The inmates can be seen at any point, whereas the guards in
the tower remain invisible. In the words of Foucault, “disciplinary power
is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time, it imposes on those

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whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility” (ibid., 187). Through
the invisibility of the guards, the inmates direct the prison guards’ gaze
back at themselves, and submit themselves to the social order of the prison.
This mechanism is important because it de-individualizes and automatizes
power structures. Power is not so much to be found in a person any longer,
but “in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in
an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which
individuals are caught up” (ibid., 202).
These insights have been formative for theories on subject formation in
post-structuralist feminism (Braidotti 1994; Butler 1993). Accordingly, power
cannot be solely understood on the basis of domination, as something that is
possessed and deployed by individuals. Power is understood as a strategic re-
lation of forces that infuses life and produces new forms of desires, relations,
objects, and discourses (Foucault 1983, 212). Moreover, the subject, Foucault
argues, does not precede power relations, but rather is produced through
these relations. Central to his formulation is what he calls the concept and
paradox of subjectivation: the very processes that enforce a subject’s subor-
dination to and correlation with certain norms, are the conditions through
which they become a self-conscious identity and agent (208–25). Foucault’s
understanding of power is important for educational settings, because it
discourages us from conceptualizing the students and teachers as blank
pages for social inscription or omnipotent masters of educational processes.
Foucault’s understanding of power does not reside in either subordina-
tion or resistance and freedom, but rather tries to move beyond this binary
construction through both subordination and resistance. This resonates with
the both/and in Giroux’s hidden curriculum studies as well as in hooks’s fem-
inist pedagogies. Each claim that classroom situations have to be understood
as both reproduction and transformation (hooks 1994, 207; Giroux 1983, 61).
Back to the students’ engagement in the HC project: what they touched
upon was the implicit knowledge in practices and objects in school that are
hard to grasp as they are hidden in their common everydayness. This implicit
knowledge is part of everyday life in school and shapes the way we relate to
each other and to the objects there. Their investigations ask whether the way
we sit in a chair actually shapes (and restricts) the way we think and how we
know these chairs. Through the investigative performances, the students not
only study what a hidden curriculum and the implicit knowledge could mean

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 for them, but examine what a hidden curriculum does in the realm of the
school, how it is connected to their bodies and their material environment,
and most importantly how it is connected to processes of subordination and
transformation.
I have tried to indicate so far, that it is not enough to pay attention to
the discursivity of the body. It is also important to understand learning
processes at school as being inscribed in the bodily practice of learning
itself. What is meant by this is the “educational work” (Bourdieu 1977, 205)
that people deploy on themselves in direct interaction with their material
environment. Consequently, “the act of practising and learning physical pos-
tures corresponds to the formation of internal worldviews and vice versa”
(Alkemeyer 2008, 53). Not to decide on either of these at the expense of any
of the others (materiality, practice, discourse) has been the foremost task
in this collaborative artistic research into hidden curriculum and makes it
possible to have an account of the lived experience and material element of
the body without abandoning social construction. At the basis of this is an
understanding that ascribes a force to bodies that can influence the social
life of the subject’s body, entangled with the forces that a practice-related or
discursive system evokes,1  3 which makes it possible to problematize a too
simple understanding of what constitutes a body in a learning situation. The
Cartesian body-mind split inherent in schooling is critiqued in noting the
disregard or devaluation of the physicality of education. Sport sociologist
Thomas Alkemeyer has summarized an alternative to the body-mind split
in noting: “When we learn, we learn as bodies” (2006, 121, my translation).
My experiences during the HC project and with the help of the students’
insistence on performative, body-related investigations, has intensified my
pursuit of this material, bodily path of learning, and engaging with unlearn-
ing. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze considers what is involved in learning to
swim (1994, 165), which is similar to learning to ride a bike (see “Afterword:
Unlearning as a Scaffolding for Living”). He observes that nobody would ex-
pect to be able to swim after reading a textbook or taking some classes outside
a pool. Learning to swim requires the engagement of one’s body with water.
The approach of learning as a bodily activity is crucial. In the book chapter

13 With bodies I refer both to the bodies of the students, my own, or any participant in school,
as well as any materials there such as furniture, objects, building, etc., and the bodies of knowledge.

160
“Bodies of Learning,” education researcher Anna Cutler and philosopher
Ian MacKenzie explore the bodily learning of swimming by distinguishing
bodies and bringing forward a model of learning that differs from accumula-
tive learning (2011, 53–73). Building upon Deleuze’s elaboration, they detect
not only the body of the swimmer who engages with the body of the water,
but also the body of knowledge that could be considered embodied by the
swim instructor. The interplay and hierarchical relationships among the
bodies of learning give shape to processes of learning in a specific situation.
Cutler and MacKenzie argue that in modernity the body of knowledge “as
expressed through regulative method determines the relationship between
the three bodies involved in learning.” This means for the modern learning
environment, “one learns the correct method in order to know what the
instructor knows” (ibid., 54). Such an understanding of learning establishes
a hierarchy between the different bodies of knowledge and assigns a domi-
nant place to the body of knowledge that is not only superior to the other
bodies, but to the process of learning, presuming that learning is a process
that culminates in a result called knowledge. Here, learning is reduced to a
method for the acquisition of knowledge as opposed to viewing learning as
a set of relations that emerge out of the entanglement of the different bodies
involved in learning. As elaborated before, hooks notes that knowledge is not
something to be possessed but to be engaged with. Accordingly, any kind of
learning is not a passive reception of knowledge (from an expert). Translated
into the school, the bodies of un/learning engage with each other and form
a classroom experience that emerges through the relationship between the
body of the learner (student), the bodies of environment (including tables,
chairs, spatial, and temporal arrangement), and the body of knowledge (em-
bodied in the teacher, curriculum). Consequently, the traditional bodies of
knowledge (teacher, official curriculum) are challenged through the rear-
rangement of bodies of learning, which is an intervention that comes close
to unlearning processes as discussed in this publication.
In Collectively Rocking Chairs (fig. 3) the students investigated the
(re)use of objects in school and their attached power structures as a way
to intervene in classroom routines like roundtable discussions. I was puzzled
by the students’ choice of this format. Why did they not choose the, for
me more obvious, frontal-teaching method — one of the frequent examples
of disciplinary schooling? The students’ choice sparked many discussions

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 and prompted me to do further research in this direction, not least because
the roundtable format is one of my preferred discussion arrangements in
workshop settings. The roundtable is often thought of as democratic, or a
“structural exercise by which is built up practical mastery of the fundamental
schemes” (Bourdieu 1977, 91) of democratic behavior through the specific
arrangement of bodies. Bourdieu sees a roundtable discussion as a socio-
symbolic practice of equality, or, as a material, discursive, and practice forma-
tion at once. However, the circular-democratic arrangement of a roundtable
can hardly hold its promise of equality.
I was part of a series of roundtable discussions connected to my work at
the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. The first time I was invited I hardly
knew anybody. Entering the room where everybody was already seated,
I faced an encircled arrangement. Describing a similar situation in a primary
school setting, Alkemeyer writes, “closely seated side by side, it was as if [the
group] had collectively turned their back to the outside world” (2008, 56–57).
Once I overcame this obstacle and found my place in the circle, I faced an-
other challenge. The circular form makes all the participants visible to each
other. There is no possibility of placing oneself in a back row, which would
offer a certain protection if needed — especially for a newcomer. Considering
the fact that the circular arrangement supports a greater range of visibility
for all actors in the circle, it privileges those who know how to deal with this
visibility or have the power to use the visibility toward their own ends. In a
striking way it correlates with Foucault’s criticism of the dominant paradigm
of visibility in Western societies, elaborated before. Through Foucault we
can better understand how the paradigm of visibility legitimizes oppressive
modes of control in many areas of life and is subtly inscribed in a deeply
democratic behavior in our bodies.
Two aspects are important in closing: firstly, a spatial-material arrange-
ment is not independent of the sociopolitical context in which it is placed.
The different bodies of un/learning emerge through these. A roundtable
discussion is imbued with the norms and conventions that we as bodies bring
to the table. At the same time the situation in which we participate, subtly
pushes our bodies to accept a certain situation.14 Both the spatial-material
arrangement and sociopolitical context, shape the ways in which we relate to

14 See also “Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet)” on pages 4 1–74 in this book.

162
each other. I suggest that participating in a roundtable is not only a bodily-
structural exercise in democratic behavior, but also a bodily-structural ex-
ercise in the paradigm of visibility that we come to acccept in Western
societies. Secondly, another socio-spatial order implies other forms of repro-
duction of inequality and it would be problematic to think of a democratic
roundtable as neutral. A roundtable enacts a socio-symbolic order that
brings with it new (informal and formal) inclusions and exclusions. This
has far-reaching consequences for HC, for revealing a hidden curriculum
does not necessarily help to overcome inequalities and dominant structures.
Foucault and Haraway note that more knowledge does not necessarily help
the subject out of subordination or domination. What it can do, is change
and consequently produce different power relations (here, the rearrangement
of bodies of learning), and at best minimize relations of domination. For the
collaborative arts-based approach toward a hidden curriculum in secondary
school education, and consequently for the project on unlearning, several
aspects became important, summarized in what follows.

Practicing Unlearning in Three More Ways

Complicities in Establishing Hierarchies of Knowledge

A main challenge in HC was investigating what is regarded as (legitimate)
knowledge in high school education. This examination necessarily needs to
include studies on hidden curriculum in educational research. While these
provide fruitful insights into theorizing a hidden curriculum in school in rel­
ation to social reproduction of inequalities, they are deficient when it comes
to their own complicity in establishing hierarchies of knowledge. Existing
studies on hidden curricula have been almost exclusively undertaken by ac-
ademic researchers who decide what is important to address in school. The
expertise is solely assigned to academic research. Ideas and visions of students
(or teachers) have hardly played a role. In line with this, I position the arts-
based research into hidden curricula along two trajectories: first, opening
up the research to students to actively participate in the discussion of what
is regarded as legitimate knowledge, what is neglected or not recognized as
knowledge in school; second, having the settings aspire to the mutuality
of a researcher-student-teacher-relationship. This is attempted through the

163
 continuous exercising and studying of the group organization and reflecting
on the ethical, class, and power configurations of its conditions. This is a
tricky one, especially when writing (about) the collective research setting of
HC, because it risks reinstituting a certain hierarchy of expertise that the
project sets out to challenge.

When We Un/learn, We Un/learn as Bodies

The collaborative artistic research of the HC project has the capacity to
approach what is taken for granted in school settings and educational re-
search. The physicality of learning processes has surfaced prominently in
many workshops over the years, whereas it has not appeared much in hidden
curriculum studies so far. The attention to the entanglement of the material,
practical, and discursive bodies of learning in school brings forth a model
of learning that is different from an accumulative one. In it, learning is
approached as a set of relations that emerge out of the entanglement of the
bodies involved in learning processes. This opens up a perspective on unlearn-
ing as the rearrangement of different bodies of learning. Spivak’s “training
of the imagination” has been simmering throughout (see “Instead of Solving
Paradoxes and Contradictions” on pages 95–121 in this book), and I tried
to open it up toward bodily knowledge and the physicality of un/learning
and imagination. This is intertwined with the discussion on cultural capital
and habitus in this text, through which I articulate the potential of HC and
desire for the study on unlearning — namely unlearning habitus.

To Be Hidden Does not Mean to Be Merely Revealed

Reflecting on the project’s title has been important to make use of its some-
what misleading character. Setting up something as hidden suggests it will be
about revealing the invisible. What is at risk of losing here is the examination
of how (in)visibilities function in society, and how we might relate and uti-
lize them for our own agendas. Bringing together thoughts on (in)visibilities
produces discussions about the extent to which the visible world around us
stays invisible for us.15 Instead, I propose attending to the continuous pres-
ence and production of omissions. Again, it is too easy to concentrate on

15 See also Michel Foucault, writing that art “consists not in showing the invisible, but rather in showing
the extent to which the invisibility of the visible is invisible” (1997, 24).

164
revealing these omissions. The project looks more into how these omissions
function in a society in which, for example, the dominant paradigm is one of
visibility. This is a matter of incorporating in whatever we do, say, write, or
read, that it will mean more than, and be different from, what we intend to
communicate in words but also very practically, in actions and movements.

165
166
 Letters:
The classroom
is burning,
let’s dream about
a School of
Improper Education
by KUNCI Study
Forum & Collective

This text is an unedited reprint from KUNCI Study Forum & Collective, Letters: the classroom is burning,
let’s dream about a School of Improper Education (Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Press, 2020). © KUNCI Study
Forum & Collective and Ugly Duckling Press.

167
Date: Jan 11, 2020, 11:10 PM
From: Sulastri1 Nirvana Trimurti <[email protected]>
To: Murni2 Dharmawinata <[email protected]>, Thothokkerot 3
<[email protected]>
Subject: A failed academia

Hey Murni and Thothokkerot,

Remember the postdoctoral fellowship I told you about the other day? I failed to
get it. Again. I received a rejection letter from the university last week. I agree that
what I need might be a little bit of luck. But I have my own theory about this:
I may have constructed a strong Curriculum Vitae with a relatively long list
of written works and creative activities such as exhibitions and research resi-
dencies. But instead of regarding it as a valuable aspect of my intellectual profile,
I was perceived as someone who has too many research interests. Someone
who has too many research interests means he or she is not linear. Non-linearity
means something that is not arranged in a straight line. Mine was definitely
deemed too curvy, or too wild.
Exploration and creativity can be perceived as conditions that lack depth.
I am rejected because I haven’t been nurtured by the university long
enough. My coming of age as an intellectual has been molded not by the univer-
sity per se, but rather by an independent system and self-taught attitude — study
club, artists collectives, and nongkrong (hang out) with artists and activists.
I’m quite disappointed, it is as if I have to prove myself again and again in
discomforting ways whenever I’m writing an application letter. There is an end-
less judgement of one’s capacity. I’m struggling with the unspoken competitive
culture in universities, and as usual it is only with you both I feel like I’m allowed to
show my vulnerabilities.
How are you guys doing? It’s still warm here. I need to brush up my swim-
ming skills this year, like a proper prepper. Doomsday is near.

Cheers, Sulastri

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Date: Jan 12, 2020, 1:15 PM
From: Murni Dharmawinata <[email protected]>
To: Sulastri Nirvana Trimurti <[email protected]>, Thothokkerot
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: A failed academia

Hi Sul, hi Thot!

Sulastri, my commiseration to hear about the rejection. I hope you’ve allowed

yourself to eat a redemptive sweet dessert (the carrot cake on your Instagram
looks delicious!).
How do you feel now, Sul? I’m sure you’ll need time to process everything,
but do you find you still have a prospect to work in the university? What I mean
by prospect here is not just the chance of being accepted in a university. But how
actually does the prospect of being a university lecturer help to form our critical
and political subjectivization in the age of neoliberal capitalism? Hehehe. I beg
your pardon for being an old grumpy SJW,4 speaking as an art school drop out
here!
I do believe teaching can be a form of activism, but how resourceful — or on
the contrary, how limiting — is the university when it comes to practicing educa-
tion as social transformation in our context? What’s actually your plan, if you’re
ever accepted in the university? What kind of intervention can you think of?
I want to know your thoughts on this. Maybe by dismantling your expectation of
the university, we can think differently about your “failure” to get the job.
I remember our colleague Stefano Harney, who talks (and practices) edu-
cational intervention in the “underground of the university” (you remember this
from his excellent dialogical book with Fred Moten, The Undercommons), aim-
ing to disseminate knowledge produced within the classroom beyond its walls.5
And here we are, outside the walls — not waiting for the university to dissem-
inate its knowledge to us, right? On your “theory” of being rejected, I agree we’ve
never been totally nurtured by the university, and to add to that, aren’t we kind of
proud of it? Being a university lecturer is just a tool to reach a bigger transform-
ative aim. If we ain’t got the tool, then we have to look, or even build another tool.
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.6 We could not even
possess the master’s tools!

