Mapping Micro-Utopias: Pedagogies for Therapeutic Dialogues across Spatial Imaginaries and Memory Cultures

This paper is the culmination of dialogue as we each develop two therapeutic pedagogical tools for use in crisis. Pojuner discusses their use of mental sketch mapping, a critical cartographic practice, in situated acts of trespass, making visible the ‘terra incognita’ produced by dispossessive bordering practices. Drawing on Paul Ricœur, Nicolas Bourriaud, and Christopher Bollas, Vostakolaei reconceptualises ‘micro-utopias’ not only as local and actualised political projects, but speculative images, stories and affective moments enabling recognition through and beyond territorialised identities. We demonstrate how our dialogue has occurred across cityscapes and within our communities, who organise in times of climate-colonial-capital crisis.

Tracing interconnected sites of colonial violence and memory cultures, we follow Ortiz and Gómez Córdoba (2024) to show territory is a process wherein “epistemological disputes take place, and where political agencies are constructed”. Micro-utopias are culturally grounded moments produced in situ, where reconciliation, justice, and solidarity are possible and constituted across places of memory. Through the processual, always incomplete form offered by mental sketch mapping, we show how micro-utopias are made visible. In representing always-heterogeneous property relations and personal memories, this cartographic practice is a form of cultural translation across pedagogical contexts — a means of reclaiming agency over individual and collective memories of dispossession. Pojuner discusses their recent use aiding legal testimonies by English Gypsies and Irish Travellers who have successfully contested the criminalisation of nomadic practices in the High Court.

Integrating mental sketch mapping with micro-utopic thinking, we offer examples of how such pedagogies have enabled territorial healing. We are applying these tools in emergent political education projects — a Museum of Enclosure in England, and a mentorship programme for Iranian diaspora on First Nations lands — so we especially welcome commentary and further dialogue in these early stages of development.