Teaching for Liberation: The Manifesto Assignment as an Example of bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy

ABSTRACT Diversity and inclusion, decolonising the curriculum, and intersectionality have become buzzwords in higher education, with questions raised about what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts in teaching contexts. Despite efforts being made to democratise the curriculum through reading lists and lecture content, pedagogy itself remains largely unchanged. In this article, I provide a theoretical reflection on my experiences of teaching an introductory gender studies unit at an Australian university at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The pandemic intensified existing inequities amongst students, not only outside but also inside the classroom. It is against this backdrop that I swapped the initially set research essay in the unit for a manifesto writing assignment. In this article, I explore the ways in which the manifesto assignment provided an opportunity to take seriously bell hooks’ vision of engaged pedagogy that views education as the practice of freedom and discuss the ways in which it came to represent an example of feminist praxis that assists in fostering a more inclusive classroom, grounded in feminism’s liberatory project.


Introduction
Diversity and inclusion, decolonisation, and intersectionality have become buzzwords in higher education institutions.Rather than promoting genuine diversity, initiatives ranging from diversity statements in job advertisements, diversity training for staff, and using these terms in promotional materials to attract new students do little to address the structural inequities that underpin the modern university.In the context of teaching, many teachers recognise the need to decolonise the curriculum and include the work of scholars from marginalised groups in lecture content and reading lists.Despite these efforts, however, pedagogy itself remains largely unchanged, and critics argue that often decolonisation and diversity in teaching do not go beyond tokenism.In this article, I provide a theoretical reflection on my experiences of teaching an introductory gender studies unit at an Australian university at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.The pandemic intensified existing inequities amongst students, not only outside but also inside the classroom.Lockdowns and university closures meant that not all students had access to the tools required to complete assignments successfully.At the same time, in Australia, like in many countries in the Global North, the political situation was one in which people took to the streets to protest several systemic injustices.This specific set of circumstances urged me to reflect on how we, as gender studies teachers specifically and as feminist teachers more broadly, remain complicit in sustaining an unequal status quo through the assessment tasks we set in our units, despite our commitment to diversity and inclusion, intersectionality, and decolonisation.Against this backdrop, I changed the final and major assessment task in the gender studies unit that was initially set as a research essay to a manifesto assignment.What I hoped to achieve was twofold.I wanted to give students whose learning circumstances were less than ideal an opportunity to complete their final assignment in the unit successfully.And I wanted to empower students who through structural inequities had learnt to remain silent to find their own voices and to use them confidently.Over the course of the semester, I came to see that the manifesto assignment provided an opportunity to take seriously bell hooks' vision of engaged pedagogy that views education as the practice of freedom (1994).
Before I begin my discussion of the manifesto assignment as an example of education as the practice of freedom, I first discuss the limitations of current approaches towards diversity, intersectionality, and decolonisation in higher education teaching.I then explain how the pedagogical approaches deployed in the unit in question already to a large degree addressed these issues, followed by a discussion of how the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged a reflection on the ways in which the research essay sustains inequities amongst students inside and outside of the classroom, and as such may be considered a form of epistemic injustice (Kidd, Medina, and Pohlhaus 2017).Finally, I analyse how the manifesto assignment addresses several key elements of engaged pedagogy: it views students as whole and embodied beings; it destabilises the mind/body split upon which traditional pedagogical practices are built and which positions knowledge as neutral and devoid of affect; it takes students seriously as knowers; it enables a process of conscientisation (Freire [1970(Freire [ ) 2005]]) whereby students come to view their experiences as part of larger histories, struggles, and structures which is key in fostering community; and it blurs the distinction between theory and practice.
My intention in what follows is to highlight that in addition to the material we teach, assessment tasks too are not neutral and are not separate from the institutions in which they are designed and implemented.As gender studies and/or feminist teachers, our pedagogical approaches must therefore take seriously the notion that assessment is a form of gatekeeping whereby those in power define what qualifies as knowledge and who qualifies as knower, and which knowledges and knowers are disqualified both within the university and beyond.With my discussion of the manifesto assignment, then, I hope to shed some light on what it might look like if we as teachers considered the ways in which assessment tasks are interlinked with issues of voice and power, and in doing so, align our practice with our theory characterised by a commitment to a model of education as the practice of freedom (hooks 1994).

