the
Little
Octopus
School
The Little Octopus School is a roaming1, wandering2, and locomotive3 learning ecosystem4 for radical play and improvisation. The Little Octopus School is stewarded by the seven-year old version of Kameelah Janan Rasheed. The school is a rehearsal for other possibilities. The possibilities of an interspecies pedagogy5. The possibilities of a liberatory learning experience rooted in curiosity; the possibilities of play as a radical gesture. We center play as an alternative to extractive or competitive knowledge production. Our offerings are not routine. We move at the cadence of a feral curiosity6 as we build and unbuild our “primitive hypertext”7. The school is organized around a desire to recapture leisure time8.
1. (roaming) Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of relation. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); Betsy Wing’s translator notes
2 + 3. (wandering) + (locomotive) Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019)
4 + 5. (ecosystem) + (interspecies pedagogy) Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. United States: Milkweed Editions, 2013.
6. (feral curiosity) Kenan, Randall and Octavia Butler. An Interview With Octavia E. Butler. Callaloo (1991)
Single number Fr. 15. -Le numéro Fr. 15.-