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It investigates how the “power of the empty signifier” can inform education, including occupying the curriculum in higher education as a framework for multidisciplinary learning and teaching. Drawing on adult learning concerns, it outlines sociopolitical conditions that demand political education and critical thinking.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/australian-journal-of-adult-learning-volume-59-number-3-reconceptualising-activism-for-a-pedagogy-of-struggle/592772/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/australian-journal-of-adult-learning-volume-59-number-3-reconceptualising-activism-for-a-pedagogy-of-struggle/592772.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Marglet","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-06","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does the paper claim about Occupy!’s legacy?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It argues that Occupy! became an “empty signifier,” serving as a galvanising mechanism that gathered diverse discontents into a shared symbol for change.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the paper connect Occupy! to education?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It explores the “power of the empty signifier” for education and considers how “occupying the curriculum” in higher education could unify multidisciplinary teaching and learning.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What social and political challenges does the paper say make critical thinking urgent?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It points to a tense moment where politics and truth diverge, arguing that high levels of political education and critical thinking are needed to resist dystopian possibilities.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},592772,1792171182,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":36,"preview_page_count":4},2336477982702,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc","Australian Journal of Adult Learning Volume 59, Number 3, November 2019  \nReconceptualising activism for a pedagogy of struggle: Occupying education, the power of the empty signifier for the future of education  \nCassie Earl  \nLancaster University  \nThe global Occupy! actions gave some pause for thought. At first, some thought that this was a global movement that could change the way politics was conducted and maybe see the end of capitalism as we knew it. The hopes for Occupy! were high, but the highest hopes for the movement were short lived. This paper examines Occupy!’s legacy; what potential remains and where educators might go with it. An argument is presented that Occupy! became an empty signifier:  \na ‘bucket’ of discontent into which thousands of disjointed, dissenting voices and discontents were poured, ranging from the original Wall Street encampment to the Umbrella revolution in Occupy Central. The paper looks at the power of the ‘empty signifier’ as a galvanising mechanism and explores what this could mean for education. The notion of occupying the curriculum in HE will be explored as a unifying mechanism for multidisciplinary teaching and learning.  \nKeywords: Popular Education; Occupy Movement; Dissent; collectivism  \n390 Cassie Earl  \nIn his chapter in a book on popular education, Bud Hall (2012) called the global Occupy! movement of 2011/12 a ‘giant human hashtag’. It is from this notion that I would like to start, although this particular global movement was incredibly complex, what Occupy! actually was at that time and for a while afterwards, was a unifying symbol, a signifier of the possibility of change to come, a stream of consciousness to which anyone could, hypothetically, add their voice: a giant human hashtag. The questions that this paper seeks to theoretically address concern the notion that if this was so, what does that mean? What possibilities does that unleash? And where could it take us? What power does a ‘giant human hashtag’ have in shaping our current and future thinking about how we ‘do’ forms of education in a changing world? What could bethe future for adult education and what sorts of (re)organisation would it take to make that desired future happen? These, and other sociopolitical questions are needed now, in a time when politics and truth are at a strange juncture (Havt-Rabin, & Media Matters, 2016; Wilson,& Swyngedouw, 2015) and critical thinking and high levels of political education are needed to combat a potentially dystopian future for many. Therefore, this paper asks what might be needed to change, not just in our classrooms in adult education and other spaces, but perhaps in our hearts and minds too, in order to fill the empty spaces left by the street eruptions, the movements of the Squares and the global occupations of politics and lives, that left such an impression on so many. What can we capture, still, now a number of years on, of that energy so that its legacy lives on in some guise of resistance? What can we take into our spaces of adult and popular education, our universities and our colleges, that will turn our education into an occupation of ourselves and our communities?  \nI have written more extensively elsewhere about the Occupy! movement, specifically in the UK (Earl, 2013; Earl, 2015; Earl, 2015), about its fulfilled and unfulfilled potential, its prefigurative practices and its promises ofthe creation of a world, as John Holloway (2010) might say, that exists not yet. The discussion in this paper on the actual Occupy! movement, constituted as a global political movement with the specific actions of the physical occupations, with tents and bodies, of squaresand parks around the world, will be brief as it is only included as a specific moment, event, protest, process, as a reference point for the potential it did and, I argue, still could contain. But these discussions are still important, whatever your own opinion on Occupy!, it did something  \nReconceptualising ","cbCaiigUP5tKHK9C","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiigUP5tKHK9C","pdf",194305,16,"English","# Reconceptualising activism for a pedagogy of struggle\n## Occupy! as an empty signifier and its educational implications\n## Occupying the curriculum in higher education\n## Global Occupy! actions and their legacy","[{\"question\":\"What does the paper claim about Occupy!’s legacy?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that Occupy! became an “empty signifier,” serving as a galvanising mechanism that gathered diverse discontents into a shared symbol for change.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper connect Occupy! to education?\",\"answer\":\"It explores the “power of the empty signifier” for education and considers how “occupying the curriculum” in higher education could unify multidisciplinary teaching and learning.\"},{\"question\":\"What social and political challenges does the paper say make critical thinking urgent?\",\"answer\":\"It points to a tense moment where politics and truth diverge, arguing that high levels of political education and critical thinking are needed to resist dystopian possibilities.\"}]","Australian Journal of Adult Learning - Volume 59 - Number 3 - Reconceptualising activism for a pedagogy of struggle | PDF",1792075500]