Learning from San Juan: Emancipatory Education and the Prefigurative Politics of Art History

I found myself in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the official dawn of the post-truth era. I was there on that fateful Tuesday in November 2016, having gone to seek out artists and activists who might collaborate with me on a class exploring art as an engine for social change. In my early encounters the day after the election, I was struck by how few people seemed to share my frustration and despair. I misinterpreted it as indifference, the ambivalence of a postcolonial colony. I could not have been more wrong. Over the course of the day, myriad small acts of resistance and self-determination revealed a robust civil society working...