Horizontal Pedagogy in Occupy Wall Street

Andy Merrifield (2011, 2013) calls for a right to the city-as-politics of the encounter. The politics of encounter is a “modality of presence” that will always be an “encounter somewhere, a spatial meeting place.” During such an encounter participants find themselves “concretely alongside others,” (2011, p. 475) and a certain kind of “affinity” develops between them, which both expresses and acts on their right to space. Merrifield elaborates:This article operationalizes Merrifield’s notion of the encounter for educational purposes. When “people find their kindred souls” and “struggle together for the realization of common hopes,” what does that look like for people learning, teaching, and studying? Can activists and classroom teachers facilitate “a group commonality” where “bodies and minds” are taken hold of? In other words, are there pedagogies for Merrifield’s encounter? What are the procedures, rituals, exercises, and habits of such a pedagogy? What is the relationship between encountering, educational interaction, and “taking hold … of space” in the way he describes?There may be many such pedagogies, but this essay will focus on a particular set of educational practices which emerged during the Occupy Wall Street movement called horizontal pedagogy. While Occupy Wall Street was one big encounter according to Merrifield, horizontal pedagogy specified procedures, rituals, and exercises with which students and activists might, to use Merrifield’s term, “take hold” of their minds and bodies in space to “struggle together for the realization of common hopes” while teaching, studying, and learning. The paper summarizes Merrifield’s notion of the encounter, details the emergence of horizontal pedagogy within Occupy Wall Street, and interprets the pedagogy’s procedures as a set of exercises meant to create encounter. Turn-taking in particular is a ritual that can “take hold” of space, which the paper demonstrates by citing personal correspondence of the horizontal pedagogy workshop activists during their meetings in Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, between 20112012. The thesis here is that the group began to take the privately-owned public space in Trump Tower by taking the floor in turns, and the paper concludes with a reflection on how, in so doing, the group asserted its right to Trump Tower with a politics of the encounter through horizontal pedagogy.The passages from Merrifield above were published in an essay in June 2011—only months before the Occupy movement began that September. In 2013 Merrifield published the book The Politics of the Encounter, reflecting on Occupy as a paradigm case of political encounter. While Merrifield’s perennial focus is the French philosopher and urbanist Henri Lefebvre, in the chapter of Politics called “The Politics of Encounter” Merrifield engages with the French Marxist Louis Althusser, whose later writings take up the theme of encountering. Reading Althusser (who in the text Merrifield interprets is reading the ancient philosopher Lucretius), Merrifield characterizes the encounter in terms of atoms and swerving. Lucretius is known for his ontology of atoms, particles moving in certain directions, which together constitute reality. Althusser interprets this ontology as a theory of history and social change, and, with Lucretius, speculates that there can be a “swerve” in the atoms’ movements, where the atoms shift from their set paths to new ones. Conjunctures, for example, are confluences of relatively autonomous actions taken by individuals in different regions of society which, at certain moments of struggle, form contradictions which overdetermine the social formation, weakening it, and leaving the social formation vulnerable to change (Althusser Gramsci, 1971, p. 217). Encounters between individuals and regions of society can occur within those conjunctures, which then move, grate, and pressure one another in particular ways like tectonic plates. The urban, Merrifield adds, is one such space in which people get together during such movements and congregate. In so doing they occasion a swerve in society, taking history in a different direction. Toward the middle of this chapter on Althusser there is one passage that is particularly helpful when thinking through what pedagogical form of activity might be best for operationalizing this swerve. Writing about participants in Occupy, Merrifield claims that theyEarlier in the chapter Merrifield writes that “the world of history gels at certain felicitous moments … takes hold radiantly” (2013, p. 57) Whereas “gels” in this sentence refers to currents of history, gelling in the above longer passage refers to people getting together in cities, taking to the streets and “emulsifying” into groups with a common purpose. In each case there is an unavoidable density—one of people, the other historical currents—creating a force which “radiantly takes hold” of a certain moment and changes the course of a social formation, like an atom swerving in the Lucretian theory. “Meanwhile,” during such a moment, Merrifield elaborates, “the gelling takes hold” through facilitated “debate and discussions.” As the gelling moment occurs, at the same time, the gelling process “takes hold”—which might mean solidifies, roots, or grips— through forms of concrete communication like “discussion.” Discussion in this case is a way to solidify, root, and grip a swerve: a means to guarantee an encounter’s strength and