Diversity and the University
Before I turn to my discussion of the role of assessment tasks in education as the practice of freedom (hooks 1994), it is necessary to review some of the issues with how diversity, intersectionality, and decolonisation have been approached in university teaching.Universities are not neutral places.They reflect and reproduce their origins as institutions by and for white, heterosexual, cisgender, upper-class, non-disabled men.While in recent years efforts have been made to address this history, critics have pointed out that too often, existing approaches have been structured around a particular understanding of diversity that confuses it with real structural change.In teaching, unit content has been a key space for the implementation of diversity approaches.Examples include adding lecture topics and lecture content to individual units and amending reading lists to include the voices of those in marginalised groups (Moncrieffe, Asare, and Dunford 2019) such as people of colour, Indigenous people, disabled people, workingclass people, queer people, and trans people.While such approaches assist in decentring dominant voices and expose students to the voices of scholars who work and live in the margins and who are otherwise silenced, too often, these are also single-axis approaches that are unable to account for intersecting modes of oppression.Critics argue that these approaches are inadequate, and this is particularly pertinent in the context of the gender studies and feminist classroom.For instance, in their work on the treatment of trans bodies and identities in women's studies courses, Beauchamp and D'Harlingue (2012, 46) critique the all too common combined approaches of the 'additive model', which adds marginalised bodies and identities as an afterthought and treats them as 'the necessary and constitutive outside that allows for the maintenance of hegemonic gender', and the 'space of exception model', 'an included exclusion that functions as a scripted transgression enabling certain women's studies projects and classrooms to take nontransgender subjects as the proper subjects of gender and the regular objects of women's studies inquiry'.This two-pronged approach functions as a pedagogical strategy that brings in trans stories and perspectives as add-ons and uses them to help clarify 'women's issues', rather than centring trans bodies in their own right (Drabinski 2011, 10).Malatino (2015) refers to this as a 'special guest approach' that is grounded in, and an expression of, a politics of diversity and inclusion that does little to help increase awareness of systemic discrimination and of students' and teachers' own complicity in dominant ways of thinking.In the 'special guest approach', it is, furthermore, those who occupy privileged positions who select 'who gets to speak or write and what stories are encouraged or accepted' (Courvant 2011, 26).For Ahmed (2017), such approaches constitute an 'institutional polishing' that ultimately functions to sustain the unequal status quo rather than resulting in genuine critical engagement with, and changes in, the power structures at universities.Makhubela (2018, 3) thus points out that diversity as a decolonial strategy at universities 'is a phantom which in its hollowness embodies deception'.Decolonial approaches are performative, as Persard (2021) argues in her work on the limits of decolonising feminism and the gender studies classroom.The 'mere invocation' of the decolonial now 'promises vindication for feminism' without necessarily addressing colonial structures, while allowing feminism to pat itself on the back for a job well done (17).Such 'metaphorization of decolonization', Tuck and Yang (2012, 1) point out, 'makes possible a set of evasions, or "settler moves of innocence", that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescues settler futurity'.Persard thus warns that At best, the current popularity of the term 'decolonising' in feminist discourse has resulted in a phenomenon that announces radical theoretical intervention without critically interrogating the discursive structures of feminist knowledge production; at worst, this incitement 'to decolonise' redeploys another iteration of neoliberal multiculturalism masquerading as a radical feminist intervention.(2021,15) It is crucial, then, to distinguish between initiatives that (perhaps inadvertently) reinforce existing systems and interventions that seek to question and/or transform these systems.The former are what Valentić (2007, 6) refers to as political interpassivity, 'doing things not to achieve something, but to prevent something from really changing', an example of which is the inclusion of those who have historically been excluded from these systems through a politics of assimilation (Sithole 2016, 26-27).Indeed, simply adding topics or readings to a curriculum without changing the parameters and paradigms through which university units and courses operate sustains particular dominant ways of thinking, learning, and teaching.Such strategy reinforces univocality while interventions that seek to change the system invite 'a multiplicity (or pluriverse) of epistemological frameworks, ways of communicating, and identity positions' (Poe 2022, 168).As Mignolo (2009, 162) thus reminds us, 'it is not enough to change the content of the conversation, [but] it is of the essence to change the terms of the conversation'.Adding more voices is only a first step.We must also consider which practices designed to make silenced voices heard in fact continue the silencing of these voices.Truly centring a diversity of voices can be achieved by systemic change to the courses we teach, for instance through significantly restructuring lecture, tutorial, and reading materials so as to avoid using additive, special guest, and space of exception models, which can show students that voices such as theirs matter.
An important element that is in practice too often unaddressed, or overlooked, is the design of assessment tasks and the role it plays in silencing and uplifting voices.Common assessment tasks in humanities and social sciences disciplines such exams, multiple-choice quizzes, and research essays replicate, to varying degrees, the structures of the white, masculine, upper-class university.Indeed, assessment is not a neutral space.It is a space in which decisions are made about the interrelated questions of who gets to speak, what one gets to speak about, how one gets to speak, and, as such, who is heard.Through assessment tasks, teachers police what counts as (valuable and worthy) knowledge, and thus administrate the privilege of speaking positions.Assessment, therefore, is always a form of gatekeeping.As long as we do not change the terms of the conversation, then, as Mignolo (2009, 162) urges us to do, 'the control of knowledge is not called into question'.He continues, 'in order to call into question the modern/colonial foundation of the control of knowledge, it is necessary to focus on the knower rather than on the known.It means to go to the very assumptions that sustain locus enunciations'.That teachers are gatekeepers should not mean that we must abandon assignments altogether.Rather, as teachers, we must continuously ask ourselves how assessment tasks can be tools that either sustain an unequal status quo that centres the voices of the privileged, or that help us to include the voices of students who are commonly silenced, to empower those voices and their modes of communicating, and foster and support structures in which these voices can be used and heard, not only inside but also outside of the classroom.