169
 Can we dream of building a new house with what we have? What kinds of
pedagogical models, tools, and ecosystems have nurtured us to be critical, how
do they sustain (or do they even sustain)? Let’s think and dream about what we
can do together outside the walls of the classroom. Maybe then, we can break
those walls from the outside?

Cheers, Murni

Date: Jan 18, 2020, 9:00 AM

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: A failed academia

dear s and m,

two important movements have emerged in universitas gadjah mada, yogyakar-

ta, recently. one is gejayan memanggil,7 considered by many as part of the big-
gest student protest after reformasi.8 the other one is the #kitaagni9 movement,
which is a student protest and campaign as a reaction against the inaction of ugm
in dealing with sexual harassment in the university.
the gejayan memanggil started as a discussion club consisting of students
from different departments called “kultur” — it reminds me of the various study
groups that emerged during the nkk-bkk policy.10 you were part of one of the
study groups during your time at ugm, no, sulastri? those kinds of groups that
take place after class sessions because students were dissatisfied with the un-
inspiring lecturers.
the nkk-bkk policy was canceled so many years ago, after reformasi. but
i found it interesting that students still find the need to organize a study group
outside of the classroom.
higher education is being commercialized. students are now obliged to fin-
ish their study in 5 years maximum. is campus life successfully becoming “nor-
malized” and depoliticized? (i’m distracted as i remember our friend from the

170
philosophy department anto labil who “finally” graduated after 17 years in the uni,
haha — and now he’s happily living his life becoming an eel farmer in wonosari).
the reality of post-reformasi leads the country to the continuous polarization
of diverging political views, religious radicalisation, gender and sexuality-based
oppression, and formal and informal censorship of the media. these have engen-
dered a mixture of feelings, which should encourage us to reflect on our position.
what can a university lecturer do to perform educational intervention in the
university? i would say they should stop teaching and start building a space and
make time to learn and unlearn together.
can we create a new initiative which serves as a public learning platform?
it seems appropriate to articulate what we feel in the development of a school. in
defining our initiative as a school, how can we use it as an avenue through which
we can practice unlearning, and more importantly to turn the unknown into a se-
ries of productive tools for understanding the contemporary social ecosystem
and articulating the resourcefulness of interdependent subjectivities?
this reminds me of a book that we read together at the Rabbit Hole Theory
reading club a few years ago. ranciere’s book on joseph jacotot, the ignorant
schoolmaster.11 i’m currently re-reading it as i’m thinking about it in the context
of art education. art education should be more imaginative! it’s interesting
when ranciere explored (in the last chapter) the fact that jacotot’s experiment was
being tried out as an educational policy on a bigger scale as a reformist agenda
in louvain (in a military school!!) by the netherlands monarch. obviously, it didn’t
work out well.
ranciere writes: “jacotot was a master, not the head of the institution.”
(p.102). his “universal teaching” method is as simple as to announce: one can
teach what one doesn’t know and everyone is of equal intelligence. a poor and
ignorant parent can thus begin educating their children. jacotot’s method is the
poor’s method, and it cannot, and will not, work in a spoiled system of school,
party, government, or any kind of institution. but although it is the poor’s
method, it is not the method of the poor — everyone from any social rank can use
it but ranciere emphasizes that they cannot institute it.
i’m sorry that you didn’t get the job that you want, s. I agree with murni, the
failure to get that not-so-good-job-anyway hints at a chance to do something else
altogether. I’m on board if we’re serious in making new ways of schooling!
and yeah, this might be the right time to believe in the tajikistani proverb,
“you can only eat a chicken once; but that chicken lays hundreds of eggs.”

171
perhaps it’s a good sign to move forward and think about what teaching actually
means, and whether there is still a form of radical school that we can practice
together outside of the conventional process of institutionalization?
i’m attaching a screenshot of one of gejayan memanggil’s protest post-
ers. the wording is telling: empty the classroom, go to the streets, we’ll meet at
gejayan!

warmest,
+t+

Attachment

Screenshot4582_220919.PNG 58KB

172
Date: Jan 23, 2020, 11:27 AM
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: A Radical School?

Hey Murni, Thoto, thanks for replying with such criticality and care.

I know that I can always count on your friendship.

I’m changing the email subject to “A Radical School?”— with a question
mark which perhaps cannot be simply answered and rather needs to be put into
practice.
Actually, I often asked myself the same thing — what would I do if I worked
in a university? To be completely honest, I never really see the university as an
appropriate place to nurture the imagination of an intellectual. Maybe the current
incarnation of universities does not foster the kind of critical practices that I seek
to produce. Indonesian universities, which flourished in the 1950s and were ideal-
ised as an emancipative educational institution that would contribute to the pro-
cess of nation building, followed the principle of “Tridharma Perguruan Tinggi,”
which refers to the three pillars of higher education institutions. These are
(1) teaching, (2) research, and (3) community service.12 I know this sounds like civil
servants’ jargon because we heard it all the time as students back then and we
knew how huge the gap is between ideals and implementation.
However, a well interpreted tridharma principle, which is not only about
producing knowledge but also engaging with community, is quite progressive
because it stands against the academic ivory tower. But there is a bureaucratic
nature of big scale institutions that is hard to overcome and I’ve heard many of my
friends who work in the university feel exhausted with administrative work and
thus have no real time to think. This situation is not only happening in Indonesia, I
believe. I thought of entering the university as a form of intervention, to be in but
also against the institution. But if that plan doesn’t work out, I think there are
other ways of intervention from outside the university indeed.
Thoto, I am looking for the Indonesian proverb which can be equated
with that Tajikistani proverb. So far I haven’t found one. Instead it has me going
back to this one: guru kencing berdiri, murid kencing berlari. In English this is:
the teacher pees standing up; the student pees while running. It’s so funny —

173
why the reference to peeing? And it’s about peeing while standing. It’s so
masculine. Anyway, the proverb has many interpretations, but for me it means
that the teacher is a model for students and students will take whatever s/he
has learnt and go beyond the teacher. With my privileges, I’m partly a product of
the university (I have a PhD!). But being in the university, as well as outside of it (in
study groups, collectives) has allowed me to think beyond what the university
has taught me.
And Thot, as you brought up The Ignorant Schoolmaster, it makes me think
about Lekra’s Turba method1 3 (turun ke bawah, literally “going down,” but also
meaning “joining the proletariat”), where the figure of teacher/master should be
sought out in the “wisdom of the masses” — those who are usually deemed the
ignorant poor. This is also related to Murni’s call to seek study practices that exist
beyond the walls of the classroom, no?
I understand that the notion of “the ignorant” in Ranciere’s and Lekra’s sto-
ries are completely different in their kind and nature. Ranciere was actually pretty
much challenging the hierarchical binary between the ignorant mass and the
educated elite, and his works basically wanted to move away from that logic.
Nevertheless, I still want to discuss with you this idea of bawah in Lekra’s Turba.
Perhaps we can think of bawah as a location of studying against the upper elite
bureaucratized ivory tower.
JJ Kusni, in his recollection of the Turba method, wrote that in practice
the artist/intellectual who’s doing Turba should follow the Tiga Sama Rule (Three
Sames), namely: Sama Kerja (Work the Same), Sama Makan (Eat the Same),
Sama Tidur (Sleep the Same). Same or sama can also be understood as bersama
(together). Kusni reflects that it is only through the Turba method and the Tiga
Sama rules that we may obtain the true knowledge of the people.14 There’s still a
patriotic aspect of Turba, as the movement to “go below” seemed to emphasize
the location of the place through which the artists — assumed to inhabit the up-
per position — sought inspiration from the masses and worked for rakyat (the
people). However, I find it’s very emancipative to think of the mass as the source
of knowledge, instead of people who have to be educated.
During Lekra’s experiments with the Turba method in the 1950s, bawah
mainly pointed to the peasants who live in villages. I’m interested in expanding
the idea of bawah to unexpected places as our reality today is different from
Lekra’s time. Of course, the peasants are still at the heart of many progressive
struggles, but can we also broaden and diversify the location of bawah today?

174
Are we, the precarious freelancers, artists, academics, activists, workers, who
do not possess the means of production, actually also part of the below? Rather
than going below, I would like to see where we will go if we start from below.
Lastly, before I forget, I went to Gary Foley’s lecture last night. Gary Foley is
an academic, writer, and Aboriginal activist. One of his prominent works was the
Aboriginal Tent Embassy initiative in Canberra in 1972. There is something that he
said which reminds me of your opinion about study groups, Thoto. In his lecture,
Gary said that the early stage of his activism was shaped greatly through the
organization of study groups with his fellow activists and students in the 1970s.
Again I see the direct reltion between study groups and the organizations of pro-
test on the streets. Doing study group might be seen as a quiet activity for some,
but there is always something boiling in there...

Love,
Sulastri

P.S. Find attached an image of Amrus Natalsya’s 1962 painting, titled Melepas
Dahaga (Quenching Thirst) from Misbach Tamrin’s book, Amrus Natalsya dan
Bumi Tarung (Amrus Nataslya and Bumi Tarung), Bogor: Amnat Studio, 2008, p.
77. I like the subject’s gesture of plunging into a mud hole. For me, the painting
also invokes a metaphor for “going below.”

Attachment

AN_Melepas Dahaga_1962_85x190cm_oil on canvas.JPG 194KB

175
Date: Jan 26, 2020, 5:53 AM
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: A Radical School?

Sul, the last sentence in your email intrigued me. Amrus’ painting is beautifully
strong, indeed the visuality somehow prompts me to think about the translation of
“bawah” in English. What is considered as the appropriate translation for bawah?
Would “grassroots” be a better option, instead of “below?” You are so spot on
in pointing out the meaning of below in its relation with the precariousness of
freelancers in the art and cultural field. Through Amrus’s painting I’d like to think
we should not just plunge our head “below,” but submerge our whole body in
the water. I want to think out loud about what other meanings are attached to the
notion of below. Below can be a learning space that is made possible by the social
generosity of many people. The meaning of below in Turba seemed to empha-
size the location of the place through which the artists sought inspiration from
the masses. But can below also be the possibility to go to unexpected places?
Location is no longer perceived as important, but the possibility of embarking on
travel outside of the familiar zone is. To grasp the complex layered dimensions of
below, we need to consider our feelings and how they engender the possibilities
of encountering different realities, certain kinds of shocks.
This discussion about Turba also leads me to think about our Kuliah Kerja
Nyata15 experience. Turba and KKN share many aspects. Do you think Koesnadi
Hardjasoemantri considered Turba when he conceptualised KKN back then?
Recently I re-read old essays written by Hersri Setiawan16 about Lekra. I found
them very inspiring. In the essays, Hersri reflected on his Lekra period while mak-
ing connections between Turba and the “inspeksi,” or inspection, practiced by
the officials of the New Order era. According to Hersri, the New Order regime
undermined the meaning of Turba through their elite bureaucrat mentality
bullshit. The essence of practicing Turba lies in the willingness to let the “bawah”
exude all their alternative characters, to be absorbed by them, and in turn, to be
part of the bawah. On the other hand, when these bureaucrats said that they
were going to the village, what they actually did was ask the villagers to meet and
greet them and pay respect to their visit in a grand manner. So, here again we find

176
radical practice meeting bureaucratization :-(. Oh, speaking of how the university
can lead us to merely feeling discontent!
Thot, you told me that when you were joining the student press as a first
year student in 1994, you were asked to write a review on Ivan Illich and Paulo
Freire’s books. This is an interesting story as there are many resonances in our
current discussion about radical school with the pedagogical practices of Illich
and Freire.

Talk more soon!

Love,
Murni

Date: Jan 27, 2020, 10:22 PM

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: A Radical School?

hey m, s,

murni, funny how you asked about paulo freire and ivan illich in your previous
email. it brings back some good, perhaps a bit romantic, memories of the refor-
masi movement. i was thinking that our discussion about the meaning of “below”
in turba in relation with the desires to find and acknowledge different kinds of
people will not only bring us to discuss the meaning of “people” but it also propels
us to talk about what schooling really means. i read paulo freire in 1994, when i
was a new student in gadjah mada university. of course i read the indonesian
translation of the book. it was published as pendidikan kaum tertindas by lp3es,
a research institution established in Jakarta in 1971.17 i was required to write a
review of the book as part of the assessment of the students who joined the stu-
dent newspaper bulaksumur at the time. then we got excited about the possibility
of radical pedagogy institutions and how ivan illich and paulo friere’s thinking
inspired us.

177
 why paulo freire’s book? i was too naive and thus i did not really think much
about it back then. but i was quickly absorbed by freire’s ideas about the bank-
ing concept in education practices and how he frames that as an oppression.
recently i led a discussion group on the subject of contemporary art and alterna-
tive pedagogy. In the discussion, we came back to freire and i began to see the
connection between freire’s book and the student activists’ realm before 1998.
freire’s book was part of the important reading material for student activists
because it fit with the students’ spirit to criticize the new order regime while
attempting to break away from the stiff and suffocating campus. reading freire’s
book helps us to see how the authoritarian character of the state leaked into uni-
versities, and informed the expectations around knowledge production.
in the field of artistic production, we may remember moelyono or pak moel
with his “seni penyadaran” which is heavily inspired by illich, freire, and boal.
moelyono’s concept of penyadaran adapts freire’s conscientization.18 it seems
activists in the 1980s were influenced by these references. it’s so fascinating how
the fields of academia, art, and activism were so interconnected. it goes beyond
the boundaries of disciplines, but shares the same spirit for social transformation.
another point i want to make is that many of the things that we are discussing
here are forms of studying that are perhaps unnoticed or deemed improper by
the professional model of modern university education. you’re right, sul — criticiz-
ing the university as an institution can be exhausting and melancholic. for now, it’s
better to think together: where else can we find other forms of “improper” study-
ing? murni, you’re also an artist, perhaps you can tell us about forms of studying
in the arts that we can discuss?

+t+

178
Date: Jan 30, 2020, 11:05 PM
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: An Improper school?

Thoto! I really like the word “improper” that you brought up, so I changed our
email subject to “An Improper School?” Still with a question mark following Sul’s
spirit of putting our discussion into practice.
I think we’re going somewhere with our discussion about school here. I can
sense it. Since you both brought up Freire et.al, I’m reminded of his famous quo-
tation: “We make the road by walking.” I think that’s how our discussion is going
so far.
The way you elaborate the term improper as not inferior to the “proper”
modern school prompts me to think of improper as the alternative, (the other, the
marginalized) that critically questions the standard of “properness” (Who made
it? What for?) and incites again the possibility of transformative education.
Speaking of school as radical study practices, instead of a disciplinary in-
stitution/apparatus, I’m now thinking of nyantrik. In popular knowledge nyantrik
(learning from the master) is considered to be practiced only in pesantren, the
Islamic boarding school. Traditionally the santri19 are practicing ngaji 20 and
nyantrik under respected Kiai21 throughout most of the day and they are obliged
to perform certain ascetic practices. What’s interesting is that in pesantren it
is as if there is no line between life and studying. This history of education is
often overlooked (or deemed improper!), as our imagination of schooling has
been narrowed to “modern” colonial education defined by Dutch colonization.22
Properness. Students wearing clean uniforms. Teachers standing in front of
a blackboard and explaining encyclopedias. Punishment for bad behavior.
Standard exams to pass a grade.
A certificate.
We may also trace the pesantren system as originating from Hindus’ ashra-
ma or Buddhists’ vihara where students learn martial arts and meditation. These
places of studying esoteric sciences get their local name in Javanese as pondo-
kan or in the Minangkabau language (West Sumatra) as langgar or surau. There’s
no strict timeline for students to “graduate” from these places. I’m interested in
how other forms of knowledge are being studied in these schooling systems that

179
exist alongside (not essentially opposed to) the modern Enlightenment epistemol-
ogy, and the ways in which they were studied, which involved embodied prac-
tices where the mind and the body are not separated as in the Cartesian model.
A contemporary example of the pesantren schooling system is the
Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja (PBSK). I read somewhere that Pak
Bagong2 3 actually took inspiration from pesantren in forming his performing arts
school when he played a Kiai in Asrul Sani’s film Al Kautsar (1976). He was im-
pressed by the life of santri and their commitment to study in a pondok pesant-
ren in Magelang where the film shooting took place, and later adapted some of
the principles of pesantren and turned it into his own program of “cantrik-men-
trik.”24 Here again we see the line between life and study blurred or removed as it
is deemed to be unnecessary. The duration of studying does not follow a strict
military-like school schedule, it happens all the time. The process of acquiring
knowledge in cantrik-mentrik emphasizes the ability of students to become more
sensible with their surroundings, to perform laku.25
Pak Bagong, for example, once asked his students to stare at waves on
a beach for hours and hours without any explanation prior to the “assignment.”
After that, he asked the students to copy the wave’s movement with their bodies.
Being knowledgeable is a qualitative leap which cannot be measured with a
numeric grading system. The spatial and temporal dimension of studying at
padepokan certainly differs from the modern/colonial school system. The fact
that Pak Bagong also danced along the line between the colonial binary of tradi-
tional and modern art is something worth exploring further.
In the arts, nyantrik is commonly understood as the relation between aspir-
ing young artists and their artistic mentors, but I think we should broaden it and
think more critically about this kind of relationship. What do you think, Sul, Thot?
I’m wondering whether these types of schooling could provide tools to de-
colonize modern/colonial education? Of course the (male) hierarchy within these
schooling systems is something that needs to be seriously addressed and prob-
lematized. I mean, eughhh, recently there was an awful sexual harassment case
by the son of a respected Kiai in a pesantren in Jombang!!!
By the way, see the picture I attached here. It’s Pak Bagong’s sculpture at
PBSK. Look at how “improper” his clothing style is — compared to the profession-
al preppy look of a teacher/lecturer today. I like how laid back his gesture depict-
ed in the sculpture is (although, I also heard from Pak Bagong’s ex-student that
he was a very temperamental teacher). We need more research questioning the

180
teacher figure, not only their artistic/ideological principles but also the affective
(perhaps then also the ambivalent) nuance of their personality.