viability, and ultimately force a change in the social formation. Merrifield does not go further to specify how this happens, and that is the pedagogical task of this essay. People speaking to each other in certain ways (e.g., through discussion) is one operation or pedagogical activity that can force or occasion swerves at large scales. Discussion can be, in other words, a pedagogy of the swerve.To operationalize this notion of encounter, we might say that discussing with a mixed sequence of turns expresses a right to the space in which it occurs. People who discuss with a mixed sequence of turns stoke and strengthen an encounter. One phrase from Merrifield’s earlier essay stands out in drawing this connection between discussing and encountering, where he writes that the people in an encounter “become space.” “For in any politics of the encounter,” he observesThe first sentence of this passage contains an important difference. Some interactions occur “in space” where people act. A group of workers do their work “in” the factory space; students their learning “in” school; activists do their work “in” a community space. Such interactions where people act “in” a space are not a politics of the encounter. Rather, in a politics of the encounter “people become space by acting.” They are not contained by the space. They actually become the space as they interact with one another. Encounters do not happen “in” spaces but rather “become” spaces. Another way of making this distinction in terms of discussion is that participants talking in a mixed sequence of turns do not discuss “in” their meeting place, but rather “become” that meeting place. They do not sit in the space, but the space sits in them (Backer 2016). The participants take that space for themselves. Thus, during an encounter “people become space” through actions where bodies fill space and become “the major scenic element,” enacting a “spatial form” as well as a “spatial content.” An encounter happens in a “meeting place,” which is obviously a ground, land, building, or area. Yet there is something psychological and political—something dangerous, communal, and connected—about this encounter which is not reducible to the meeting space itself. “Nothing is necessarily urban” or “scenic” during the encounter, and the participants’ experiences are neither “thing-like” nor “alienated.” The “illicit rendezvous” of the encounter happens in a “moment” that is concrete, built, and locational (happening in the meeting space) and abstract, subjective, and intersubjective (“human bonding and solidarity”). This is what it means for people to “become space” in an encounter. They are not “in” the space, the space is in them. In this way, they express their right to the city by discussing.Think of the idiomatic expression “taking the floor” in reference to speech and communication. There is a rich tradition in sociolinguistics and conversation analysis, starting with Goffman (1981), which examines the significance of turn-taking. Some scholars identify “having the floor” with taking a turn, whereas others disagree that the two are identical (Edelsky 1993). While they are not exactly the same the two are intimately related, argues Carole Edelsky, in “Who’s Got the Floor?” Summarizing the literature on this subject she writes that ““‘floor’ … is used to mean a space (that part of the chamber occupied by members), participants (members of an assembly), and a right to be heard” (Edelsky, p. 205). She goes on to define “the floor” as “the acknowledged what’s-going-on within a psychological time/space.” For her, “what’s going on” can be “developed or controlled” by one or more people, and is “official, in that, if questioned, participants could describe what’s going on” as some subject or object of attention. She later claims, when analyzing data, that the floor is both psychological and spatial and “jointly produced” (p. 211). Edelsky’s notion of the floor concretizes Merrifield’s encounter in that it is both a psychological and spatial entity cocreated by speakers assembling and interacting through speech. When someone takes the floor, there is both a meeting space and a right to be heard, a collective acknowledgment of what’s going on in that place at that time. Reading Merrifield with Edelsky, an encounter is one such interaction where the geographical and intersubjective aspects of an assembly— the people and their bodies in that moment, their feelings, thoughts, hopes—become the space when they take the floor in a mixed sequence. The speakers become the “scenic” element of the space, as Merrifield writes above. When each of them take the floor in the space, each of them become what’s going on as they speak about what’s going on in that space. Merrifield writes that during the encounter “all human connectivity, each body, if it really connects, literally fills the space.” Taking the floor is a way of “literally” filling space, each body becoming the “scenic element.” The speakers “talk back” to one another, upending traditional relations of production. The people discussing become the space, begin to take the space, in which they discuss. In short: taking the floor in equal and mixed turns begins to take the space.1This thesis about discussion beginning to take space advocates a Marxist interpretation of the conversation analysis tradition represented by Edelsky to illuminate how mixed turn-taking in discussion is a pedagogical operationalization of Merrifield’s politics of encounter. In a telling phrase, Goffman