Battling the Beast and its GERMs: A Pedagogy of Piracy and place of resistance

Abstract

This paper takes up Tim Ingold’s theory of place, which he likens to knots, and the threads from which they are tied are lines of wayfaring … caught up in multiple entanglements. In our ‘wayfaring’ as academics, we have been led serendipitously to knots on the landscape; the tying together of history, philosophy and metaphor to establish a secret place; a temporary place, inhabited by pirates, teachers and storytellers. This is place of resistance against damaging and powerful controlling forces. Resonating with the pirates ‘autonomous zone’, this place can be understood not as an enclosure, but an opening, where boundaries are not borders but horizons, where there is potential for growth and movement.