With love,
Murni

Attachment

Pak Bagong_PSBK.JPEG 49KB

181
Date: Feb 6, 2020, 2:30 AM
From: [email protected],
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: An Improper School?

Hi Murni and Thot,

Murni, I’m curious about when you said that we could attribute radical, or im-
proper, as a prefix to the practice of the pesantren. To add to your explanation of
pesantren, perhaps we could also consider it an exceptional form of “commune”
that still survives at the moment, aside from indigenous peoples that live in the
hinterland (the countryside), no? I don’t want to do too much name-dropping
here, but it looks like James Scott can be referred to, concerning this idea of
commoning.26
But, what I want to talk about is the subject of hierarchy in pesantren.
Especially the teacher and student relationship. Maybe we can regard pesant-
ren as a platform for “lower class education” in the context of the Dutch colo-
nial era, where the santri did not have the privilege of entering Dutch schools.
This is also to consider that the pesantren educational model provides a material
base (namely the boarding house) for poor people to live, eat, and study together.
Of course the modernized version of pesantren is not always accessible for
the poor. But, one question still lingers in my mind: whether we can consid-
er this idea of “education in the name of the lower class” to be accurate when
the hierarchy carried over from the feudal-style structure is entrenched in the
education process? The question perhaps will lead us to the evaluation of not
only the idea of hierarchy based on economic background but also the political
dimension of knowledge transfer. The idea of knowledge ownership is structured
around some subtle hierarchies. Within the context of a pesantren, the Kiai is
regarded as a figure with divine power. And the only way of knowledge transfer
has to be done through the Kiai.
Murni, I second what you said, that we should be able to broaden the discus-
sion about nyantrik as more than just the relation between young aspiring artists
and more established ones. In order to do that, I think we should shift the atten-
tion to nyantrik as learning from the master to nyantrik as an informal knowledge
transfer. Laku is also an interesting form of studying practice that could perhaps

182
be deemed irrational or inefficient, seen from the highly professionalized and
accelerated modern form of schooling. Your description of PSBK has captured
beautifully the idea of learning as a condition to learn from the studying environ-
ment. What I am trying to get at here is that nyantrik should be perceived as the
occasion where we are able to seek a different meaning of the teacher figure.
The status of the teacher is created by the student. In this way, I begin to see
a teacher not as a source of knowledge but more of a mediator, or a reflector,
leading to another kind of knowledge.

With hugs and kisses,

Sulastri

Date: Feb 12, 2020, 9:52 PM

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: A Radical Improper School?

hi m, s,

sulastri’s last email immediately triggered my mind to a random proverb that

I found somewhere: “Be cautious of the three-breasted genie.”27 mainly because
murni mentioned the educational process in pesantren and the sexual harass-
ment case. sul, you are also totally right in pointing out the subtle hierarchy em-
bedded in the charismatic figure and divine knowledge of kiai.
however, i think we share something in common here — we value the pro-
ductive relation between studying and collectivity. schooling, or talking about
school, leads us to discuss people. though we haven’t articulated it yet we are
sort of asserting our views that to study means to be with other people. studying
is doing a deep hanging-out while continuously attuning to our social ecosystem.
in light of that, we can reinvent and introduce school, or the idea of studying, as a
tool to encourage solidarity. does that make sense?

183
 speaking of colonial education, I cannot help but think about its counter-
part, the sekolah liar (unlicensed school, or literal translation: wild school) that
made the colonial government feel so threatened. sekolah liar emerged in the
1920s as a reaction against the discriminative colonial education policy that only
allowed kids with a priyayi (elite Javanese) background to enter the school. one of
the pioneers of sekolah liar is taman siswa (literal translation: garden of students),
established in 1922 in yogyakarta by ki hadjar dewantara, now celebrated as the
“indonesian father of education.”
i perceive the taman siswa as an instance in which developing a school
serves as a caring system for others. i think it’s possible to link taman siswa’s
form of education with the pesantren system, as before establishing taman
siswa, ki hadjar dewantara was active in a traditionalist kebatinan (meditation)
group, the paguyuban selasa kliwon. I also noticed that taman siswa was also
associated with the term perguruan (the term’s meaning is rooted in a martial arts
studying place) instead of sekolah (school, from Dutch language).
in taman siswa, students were given dormitories, or wisma, where they
organized their communal life together. so it’s quite similar to that of nyantrik
and pesantren. i remember from reading some publications in the taman sis-
wa education system28 that studying hours are considered to be not only the
time that students spend in the classroom studying various subjects — from
language, earth sciences, economics, aesthetics, and history — they also involve
activities outside of the classroom, including gardening, cleaning wisma (house),
and joining political/civil organizations.
at taman siswa, the school ecosystem is organized in a familial, commu-
nal system, and so studying time at taman siswa is family life time that lasts 24
hours a day. there’s an interesting aspect of conjugating “studying” and “living”
together as a form of education. however, in line with what you said sul, about the
problem of hierarchy in nyantrik, i find discomfort in the form of the paternalistic
family organization, in which the father figure is seen as the leader and the teach-
er’s task is to become a parent to nurture students. the manifestation of the father
figure and kekeluargaan (familyness) was deployed by the New Order regime to
control society in the name of “harmony and stability.”29
what are the implications of this seemingly unequal relationship that exists
in a patriarchal family? or to bring up ranciere here again: “how to strive for equal
intelligence in communal living-studying?”
the name taman already evokes a different imagination of the established

184
school’s physical construct. so it is important to organize this taman or garden for
mutual and collective caring that welcomes diversity and questions inequality.
i’m changing the subject of this email thread to “radical improper school” be-
cause i am thinking of a school that can generate radical imaginations of other
ways of living. although the attempt can lead to failure or be deemed insufficient
or improper, we/the school shall persist.
there was a poster that i saw in Motel Spatie, an art organization in
Arnhem, Netherlands that is closely linked with squatting and autonomous
groups. the same poster was also used to hang at lifepatch, a group that
engages in community initiatives in science, art, and alternative technology in
Yogyakarta. the words on the poster read, “this is a d.i.y. residence. we have no
mother, no father, no family guardian, no nurse, and no one is paid to clean.” i am
attaching the image of the wall where the poster used to be seen. i like seeing the
remnants of the double sided tape on the wall above the kitchen sink in lifepatch.
it’s like a reminder that cleaning the house is part of the mechanism for living and
working together.
when there is no specific figure/person that possesses the sole responsi-
bility to take care of everyone, caring becomes a collective and mutual task to
share. self-organization becomes a site for social reproduction to reimagine itself
continuously. can we organize a school that is built through mutual care?

sending you the utmost care and friendship, +t+

Attachment

Cleaning.JPG 75KB

185
Date: Feb 15, 2020, 5:42 PM
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: A Radical Improper School?

Murni, Thoto, I just want to say that I’ve been enjoying our exchange so far.

Let’s exercise our radical imagination now.

If we were a kind of plant, have you ever imagined what kind of plant would
best define us? I quite like the idea that we are like grass, perhaps rumput teki,
or nut grass. This grass is known, or misunderstood, as just an ordinary weed.
On many occasions, it is considered too wild, difficult to control, thus unwanted
among other cultivated plants. It finds a crack, an opportunity to thrive, even in
the driest land. It is resilient, unbeatable. And it is useful too — for food, sleep-
ing mats, folk medicine. Its usefulness is not a straightforward thing, but results
from trial and error and experiments. A hope on the brink of despair. A curious
light at the end of the tunnel.
Suppose we are proposing our kind of school, do you think we propose
slowness? Slowness that involves revolutionary patience. I wrote a short para-
graph about slowness yesterday. Here it is:
“Slowing down and seeping in strategies aimed at connecting different
articulations of staying in, withdrawing, persevering, and surpassing
chronic deterioration of marginalized forms of life in various geopolitical
contexts. The strategies open up spaces for the still-hidden possibilities
of the everyday to emerge from seemingly narrowing horizons for so-
cial projects. Simultaneously, this involves turning away from modes of
(re-) presentation that, in trying to speak against the violent institutions of
our times, are often inadvertently absorbed by the very things they seek
to overcome. Through these approaches we propose ways of being
with others and becoming together within and beyond spectacular con-
sumption. We consider such approaches as durational frameworks
that precipitate collective study: a time and space for collective listen-
ing, sense-making, and common solidarity in the wake of crisis as or-
dinary. What could the city — as a network of layered relationships and
an assemblage of histories — offer and afford in studying solidarity?”

186
 The paragraph reads a bit heavy. I am trying to extract some points about
studying, collectivism, and solidarity from our conversation. Somehow they feel
sticky in my head. So perhaps I am just leaving the heaviness of the paragraph as
is. Because I am still grappling with how we can connect studying, collectivism,
solidarity, and other matters in between these things. How can we create a space
where we invite others to study together? Such a space should also serve as a
medium for all of us to unlearn everything that we thought we knew about study-
ing. How can we create a condition in which studying together is also an avenue
for developing more creative, engaging, and ethical approaches to society?

Love xxx
Sulastri

187
188
CODA

Sulastri, Murni, and Thothokkerot set up a Google Doc and together wrote an
open call for the School of Improper Education, reflecting the urge to put their
questions on studying together into practice. The text reads:

Open Call for the School of Improper Education 30

We are building a new school. The school is an experiment on the sustainability
of (both material and immaterial) economies of organization. We want to test the idea of
school as a garden of ideas, a laboratory of affects, and a space where new ideas clash
and coalesce. We are not yet sure about what can be learned in this school. But we are ab-
solutely sure about not starting from the premises that specify what needs to be learned and
not learned. We want to study together, while interrogating the meaning of togetherness.
Our bodies are entrenched with histories and memories shaped by formal education-
al institutions — school buildings, respectable teachers, uniforms, flag ceremonies, wood-
en desks, libraries, high fences, narrow hallways, too many things to memorize, exams,
grades, ranks, report cards, and strict school regulations.
We start from the question: what does an improper education mean?
We want to problematize the hierarchical relations between teacher and student. We
aim to unpack the homogenizing tendencies of pedagogical principles upon the body
and mind. We would like to vitiate the emphasis of curricular desires around use value. Is it
enough to describe one’s own practice as an alternative education? How do we operate a
study environment that doesn’t turn knowledge into commodities?
We seek to recreate the notion of the classroom and invite those who have been im-
properly educated to engage in the space as well as disrupt it. At the School of Improper
Education, the meaning of authority in knowledge reproduction will be scrutinized. We
are looking for those who are eager to perform experiments on learning and teaching — of
becoming a student and teacher at the same time, to oscillate in between different ed-
ucational models. This invitation also goes to those who are keen to blur the boundaries
between formal education and everyday realities.
At the School of Improper Education, you can stay within, and at once think outside
of it. As a platform which strives for the principles of uncertainty and curiosity, the purpose
of this school is to study the meanings of studying and the ways to study these meanings.

189
References

1 Sulastri Nirvana Trimurti often gets asked about the word 'Nirvana’
in her name. Shouldn’t it be ‘Nirwana’ instead, the Indonesian word for
Nirvana? This is what people usually ask her. Meanwhile, Indonesian
people think the name “Sulastri” sounds archaic. It seems at odds with
the speed of the 21st century. Sulastri’s parents are academics and
hippies, which could explain her name. Sulastri derives from a protagonist
in Suwarsih Djojopuspito’s novel Buiten het gareel (1940). The novel is set
in the late days of Dutch colonialism and narrates the story of Sulastri
and her husband who preferred to teach in a “wild school” instead of
colonial schools. The novel was initially written in Dutch after Suwarsih’s
manuscript in Sundanese was rejected by Balai Pustaka, a publishing
institution under colonial patronage. In 1975, the novel was translated
and published in Indonesian as Manusia Bebas (The Free Man). Trimurti
derives from Soerastri Karma Trimurti, better known as S.K. Trimurti
(1912–2008), a journalist, teacher, and labor rights activist. She was the
first Minister of Labour although only for a short period (1947–1948)
and a few years after that, when she was 41 years old, she decided
to continue her study in the Economy Faculty of Universitas Indonesia.
2 Murni Dharmawinata embodies the overlooked history of artist
I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (1966–2006) and art critic Oei Sian Yok
(1926–2002).
The latter changed her name to Eugene Dharmawinata due to the
New Order’s discriminative racial policy against the Chinese Indonesian
community. Murniasih was born into a poor peasant family in Tabanan,
Bali, and moved to South Sulawesi as part of the government
transmigration program.
At the age of 10 she moved to Jakarta and worked as a domestic
helper before finally deciding to return to Bali and work as a jewelry
silversmith. She started painting and exhibiting her works in the 1990s
with her colleagues at Seniwati Gallery in Ubud. Murniasih’s works bear
witness to her subconscious and life experiences of being a woman in a
patriarchal society through wild and absurd images that often provoke
taboos on gender and sexuality. Oei Sian Yok was born into a rich family
who owned a tobacco business in Magelang, Central Java, and studied

190
 art history in the Netherlands. She was an art contributor for a weekly
popular magazine in Jakarta from 1956–1961 and in this short span of
her career she produced hundreds of articles. She stopped working as
an art critic after the magazine was banned by Sukarno’s government
in 1961, and didn’t continue to write after that. The reason why she
ceased writing is still unclear to the public. There are similarities as well
as radical differences between the two women not only in terms of their
personalities, histories, and thoughts, but also in terms of privilege and
social location. Murni Dharmawinata’s name thus revolves around unstable
and often contradictory identity performance.
3 Thothokkerot’s name is excavated from tales surrounding an
archaeological entity which exists through its plural and singular
subjectivities. The historical sources of Thothokkerot are remembered
almost like a voice transmitted by radio signal—heard, yet invisible.
What’s known of their history is an escape journey from their hometown
called Gumurah or Gumuruh (meaning loud noise in Javanese) near
Kediri, East Java. They were reportedly seen in various appearances,
sometimes a woman, sometimes a man and/or both. One of the
witnesses reported that they were a group of orphans who travelled
to places such as harbors, farms, markets, villages, and cities where
particular sounds live. They are guided and guarded by the wind.
They left their hometown because the loud noises resembled the sounds
of heavy machinery, muffler, railways, airplanes, and power plants that
contaminated their land. They could no longer master their divine skill in
mimicking and producing the sounds of the universe. They are disciples
of sound improvisation, soundsmiths. They later doubted the divinity
of the skills believed to be handed down by their elders. Now they look
for pristine and pure sounds to create their soundcraft, searching in
several places including a picket line, where they exchanged, mimicked,
and crafted the sound of marches. The multiple histories and meanings
of Thothokkerot attest to a long process of collective knowledge
construction.
4 SJW stands for Social Justice Warrior. Literally, this term applies to
activists who stand for social justice. Recently, this term has been used
cynically and as a pejorative label applied to activists, feminists, and all
peoples who stand for social and environmental justice.