Freedom Dreams
In the first half of 2020, I coordinated the first-year gender studies unit Freedom Dreams: Foundations in Gender Studies at an Australian university as a casual employee.Designed by Rebecca Sheehan, the unit is structured around the histories of activist movements, through which students are introduced to key concepts and ideas in gender studies.The reading list contains not only theoretical pieces in gender studies but also a significant number of less conventional texts such as manifestos, media pieces, and poetry, so that students also read the voices of those who have been denied access to the 'canon', prompting reflection on the political character of the production and dissemination of what is commonly recognised as knowledge.The unit thus makes heard voices that too often are excluded, and encourages students to question what counts as knowledge and why.The unit, furthermore, shows students that change does not 'just happen', but that people stand up and demand change.The assessment in the unit consisted of various types of tasks to accommodate different students' learning strengths: tutorial participation (which counted for 10% of the total mark), short weekly multiple-choice quizzes about lecture and reading content (20%), a short essay in which students analyse media and popular culture texts with reference to key concepts in the unit (25%), and a major research essay in which students respond to one of a number of set questions with the option to design one's own question (40%), in addition to a university-set research skills quiz for first-year students (5%).For several years, I had worked as a tutor on the unit and knew that it resonated with students, so in my capacity as a casual unit coordinator, I left the integrity of the unit intact and initially only made minor adjustments to the content in line with my own expertise and approaches to gender studies, and where administrative policy allowed it.
When in mid-March 2020, state governments in Australia implemented restrictions on movement and social interactions in an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19, many universities, including my workplace, closed their doors and instructed teaching staff to move all teaching activities online.As news of the pandemic and potential lockdowns started to spread, it quickly became clear that existing inequities amongst students would intensify (see, for instance, Bennett, Uink, and Cross 2020;Cook et al. 2022;Overgaard and Mackaway 2022).In the week prior to theat that stage still unannounced but anticipatedclosure of the university, I urged students to inform me of any issues around access to material and immaterial tools that would impact their ability to study should the university close its doors, so that together we could work on finding solutions.Over the course of the semester, several students informed me of their lack of access to a suitable and safe study space, lack of (reliable) internet access, significant intensification of caring duties, job losses in their families resulting in financial difficulties and/or increased working hours, and increased (risk of) physical and mental illness, with those already marginalised most affected.In Australia, the first months of the pandemic coincided with the Black Lives Matter protests against racially motivated police brutality and deaths of Indigenous people in custody, fuelled anti-Asian racism, and followed climate change protests after devastating bushfires and governments' refusal to take global warming seriously.As Poe (2022, 163) writes in the U.S. setting, this political context 'brought a reckoning about epistemological and pedagogical frameworks used in higher education', and 'raised important questions about structures of academic writingwhat we teach, how we teach and assess, what are the ends of academic writing'.Against this backdrop, I could no longer justify the research essay as the final and major assignment in the unit: the research essay would increase inequities amongst students due to issues of further reduced access to the resources required to complete it successfully, and the social and political context foregrounded serious questions about its role and purpose in this particular gender studies unit, and gender studies and feminist teaching more broadly.While I had long felt uncomfortable with the ways in which university assessments are organised, it is because I was now employed as a unit coordinator, in combination with the move to online learning that provided a small window in administrative policy, that I could amend the assessment tasks several weeks into the semester, and replace the research essay with a manifesto assignment. 1

The Research Essay
Despite an increasing push in the neoliberal university towards efficiency and standardisation in the design and marking of assignments, the research essay remains a common instrument in the humanities and social sciences.In writing a research essay, students can develop a deeper understanding and knowledge of unit content, and engage in wider debates.It also allows them to learn how to formulate a sustained argument, think critically, find and evaluate sources independently, and write academically.As a mode of academic writing, thinking, and assessing, the research essay is, however, not neutral.Just like other forms of assessment, it benefits some students while disadvantaging others by requiring a particular skillset (Poe 2022;Starkowski 2022;Tracy 2022).Indeed, because most universities are institutions built on white and middle or upper-class value systems, it is commonly students with other backgrounds who lack or have insufficiently mastered such skills and end up penalised and disadvantaged (Starkowski 2022, 309), thus intensifying already existing inequities amongst students.The research essay has a particular set of formal characteristics: students are expected to write in a professional matter-of-fact tone according to the conventions of academic writing, they should use and thus demonstrate knowledge of field-specific language or terminology, the writing must follow a particular formulaic order or logic with an introduction, body, and conclusion, and the ideal paragraph discusses one aspect of a topic connected to the rest of the piece through topic and linking sentences, amongst other things.Those who have mastered such skills are rewarded with good grades and ultimately a degree.The research essay is thus part of a 'hidden curriculum', 'a term that denotes the resources, norms, and values that are inaccessible to students who have not received guidance on these aspects of university academics' (Starkowski 2022, 300).While for scholars such as Starkowski, the solution to this problem is that we teach students the hidden curriculum in order to address inequities in student success rates, this is, in the end, as I will go on to show, an assimilative process that does little to address unequal structures of knowledge production. 