Learning in Love

This chapter uses life story as methodology to hold academic space for love and entanglement as relational pedagogy, countering mainstream Western narratives of emotion and relationships being superfluous or distractive to institutional learning. It argues that intimate connections are critical epistemological sites that have been systematically erased by imperialist systems. Learning into close relationships, which goes hand-in-hand with defining healthy boundaries, is not only a decolonial way of knowing but also revolutionary in its anti-capitalist implications. Within the theoretical frameworks outlined by key feminist pedagogues such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Ursula K. Le Guin, the chapter challenges what is “extraneous” in institutions, arguing that the affective is crucial to dismantling colonial understandings of “legitimate knowledge.” Donna Haraway’s theories of composting, becoming-with, sympoiesis, and situated knowledges are foundational to defining what pedagogic practices based on such knowledge-making looks like, alongside adrienne maree brown’s positing of community as foundational to both education and activism. Anchored in the realities of the author’s lived/living experiences, examples of epistemological connections and practices are offered for readers to diffract into their own pedagogic journeys.