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5 Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning
& Black Study (New York: Minor Compositions, 201 3).
6 Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House
(London: Penguin Classics, 2018).
7 #Gejayan Memanggil (#Gejayan Calling): The future returns. Gejayan
Street was once witness to a massive student movement in Yogyakarta
among other protests in big cities in Indonesia that called for an end to
Soeharto’s New Order regime in May 1998. This was the area where the
students in Yogyakarta protested and demanded political and economic
reform (Reformasi) after the Asian monetary crisis. Indonesia was the
country hit hardest by this crisis. One of the students from IST AKPRIND
(AKPRIND Institute of Science and Technology), Moses Gatutkaca, had
fallen victim to a peaceful protest which turned into a violent riot. In
the aftermath of enduring protests in almost all big cities in Indonesia,
the movement expressed students’ demand for democracy and forced
Soeharto to resign from his presidency. 21 years after reformasi, again,
Gejayan Street witnessed student protests. Inspired by the memory of
Moses, #GejayanMemanggil revived the Indonesian students’ movement
which was also spurred by a draft bill of the Indonesian Criminal Code
(RKUHP), to be legitimized by the Indonesian house of representatives.
As much of a millennials’ movement as it may appear—unlike Reformasi
1998’s wave—the movement nonetheless tackled diverse and nuanced
issues by demanding the cancellation or review of aspects of the criminal
code bill that touched citizen’s private lives: from abortion to supranatural
knowledge. The movement also demanded a revision of the Komisi
Pemberantasan Korupsi (Commission of Corruption Eradication) bill,
prosecution for governmental elites who are responsible for environmental
destruction, the refusal of problematic bills on agrarian and labour
affairs, urgency in passing bills on sexual violence, and prosecution for
human rights violations. The protests were staged on September 22, 2019
and September 30, 2019. The media claimed that this was one of the
biggest student movements after 1998. The protest also drew wider public
support from various elements including high school students, women
activists, artists and public intellectuals. The peaceful movement later
sparked more student protests in other parts of Indonesia that ended
with police violence and repression.

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8 Reformasi 1998 is the political movement that resulted from the
authoritarian style of President Soeharto’s corrupt, nepotistic, and
militaristic New Order regime that lasted 32 years. Following the monetary
crisis in 1997, student protests, and riots, the year culminated in the
Reformasi 1998 with the fall of Soeharto and reformation period.
9 #KitaAgni is a student protest and mass action held from 2018–2019
at UGM (Gadjah Mada University). #KitaAgni was also a hashtag to
strengthen the will to show public support against sexual violence in
the university environment. The hashtag functions to unite various small
scale movements which spread all over Indonesia—through internet
networking. This movement also protested against the inaction of UGM
in dealing with a sexual harassment case. In 2019, this movement
triggered other movements to encourage campuses of educational
institutions to be more sensitive to the problem of sexual harassment.
This movement was a warning that we are not in safe spaces even in
higher educational institutions.
10 NKK-BKK is the abbreviation for a New Order policy called Normalisasi
Kehidupan Kampus—Badan Koordinasi Kampus (Normalization of
Campus Policy—Campus Coordination Board). The policy was instituted
in 1978 and aimed to force students to return to school. The students
were silenced. The state made the university life sterile from political
engagements. About this policy, Doreen Lee’s study of the history of
Indonesian student movement stated that the New Order government
“dismantled the organizational structures of student politics, successfully
instilled a long period of dormancy for the most critical segment of
Indonesian society” (Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political
Past in Indonesia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019, 32). Lee also
reminds us that it is important to think about the existence of the student
movement in the 1980s, their sporadic small-scale activism as the mode
which can be used to trace the similarities with student activism in the
1990s. Inspired by Edward Aspinall (see Opposing Soeharto: Compromise,
Resistance, and Regime Change in Indonesia, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2005) who referred to the student activism in the 1980s
as a “proto student movement,” Lee further accords to the 1980s student
movement “the status of handmaiden to the next more eventful chapter
of pemuda history” (Lee, Activist Archives, op. cit., 32). In this light, we

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 want to think about the study group activities and their connection with
the recent student movement organisation in Yogyakarta as an activism
mode which might be learned and passed on from the 1990s. We imagine
study group as the kind of quiet activity which serves as the catalyst for
organising the people on the streets.
11 Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, trans. Kristin Ross
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).
12 The state requires that the universities need to observe the Tridharma
Perguruan Tinggi principle. Tridharma Perguruan Tinggi, or Three Pillars
of Higher Education, encapsulates the three principles of vision that
universities in Indonesia need to undertake to carry out their educational
activities. The three principles read as follows: education and teaching,
research and innovation, and community service.
1 3 The Institute of People’s Culture (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat,
abbreviated as Lekra) was a leftist institute established in 1950. Their
urgency to produce seni kerakyatan, or art for the people, set the
aesthetic and political standard for evaluating art in the 1950s and 1960s.
The close relation between Lekra and the Indonesian Communist Party
has been a source of discussion for other scholars (see also Antariksa,
Tuan Tanah Kawin Muda: Hubungan Seni Rupa-Lekra 1950–1965
[A landlord married young: The relation between visual art and Lekra
1950–1965 ], Yogyakarta: Yayasan Seni Cemeti, 2005; Michael Bodden,
“Dynamics and Tensions of Lekra’s Modern National Theatre,” in Heirs
to The World Culture: Being Indonesian 1950-1965 (ed. Jennifer Lindsay
and Maya T. Liem), Leiden: KITLV Press, 2012, 45 3–484; Rhoma Dwi Aria
Yuliantri, “Lekra and Ensembles: Tracing the Indonesian Musical Stage,”
in op. cit., 421–451). Lekra was an example of an art association that
was able to formulate a method for articulating artworks that not only
had high artistic value but were also emblematic of Indonesian identity
and the people’s culture. Keith Foulcher cites the artistic and ideological
principles of Lekra as follows: “Adhering to the principle of politics as the
guardian, we conduct the combination of five propositions—egalitarian
and eminent, high quality ideology and high artistic value, combining the
good practices of traditions with revolutionary contemporary values,
combining the creativity of the individuals and the wisdom of the masses,
and combining socialist realism and revolutionary romanticism through

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 the turun ke bawah method.” See Keith Foulcher, Social Commitment
in Literature and the Arts: The Indonesian ‘Institute of People’s Culture’
1950–1965, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies (Clayton: Monash
University, 1986).
14 J.J. Kusni, Di tengah pergolakan: Turba Lekra di Klaten [In the Midst
of Turbulence: Lekra’s Turba in Klaten] (Yogyakarta: Ombak, 2005).
15 Kuliah Kerja Nyata (KKN) roughly translates as “practical university
studies.” KKN is a student community service organization, and an
established mechanism designed to deliver concrete contributions to the
people. The implementation of KKN is part of students’ obligation during
their final year in the university. In the KKN scheme, the participation
of students in the “real world” is part of a top-down requirement to
complete their degree (Paul K. Gellert, “Optimism and Education: The
New Ideology of Development in Indonesia,” Journal of Contemporary
Asia 45, no. 3 (2014): 371–9 3). In KKN, students are obliged to live in a
designated village, or desa, to design and do various kinds of kerja
nyata, or “practical work” for the people of the village. Yogyakarta-based
Gadjah Mada University was one of the firs universities in Indonesia
to implement the kind of voluntary work that would later become KKN
(Koesnadi Hardjasoemantri, Peranan Proyek PTM dalam Pengembangan
Pendidikan: Sebuah Kasus Peran Serta Mahasiswa Indonesia [The Role
of PTM Project in Education Development: A Case Study of Indonesian
Student Contributions], Balai Pustaka, 198 3). Within the Gadjah Mada
University context, the embryo of KKN can be traced back to the history
of Pengerahan Tenaga Mahasiswa (Student Workforce Deployment),
abbreviated as PTM, in 1951. In the PTM scheme, Gadjah Mada University
sent out their students to conduct Pengerahan Tenaga Mahasiswa in
schools outside Java.
16 Hersri Setiawan (b. 19 36) is a writer, historian, and activist who became
a political prisoner at Buru Island, following the Soeharto-led bloody
massacre of communist sympathizers in 1965–1967. Hersri played a
central role in Lekra (see endnote 14) and was the representative of the
Indonesian delegation at the secretariat of the Afro-Asian Writers Bureau
in Sri Lanka. Hersri has written more than 10 books about the silenced,
tragic histories of 1965. His latest book is Memoar Pulau Buru (Buru Island
Memoir), Jakarta, Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia (KPG), 2004, which

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 narrates his personal accounts as a political detainee on Buru Island
for nine years.
17 Paulo Freire, Pendidikan Kaum Tertindas, trans. LP3S team (Jakarta: LP3S, 1994).
18 Moelyono, Pak Moel Guru Nggambar [Mr. Moel The Drawing Teacher]
(Yogyakarta: INSIST Press, 2005). It’s interesting that Moelyono
identified himself at that time as “guru nggambar” (drawing teacher)
instead of seniman (artist).
19 Santri is a pupil in a pesantren.
20 Ngaji is a religious education, and one type of study that can be found
in pesantren. Ngaji, as a verb, can mean reciting the quran but it is also
connected to the term kajian (reading closely/studying the meaning of
something).
21 Kiai is a religious leader, or a religious teacher in a pesantren.
22 An exception is Ben Anderson’s seminal work which examines the close
connection between pesantren and the nationalist revolution. See
Benedict Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance
1944–1946 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972).
23 Pak Bagong refers to Bagong Kussudiardja. Bagong was an esteemed
Indonesian visual artist and choreographer. On returning from his dance
training with Martha Graham in the United States, Bagong founded
Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja in 1958. A padepokan usually refers
to a space where a group of people learn to practice a certain kind of
art under the auspices of a mentor.
24 Cantrik-mentrik refers to the pupils in a padepokan. Cantrik denotes a
male pupil, whereas mentrik denotes a female one.
25 Laku is a Javanese word, referring to an act of asceticism, combined
with a soul searching process.
26 Pesantren have become a specific niche for traditional knowledge sharing
in the modern era. To compare the existence of a pesantren with the
methods of knowledge sharing practiced by the people in the hinterland,
see James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History
of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
27 This proverb is a form of confabulation. There is no actual proverb like
this. The function of such a confabulation is to question about what
counts as proper knowledge. The proverb suggests hidden questions
regarding authorship and the validity of “legitimate” knowledge.

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28 Examples of magazines published by Taman Siswa include Keluarga
(November-December 19 36; January-February 19 37), and Pusara (19 35),
passim.
29 See a wonderful anthropological study on the relationship between family
and school as a form of control in Saya Sasaki Siraishi, Young Heroes:
Family and School in New Order Indonesia (Ithaca: Southeast Asia
Program Publication, 1997).
30 Letters: The classroom is burning, let’s dream about a School of
Improper Education explores the possibilities of studying and co-learning
for investigating, imagining and practicing old and new territories of social
transformation processes. We develop the ground to state that collective
study is a modality to traverse and connect institutional, disciplinary
and geographical boundaries. In this essay, we use the ideas of KUNCI’s
School of Improper Education as the central locus of discussion.
The text unfolds through two mutually constructive narrative devices.
The first part is a fictionalised account of email correspondence between
three best friends, Sulastri Nirvana Trimurti, Murni Dharmawinata, and
Thothokkerot. The conversation begins with Sulastri’s email to Murni
and Thothokkerot, lamenting her failure to get a postdoc position at the
university. Through their exchanges we narrate the discourse behind
the development of the School of Improper Education, which intertwines
stories of personal struggle; limitation; questions around what can be
done in the time of crisis; and the usefulness of art, intellectual practices,
and activism.
The second part is located in the endnotes section of the essay.
It serves to contextualise the first part in contemporary Indonesian
discourse and can be read as historical backdrop, shared cross references,
and collective bibliography. In writing the second part, we seek to reflect
on the social issues in our surrounding further, against our personal
experiences. As an experiment in collective writing, we see a reflection of
our collective-selves in Sulastri, Murni, and Thothokkerot. Or rather, Sulastri,
Murni, and Thothokkerot, are the mediums through which we reinvent
ourselves time and again.
It seems appropriate to structure the conversation between Sulastri,
Murni, and Thothokkerot in the form of email exchanges. In organising
Kunci activities, as the members are living in different cities (Yogyakarta,

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 Melbourne and Orange in Australia and Berlin, Germany), we rely on
various forms of communication mediated by various mobile phone and
computer applications—Line, Facebook Messenger, Gtalk, WhatsApp,
Skype, and Google Docs. The epistolary form conjures up the spirit
behind an action. Such spirit is often hidden. Communication in the form
of letters and emails is assumed to be confidential We pay attention
to the confidential character of the letters and how they contain all
the reasoning, doubts, fear, and vulnerability, as well as a sense of
confidence, dignity, and determination. They represent all the salient and
seemingly unimportant matters which lead to something. Like a diary,
their power emanates only upon being revealed by someone. Some
references, in the form of letters, but also non-fiction works, provided
inspiration for this writing—Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang by Kartini, trans.
Agnes Louise Symmers as Letters of a Javanese Princess (Whitefish
Kessinger Publishing, 2010) and The Mute’s Soliloquy by Pramoedya
Ananta Toer, trans. Willem Samuels (New York: Hachette Books, 1999).
The School of Improper Education has been around since 2016
and operates by exploring the historical remnants of various studying
practices in order to carve out what can be constituted as “an
alternative.” As the starting point of this endeavour, we experiment
with four pedagogical concept-practices: 1) the Jacotot method
(re-conceptualized by Jacques Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster),
which we set up to demand for the recognition of universal intellectual
equality and to propose possibilities to create a learning environment
from a situation where the students and the teacher do not know
anything about a certain subject; 2) Turba method, an acronym of turun
ke bawah (literal translation: going below), an artistic-research-activism
method formulated by LEKRA in the 1950s-1960s. Turba encourages
artists and intellectuals to seek knowledge by generating dialectical
progressions with the wisdom of the masses; 3) nyantrik, an ascetic
studying practice which has evolved from pesantren and is now often
found in “traditional” performing arts communities. Nyantrik undoes
the boundaries between life and study, and the process of acquiring
knowledge in nyantrik emphasizes the ability of students to become more
sensible with their surroundings; and 4) Taman Siswa (literal translation:
Garden of Students) taken from Soewardi Soeryaningrat’s teaching

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principle formulated in 1922 as an attempt to counter the infantilizing
moorings of Dutch education in the colony. There are 4 3 people currently
listed to be the participants of our school. In organising the school, we are
expanding the scope of our intellectual camaraderie and friendship.

