Abstract

This essay discusses methods of pedagogy and educational philosophy stirred up by the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement/occupy-hong Kong Movement at the end of 2014. It situates these events as a way to envision a new type of public university. To this end, the essay proposes a model of ‘wandering scholarship,’ in which educators and activists walk through urban environments and use dialogic esthetics to reclaim them as ‘Commons.’ Wandering means a multisensory exploration and learning based on the historical concept of ‘psychogeography,’ a drifting through sites and interpellation of their embedded ideologies. As opposed to traditions of introspective wandering, this kind of ‘dialogic wandering’ is done within groups and encourages people to talk to fellow-walkers or random bystanders. As will be shown, these modes of wandering while addressing publics were pioneered in the 1960s student movements and also adopted in a unique manner by the young activists of the Umbrella Movement. Dialogic wandering leads to affective languages and embodied learning as opposed to modes of analytical reasoning and logic within higher education. To further study the impact of this aspect of social movements within a university curriculum, it will be shown by means of example how students can meaningfully adopt dialogic wandering to survey people’s affect and ideological positioning within environments.