2  Good research essays, like other academic writing, refer to current scholarly literature and debates on a particular topic, published in field-specific academic journals and books.As such, there is an emphasis on citing the 'right' kind of sources, sources that are considered to meet 'rigorous' academic standards.However, what this does not take into account is that access to scholarly publication is not equal (see, for instance, Bruining and Tack 2022;Smith 2018).Those who are already marginalised thus do not have access to those spaces in which they can produce and publish the kind of knowledge that in the academy is viewed as 'rigorous', which means that it cannot be cited by students.Students are thus expected to master and cite ideas and sources that are often reflective of dominant narratives, which further cements these narratives as better, more right, good knowledge.It, furthermore, discourages students whose experiences are reflected in these narratives from engaging with knowledges and ways of knowing different to their own, while demanding of those from marginalised backgrounds that they engage with knowledges and ways of knowing that do not reflect nor resonate with their lived experiences and realities.To draw from Ahmed's (2007, 162) work, students from marginalised groups cannot truly extend into an institution that was not built for their success.This is 'the politics of who gets to be at home, who gets to inhabit spaces, as spaces that are inhabitable for some bodies and not others, insofar as they extend the surfaces of some bodies and not others'.The research essay thus risks silencing and amplifying particular voices and, as such, grants authority to speak authentically only to certain groups of students.Because work by those who have traditionally been excluded from the institution of the university is commonly viewed as less legitimate and rigorous, they are denied the power to speak unless they have been assimilated into dominant structures of form, content, and citation.
The research essay, then, performs a kind of epistemic injustice.For Kidd, Medina, and Pohlhaus, this term refers to those forms of unfair treatment that relate to issues of knowledge, understanding, and participation in communicative practices.These issues include a wide range of topics concerning wrongful treatment and unjust structures in meaning-making and knowledge production practices.(2017,1) In eliminating particular voices, ways of knowing, experiences, realities, and forms of communicating, the research essay ultimately risks destroying already marginalised social identities and groups.It may thus be considered what de Sousa Santos refers to as epistemicide.de Sousa Santos (2014, 238) explains, 'dominant epistemologies have resulted in a massive waste of social experience and, particularly, in the massive destruction of ways of knowing that did not fit the dominant epistemological canon' and, as such, 'the destruction of knowledge … involves the destruction of the social practices and the disqualification of the social agents that operate according to such knowledge' (153).In the context of an academy that is marked by access inequities, at best, then, the research essay does not sufficiently question which voices are heard and which knowers, knowledges, experiences, and ways of knowing and communicating knowledge count, and, at worst, it eliminates these voices and social identities that could speak from alternative epistemologies and experiences.

The Manifesto Assignment: Education as the Practice of Freedom
The characteristics of research essays are, of course, not universal nor unchangeable.Research essays can be (re)imagined, and taught, in different ways.For instance, they could incorporate critical reflections on positionality and power dynamics; promote experimentation with form, language, and tone; and cite from a broader range of source types.Teachers can model such approaches to research and writing through lecture content and reading lists.In this way, the tools students develop by writing research essays can be used to challenge dominant epistemologies.My point in what follows, then, is not to suggest we must do away with the research essay altogether.Instead, it is to encourage reflection on a common assessment task and the inclusions and exclusions through which it operates.As teachers, we must consider how we can practice epistemic care in all aspects of our teaching, including in the design of assignments.Manifesto writing, I argue, is one way to resist the destruction and disqualification of social practices and social agents.Fahs perhaps best expresses what I had in mind when I designed the manifesto assignment: Feminist manifestos level the playing field of knowledge-making, in ways far beyond the inadequate contemporary practices of mere inclusion of intersectional work by diverse scholars.I like to imagine feminist manifestos most basically as a genre of class-based rage, a fight against the ruling class, against unbridled wealth, against the policing of language and text, against the practices that exclude certain kinds of voices and certain kinds of thinking under the guise of respectability and politeness.(2020,15) The assignment, then, was an experiment in epistemic disobedience (Mignolo 2009;2011) that 'takes us to a different place, to a different "beginning"' (Mignolo 2011, 45) in education.
