Democracy Dreams: A Pedagogy of Struggle in Thailand
NYSEAN partner, AAWW recently kicked off their first Syllabus of 2021 on The Margins, a carefully annotated feature put together by the scholar and translator Tyrell Haberkorn that offers resources and reading material on the democracy struggles in Thailand.
What is unfolding on the streets of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen, and many other provincial cities in Thailand since late 2020 is the making real of democracy that dissidents have been dreaming up and working towards since 1932. In doing so, activists are encountering the same risks and dangers, including those of the cold metal bars of prison, the possibility of exile, and the threat of being killed by a regime that does not comprehend the irrefutable dignity of their lives. What follows below is a series of readings and virtual exhibitions to frame the present-day struggle and its significance. The sources are divided into five categories, each named by an action: recording repression, engaging in dissent, creating archives against domination, tracing the unspeakable, and imagining the future. Teaching, and learning, struggle is an active, ongoing process. This is a syllabus for a class in dreaming democracy intended to be attuned to the streets of protest rather than the university classroom.
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