“When We’re in Spaces Among People of Colour, Your Ideas Just Flow”: Politicized Trust and Educational Intimacy in Activist Spaces

Abstract

This paper examines how relationships of educational intimacy and politicized trust were constructed in an activist community. Bridging theories of politicization and activist becoming with emerging research on the significance of relationships for identity development and solidarity, this paper brings micro-interactional data of how relationships are constructed and why they matter. Tracing a group debrief by members of colour within the Fossil Free UofT activist group allows us to see how humour constructed intimacy alongside intense disclosure and collectivized grievance construction. This contributes to work in the learning sciences to demonstrate the political contexts and consequences of learning and provides tools for activists to organize learning ecologies for educational intimacy and politicized trust.