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200
Tired in Archives

201
The library was quiet as usual — barely audible the sound of ventilation,
whispers, and breathing. You search your place, meandering through
the corridors, picking up material at the reception desk. You walk to the
shelves where you find some more, old magazines, pamphlets, sketches
that you are about to study.
You flip through the material, reading, searching. Flipping becomes
paging, becomes one page at a time, becomes a paragraph. Your finger
starts to hold the line to assist reading, until the images and letters start
to dance in front of your eyes.
You slowly surrender to the fatigue. Your head gets heavy, arms press
against the table, you wish to lay down, but the sofas are already taken
by other visitors — sleepers, drowsers, nappers, readers. You make yourself
as comfortable as possible to receive. To receive the spirits, timelines, and
unchronological moments of histories. Some weigh heavy burdening your
sleep with the duress of time, others are fleeting, a whiff or a faint smell
that caresses your skin.
You were always puzzled by what libraries and archives do to you.
Such peculiar places. Full of energy you planned your visits, entered the
library, only to feel a tremendous tiredness creeping into your limbs. You
couldn’t bear it, fight it — avoid it, curse it. Again and again, and for years,
you tried. Something pulled you in, something knocked you out. You’ve
acknowledged your fate.
Then, a friend invited you.
“Would you like to come along for a study meeting? We meet at the
city archive.”
“I am sorry, I can’t. And besides I won’t be much of a help,” you ex-
cused yourself.
The friend did not let up, you finally joined.
To your surprise, the archive is full of people dozing, slumbering,
drowsing. “Why are they not sleeping at home?” you ask.
She counters, “it depends on what you understand as sleeping.”
You still remember how you nervously listen to the asynchronous
rhythm of breathing, sometimes interspersed with bits of snoring, whispers,
nervous mumbles.
“Is this a dormitory?” you scoff baffled.
“No, a study place.”

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 You follow her through the corridor along the shelves and tables
occupied by guests.
“Do you wanna try?” she turns around to you.
You frown.
“It won’t be an easy encounter, if a connection happens at all.”
You are glad she asks.
The unacknowledged spirits choose their medium for circulation.
Bodies, your body might become a small node within the streams of
histories. A node for the movements, twists, and turns in the infrastructures
of times.
You are confused, already for a long time. You are struggling with
the aftermath of separating yourself from what you study. You study,
observe, select, dissect.
“Where is my place?” you hesitate again.
She does not hear you, attending to one of the drowsers.
“They haunt us, study us,” she turns to you again. “We were long
enough hunting. We need to learn to acknowledge.”
The technologies to uphold this separation produce particular ghost-
ings. The scars of separation are deeply felt, and the ghosts of suppressed
histories of apartheid are everywhere, and in particular ways in archives
and libraries.
For a long time, you have believed in concentrating on what is liter-
ally in front of your eyes, not what is around or behind you, or what was
going through you.
“Finding ways to live with these energies, the spirits, and ghosts of
times and histories, let alone conversing with them, is hard work.” She
warns, “choose your material wisely, but be aware that they are also
choosing you.”
Since then, you have dedicated your time to dwelling in archives. You
are now what is called a drowser apprentice of some sorts. Together with
others you learn to cope, bear, and juggle ways of studying, dwelling,
inhabiting archives. The other day you shared with a sleepy newcomer
what you do. “We learn to read our scars of separation. They give us hints,
show some paths.”
Other times, you have not agreed with, nor understood what you
are taught, shown, and what you sense. With your colleagues, you share

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the ups and downs of receiving, being haunted, while hunting is what is
passed down to you through generations, what you learned to desire. You
guide the energies through your bodies, conjuring some spirits, letting
down others, and being let down.
Within a plethora of times, you are slowly becoming a time traveler
without traveling times in the common sense. You are traversed by times.
Sometimes, you get frightened again. That you would summon spirits,
ghosts, and timelines that overwhelm you. You take courage in the words
of a friend. “The spirits and hauntings have long awaited you. And there
will come a time when you need to be ready to let go.”

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Re- and Un-Defining
Tools: Exploring
Intersectional
Approaches to
Digital Search Tools
in Library
Catalogues
This conversation was commissioned by KUNCI Study Forum & Collective for MARCH—A Journal of Art and
Strategy, “Tools for Radical Study: A Collection of Manuals” (March 2024). An earlier version is published in
Hackers & Designers, First…Then, Repeat. Workshop scripts in practice, edited by Anja Groten (Amsterdam:
Hackers & Designers, 2022, 50–60. The text here is a lightly edited version written by the Feminist Search
Tools working group (FST). Their members have changed throughout the project. Read-in (Sven Engels,
Annette Krauss, and Laura Pardo) and Hackers & Designers (Anja Groten) initiated the early version, with
Aggeliki Diakrousi, Ola Hassanain, and Alice Strete later joining, after the start of a further iteration of the tool,
the so-called “visualization tool” during the Digital Methods Summer School in 2019, www.wiki.digitalmethods.
net/Dmi/SummerSchool2019. FST members are part of Read-in, a self-organized collective that experiments
with the political, material, and physical implications of collective reading and the situatedness of reading,
read-in.info (Annette, Laura, and Sven, with Ying Que), and Hackers & Designers, a nonprofit workshop at
the intersection of technology, design, and art that through hands-on learning, stimulates collaboration
across disciplines and expertise, hackersanddesigners.nl (Anja, André Fincato, Heerko van der Kooij, and
formerly James Bryan Graves), Ola, Aggeliki, and Alice. feministsearchtools.nl

205
 by Feminist Search
Tools working group:
Aggeliki Diakrousi,
Hackers & Designers
(Anja Groten),
Ola Hassanain,
Read-in (Sven Engels,
Annette Krauss,
and Laura Pardo),
and Alice Strete

206
The Feminist Search Tools (FST) working way that could easily be applied to contexts
group is an ongoing artistic research pro- other than those for which they were de-
ject (2017–present) that studies the power veloped,3 we attend here to the tool-making
structures that library and archival search or -imagining process to complicate and
engines reproduce. In so doing we offer an expand our understanding of them (digital
intersectional lens through which to look and otherwise) and their implications for
at (computational) searches, and thereby specific contexts.
inquire into how to render marginalized
voices within them more easily accessible
and searchable. Starting in 2017 at Utrecht Tools as “Modes of Address”
University Library, in 2020 FST shifted and “Digital Study Objects”
to the IHLIA LGBTI Heritage Collection,
an independent organization within the Anja Groten
Amsterdam Public Library (OBA) that Considering that we had very different en-
collects information about LGBTIQ+ counters and experiences with the tools
communities.1 created within the FST working group,
The following conversation is the I propose we start our conversation with an
second of its kind. As members of the FST open question: what were everyone’s initial
working group we reflect on our motiva- expectations for working on a digital tool,
tions and working together,2 the situated­ and how have these expectations been
ness and processual character of the met or perhaps changed over time?
project, and (mis)understandings around
the term “tools.” We specifically refer to Annette Krauss
a digital search interface in different itera- I still remember how some of us in Read-in
tions that allows for textual search queries got interested in the term “tool” and more
within digital catalogues and archives. As specifically, “digital tool” through the ques-
the tools we used never really solidified in a tion of scale. During our previous project,

1 See ihlia.nl.
2 For more information on modes of working together, see also the first conversation “Doing and
Undoing Relationships,” Feminist Search Tools, March 3, 2020, www.feministsearchtools.nl.
3 For more details, see “Teaching the Radical Catalogue: Session 4,” recorded conversation,
www.syllabus.radicalcatalogue.net/session4.html, and a text whose title quotes from a core question
developed by Read-in: Lucie Kolb and Eva Weinmayr, “Why are the authors of the books I read
so white, so male, so Eurocentric?,” Fabrikzeitung, December 17, 2021, www.fabrikzeitung.ch/
why-are-the-authors-of-the-books-i-read-so-white-so-male-so-eurocentric-a-conversation-with-
feminist-search-tools-group/#.

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Fig. 1 Silver Sticker, “Why are the authors of the books I read so white, so male, so Eurocentric?”
on bookshelf, IHLIA LGBTI Heritage Collection, Amsterdam, 2020

208
Bookshelf Research (2012–present),4 we Anja
physically spent quite some time in small, You referred to Bookshelf Research as a
(grassroots) libraries studying the catego- tool. What do you mean by that? Do you
rizations of publications. For me, Bookshelf regard “tool” as a synonym for “method”?
Research was therefore actually already a
tool. By passing every single print-based Annette
item in the library through our hands, we I rather see “tool” here as a mode of ad-
became acquainted with the library and dress, a set of search mechanisms, or prin-
tried to figure out its different categories — ciples. I think it has to do with my disbelief
publishers, languages, genders, material- in the possibility of transferring methods
ity — resulting in a statistical breakdown of from one context to another without doing
inclusions and omissions. For instance, we harm. A mode of address proposes some-
looked at the Grand Domestic Revolution thing that a method has difficulties at-
Library of Casco Art Institute: Working for tending to — namely, situatedness and
the Commons, which holds around three context-specificity.7
hundred books.5 The digital dimension of
the tool became more explicit when we Sven Engels
shifted our attention to Utrecht University I think at some point I started equating
Library, which holds three million books, tools with “digital tools.” This created a
and a physical counting exercise was no disconnect for me because I felt I wasn’t
longer possible in the same way. What that easily able to access what those tools
remained was the desire to challenge the do. At the same time, the notion of the tool
coloniality of modern knowledge pro- as a “digital object” — an interface — also
duction by asking: Why are the authors came with the expectation of its usability.
of the books I read so white, so male, so This also brings up the question of “use
Eurocentric? 6 for what” and “for whom,” whether a tool

4 Bookshelf Research proposes counting exercises for specific private or public libraries and
bookshelves according to categories such as gender, nationality, and materiality, resulting in reflections
and conversations about statistical breakdowns and their inclusions and omissions. See read-in.info/
bookshelf-research.
5 Casco is an experimental organization based in Utrecht that focuses on two key practices, art and
the commons, as both tools and visions for better ways of living together. See casco.art.
6 For more on Read-in, see www.read-in.info/why-are-the-authors-of-the-books-i-read-so-white-so-male-
so-eurocentric.
7 See Dagmar Bosma and Tomi Hilsee on mode versus method in “Gathering amidst the ruins: on the
potential of assembly within the context of art institutions,” symposium, Casco Art Institute: Working
for the Commons, Utrecht, October 27, 2021, www.casco.art/activity/gathering-amidst-the-ruins-on-
the-potential-of-assembly-within-the-context-of-art-institutions.

209
should also produce some form of result. modes and materializations through which
Thinking about the tool as a digital study we can ask questions about tools, was a
ob­ject creates room to explore these and very important part of the process.
other questions and what the tool actually
does. Sven
When you talk about the things that get lost,
Anja do you refer to the decisions made that
The idea of a tool as an enhancement, factor into a tool, or are you referring to
something that’s supposed to make our the conversations that are part of the tool-
processes easier — processes that would making process that might no longer be
happen anyway — that might have also visible?
caused some confusion around the project,
don’t you think? Interesting and important Laura
confusions and, again, also expectations. It’s both. We always say that moments like
this — our conversations — are so valuable
Laura Pardo and important. When you have a product,
When we started talking about tools rath- a finished search interface, for example,
er than the tool, my perception and ex- those conversational elements can get
pectations changed. From the beginning lost. I think it is great that we bring the con-
stages of the FST project, during our first versations, pieces of audio, or images to-
conversation with Atria,8 we had ques- gether on our project website. But when
tions like: is the tool going to work? There making some kind of tool, you also need to
has indeed been a certain expectation come up with solutions to problems, right?
of the tool to produce a result or a solu-
tion to a problem. The fact that we would Aggeliki Diakrousi
make a digital tool made me especially From listening to your thoughts, I want to
scared and cautious. In my understand- return to how scale played a role for you
ing of digital tools, they tend to be binary: in the beginning. When the database be-
it’s either this or the other. Everything in comes so big that somehow you can’t re-
between gets lost. Realizing there is not late to it anymore as a human, it exceeds
just one tool, but a kind of ongoing tool- your understanding and therefore chal-
making process that includes different lenges matters of trust. I also like the idea

8 Atria, Kennisinstituut voor Emancipatie en Vrouwengeschiedenis (Atria, Institute on gender equality

and women’s history) collects, manages, and shares the heritage of women and women’s movements
and promotes equal treatment of all genders. See atria.nl.

210
of the conversational tool because it means violence because scalability avoids con-
the tool can be scaled down and become textualization and situatedness in order to
part of the conversation and it doesn’t have function smoothly, and therefore it ties in
to give a solution to a problem. In conver- with an extractivist logic. I believe by means
sation with the tool, we can address issues of conversations we attempt to bring back
that we otherwise don’t know how to solve. context and situatedness. Conversations
If we don’t know how to solve things, how ground us.
would a tool solve them? The tool is our
medium in a way. I am interested in finding Laura
more of these bridges to make the tool a Isn’t our struggle with addressing the ques-
conversational tool. tion of gender (and also race, class, sexual-
ity, disability) in our first prototype, a digital
Annette interface that engages with the records of
I have grappled with the role of scaling Utrecht University Library, an example in
throughout, being attracted and appalled this direction? 9 We are working with a big
by it. This is what I tried to point at with database and have to find solutions to ad-
modes of address. The work of Anna dress certain questions. And by choosing
Lowenhaupt Tsing could be interesting a specific solution, many other modes are
here, when she refers to scaling as a rigid not chosen, and we know these choices
abstraction process (2015). She criticizes also lead to misrepresentation.
science and modern knowledge produc-
tion for their obsession with scalability. Alice Strete
She describes scalability as the desire to I remember we were looking for the gen-
change scales — expanding a particular der of the authors at the beginning of the
area of research or production without project, approaching it by looking at the
paying attention to the changing contexts. dataset of Wikidata.10 I think at that point
This has provoked many forms of colonial I expected that the information would be

9 The first prototype experiments with a search field into which the user can type a search term. The
search takes place within a selection of the records of works published between 2006 and 2016. The
choice is made by the FST working group and is based on a number of MARC 21 fields. MARC 21 (an
abbreviation for machine-readable cataloguing) is an international standard administered by the US
Library of Congress; it is a set of digital formats used to describe items that are catalogued in the
context of a library, such as Utrecht University Library.
10 Utrecht University Library could not provide access to information regarding the gender of an
author. We therefore decided to link our dataset to Wikidata, which provides information about an
author’s gender. The first version of the FST compared both datasets based on name and attributed
the gender according to Wikidata.

211
available for us and we just needed to find My concern was that the tool would take
it and figure out how to use it. But then I us from one way of classifying to another.
realized I had to adapt my expectations When you look for “knowledge,” at least
about how to extract insights from the da- from my perspective, you have to exercise
tabase, which was not obvious to me from a level of caution. These general classi-
the beginning. fications are out there and while you do
not adhere to them or abide by them, they
Sven are there. I had a brief conversation with
The biggest clash in that regard for me was Annette about the tool having to change
when we tried out Gender-API.11 It attrib- over time. To make a point, I used the ex-
utes gender based on how often it is asso- ample of the Neufert (2019) architectural
ciated with a name online. Not only does catalogue, which has become a guideline
this lead to faulty results, but it also disre- for international standardization of the es-
gards self-identification, which is so cen- timation of distances around architectural
tral to gender identification. This definitely things.12 If you want to design a table, you
forced us to rethink how gender could be have all these ranges to estimate with: dis-
identified in different ways and with differ- tances, heights, etc. So basically, whatev-
ent tools that also take self-identification er comes out of architectural design goes
into consideration. through, or operates within, a fixed frame-
work. Anyway, my question was whether
Ola Hassanain the tool-building has its own space, or
When I joined the project, I asked ques- whether it builds upon the categories and
tions that derived from a concern about classifications that the libraries are using.
the classifications we would be using and The interesting thing about the Neufert
how the tool would filter certain searches. catalogue is that it gets updated every year

10 Utrecht University Library could not provide access to information regarding the gender of an
author. We therefore decided to link our dataset to Wikidata, which provides information about an
author’s gender. The first version of the FST compared both datasets based on name and attributed
the gender according to Wikidata.
11 If the comparison to Wikidata did not yield a result, the algorithm would identify the gender of an
author based on the so-called Gender-API, a commercial application that assigns the binary gender
categories (female/male) based on names. Gender-API is usually implemented in commercial websites
in order to optimize customer experiences (female-identified people see search results that are relevant
for their gender category as defined by the company). The Gender-API brought about many issues,
one of which is that it excludes nonbinary gender categories. Another issue is that Gender-API is a
closed-source technology. Gender-API is a black box technology made for marketing purposes. Thus,
we were incapable of reconstructing exactly how the program determines and applies gender categories.
12 See also www.i.pinimg.com/originals/e5/e9/87/e5e987560e528dab906a5289 3cedead0.jpg.