The manifesto assignment consisted of three parts: a brief introduction that outlines the manifesto's focus (what is the kind of social change it addresses, in which context, and why), the manifesto itself, and an inspiration list.To help students prepare for writing their own manifesto, I reminded them to keep the assignment in the back of their minds as they watched the lectures, engaged in tutorial discussions, read set and recommended readings, and lived their lives.In this process, students would identify an issue related to gender and sexuality that they strongly felt required urgent social change.I encouraged them to reflect on why specifically they felt passionate, angry, hopeful, about this issue and why it was significant for them and in their worlds, so they could tap into these emotions when they started to write their manifesto.I, furthermore, encouraged students to consider how a piece of writing can bring about that change: what might be possible, how can we make it happen, how can we show othersand which otherswhat this change might look like?As part of the required and recommended readings in the unit, students read a number of manifestos related to gender, sexuality, race, and class over the course of the semester.In their reading, they paid attention to the content, style, and format of these manifestos, and how these elements are connected.Questions I asked them to consider were, amongst others: what does the manifesto look like visually; how is it structured and which different elements does it contain; does it use any rhetorical devices and to what effect; what is the tone of the manifesto and which kind of language and stylistic devices do(es) its author(s) use; do different manifestos have different forms, structures and styles, and what are the effects of these differences; is its topic rather broad or structured around one particular issue; what is its intended audience?In doing so, I wanted students to consider how (their) writing can bring about change, and to experience themselves as agents of change.The inspiration list functioned as a record of this process.In this referenced list, students discussed how seven of the unit readings (of which three could be swapped for lecture segments) had inspired them in writing their own manifesto.They were not required to conduct additional research beyond the materials provided to them in the unit for reasons of equity, since, as I mentioned earlier, several students did not have access to a (reliable) internet connection which meant that doing additional research was inaccessible to them.Students would, however, not be penalised for including additional sources that were not part of the unit materials.In the manifesto itself, in keeping with the manifesto format, students did not have to reference their sources.
In the process of guiding students through this assignment, I came to see how it resonates with bell hooks' vision of the classroom in her work on transformative education, in particular engaged pedagogy.In what follows, I explain how the manifesto encapsulates several interconnected tenets of hooks' education as the practice of freedom (hooks 1994).Taken together, I hope to show how the manifesto assignment aids in expanding the definition of who counts as knower and what counts as knowledge and, furthermore, how, in fostering voice, assessment tasks can guide students in the process of standing up for themselves and others in ways that do not replicate a neoliberal individualising of structural issues.

Students as Embodied Beings
In her introduction to Burn it Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution, Fahs (2020, 2) writes that while the 'explosive anger' feminists in the late 1960s expressed through the writing of manifestos brought about many changes that women today still benefit from, 'an eerily familiar set of conditions has now presented itself' that 'create increasingly dire conditions for nearly all oppressed people' (3).A return to manifesto writing is timely, Fahs argues, because '[h]ow else are we supposed to make sense of our own anger, our sense of confusion and implosion, our imminent feelings of doom and stifled possibilities?' (3).Indeed, manifestos are 'hotblooded and full of passion, unreasonable and "unprofessional" in tone, and revolutionary in intent' (Fahs 2019, 34), and are grounded in urgent affective experiences.Research essay writing, on the other hand, with its requirement of rational and balanced consideration whereby the student practices a kind of removal of parts of themselves from the argument, supports compartmentalisation (hooks 1994, 16).The manifesto assignment rejects such a white masculinist approach to writing that objectifies not only the student but also the teacher.When we ask our students to write a manifesto, then, we ask them to come to the table as whole and embodied beings.As I mentioned earlier, the assignment also included an inspiration list, in which students described how particular sources inspired them in writing their manifestos.This was designed not merely as an exercise in referencing ideas, but as an embodied activity through which students could express how in their writing they felt connected at the intellectual, emotional, and visceral level to themes, modes of writing, emotions, and so on in the work of others.
Manifestos thus reject the mind/body split upon which many western education systems, systems of knowledge production, and thus assessment tasks, are built.Indeed, as hooks (1994,17) points out, only '[t]he person who is most powerful has the privilege of denying their body'.In his philosophical investigation of western control over knowledge production, Maldonado-Torres (2007), importantly, links 'the coloniality of knowledge' to 'the coloniality of Being'.He argues that Descartes' cogito ergo sum 'presupposes two unacknowledged dimensions.Beneath the "I think" we can read "others do not think", and behind the "I am", it is possible to locate the philosophical justification for the idea that "others are not" and do not have being'.He thus reformulates it as: 'I think (others do not think, or do not think properly), therefore I am (others are-not, lack being, should not exist or are dispensable)' ( 252).As hooks (1994,193) points out, '[o]ne of the central tenets of feminist critical pedagogy has been the insistence of not engaging the mind/body split', and Maldonado-Torres shows that what is at stake is being itself.
