Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-Capitalism: Lessons from Educators, Artists andActivists

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear", Antonio Gramsci.When Antonio Gramsci wrote these lines from his prison cell in 1930, he was mainly referring to morbid symptoms within the Italian left.The working class in Italy had lost faith in capitalism and the authoritarian form it had taken under Fascism.Fast forward to the third decade of the twenty-first century and the world seems to be in a similar interregnum in which political classes and parties have lost legitimacy, but where the path forward is unclear.Globally, over the last few decades, we have seen the growth of a particularly predatory form of capitalism that exhibits many "morbid symptoms".These symptoms, some relatively new and others resurgent, include, among others, authoritarian politics, ethnic and racial nationalisms, polarization and hyper-partisanship; resurgent patriarchy, religious fundamentalism, growing inequality, the financialization of capital, algorithmic control, the privatization of the public sector, climate denial, and growing social surveillance and disinformation.And all of these have been exacerbated by the spread of the Coronavirus and the economic and social disruptions it has caused and continues to cause.