Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-Capitalism - Lessons from Educators, Artists and Activists

Oct 15, 2026

Current Issues in Comparative Education examines how educators, artists, and activists can create “third spaces” that prefigure a post-capitalist, multi-racial democracy. Framing today’s interregnum through Gramsci, it analyzes capitalism’s morbid symptoms—authoritarian politics, nationalism, inequality, patriarchy, algorithmic control, and climate denial—intensified by COVID-19 disruptions. It then develops third space as a contingent, in-between location and methodology for social justice, emancipation, and coalition politics, highlighting public pedagogies beyond formal schooling.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

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Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-Capitalism

Conceptualizing third space and post-capitalist possibility

Capitalism’s “morbid symptoms” in a global interregnum

Third spaces, public pedagogies, and counter-hegemonic learning

Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE), Volume 25, Issue 2, Special Issue 2023 Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-Capitalism: Lessons from Educators, Artists and Activists Carol Anne Spreen New York University “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. But this current interregnum is not only characterized by the morbid symptoms we have elaborated here. It is also ﬁlled with the potential to usher in a new post-capitalist world (Mason, 2016; Moreno, 2021; Gibson-Graham, 2011), which does not necessarily require the projection of a utopia that has yet to be imagined. Spaces that preﬁgure a post-capitalist world are all around us if we know where to look. In this book, Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-Capitalism: Lessons from Educators, Artists andActivists we seek to explore counter-hegemonic social spaces, or what some call third spaces (Anzaldua, 1987/2021; Bhabha, 1994/2002; Soja, 1996) that have been created largely by social, community and artistic activists to preﬁgure a post-capitalist, multi-racial democracy. These spaces tend to be democratic, grounded in communities, and challenge the hegemony of current forms of economic, political, cultural, and educational domination. Sousa Santos (2018), referring to such spaces as epistemologies of the South, argues that these spaces are emerging both within formal institutions and outside of them. Building on these theorists, we understand third space to be a contingent, in-between location (ﬁguratively and otherwise) that challenges binary and hegemonic forms of thinking. If ﬁrst space represents our cultural identities and everyday lives (which are not static) and second space represents the hegemony of the dominant (or colonial) forces that attempt to deﬁne us, then the third space is a hybrid space in which to explore issues of domination, power, and emancipation. Since these are processes that are never ﬁxed, but rather always in process, ﬂuid, and inﬂected by history, third space is both a concept anda methodology that is committed to social justice and coalition politics as an alternative © 2023, Spreen. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4 . 0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original author and source are credited. Current Issues in Comparative Education 25(2), 108-113 . Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-Capitalism: Lessons from Educators, Artists and Activists space of enunciation and intervention. As a generative locus, it allows us to imagine radical new ways of working together and relating to each other and in the process, ne

FAQs

What does the article mean by “third spaces” in education?

Third space is a contingent, in-between location that challenges binary and hegemonic ways of thinking. It supports learning and coalition politics oriented toward social justice and emancipation.

How does the article describe the current interregnum?

It portrays a period where legitimacy of political classes and parties has eroded, alongside growth of predatory capitalism. The text links this to authoritarianism, nationalism, polarization, inequality, patriarchy, algorithmic control, and related crises.

Why are third spaces important for learning beyond formal schools?

Many third spaces operate outside conventional education settings, acting as “public pedagogies.” They include street art, memory parks, civil-rights and human-rights related sites, and worker cooperatives that enable different forms of knowledge and reimagination.

Oct 15, 2026

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