writes that when a person has the floor, the speaker’s body “is a marker of various preserves, such as space and turns” (Edelsky, 1993, p. 205). When all the participants in a discussion take the floor in mixed turns, their bodies become markers which preserve the space in which they speak. That marking of preservation is the action of encounter in Merrifield’s sense, when the participants no longer interact “in” space but rather become the space during interaction. In this case, discussion is the pedagogical procedure which induces the encounter. Again, while Merrifield uses the verb “become,” I would propose using “begin to take” in a discussion encounter. Since the members of the discussion each take the floor in their political encounter, they begin to take the space: it is neither a full-on taking of the space (like a Zapatistan eijido) nor an occupation of the space (like Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street, as we will see), but rather an operation which takes a first step to taking space.The Occupy Wall Street movement took Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011. The action was advertised in the magazine Adbusters beginning in July 2011. From the published there we September 17, into Manhattan, set up and and Wall September to Wall Street and not They Zuccotti Park in the of the a from the The a community through a of which used procedures on the meeting of a The community to the moving with actions if all members The were to and it is that the of the Occupy Wall Street movement can be in one to an encounter in the a how the Occupy began in this way in an for the In the with a activists at an advertised the for a collective The into more of a and how he and his used communication to change the of the I about the I this really a of the of people whose of political action is to with the of one or another They were obviously people more with of forms of and I at one a I from some some students a with the in I an I from in during the of the in in Manhattan, a known for at and I at and we both the other was thinking the same are we so is it that we something like this we and go I the way we it was more this They advertised a hold we up a and a and to get to about an of the and to a process would by out into groups and then to each group to its collective and set up for new meetings of both the and of the and the of the occupation of Wall This within it a kind of for one of the Occupy as a social movement in In a of where a certain of interaction a and horizontal of communication that groups and of turn-taking and the of as Occupy, when it a and Occupy was out of an encounter which and his and Occupy a encounter on September Occupy Wall Street as a in I the published in an and to the the was at the I there were of people the together the where of and other The public space a of drawing and bodies with in a while in and by each group at the the the as all of and the occupation for a the or the The and were with and book the regions of and the called were up the on both of the that so the participants of the used the human to the were on a which activists on of and The human from the of the to the or before could on the an to it was a or a of and groups to I for an or and of the their in the which I out meant that they with what was One of the was that the and was to to on an in Wall Street, an public space the Wall Street become the group for those in educational and a of within it Occupy and later the Another in the was known as at the that the occupation would members of the of to create an that would the of Zuccotti Park by teaching, learning, and in ways with the and workers to its of this task to particular for a There was a task force to or would the a task force to and another task force to particular and for the of an educational with the Occupy In to the large group and the task The group I and of the of the and meetings to discuss the and significance of like and in the of a of work at Zuccotti Park and in the first meeting of the I this task which was called and meetings and in with the meetings and the and at Zuccotti Park was by on 2011. meeting in a of privately-owned public spaces at that time, and was for a new a all the the task force on the in Trump Tower on Street and Tower is at in Midtown Manhattan, between and the from The and the of Park the was in by the As the the of the to the is “a of and an with and an Trump his for the to this building, which a public space in part of its like the are spaces as public within privately-owned When its it to spaces for the public within or their The Trump from this between and city This workshop two horizontal pedagogy was an course by members of this workshop facilitated other that its to Occupy in of the horizontal pedagogy workshop facilitated meetings of like and and Occupy The of procedures the group together was the practices form a pedagogy which might be as an operationalization of Merrifield’s notion of the encounter through What members of the workshop say about Trump Tower in and work in to the way in which, by taking turns, we began to take that space. A more history of the pedagogy using correspondence from members of with an on of the group about Trump the space in which their took the set of procedures above took through reflection and the members about the space which that the horizontal pedagogy workshop the space: by taking the floor together in Trump the a place of and for some of the The is that as the members of the