212
or every other year. It’s pushed back into Anja
the design world as a new edition every When you refer to changeability and the
time, as something that is regenerating. So challenge of correcting systems of catego-
how does a search tool respond to some- rization, I have to think of Emily Drabinski’s
thing that is constantly changing? text “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory
and the Politics of Correction” (2013) which
Annette also inspired Eva Weinmayr and Lucie
I understood the Neufert catalogue more as Kolb’s research project on “Teaching the
a standardization tool and normative rules Radical Catalogue.”1 3 Drabinski discusses
comparable to the library classifications practices of knowledge organization from
developed by the Library of Congress in a queer perspective and problematizes the
the US. However, you actually stress its notion that classification can ever be cor-
flexibility. rected. According to Drabinski (2013), there
needs to be a sustained critical awareness
Ola and ways of teaching catalogues as com-
The tool has to cater to that constant plex and biased texts. I remember the Un­
change. My question was about whether bound Libraries work session organized by
we can have more diverse or inclusive Constant — Association for Art and Media
ways of using or finding references includ- in 2020,14 during which Anita Burato and
ing books, and what informs such a pro- Martino Morandi, who are self-taught li-
cess, basically. If we have something like brarians working at the Rietveld/Sandberg
the Neufert catalogue already set up in the Library in Amsterdam,15 presented their
libraries, how does the tool respond to that, library search tool, which allowed the users
and how does it regenerate? of the library catalogue to suggest new
categories.16 Thus, as someone searching

13 As one central element of this project, the exhibition Reading the Library (2021) focuses on feminist
and decolonial approaches to systems of ordering knowledge. See sitterwerk.ch/En/Event/611/
Reading_the_Library. Eva Weinmayr and Lucie Kolb developed a syllabus that instigates discovery
and learning within an educational context to reveal the socially and historically produced orders and
hierarchies that underlie library catalogues. See syllabus.radicalcatalogue.net.
14 Constant is a nonprofit, artist-run organization based in Brussels since 1997 and active in the fields of
art, media, and technology that departs from feminisms, copyleft, free/libre, and open source software.
See constantvzw.org.
15 Infrastructural Manœuvres is an ongoing project of the Rietveld/Sandberg Library that foregrounds
the role and possibilities of a library’s technical infrastructure, opening it up to reflection and
experimentation. See www.library.rietveldacademie.nl and www.catalogue.rietveldacademie.nl/about.html.
16 Unbound Libraries was a work session organized by Constant around digital libraries and tools for the
organization of knowledge that took place online from May 31 to June 5, 2020. See constantvzw.org/
site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html.

213
in the catalogue, one can also make sug- complexifying what already exists. I feel
gestions for modifications of the catalogu- it’s definitely also a trap we’ve been very
ing system itself. The librarians would then aware of ourselves and we attempted to
review and apply or reject the suggestions. focus on the latter while making room for
Their idea was to organize discussions and different perspectives and questions.
workshops with students and teaching
staff around such suggestions. It is quite Annette
exciting to think about the changeable cat- I understand Alice’s comment more in
alogue becoming dialogic in that way. terms of a search interface as a black
box. And indeed, we have built upon so
Alice many existing tools, like Atria’s Women’s
There is a big difference between using an Thesaurus (Vrouwenthesaurus),17 the
existing search tool — into which you have Homosaurus of IHLIA,18 and all the ref-
less insight — and making something from erences that Anja men­­t­ioned. There are
scratch, so to speak, that integrates con- loads of tools or experiments of tooling that
versation at every step. I appreciate the we have worked with.19
possibility to pay attention to the decisions
that are being made in the different phases
of the process.

Sven
I wonder to what extent the idea to build
something from scratch is even possible
or desirable. It often feels like projects are
trying to come up with something new
and innovative instead of acknowledging
the work done before by others and em-
bracing the practice of building on and

17 Atria’s Vrouwenthesaurus (Women’s Thesaurus) is a useful aid when searching by subject. It

contains terms about women, gender, emancipation, and feminism. See collectie.atria.nl/thesaurus.
18 The Homosaurus is an international linked data vocabulary of LGBTQI+ terms that is intended to
function as a companion to broad subject term vocabularies, such as the Library of Congress
subject headings. Libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions are encouraged to use
the Homosaurus to support LGBTQI+ research by enhancing the discoverability of their LGBTQI+
resources. See www.ihlia.nl/collectie/homosaurus.
19 For example, see the Feminist Search Assistant and FST meet-ups. See www.fst.hackersanddesigners.nl
and www.read-in.info/fst-meet-ups.

214
 Fig. 2 Screenshot Visualization Tool (version 1), based on the first prototype with Utrecht
University Library; developed in collaboration with DensityDesign during the Digital Methods
Summer School, Amsterdam, 2019

215
Fig. 3 Screenshot of FST Visualization Tool (version 2), based on the IHLIA catalogue and the Homosaurus,
2020. The question “Why are the books I read so white, so male, so Eurocentric?” is central at the top.
Selected are five clusters on the top left: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Disability, and Structural Oppression.
The x-axis is composed of a selection of Homosaurus terms linked to a certain cluster. The y-axis depicts
the 20 most encountered publishers in the IHLIA Heritage Collection catalogue.

216
Where Does the Agency often hidden, don’t our tools in a way also
Lie within the Tool? own us? And also, when we think about
tools — for instance, software — we often
Laura think about them as separate from us.
When it comes to user interfaces, we are There is an alleged separation between
so used to smooth interface designs that the tool builder, the tool, and the tool user.
feel like “magic,” like filling in a search I found it so interesting in our process — as
window in Google, for instance. You just much friction as it brought, it became very
type something and you don’t know what clear how a tool is actually not so separate
is happening in the backend; it just shows from us. Every conversation was also in-
you the result. I was always hoping that we formed by the tool and, in turn, shaped the
would do the opposite of this, or something tool. But also we, as a group, were shaped
other than that. There is a lack of agency I by its coming into being and constantly
experience with digital tools. With non-dig- confronted with our expectations of our
ital tools, I don’t have that feeling. I have a tool relationship.
hammer, and I know how a hammer works.
I am somehow much more frustrated as Aggeliki
a user of digital tools. I don’t know how to I wonder how the code could also become
break that distance with such tools. I think part of this conversation. For instance, the
we were trying to close that gap, but it still ways we categorized the material in the
feels unattainable at times. code. Creating intersectional axes prac-
tically meant we had to bring everything
Anja inside the same place.21 Everything had to
This reminds me of a subsection in our become one script. To be able to create
previous conversation that I wanted to the different axes, we connected the differ-
speak more about: “Understanding one’s ent terms in that script. The way we cate-
own tools” 20 and the implication of own- gorized the code, the file, and the scripts
ership over a tool. Even though they are should also be part of that conversation.

20 See “Doing and Undoing Relationships.”

21 FST is based on an understanding of feminism as intersectional. The 2016 Let’s Do Diversity report
by the University of Amsterdam Diversity Commission eloquently summarizes what intersectionality
is about, introducing it as “a perspective that allows us to see how various forms of discrimination
cannot be seen as separate, but need to be understood in relation to each other. Being a woman
influences how someone experiences being white; being LGBT and from a working-class background
means one encounters different situations than a white middle-class gay man. Practicing
intersectionality means that we avoid the tendency to separate the axes of difference that shape
society, institutions and ourselves” (Wekker et al. 2016, 10).

217
Because the code is also built on binaries is by making the process available and
and structures and is written in ways that hyper-contextualizing it. There have al-
make it difficult to complicate. It’s actu- ways been specific people, specific org­
ally difficult to find possibilities to make a anizations that we engaged with, and, to
split. We are not professional software a certain extent, we also depend on them
developers. We just happen to know a bit moving forward. Don’t you think there is a
of coding. We are learning through this danger of these conversations among us
process. I am sure the tool can be much becoming too self-referential? In a way,
more innovative in the way it is structured. we publish and release the tools through
It also needs a deep knowledge of the initial these conversations and other forms of
library tool. But yeah, this was an interest- acti­vation such as the meet-ups. But how
ing process. I would actually like to see this do we make sure that Feminist Search
conversation and the learning process re- Tools contributes or feeds back into the
flected more visibly in the tool. communities it is inspired by?

Annette Annette
Which brings us back to the “conversation It reminds me of how the practice of sit-
tool.” All these conversations and encoun- uating often resembles self-referentiality
ters are so necessary because the digital because it requires a slowing down of pro-
tool itself makes them so invisible in a way. cesses and the need for revisiting one’s
own practices and argumentations.
Anja
But how could they become more visible? Sven
These conversations indeed became a The conversations are maybe more part of
useful “tool” for our process as they of- the background in the digital tool itself. If
fered us committed moments of collective we think, for instance, of the website and
reflection. On the “Doing and Undoing the project itself, we try to bring them more
Relationships” project website, the con- to the foreground. It’s something to keep
versation became quite important both as in mind again and again how central these
a narration of the website and as a navi- questions are to the project itself.
gation. But what happens after the con-
versation? The idea of releasing the digital
tool still seems to be a difficult subject
for us. The way we go about the release

22 See “Doing and Undoing Relationships.”

218
Exploring Intersectional “Why are the books I read so white, so
Search as a Way to Move male, so Eurocentric?” while desiring to
Beyond Identity Politics move beyond them. These conversations
and tensions have been an important part
Anja of the process but aren’t necessarily so
We have clarified that we understand visible in the tool as it is right now. How can
feminism as intersectional: “avoiding the we show such tensions and struggles that
tendency to separate the axes of differ- we come across while approaching a tool
ence that shape society, institutions and like this, make them accessible to people
ourselves.” 22 With the last iteration of the engaging with the tool, and have them be
tool we tried to literally intersect groups part of the conversation about it?
and axes of categorization, but at the same
time also created new kinds of separations Aggeliki
in order to make certain things legible and I am thinking about the notion of an intro­
others not. How are those separations in verted process. I think it is important to
fact feminist separations? And in what include the people this tool refers to, but
ways did the tool perhaps share our under- maybe not always so intensively. And
standing of feminism? perhaps people don’t have to understand
it completely. It’s good that it’s clear that
Sven when we say “tool” we aren’t speaking
Annette and I had a conversation with Lieke about a tool that gives solutions to prob-
Hettinga, a PhD researcher working at the lems. For me, it’s important that people un-
intersection of trans and disability visual derstand the conversational process and
politics and poetics of the body, about the that they should be part of it — and that they
Visualization Tool focusing on the IHLIA will also affect the tool. How can we open
Heritage Collection [see previous image]. up a reflection of this process? How can
Lieke had questioned to what extent when we engage more people in this process?
using the clusters of gender, race, sexu- Maybe it’s through workshops or small
ality, etc., we are just reinstating identity conversations or a broadcast? To me, this
politics, and to what extent we are able to relates to feminist practice — that the tool is
move beyond these categories. By looking applied in different layers. Not only in how
at categories separately but also trying to you make the actual tool but also how you
find connections between them, this re- communicate about it; how you do things
minded me of the underlying tension of this and take care of the technical but also the
project, us needing to name different cat- social aspects.
egories relating to identity in our question,

219
Fig. 4 Paper Prototyping Workshop led by
Anja Groten with the FST working group,
Amsterdam 2019

220
Use-Value you just said are not isolated things. I think
and Usability that’s not hard to imagine but maybe hard
to articulate — in terms of how we imagine
Sven the functionality of the tool, or how it oper-
I had to think of the metaphor that Ola ates within the library.
brought up earlier: the tool as a disruptive
mechanism of “throwing stones into a Alice
wheel,” which nicely translates to the tool Would this be an argument against the
existing in power structures. But at the usa­bility of such a tool?
same time, I do have to admit there is also
a desire around the usability of our tool, Ola
which for me stems from wanting to locate No, this is not an argument against usability
queer literature. I want to be able to find but against the fact that we think it’s not
that identification in the material I am look- something neutral and separate. That is
ing for, and I still find it very frustrating not part of the problem. It creates and perpet-
to be able to find that within mainstream uates the same issue because the tool is
media outlets or libraries. So, I think we already something that gives analytics to
should also not so easily do away with the bigger body of the library. And through
these hopes and desires that come with that, patterns are formed. And the inter-
the use-value of a tool. There are a lot of face responds to that. So, we are caught
desires and hopes around that! I think it is in an enclosure of this desire that is already
also interesting to think through both. We informed by how the knowledge is institu-
can, of course, be critical about the effi- tionalized or how that knowledge is classi-
ciency and usability of a tool. But at the fied. So, I think there has to be awareness
same time, we need to understand where of that.
that desire is coming from — wanting the
tool to function and providing something Aggeliki
to someone engaging with it as well. The way that I envision it, it’s not going to
be a “beautiful” interface that is easy­going.
Ola It will show the fragments of learning that
The desire to actually find something can- went into it.
not be separated from the rest of the com-
mentary we made in terms of the efficiency Anja
of the tool, as you said. That’s the issue. Yes, the tool also demands a certain level
When a tool is used, it creates issues as it of involvement, care, and commitment. It
is being used. The desire and everything is perhaps not thought about as something

221
that can be finished, standing on its own,
but as something that is never resolved
and needs continued engagement — a
practice.

Annette
For me it links back to the attitude toward
the tool — toward this black box. I don’t be-
lieve that we can ever have a complete un-
derstanding of any tool. But we can strive
for a certain kind of literacy that supports
a questioning attitude, and is dedicated to
the quest for social justice. This might be
crucial in order to address the complicities
of the modern project of education that li-
braries are embedded in.

 — February 17, 2021, Amsterdam

222
 Afterword: Unlearning as1
a Scaffolding for Living
Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike) (2012–present)

There is a key early unlearning project that does not have its own contribution in
the book. Yet it is exemplary of unlearning’s “double” approach to site: 1) unlearning
something concrete in a specific time and place; and 2) unlearning as a working
concept of bodily knowledge. Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike) took place in
Utrecht and Tbilisi and involved cultural practitioners, friends, neighbors, and
scholars. The exercise was to experiment with the paradox of unlearning to ride
a bike, which one learns not through instruction but in practice after which, as the
cliché goes, it seems impossible to unlearn.
One of the project’s contexts, a one-week workshop in 2012 in Utrecht, took
place in a gym to engage with unlearning more consciously as a physical activity.
Equipped with exercise mats, tools, and other gymnastic apparatuses, we sat on
bikes, worked with them, tinkered with them. We also brainstormed, discussed,
wrote, and reflected. The gym became a site for our unlearning investigations,
which included reflecting on the routines developed in classroom situations, the
disciplining of bodies, habits of talking, and doing. The impossibility of unlearning
to ride a bike had a great impact on us. Participant and scholar Gianmaria Colpani
likened it to a “mapping device of the bodily working of learning processes” that
forces us to acknowledge “for however much our language may articulate the
possibility of unlearning to ride a bike, our body fails to respond” (Colpani in Chung
et al. 201 3, 42–4 3). The physical-symbolic practice of unlearning to ride a bike and
its associative strength was juxtaposed with questions of how we engage in
impossibilities. What are our default positions, dedications, and settled routines
of thinking and doing with regard to this impossible task? Are there similarities,
experiences, and feelings that remind us of engaging in impossibilities in our
everyday lives? How do we engage in the (im)possibility of unlearning to ride a
bike and its entanglement with cultural politics?

