Repair tables, broken vacuum cleaners and posters: Weaving new worlds together in response to breakdowns

Abstract

When people decide to gather and repair broken devices together, it seems obvious that repairers and visitors gain all kinds of instrumental competences (e.g. repair knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and that they can also experience deeply a transformative learning process about, for example, the need to keep planetary boundaries within the sustainable limits of life. In this article we approach the educational dimension of repair cafés differently and sketch the outlines of a minor public pedagogy. We analyze repair cafés as situated and entangled assemblages of both human and non-human actors; assemblages that are always very local and that need to be analyzed as specific, designated places—and times—where something is at stake. The central focus of this article is on substantiating this notion of a minor public pedagogy by offering a detailed analysis of the particular pedagogic moments that emerge in these encounters between humans and things. The navigational capacity of this public pedagogy is minor in nature as it doesn’t create clear signposts of where to go as humans. Instead, it engenders many moments of and propels humans into a sensory sensitivity for inhabiting the world in the here-and-now.