workshop and discussion their educational process they and their interactions into taking the floor, taking the space. first meeting in Trump before the one who I will in an was a a and some of for the was by This by the that was This phrase about the space has at two the at Trump Tower was and The which is both more and more is that the space Merrifield’s of an interaction the of a “scenic” and a space, a space, which this was the of an “illicit as Merrifield a group discussing in Trump and there in Trump Tower them, leaving them with a of in their to would like to an expression of to all for I up and with the of that is so so to The first to use the when to the meetings in which from a with the writings of The of through meeting and particularly the of the kind of Merrifield in his politics of the encounter. In the meetings that the group thinking together in this and began to the procedures they used to stoke and strengthen those the meeting at Trump Tower on the group a more for the to out some of the it during the first They to and a of the which the to the is an to with and learning at Trump Tower as a emerged from a social is to the of interaction, and the emergence of pedagogical procedures in a place like Trump an of to the of the out a in this would actually look This that the group was not in the but what procedures could be used to the encounter, the encounter, and in with the encounter, all of it at Trump two that operationalization took further and this expresses a of and in the space of Trump a of that space from something and to a space of and The meetings feelings, and the the earlier of talking about human and Trump a that we are making of a an encounter, They their work as an encounter and making a a The procedures for making that encounter took a more in the is a of the members and an to what into something like a for further we together a for discussions.” This which took the and pedagogical procedures, “a was the step of the group the pedagogical they used in Trump to create and the of they for the of The is called of of procedure teachers do when a are the first from horizontal the first of the pedagogical the group used to hold they would be and into the form in the but the of the pedagogy is here in of something through and and a The group a kind of or to their which was advertised in the In the of a for a was and to the community in that Occupy of and are in this with the of the Trump The group the one of the members at Trump as part of one A on to say that about what we are doing at Trump on I to all of for taking part in this with a new way of learning and together is but I it is Again, a of and the space of Trump through the pedagogical the group The way of learning and there in that space, taking that space and making it something the group a on and it are the first from horizontal the first of the pedagogical the group used to hold they would be and into the form in the but the of the pedagogy is here in of something through and and a The group a kind of or to their which was advertised in the In the of a for a was and to the community in that Occupy of and are in this with the of the Trump The group the one of the members at Trump as part of one A on to say that about what we are doing at Trump on I to all of for taking part in this with a new way of learning and together is but I it is Again, a of and the space of Trump through the pedagogical the group The way of learning and there in that space, taking that space and making it something the group a on and it turn-taking and taking the floor of the Occupy Wall The group and to guarantee in making by the floor to all those take turns participants take turns and others take turns with various like taking taking time, and the procedures were the Occupy Wall Street One might be that, turn-taking is so to taking the floor, it is a particularly when space and a right to the all participants are to take the floor, which begins to take space. members of the are to their right to speak in the meeting space, their right to be heard, that of “what’s going on” and the object of attention. Turn-taking has a spatial significance when with Andy Merrifield’s notion of the when takes the floor in a discussion they “become the space” and begin to take the space, it into a moment of bonding and Discussion is an operation for the politics of the pedagogy the political practices of the Occupy Wall Street movement for educational its practices into pedagogical procedures for teaching, learning, and as Occupy Wall Street was one big encounter, as Merrifield claims, horizontal pedagogy procedures with to that encounter, the of the occupation to Trump Tower and it into an and space for For and other members of the the has to mean something to the and and When I of Trump and Trump Tower I of the educational the task force in that space, the way we that space mean something and While we not that space, nor we take it we began to take Trump Tower by discussing there in a certain The thesis of this article is that discussion was an operation which this a right to that of and that pedagogies like horizontal pedagogy can and stoke other politics of encounter not take the space, but the mixed sequence of turns where people took the floor of Trump Tower began to take it by becoming the space. The horizontal pedagogy procedures are a kind of for encountering. obviously the or of a social movement will or its in a group to the encounter in which those procedures were becoming the space in