1 An earlier version of this text is published in Krauss 2017, 19–40.

223
 This book’s research into the politics of (im)possibilities and working through
the persistence of bodily knowledges related to default positions and settled
routines, is situated in this early site. Bodily knowledge refers here to the capacity
of the human body to acquire social abilities that are not biologically given: that
is, to learn social skills of all kinds. Feminist theoretician Susan Bordo explains an
aspect of bodily knowledge through:
focusing on the “direct grip” (as opposed to representational in-
fluence) that culture has on our bodies, through the practices and
bodily habits of everyday life. Through routine, habitual activity, our
bodies learn which gestures are forbidden and which are required,
how violable or inviolable are the boundaries of our bodies, how
much space around the body may be claimed, and so on. These are
often far more powerful lessons than those we learn consciously,
through explicit instruction, concerning the appropriate behavior
for our gender, race, and social class (199 3, 16).
Forms of embodiment are often beyond the grasp of consciousness, and can
hardly be transformed voluntarily, or even made explicit. Through habitual activ-
ity they persist as though they are naturally given abilities. Bordo points to the
“material body” as a site of political struggle.2 The early acquisition of an accent
or a way of sitting is usually made unconsciously and effortlessly. Learned ges-
tures, rhythms, or postures are incorporated into our bodies, and into a particular
space and time.
Literary critic Elaine Scarry (1985) investigates pain and its effect on bodies
in daily life to inquire into the body’s impact on a person’s political subjectivity.
She explores the cultural manners, taste, and dispositions that pass from one

2 This is not to say that the politics of representation of the body is not important. On the contrary,
both sites of political struggle are equally important. Feminist scholars have been instrumental in
developing critiques of the politics of the body in terms of the material body and its representations
(Davis 1997). The term “material body” is not meant in the sense of natural or unmediated, as Bordo
explains the “direct grip that culture has on our bodies” is always already made. Or, in other words,
whatever function biology or anatomy have, they are always “intra-dependent” with culture (Barad 2007).
3 Scarry literally links embodied knowledge to the ability to ride a bike: “What is remembered in the
body is well remembered. It is not possible to compel a person to unlearn the riding of a bike” (1985, 110).
What Scarry unequivocally rejects as an impossibility actually forms a starting point of the Site for
Unlearning (to Ride a Bike) with exploring what this impossibility does and means to the group on site.
4 With incorporations Bourdieu speaks of elements of style, manner, taste, and dispositions, as well as
systems of meanings, linguistic, and social competencies.

224
 Fig. 1 Backwards Biking, archive photo (Anja Groten), Utrecht, 2012.
Courtesy Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike). Photo: Laura Pardo

generation to the next in the form of daily routines and habits.3 Scarry follows
cultural sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who also investigated the relevance of incor-
porations in producing similarities within groups, which he called “habitus” (1977,
5 3–65).4 The materiality of the body and “habitus” form the political identity of
bodies inseparably intertwined with habituated worldviews on national identity,
ethnicity/race, gender, or class. My body calls me to order without me necessarily
being aware of these incorporations. For this book, I borrow the term “call to order”
from Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning &
Black Study (201 3) in its double meaning, as demand (by the more powerful) to
undertake an activity according to particular rules and as simple, inconspicuous
gesture of formally starting a meeting or a class. As the (institutional) forms of
these subtle and not so subtle gestures affect knowledge production, relations,
spaces, and temporalities, the sites for unlearning strive to unlearn the habitus
framed by these habituated and habituating calls.

225
Project Acknowledgements

Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike)

Collaborative experiments, mapping, video, reader, Utrecht, 2012.
Collaborators in Utrecht: Hyunju Chung, Gianmaria Colpani, Anja Groten,
Simone van Hulst, Annette Krauss, Sofia Montenegro, Laura Pardo, and Maiko
Tanaka. Thanks to Stefano Bertacchini, and the team at Olympia Utrecht.

In the framework of 1st Tbilisi Triennial: Offside Effect. Academy as Exhibition

(curated by Henk Slager and Vato Tsereteli), 201 3. Collaborators in Tbilisi:
Lasha Babuadze, Ana Chaduneli, Tamar Chaduneli, Hyunju Chung, Gianmaria
Colpani, Tamuna Dadalisa Mchedlishvili, Elene Gabrichidze, Anja Groten, Simone
van Hulst, Bessa Kartlelishvili, Annette Krauss, Chris Lee, Giorgi Magradze,
Maja Malinovska, Tara McDowell, Sofia Montenegro, Mari Nakanimamasakhlisi,
Christian Nyampeta, Laura Pardo, Mamuka Samkharadze, Tatia Shavgulidze,
Levan Skhirtladze, Maiko Tanaka, Khatia Tchokhonelidze, Ruth Trueba Castro,
Vato Urushadze, Koka Vashakidze, and Miya Yoshida.

Fig. 2 Collectively Biking, archive photo (left to right: Vato Urushadze, Elene Gabrichidze, Hyunju Chung,
Maiko Tanaka, Levan Skhirtladze, Khatia Tchokhonelidze, and Sofia Montenegro), Tbilisi, 201 3.
Courtesy Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike). Photo: Annette Krauss

226
Unlearning Forms of Organization

The material body is structured by material, sociopolitical, and historical forces,

which, as anticolonial philosopher Frantz Fanon reminds us, are embedded in a heri-
tage of colonial racism that comprises the “bodily schema.” On the quasi-naturalness
of bodily knowledge, Fanon writes:
I know, if I want to smoke, I shall have to reach out my right arm
and take the pack of cigarettes lying at the other end of the table.
The matches, however, are in the drawer on the left, and I shall
have to lean back slightly. And all these movements are made not
out of habit, but out of implicit knowledge. A slow composition of
my self as a body in the middle of a spatial and temporal world—
such seems to be the schema. It does not impose itself on me;
it is, rather, a definitive structuring of the self and of the world—
definitive because it creates a real dialectic between my body and
the world (1986, 111).
Fanon transfers the “implicit knowledge” that brings him to smoke, to the expe-
rience of a Black 5 person “in a white world” (ibid., 110), who is very likely to not
develop their bodily schema as quasi-natural or implicit. This person is forced to
inhabit what Fanon describes as a “third-person consciousness” wherein “[t]he
body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty” (ibid.) due to the
obstacles thrown at non-white bodies in white-dominated places. On whiteness,
philosopher Shannon Sullivan notes that there seems to be “no historico-racial
schema at play in the constitution of her lived body” (2004, 14). The historico-
racial bodily schema that is disruptive for a Black person’s lived experience is
often enabling and supportive for a white person. Bodily forms of knowledge,
aptitudes, and attitudes are not perceived as results of learning processes of
a white, male, abled body, but as neutral and universal. For Sullivan (ibid., 15),
implicit bodily knowledge for a white person favoring a body full of possibilities,
is likely to be explicit knowledge for a Black person foreclosing possibilities.

5 In the following I write the words Black and Person of Color in title case. I am following a discourse
that proposes a capitalization to denote and support the political term Black and Person of Color
that exceeds provenance and appearance. The usage of these terms relates to persons that do not
identify as white, and do not exclusively relate to European-Western-Christian cultures and their
traditions and ideologies (see Amoo-Adare 2014, 8; Kazeem and Schaffer 2012, 177).

227
 Why do I connect unlearn to ride a bike with Fanon’s inescapable historico-
racial body schema, when participants in the Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike)
can at any time choose to quit? After all, not much is at stake for an enabled body
at the site. The intent is rather to direct attention toward a white person unlearning
normalized historico-racial bodily schema. A privilege of whiteness is dealing with
racism as a matter of choice. A white person can decide to stop engaging with
racism, a non-white person does not have this choice. Furthermore, unlearning to
ride a bike resonates with this premise in the im/possibilities that surround this
endeavor. Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike) is a rather unsatisfying practice for
unlearning habits of thinking and doing that sustain normalized historico-racial
bodily schema. However, it has drawn my attention to other socio-ethico-aesthetic
formations, of which the different contributions in this book speak.
The intention of this book is to look into social organizations, and our par-
ticipation within them. More specifically, I look at the role of habits of thinking
and doing, including implicit knowledges, that sustain white dominance and white
supremacy, and how they call each other to order. Based on these premises, I ask,
what does a specific practice of unlearning these habits and implicit knowledge
look like in everyday life in the middle of Europe?
I work with a specific understanding of racism, namely a white, scientifically
legitimated system of thought invented in Europe and the colonies with atrocious
consequences. From (t)here, white supremacy has been engineered through spe-
cific modes of social organization, and habits of thinking and doing. I refer here
to critical race and gender studies scholar Philomena Essed. She understands this
racist system as “ideology, structure and process in which inequalities are related
in a deterministic way, to biological and cultural factors such as race and ethnic
group” (1991, 4 3), with inscribed concepts, notions, and terminologies prevalent in
European cultural history.
Considering the scope and (historical) impact of racist structures in life, prac-
tices of unlearning are confronted with the sheer impossibility of these endeavors.
The need to unpack impossibilities and the (infra)structures that enable these,
have become pivotal to unlearning, which in practice are what I call “routines of
the impossible.” This writing and the practices that precede it intend to unlearn
these routines that give the title to this book.

228
 Fig. 3 Losing the Fear of the Ground, archive photo (Annette Krauss), Utrecht, 2012.
Courtesy Site for Unlearning (to Ride a Bike)

Unlearning and Institutions

In this unwieldy relationship between unlearning and the impossible, a focus

on artistic practices with and within (educational) institutions is grounded in knowl-
edge and education as sites of struggle. Trying to find out what is (im)possible
in these sites of struggle and taking our own assumptions and prejudices (the
collaborators’ and mine) as an integral part of it, has been a guiding force.
Institution here encompasses “integrated systems of rules that structure social
interaction” (Hodgson 2006, 3–6), including both formal institutions generated by
(legal) entities such as governments and informal institutions, such as customs,
routines, and patterns important to a certain community. These strands are in-
separably entwined, as artist Andrea Fraser, protagonist of institutional critique
describes: “So, if there is no outside for us, it is not because the institution is
perfectly closed, or exists as an apparatus in a ‘totally administered society’ or
has grown all encompassing in size and scope. It is because the institution is inside
of us, and we can’t get outside of ourselves” (2005, 104). The sites for unlearning

229
become litmus tests with regard to unquestioned, or ineptly questioned routines,
hierarchies of know­ledge, and the role of the body in unlearning processes.
More than describing activities in institutions to understand them, following
feminist scholar Sara Ahmed’s work on institutional life and racism, it is crucial
to explore how these activities shape institutions. Ahmed connects institutions
and routines, arguing that “when things become institutional they recede from
consciousness. To institutionalize is [...] to become routine or ordinary” (2012, 21).
In the text “Site for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet),” the earlier introduced notion
of call to order is explored in relation to institutional habits, and brought to-
gether with Essed’s concept of “everyday racism,” which does not separate the
institutional from individual racism that are rather about “different positions
and relations through which racism operates” (1991, 36). That division places the
subject outside the institutional framework and at the same time detaches the
regulations and procedures from the people who make and enact them. Essed
puts forward the mutual interdependency of macro and micro racism where in-
stitutional settings are construed in ideas and practices in everyday life and vice
versa (ibid., 38). Bringing the analytical framework of call to order and everyday
racism together provides a lens onto what these collaborative practices are ex-
posed to, and what and how they/I expose others to, and am/are complicit in.
Furthermore, the collaborations become manifest in specific modes of address
toward and inhabitation in the institutions while contributing to how they might
operate differently. “[R]ather than suggesting that knowledge leads (or should
lead) to transformation,” as Ahmed writes, the sites for unlearning attempt to
generate a different kind of “knowledge of institutions in the process of attempt-
ing to transform them” (2012, 17 3).
Compared to the institutional investigations and practices that infuse Site
for Unlearning (Zwarte Piet) (2011–present), Hidden Curriculum (2007–present),
or Site for Unlearning (Art Organisation) (201 3–20), Site for Unlearning (to Ride
a Bike) seems more like basic research (Grundlagenforschung) that misses insti-
tutional contextualization and embeddedness. Together the experiments form a
support structure—a scaffolding for living—for the collaborative research with
and into institutions when it comes to dominant forms of thinking and behaving,
(affective) structures of impossibilities, and their entanglement with embodied
knowledges.
Unlearning aims to intervene in yet another institution: the institution of learn-
ing, the standard notion of, according to OED Online, “acquir[ing] knowledge or

230
skills as a result of study, experience and teaching.” With knowledge and learning
increasingly shaped by economic forces, my practice of unlearning involves the
study of how certain forms of learning permeate Western academic and artistic
research, and their mediation. An acquisition-based, accumulative concept of
learning connects smoothly with models of growth within these economies and
intertwines with concepts of progress that have long bolstered received ideas of
historical development and social evolution. Decolonial scholarship (Escobar 1995;
Allen 2016; Vázquez Melken 2020) investigates the entanglement between concepts
of progress and colonialism, with scholarship tracing progress concepts to the
moment Europe declared itself superior to other people and cultures, using these
concepts to legitimize oppression, expropriation, and extraction of resources. As
intervening in a Western standard notion of learning is a massive undertaking, I
work at a small-scale with an eye toward the big, in concrete (institutional) settings
with the sites for unlearning as frameworks. Critiques offered by feminist, de/
post/anticolonial studies strongly inform this artistic investigation into unlearning,
insofar as they address academic canons, corporeality, coalition building, forms
of institutionalization, and everyday norms as a central part of their agendas.6

Unlearning and Arts-Based Research

My practice has long been committed to both artistic practice and academic
theory. Through the investigations into unlearning I work across and speak to
their relationships. Western academic and scientific research and related under-
standings of art are commonly understood as tied to the “European project of
modernity,” 7 with universities and (art) academies at the forefront of the dis-
semination of knowledge and its (geopolitical) production processes (Wilder 201 3).
As such, research is deeply embedded within the troubled histories of Western
epistemologies, and is connected to its histories of articulations in the name of
dominant majorities, the privileged, and the colonizers. In this context, research
and education are often construed as dependent on better analyses or more

6 For my use of the terms anticolonial, decolonial, and postcolonial, see footnote 2 of “Introduction
and Acknowledgements: Practicing Unlearning” on page 12 in this book.
7 Postcolonial scholar Talal Asad sees modernity as a series of interlinked projects that certain people
in power seek to achieve; it aims at institutionalizing a number of principles, such as human rights,
democracy, civil equality, consumerism, freedom of market, and secularism (200 3, 1 3).

231
knowledge to forge something that will “right wrongs” (Spivak 2004). But what
if, as decolonial scholar of education Vanessa Andreotti (2015, 36) urges, “these
wrongs are not only a result of ignorances but of something more collective and
much deeper that we are all implicated in?” Accepting this force, Andreotti points
out, is the starting point for decolonization.
Scholars such as Spivak (1990), Andreotti (2011; 2015), Madina Tlostanova/
Walter Mignolo (2012), and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (2019) have identified unlearning
at the core of postcolonial, decolonial, and anticolonial research,8 and education,
intervening in and unsettling the imperial foundations of Western knowledge pro-
duction. What links these scholars is the description of coloniality as constitutive
of modernity and vice versa. Modernity does not emerge solely from European
history, but takes into account the concept of coloniality (Quijano 2000), which
refers to modes of control of social life, economic and political organization, and
ways of thinking and sensing that emerged through colonialism, slavery, and capi-
talism in colonies in the Americas, Africa, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia from
the beginning of the sixteenth century (Gilroy 199 3; Quijano 2000). Recognizing
the modern-colonial matrix of power, Quijano and Mignolo describe it as a sys-
tem that determines the management, institutionalization, and dissemination of
epistemic, material, and aesthetic resources in ways that reproduce modernity’s
imperial project. Tlostanova and Mignolo (2012) assign to unlearning the capacity
to respond to these modern-colonial challenges. Consequently, unlearning has
always also been a project about institutions and education.
These studies inform my artistic practice and arts-based research and in-
volvement in activism and help me unpack complicities with the modern project of
research. In this writing, arts-based research (interchangeably used with artistic
research) is understood as a specific form of artistic practice combining practice-
based, and theoretically driven investigations constituted from personal-political
and transdisciplinary methodologies. Cultural theorist Estelle Barrett and artist
and theorist Barbara Bolt describe this form of research as “practice-led enquiry
that draws on subjective, interdisciplinary methodologies and practices” that have
the potential to address, problematize, and rework “the frontiers of research”
(Barrett 2007, 4). By combining these features, I tie in (arts-based) research that
generates practices and writings in dialogue with methodologies, practices, and
concepts from other fields to explore its premises and ways of understanding.

