Adrienne Adams
Johnson 104, Spatial Justice’s Classroom
Departing from traditional social science approaches to gentrification and displacement, Spatial Justice has taken humanist approaches to generate new perspectives on this pervasive issue in Highland Park. Unlike the social scientist’s explicit desire to maintain a sense of objectivity by means of methodology, the course’s humanist approach directly engages with the question of how power dynamics between the class and community partners impact the types of knowledge and collaboration possible. Within this reflective questioning, the course has examined how to resist the academic tendency to transform persons facing pressing social issues into “objects of study.” In this process of personal and collective reflection, which occurred mainly through class discussion, the class faced the challenge of navigating how the spatial location of the classroom mediated the direction of our reflection. Although the class included interactions with activists in Highland park and off-campus visits such as the mural tour, the reflections of these events primarily resided in the classroom. Spatial Justice taking place in one of Occidental’s classrooms makes sense logistically, given that many students reside on-campus and it is the common place of learning; however, the specific connotations linked to the classroom space pose potential roadblocks to the class. Traditionally, the classroom is the site where a group of students study a particular unit of analysis. Furthermore, studying suggests a vertical relationship between the researcher and unit of examination in which the researcher looks down at the unit. This critical distance typically dissuades opportunities of sharing emotional experiences. Importantly, each course’s relationship or critical distance to the unit of analysis varies according to the multiple identities and backgrounds represented among faculty and students. That said, I am not suggesting that all classrooms functions in a homogenous or singular manner, but rather highlight how the traditional classroom mediates how emotions, personal narratives, and critique are expressed and perceived. Returning to the discussion of challenges, the course reflections at certain moments shattered this conception of the classroom as an impersonal, objective space. During Celestina Castillo’s visit to the class, many students incorporated their personal relationship to gentrification into the discussion, while others asked difficult questions regarding the role of Occidental students. This emotionally charged space enabled to extend beyond the traditional intellectual sense and into an affectively dense and bodily experience. Other times, the course reflection left me with a feeling that our class was studying Highland Park. While discussing our experiences taking photographs of businesses in Highland Park, the class mainly focused on how ridiculous and out of the place the predominantly white hipsters appeared in this area. Throughout this discussion, I felt a sense that the students used the critical tools and language gained from Spatial Justice and other contexts to engage in a process of disidentification from the so-called gentrifiers. In other words, students occupying the role of “expert” enabled us to critically distance ourselves from those that are perpetuating the problem. In that sense, those potentially facing displacement and Highland Park in general becomes an object of study in which students frame in a particular way for our own benefit. Moreover, the distance between the classroom space and pockets of Highland Park facing displacement and Highland Park in general offered students the opportunity to take on this role. While my observation may be speculative, I wonder how this opportunity resides on an emotional and affective level. Meaning, since students feel a sense of comfort within the classroom space, they feel as if they are able to lobby certain critiques. In the future iteration of this course and other community-based learning settings, it would be fascinating to rethink the relationship to not only the traditional classroom structure, as Spatial Justice and other CCBL courses have, but also consider how location of reflections impact educational outcomes and community partnerships.=======================================
Bio
Adrienne Adams is a third year Critical Theory and Social Justice major. Through engaging in queer archival and oral history interviewing, they have begun to interrogate the particular cultural moments in which queer and trans persons of colors’ expressions of experiences and resistance are rendered (il)legible. Thanks to this class, Adrienne has expanded their conceptions of the complexities of academic scholars pursuing community-based partnerships