Furthermore, when we ask students to come to the table as whole, embodied beings, we ask them to be vulnerable and to take risks (hooks 1994, 21).Writing a manifesto is to put one's whole being on the line.That means that we cannot expect or ask of our students to write a manifesto without providing a space in which they feel safe to do so.In our role as teachers, we must therefore work to build a safe infrastructure throughout all aspects of our teaching.This means that we must ourselves model vulnerability and risktaking in front of our students (hooks 1994, 21) by, for instance, being the first to bring our own stories and experiences into the classroom so that we can foster an environment of mutual sharing and mutual vulnerability.This act of mutual sharing enables empowerment and growth for both student and teacher (hooks 1994, 21) and thus, rather than diminishing the classroom, a pedagogy structured around wholeness of mind, body, and spirit (Thich Nhat Hanh in hooks 1994, 14) enriches it.In this process of guiding students in developing their assignment, traditional conceptualisations of knowledge are questioned: knowledge can be affective, and affect can count as knowledge.Not only the definition of knowledge is challenged but also that of the 'knower' is expanded: students who have traditionally been excluded from the position of knower learn that their affective experiences are valid and valuable and that they, too, have a voice with which they can speak.

Students as Knowers
The manifesto assignment starts with the student, then: it takes seriously their reality, their emotions, and their knowledge of the world.The student is the expert and the authority on the topic they write about and, as such, the manifesto teaches them that their knowledge and their voice matters.Just like Fahs (2019, 35), '[t]oo often, I think, academic writing strips students (and to a lesser degree, faculty as well) from their own sense of authority about the world'.Through traditional academic writing practices, which we perhaps unwittingly promote with research essay assignments, students learn that academic writing is a hierarchical process in which they have to earn the right to take up a position and make claims: they must identify the right body of literature, read and master these texts and the ideas they present, and identify 'big names'.We must, however, be careful not to assume that students can claim the position of knower, even if they have 'mastered' the literature and as such have 'earned' this position.It is those in positions of privilege, and who replicate dominant standards, whose knowledge is published (Smith 2018;Tuck 2018), which limits the kinds of theories and experiences students can read to inform their own thinking.This raises questions about which students are more likely to see their realities reflected in the available literature, and how this impacts if they can feel like knowers and make confident claims in the research essay.The research essay, then, may not provide sufficient opportunity to foster voice in all students, nor to, as Ramos and Roberts (2021, 29) write in their work on wonder as pedagogy, generate 'other ways of knowing-being-doing that work towards disrupting feminist complicity with coloniality'.
Because the manifesto 'conveys the message that there is no other reality but the author's reality' (Fahs 2019, 34) and starts from their anger at oppression, students who are otherwise marginalised through academic processes of knowledge production and publication are encouraged to view their own knowledge and experiences as worthy and valid.Throughout the semester, as they were considering their manifesto assignment, students were guided to consider whose voices we hear and whose voices count, and how structural inequities impact on who not only is heard but also who learns to speak, feels comfortable speaking with claim to authority, and how that impacts on their own lives and ability to speak.In my earlier discussion of the research essay, my point was not to suggest that engagement with others' work and ideas is not important.On the contrary, that is what the inspiration list section of the assignment explicitly addresses.Rather, my point is that the work that is considered valuable, valid, and worthy in a university setting functions through mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that silence the voices of those who are already marginalised.Ron Scapp, in dialogue with hooks, points out that '[w]hen one speaks from the perspective of one's immediate experiences, something's created in the classroom for students, sometimes for the very first time.Focusing on experience allows students to claim a knowledge base from which they can speak ' (in hooks 1994, 148).While research essays do require critical discussion and analysis, they are not sufficient in countering the inequities in who can lay claim to the position of knower and thus may, perhaps unexpectedly so, contribute to what Freire ([1970) 2005]) calls 'the banking system of education', in which students are treated and encouraged to view themselves as passive consumers.

Conscientisation and Students as Agents in Community
Unlike the banking system of education, the manifesto assignment is an example of what Freire ([1970) 2005]) refers to as conscientisation, a process in which students (further) develop the critical skills to understand how their lives are enmeshed in larger histories, struggles, and structures of oppression and liberation.As they read other manifestos and write their own, students go through a process of conscientisation through which they come to view their individual experiences as part of a larger struggle for liberation from oppression.They also begin to connect with movements that have been instrumental in demanding social change and, as such, students are inspired to view themselves as part of a community.Community is an integral part of hooks' pedagogy because 'a feeling of community', she writes (1994,40), 'creates a sense that there is shared commitment and a common good that binds us'.
