Leadership and the power of others: Re-thinking educational leadership with Magical Marxism and Spinoza

This chapter focuses on the interaction between a public-sector and community-based initiative to address the question of how scholars and practitioners might move beyond the discursive and practical turn to leadership, so as to think and practise otherwise. This case is explored through the lenses of Andrew Merrifield’s Magical Marxism and Etienne Balibar’s reading of Spinoza. The aim is to move beyond leadership, opening up a diverse repertoire of strategies, practices and rationalities for leadership as inspired forms of radical imagination and collective agency underpinned by an affirmative ontological understanding of human motivation.