The project Educating the Democratic Imaginary: Utopia, Citizenship, and Critical Pedagogy seeks to conduct a systematic investigation into the symbolic, ideological, and pedagogical structures that shape contemporary forms of citizenship, with particular emphasis on the tensions generated by processes of inclusion, exclusion, and democratic transformation. Drawing on the theoretical framework of critical pedagogy and fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue with political philosophy, the history of education, cultural theory, legal studies, and film studies, the research aims to reconstruct and critically interrogate the ways in which civic imaginaries are produced, reproduced, or transformed within educational and cultural practices.
The central hypothesis is that democratic consciousness does not emerge as a neutral fact, but rather as a historically and ideologically situated construction, marked by both emancipatory potential and normalizing dispositifs. The research is structured around four main axes: (1) the pedagogical construction of civic agency, explored through the categories of tokenism, recognition, and black pedagogy; (2) the philosophical analysis of utopian and dystopian imaginaries, examined also through literary and cinematic representations; (3) the study of continuity and rupture in educational models, from fascist schooling to republican education, with particular attention to the legacy of liberal socialism; (4) the analysis of cinema as a symbolic device of subjectivation and a tool of cultural critique, capable of staging conflicts, memories, and forms of controversial inclusion.
The methodological framework combines archival and documentary research with textual, filmic, and comparative analysis, complemented by interdisciplinary seminars and collaborative practices with schools and cultural institutions. The activity plan envisages the production of scientific essays, a monograph devoted to pedagogical utopias and civic critique, and the compilation of a corpus of case studies including films, educational texts, and archival sources.
In a context marked by political polarization, ecological crisis, and ideological fragmentation, the project aims to reaffirm the centrality of education as a symbolic and cultural practice capable of reactivating democratic imagination and civic participation. Utopia and dystopia are here understood not as naïve projections, but as conceptual and methodological tools for critically rethinking citizenship and for opening educational horizons oriented toward justice, pluralism, and planetary responsibility.