Here is an annotated selection of articles dealing with issues of labor, precarity, capitalism, education, academia or community that have illuminated our discussions in the past months. The selection will change as we gather more information, and you are welcome to contribute with your own findings by sending annotated articles to our contact email academictrap@gmail.com.
THE EVOLUTION OF CAPITALISM
We believe that the crisis of education cannot be separated from the evolution of capitalism into what has been termed “Late Capitalism”, “Neoliberalism”, “Platform Capitalism”, “Debt Culture”, etc. Before delving into concrete educational matters, the following articles lay out the social, cultural, economical and political conditions created by these mutations of capitalism. They are the coordinates in which we move today, and we need to have them in mind in order to devise spaces of resistance:
Berardi, Franco – The Soul at Work: from Alienation to autonomy
Boutang, Yann Moulier – Cognitive Capitalism and Education: New Frontiers
Harney & Moten- The Undercommons
Marx, Karl – Wage Labour and Capital
Olma, Sebastian – Never mind the sharing economy: Here’s Platform Capitalism
EDUCATION UNDER NEOLIBERAL ATTACK
The public education we believe in has been under attack by neoliberal policies since the early 1990’s. Although the consequences and outcomes vary from country to country, there is a general tide of defunding, privatization, worsening of working conditions, tuition hikes and general corporatization of educational institutions. The following articles reflect on this reality, focusing on useful examples that we can wage against those who deny the attack on education:
Aranowicz, Stanley- The Last Good Job in America
Bousquet, Marc- How the University Works
Jewett, Andrew- Academic Freedom and Political Change
Miller, Toby- The Contingency of (some) Academic Labor
PARA-ACADEMIA
It is not all doom and gloom though. There are interesting and inspiring academic initiatives that have appeared in the last years, located both within and outside academia. In this section you can find examples of what can be constructed from the ruins of the academic edifice:
1000 little hammers- Dispatches from the ruins
Ashram, Vydia- The Global Autonomous University
Deborah Withers & Alex Wardrop- Reclaiming what has been devastating
Deborah Withers & Alex Wardrop-The Para-Academic Handbook
Ko, Mi Suk – How an intellectual commune organizes movement
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
In order to resist the co-option of academic knowledge and practices by capitalism we need to devise new pedagogical strategies. In other words, we need to show what education is really about, and confront those who wish to commodify it with the reality of critical pedagogy as a basic social need:
Bell Hooks- Teaching to Transgress
Paulo Freire- Education for Critical Consciousness
Spivak, Gayatri- An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization
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