'[O]ne way to build community in the classroom is to recognize the value of each individual voice ', hooks (1994, 40) explains.The manifesto assignment takes seriously this point, as it is structured around students as knowers and thus the recognition of students' individual voices, precisely so that students may come to feel belonging not only in the classroom but, by extension, also to communities in the world outside of the classroom.When in writing their manifesto, students feel their voices are recognised and feel part of a community, they are able to see themselves as agents of change in a shared project for freedom, in which we all work together to produce knowledges that have been displaced from view.Indeed, for hooks, Freire 'affirmed that education can only be liberatory when everyone claims knowledge as a field in which we all labor' (1994, 14; my emphasis).However, for us all to be able to perform that labour, in the classroom and beyond, students must feel they are part of a community working towards a common good, which hinges on helping them develop a felt sense that their voices are recognised.The manifesto assignment not only recognises students' own voices by taking students seriously as whole, embodied knowers but, furthermore, as a tool of conscientisation it assists students in understanding that silence, the inability to speak, is not inherent to specific individuals as neoliberal models of personal responsibility and failure would have it but, rather, is structurally produced through operations of power.The manifesto assignment, thus, attempts to create a knowledge space in which all can labour and thus feel belonging to a community.
Such process of having one's view of the world altered and coming to see the world through structures of oppressionor, conscientisationcan be a painful experience for students (hooks 1994, 43).As we as teachers guide students through this process and their assignment, it is important that we hold space for their pain when they let go of old ways of thinking, seeing, and experiencing.This, too, is a matter of voice and acknowledging students' embodied knowledges and experiences.The manifesto itself provides students with a space where this pain can go, where they can name their pain, explore it, and transform it into hope.Simultaneously, because writing a manifesto connects students with others like them and encourages them to view themselves as part of a community, students can feel held by this community as they imagine different worlds.

Students at the Intersection of Theory and Practice
In centring students' embodied knowledges, and thus raising questions about what counts as knowledge and who counts as knower, the manifesto assignment touches upon another tenet of hooks' pedagogy: the institutionally (re)produced gap between feminist theory and practice.Theory, hooks points out, is what is valued and recognised within the university and, as such, has become a tool to help gain legitimacy for feminist scholarship within the (patriarchal) structures of the academy.The effect is, however, that work by marginalised groups such as that of women of colour, and particularly when that work is written in such a way that is accessible to a wide audience, is often delegitimised as 'not really theory' and hence not valuable.But of what use is feminist theory, hooks (1994,65) asks, if it is so jargonistic and dense that students do not understand what it means and leaves them feeling humiliated, and if it is disconnected from their lives outside of the classroom?Feminist theory conceived as a mechanism of institutional recognition in the academy, then, establishes hierarchies and an intellectual class system (hooks 1994, 64), which undermines feminism as a movement.A rejection of theory is, however, not the solution: to move away from theory, just as the move away from practice, would only further reinforce the notion that there is an inherent and necessary split between theory and practice that cannot and/or should not be bridged.
In the classroom, we must take seriously the idea that theory and practice are enmeshed in a reciprocal relation in which one enables the other (hooks 1994, 75), because to separate theory and practice would be to 'deny the power of liberatory education for critical consciousness, thereby perpetuating conditions that reinforce our collective exploitation and repression' (hooks 1994, 69).Indeed, to separate them would be to confirm the banking system of education rather than guiding students through a process of conscientisation (Freire [1970(Freire [ ) 2005]]).The manifesto assignment attempts to bridge this gap.Manifestos might not be considered as rigorous, as theoretical, or as scientific as a research essay, or as formal in its testing of knowledge as quizzes and exams, and as such 'merely' part of feminist activist practice.However, turning to de Sousa Santos, I propose that it is precisely as an activist practice that the manifesto can be conceptualised as a critical theory.He writes: A critical theory is premised upon the idea that there is no way of knowing the world better than by anticipating a better world.Such anticipation provides both the intellectual instruments to unmask the institutionalized, harmful lies that sustain and legitimate social injustice and the political impulse to struggle against them.(2014, vii) Manifestos are activist instruments and, as such, start from a deeply felt sense of urgency that the world must change, that we must struggle to create better worlds.In this process students develop the tools to unmask how oppression operates by drawing from their own experiences and connecting them to the critical knowledges and tools they have acquired over the course of the semester.They develop new knowledges, new theories about the world in this anticipation of better worlds-to-come.To embrace the notion that there is no better way of knowing the world than through anticipation of a better world requires of us, as teachers, then, that we learn to trust our students as embodied knowers.Indeed, '[w]hen our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice' (hooks 1994, 61).Theory-practice comes to 'serve a healing liberatory function' (hooks 1994, 65), rather than being a system that sustains hierarchical processes of knowledge production in the university structured around the continued silencing of marginalised students.

Concluding Thoughts
Many students' manifestos drew from their lived experiences of inequity and oppression, and the issues they addressed varied greatly.For instance, a number of students addressed experiences of inequity in queer spaces, such as the pressure placed on male-identifying cross-dressers in queer spaces to choose between transitioning or performing masculinity exclusively; and the connections between capitalism and whiteness in queer life and movements that annul the right to existence of queer people of colour.Many international students wrote about gender inequities in their home countries: a call to join and support the feminist movement in Mexico in light of rampant rates of femicide and domestic and sexual violence against women; a call to action against toxic masculinity and gendered power struggles in Pakistan; and an analysis of arranged marriages in India.Other manifestos addressed class issues such as, for instance, period poverty.Sexrelated inequities were also addressed by students who, for instance, wrote about race dynamics in sexual encounters; the need to include women's sexual pleasure, including that of women of colour, in sex education in schools which focus too much on reproductive capacities in fear-based ways; but also, the dominance of the couple relationship was addressed in one student's 'post-single' manifesto.While many of these topics were not explicitly taught in the unit, students nonetheless drew on and connected with core themes, concepts, approaches, activist movements, and writing styles from the unit materials, often in new and creative ways.