8 See my elaboration on the use of de/post/anticolonial practices and theories in footnote 2 of “Introduction.”

232
Sites for Unlearning as Situations

From the perspective of my artistic practice, the sites for unlearning are process-
driven and encourage attention be directed toward the entanglement of mate-
riality, practice, and discourse. The sites work with an expanded notion of per-
formance, which I understand as a site of group coordination (including human
and more-than-human actors) in different spaces and at different times. The
sites are best described as the “making of unlearning situations.” It is important
that the word “site” is derived from the term situation and being situated, rather
than from a simply spatial understanding. Next to the decolonial perspective of
unlearning, the sites tie in the legacy of (artistic) situationist practices and the
feminist approach of “situated knowledges” theorized by feminist philosopher
of science Donna Haraway (1988).
The artistic engagement with situations brings up a whole range of artistic
practices that question static object conventions and attempt to contribute to
“new forms of Situationism” (Bishop 2012; Doherty 2004; Jackson 2011). A key
reference for the sites for unlearning has been the early Situationists’ experimental
practices from the 1960s and 1970s, one being the “constructed situation,” which
is described by the Situationist International as “a moment of life, concretely
and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance
and a game of events” (unsigned 1958, 1 3). Conceived as collectively produced
experimental activities in urban environments, constructed situations aim to un-
hinge normalized ways of thinking and living in people’s everyday life. In Society
of the Spectacle (1970), filmmaker and writer Guy Debord theorizes constructed
situations as counter-practices against the alienation, repressive instrumentality,
and divisive effects of capitalism (1970, 66, 70). Debord and the Situationist
International tried to inhabit a radical anti-capitalist position while at the same
time refusing rational critique and argumentation. Instead, they emphasized
playfulness, irrationality, and games that avoided elements of competition and
work against the separation of art from everyday life (Debord 1957).
In juxtaposition to this, the sites are also deeply influenced by what Haraway
coined “situated knowledges” (1988), as alternatives to scientific objectivity in
research. Haraway argues against the idea of the researcher as neutral, unbi-
ased, and disinterested. According to her, knowledge is constructed, rather than
discovered. This means that theories, ideas, and practices are always produced
within specific situations that are at once historical, disciplinary, socio-cultural, and

233
political. A key element of her approach is what she calls the “critical positioning”
of the feminist researcher (ibid., 589). Critical positioning is practiced through
three interconnected aspects: 1) “limited location” refers to a continuous striving
to know about the limitations of one’s own structural position as a researcher; 9
2) “accountability” toward different constituencies; 10 and 3) “partiality of vision.”
This third aspect is “not partiality for its own sake,” however. It rather expresses
that being incomplete triggers reactions, evokes resonances, and engages with
the notion of difference. Moreover, situated knowledges are not to be confused
with relativism. According to Haraway, “[t]he alternative to relativism is partial,
locatable, critical knowledge sustaining the possibility of webs of connection called
solidarity in politics and shared conversations in epistemology.” The communal and
connective quality of knowledge production is pivotal here. Haraway articulates
a clearly defined goal, namely “knowledge potent for constructing worlds less
organized by axes of domination” (ibid., 58 3–90).
The sites for unlearning attempt to bring together the three elements de-
scribed: the practice-oriented artistic approach of situation making, a feminist
understanding of situated knowledge production, and the questions and
demands posed by de/post/anticolonial scholarship. In this regard, the sites are
not imagined in the language of alienation and rather embrace the terminology
of interdependence. They aim to collaboratively examine the spatio-temporal,
embodied, and material relationalities inherent to situations, that are sustained
by reproductive labor, and challenged by questions of maintenance. The sites
are specific experimental settings for making unlearning situations, and at the
same time studying what makes a site. “Situation-making” is a reminder for me
that there is (only) so much that we can do to make a situation. We are always
already part of a specific situation, its orientations and power relations, as much
as this situation is in the making and therefore to be shaped. The term situation
attempts to give consideration to this mutuality, ecology, and multi-directionality
by introducing situation as both subject and object of the making. Thus, we/I make

9 Kum-Kum Bhavnani explains her understanding of limited location “that the researcher analyses
the micropolitics of the research situation. That is that researchers explore, in public, what power
dynamics come into play and when, how they shift, and what their consequences might be in the
many different parts of their research” (2007, 64 3).
10 Bhavnani adds the notion of reinscription, of “the feminist being publicly aware of the prevailing
images of the research groups and examines whether her own research reinscribes the group into
dominant stereotypes” (2007, 642).

234
a situation and the situation makes us/me. A multi-actor approach is crucial to
these collaborative experiments. Against this backdrop, the sites for unlearning
are proposed as formations that connect (and struggle with this connection of)
artistic practices, bodily routines of thinking and behaving, everyday life with
sociopolitical, material, spatio-temporal, aesthetic, and economical questions
including the role of institutions.

Writing

The different settings, time frames, and fields of the sites and collaborations
have implications for the possibilities to write (about) these sites. While I wish to
experiment with writing unlearning, at times, I cannot but write about unlearning
as a way of looking back on or revisiting these sites again. Therefore, I introduce
the bracketing of about in the research question: how can I write (about) un-
learning? This question has been leading my writing that constitutes parts of this
book. And then, how do I relate to the practice of writing? Even though writing
is an important part of my practice, it is not primarily the practice through
which I do what I do. More importantly, what I grapple with, I aim to through
collaborative practices—for example, with and in institutions. Reading books and
diving into theory at best makes me vigilant and sharp—and sometimes gives
me refuge—in order to approach the experiences, questions, and paradoxes
that I encounter in practice. And it works the opposite way too: the collaborative
endeavors and corresponding practices make me wary and savvy about reading
and writing texts. These practices follow each other, appear simultaneously,
or get lost with each other. Writing, in my case, is a way of literally coming to
terms. It is a process of finding and giving words, also together, to the different
collaborative processes, in which I am involved, to the connected experiences and
sensations. These terms enter working processes to be challenged again. A few
times now, writing (in various forms) has taken place collaboratively, and more
often in conversational forms. Both ways are precious processes that contribute
in their very own manner to the processes of the collaborations. For example,
some of these collaborative writings are integrated in Unlearing Exercises (2018)
or “In the Vortex of Institutional Lives,” the Feminist Search Tools conversation,
and KUNCI’s letter exchange.

235
 In the collaborations, we equip ourselves with some provisional terms, which
are only to be (con)tested again in practice. Sometimes these written systems
seem to be a step ahead or several steps behind the collaborative practices;
sometimes they do not seem to touch the work we do at all and feel like de-
tours. At times they come close to each other, but they are hardly the same. Or
to say it in other words, the complexities of writing (and written texts) are not
the same as the complexities of the other practices, but they build an invaluable
ecology between me, the collaborators, and the sites. Through the bracketing of
“(about)” I try to complicate the about in writing (about) the sites for unlearning.
For me, it is a reminder of the representational trap and ethical question of the
about and directs me toward how these different practices correlate with and
permeate each other.
Furthermore, this writing is not to be understood as a comprehensive study
of processes of unlearning. On the contrary, what the different contributions in
this book engage with are context-specific questions, forms of knowledge and
approaches that inform the work on unlearning considering its material, artistic,
and political dimensions. The composition of the contributions aims at letting
them speak to each other, because it is in the resonance with each other where
the force of unlearning unfolds.

Unlearning and Collaboration

Collaborations provide invaluable scaffolding for the sites for unlearning with
the aim to unlearn something together. They differ in collaborators, interests,
motivations, economies, and rhythms. Consequently, the forms function differ-
ently in the various contexts. Still, on these grounds, why would it be important
to think and do unlearning through collaboration? There are various answers to
this question that touch upon conceptual, political, and personal aspects.
One of the recurring difficulties with approaching unlearning and learning
is the implicit individual attribution that un/learning seems to contain—as if it is
(entirely) up to an individual person to (consciously or unconsciously) learn and
unlearn. The economization of learning (in the framework of knowledge economies)
is grounded in and perpetuates the individualization of learning. The epitome of
this understanding of learning is human capital, and I focus on this in the chap-
ter “Lifelong Learning and the Professionalized Learner” in Unlearning Exercises:

236
Art Organizations and Sites for Unlearning (Krauss in Allen et al. 2018). The sites
for unlearning engage and experiment with forms of collectivity to investigate
the potential to intervene in the economic and individualized understanding of
learning and unlearning.
Most of all, engaging with unlearning is a practice in how to relate—to col-
laborate is a practice of relating in specific contexts. To investigate in and work
on how we relate to each other (human, and more-than-human) is certainly not
without contestation and conflict. Working collaboratively provides the possibility
that others challenge the way I assume these relations too easily. This, in turn,
might inform the way I engage with hierarchies, differences, and conflicts in
these contexts. Hence, the spatio-temporal, embodied, and material relational-
ities through which forms of collaboration emerge, are at the same time that
which the collaboration attempts to shape toward unlearning. It is within and
through these relationalities that “situation-making” unfolds and challenges the
routines of the impossible. And yet, we have to pay attention to another institution,
that of collectivity. What are the limits of a collectivity that undergirds sites for
unlearning? 11 To study and intervene in modes of working and living together is at
the core of collaborative unlearning. These ways can hardly be shared as models
but as instances that serve as references or in best case as inspirations for others
to develop their ways of collaborating.

11 See also Harney and Moten 201 3, 147.

237
238
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252
Biographies
Aggeliki Diakrousi is an artist and researcher with a background in architecture
and experimental publishing. Her work examines the politics of public spaces
entangled with the use of technology and includes critical collective approaches
to digital infrastructures. She is a former member of Varia and teacher at
Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. She is currently a research assistant
at the Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI). www.w-i-t-m.net.

Sven Engels received a Master of Arts in Gender Studies from Utrecht University
and Bachelor of Arts from University College Maastricht. They have been involved
with unlearning in different capacities, including Unlearning My Library, which
builds on the research of Read-in, in the context of the Zero Footprint Campus
in Utrecht from 2017 to 2018.

Anja Groten works as a designer, writer, and educator. Her work revolves around
the cross-section of digital and physical media, design, and art education and
her involvement in different collectives. In 201 3 Groten co-founded the initiative
Hackers & Designers. Since 2019 she is head of the Design Department at the
Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam. In 2022 Anja obtained a PhD in Artistic Research
at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden.

Hackers & Designers (H&D) is a non-profit workshop initiative organizing ac-

tivities at the intersection of technology, design, and art. By creating shared
moments of hands-on learning H&D stimulates collaboration across disciplines,
technological literacy, and different levels of expertise.

Ola Hassanain leads a critical spatial practice as a visual artist with architecture
training. Hassanain premises her work on an idea of “space as political dis-
course,” an expanded notion of space, that tries to develop a spatial literacy that
can aid us to imagine different of political ecologies. Hassanain’s development
of critical spatial practice is partly informed by her post-academic training:
a residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunst, Amsterdam, 2021–2 3;
a fellowship at BAK – basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2017–18, teaching
and development of the Blacker Blackness Master course, Sandberg Instituut,

253
Amsterdam, 2021–2 3, teaching at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht in the
Fine Art Department; and other international collaborations with venues such
as the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial and Sharjah Architecture Triennale.

Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide is senior exhibitions curator at the Van Abbe-
museum, Eindhoven where her recent shows are Sung Hwan Kim: Protected by
roof and right-hand muscles (202 3–24), Positions #7: Everything worthwhile is
done with other people (202 3) curated with Nick Aikens, and A Lasting Truth Is
Change (2022) for which she co-edited the eponymous publication with Taylor
Le Melle. She is co-editor with Aikens of I Think My Body Feels, I Feel My Body
Thinks: On Corpoliteracy (2022) among many other publications.

Nancy Jouwe is a cultural historian and works as a freelance researcher, speaker,

and curator. She is a 2022–25 fellow at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht
and a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She co-edited several
books plus articles on topics relating to the arts, intersectionality, colonial history,
slavery and its afterlife, and diasporic socio-cultural movements.

Annette Krauss works as an artist, writer, and educator. Krauss has (co-)initiated
various long-term collaborative practices (Hidden Curriculum, 2007–present)/
Sites for Unlearning, 2011–present/Read-in, 2010–present/Read the Masks.
Tradition Is Not Given, 2008–12/School of Temporalities, 2013–present). These
projects reflect and build upon the potential of collaborative practices while
aiming at disrupting taken for granted truths in imagining and living forms of
collectivity. She worked as course leader of the Master Fine Art at the University
of the Arts Utrecht, and since 2023 has been part of a co-professorship for Art
and Communication Practices, University of Applied Arts Vienna.

KUNCI Study Forum & Collective based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia is a non-disciplinary

research collective, which, since its founding in 1999 has been experimenting with
modes of producing and sharing knowledge through studying together.

Laura Pardo is an artist and lecturer who received a Master of Arts in Artistic Re-
search from the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and Bachelor of Art in Fine
Art from Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá. She is a lecturer at Breda University
of Applied Sciences.

254
Read-in is a self-organized collective that began in 2010 and which experiments
with the political, material, and physical implications of collective reading and the
situatedness of any kind of reading activity. Read-in experiments with formats
such as going door-to-door and requesting neighbors host a spontaneous col-
lective reading session. With Bookshelf Research, Read-in examines private and
public libraries according to categories such as gender, nationality, and mate-
riality, engaging with the open secret of knowledge hierarchies that inhabit our
bookshelves and reading practices. www.read-in.info.

Alice Strete is an artist and researcher interested in the intricate relationship be-
tween humans and the technologies they surround themselves with. Her work
involves collaborative media art and publishing practices and explores topics
from feminist technologies to the sociopolitics of food.

Ferdiansyah Thajib is a Berlin-based member of KUNCI Study Forum & Collective,

Yogyakarta, Indonesia. KUNCI is a non-disciplinary research collective, which,
since its founding in 1999, has been experimenting with modes of producing and
sharing knowledge through studying together. Currently he is a Senior Lecturer
at the Elite Master Program “Standards of Decision-making Across Cultures,”
Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

255
Unlearning Routines of the Impossible

Co-published by Casco Art Institute and Minor Compositions

Distributed by Casco Art Institute and Autonomedia

ISBN 978-1-57027-453-4
Printed and bound in the Netherlands, 2025

Annette Krauss
with contributions by
 Feminist Search Tools working group (Aggeliki Diakrousi, Hackers & Designers
[Anja Groten], Ola Hassanain, Read-in [Sven Engels, Annette Krauss,
and Laura Pardo], and Alice Strete)
Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide
Nancy Jouwe
KUNCI Study Forum & Collective
Ferdiansyah Thajib

Concept and
commissioning editor Annette Krauss
Editor Janine Armin
Proofreading Eva Wilson
Design Rosen Eveleigh
Design assistance Carlo Canún
Typeface assistance Karl-Emil Bengtson
Images The contributors, unless otherwise mentioned
Printing Drukkerij Raddraaier, Amsterdam

Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons

Lange Nieuwstraat 7
3512 PA Utrecht, The Netherlands
www.casco.art

Minor Compositions
Colchester/New York /Port Watson
www.minorcompositions.info
Minor Compositions is a series of interventions
Autonomedia and provocations drawing from autonomous politics,
PO Box 568 Williamsburgh Station avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions
Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA of everyday life. Minor Compositions is an imprint
www.autonomedia.org of Autonomedia.
This book has further been made possible with
the support of Mondriaan Fund, the public fund for
visual art and cultural heritage, Amsterdam, and also
the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the framework
of a postdoctoral grant for Annette Krauss financed
by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): 495 (2017–2 3).
The contributions of this book are licensed
under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), unless otherwise mentioned.

256
essays, collective conversations, and scenes on
what unlearning might do and be. Together they form
a support structure — a scaffolding for living — for
practicing unlearning.

What are the struggles, entanglements, and joys

of practicing unlearning in predominantly Western
contexts? This book responds to this question
through revisiting the artistic research projects
Sites for Unlearning, (co-)initiated by artist Annette
Krauss. The sites are experimental gatherings where
the aim is to collaboratively unlearn dominant forms
of thinking and doing, and the affective production
of impossibilities within institutions in order to
intervene in social injustices. The artistic projects
are accompanied, framed, and challenged by invited