Ateneo

Given that the politics of knowledge has become more apparent within social movement practices we reclaim the ateneo as an open critical space of encounter committed to facilitating insurgent learning and convivial research. As a de-territorialized space, the proposed ateneo recognizes the long-standing, vexed relationship historically under represented communities have with the formal institutions of higher education. As a space of convivial research, the ateneo navigates between long standing achievements in Participatory Action Research as well as more recent innovations in Militant and Convivial Research by exploring transdisciplinary investigations. The Ateneo as a strategy cultivates horizontal investigative practices, successfully linking more critical approaches to traditional disciplines and methodologies with dynamic grassroots innovations that refuse to participate in the objectification of communities in struggle. The strategy of the ateneo as a mobile open space of encounter claims two intellectual traditions and four meta-theoretical platforms. The deployment of ateneo as a strategy of oppositional learning and research has a long history of use in the anarchist community beginning in Spain since the end of the 19th century. The rise of the alterglobalization struggle, or “movement of movements,” has witnessed a resurgence of the practice. Many of these new uses of the ateneo have drawn from the success of the horizontal autonomous practices associated with the social centers and the okupas movement active across Spain since the 1980s. Our goal will be to avoid imposing a preordained or established structure or strategy, refusing to specify just how the ateneo might be organized beyond the initial effort to convene it as a open space of encounter. We hope to generate interest in a diverse representation of community-based intellectuals and researchers who are comfortable working in sites that are informal and emphasize the process of engaging in collective strategies of knowledge production. The idea is not to limit the ateneo by a format typical of academic spaces such as an advanced seminar, conference, workshop, plenary, or research cluster but to insist on it as an open, diffuse space that can facilitate research, reflection, and action. As a space that allows us to gather as a diverse situated community, it also potentially transcends bureaucratic structures and professional identities.