Of course, the assignment comes with several limitations, some of which are structural while others are specific to the context of online a-synchronous learning during a pandemic lockdown.While writing a manifesto gave students the opportunity to see themselves as part of a community of like-minded people who stand up for what they believe in, the process remained a solitary activity.Discussion forums for students to exchange their thoughts, one-on-one Zoom meetings with their tutor and/or unit coordinator, emails, and online drop-in sessions on Zoom with their unit coordinator and other students, are not enough to truly foster community in the here-and-now.Giving students an opportunity to present their manifesto to the class, followed by a discussion, and perhaps providing opportunities to take their manifestos into the world might help counter this, as would assigning students to small discussion groups at the start of the semester, whether online or in-person.A number of students also felt anxious and insecure in the process of preparing their manifesto, as was evident in the multiple messages I received from students looking for reassurance.I received more questions than usual from students who wanted to hear directly from me that they were on the right track.
Other questions were more specific.In terms of the topic, students wanted to know if their piece could be informed by their personal experiences, or if they should select a topic more distanced from their lives.They also wondered if they could write the manifesto using first-person pronouns or if they should write in the third person as they thought it would be more critical and analytical.Students were also explicitly concerned that the tone of their manifestos was too emotional, and wanted to check that they were correct in their understanding that a manifesto could be less academic and more emotional in tone.Some of these students clarified that they were confused because it was, after all, a university assignment.Another question students raised multiple times was whether the manifesto should be set in an Australian context, or if they could address an issue from, in the case of international students, their home countries or, in the case of Australian students with migrant backgrounds, from their families' countries of origin.What was noteworthy here, was that these questions came from students with ties to countries in the Global South.Each of these questions had already been answered in the assignment instructions, in lectures, in tutorial forums, and in drop-in sessions on Zoom.That these questions nonetheless continued to be asked and students needed ongoing reassurance, it seems to me, shows that not only is it difficult to express oneself in a new format, but that to do so as a whole embodied being, and/or when one is not used to having a voice, in an environment one has been taught only values particular kinds of knowledge, causes feelings of discomfort.There was, of course, also the impact of all the unknowns and difficulties caused by the pandemic which likely exacerbated feelings of insecurity and anxiety.A final limitation worth addressing is the risk of students writing what I refer to as the 'saviour manifesto', with a small number of students submitting manifestos in which they spoke for others, despite conversations throughout the semester about voice and power more broadly, and the slippery slope of writing a manifesto as an ally.
My intention in this article, then, has not been to suggest that the manifesto assignment is the be-all and end-all in equitable teaching practice, nor to insinuate that gender studies and/or feminist teachers do not already engage in a consistent questioning of power structures in their research and teaching.It is also not to argue that the research essay cannot help students to develop important writing, argumentation, reflection, and critical thinking skills that allow them to question structures of power.Rather, my discussion here should be taken as a nudge towards further reflection on assessment tasks as a space in which power relations can be (re)produced or challenged.Assignments can be tools that either sustain an unequal status quo that centres the voices of the privileged, or that help us to empower and amplify the voices of students who are commonly silenced and foster and support structures in which these voices can be used and heard, inside and outside of the classroom.The manifesto assignment, as I have discussed here, does this by acknowledging the wholeness of students and as such centring them as knowers in their own right.The assignment continues the process of conscientisation set in motion in the unit, whereby students come to connect their lives to broader systems of oppression and encourages them to become agents of change.By connecting with agents of change past and present, students begin to see themselves as part of a community of people who have come to voice and risen up to imagine and fight for better worlds.It shows students that the classroom is intricately connected to their lived realities and the world, and in doing so can foster excitement for learning (hooks 1994, 8).Rather than pandering to an increasingly dominant institutional logic of producing 'job-ready graduates', the manifesto assignment, as an application of engaged liberatory pedagogy, teaches 'knowledge about how to live in the world' (hooks 1994, 15): it teaches students to demand, in keeping with de Sousa Santos (2014), that they are heard on their own terms, and to refuse that their knowledges and being are destroyed by dominant epistemologies.

Notes
1.I am grateful to Rebecca Sheehan who generously offered her time and provided guidance as I designed this assignment.2. I have, since I began teaching, taken the time to teach students how to write an essay precisely with the aim of addressing inequities, and I do not suggest that in the current system, teaching students these skills is not important.However, merely working within this system does not sufficiently address how the system itself (re)produces inequities.