We have received this text by Stewart Martin published in Mute through several channels, with the indication “you might be interested”. And we must thank our informants because the truth is that the article addresses a paradox that we have been interested in for some time: in the current evolutionary stage of the capitalist system, when the idea of an autonomous workforce is highly desirable, what are the consequences and what should be the objective of an emancipatory education?
We said elsewhere the following: “If we consider, as Paolo Virno suggests, that cultural industries have been a testing ground for the new forms of flexible work and life required by post-Fordist production conditions, would it be a completely wrong idea to consider self-education as a testing ground for possible solutions to the new training needs of the current production system? This is not, of course, a call to conservatism, on the contrary, we should become aware and persist in the “emancipatory objectives” of our projects;”.
We insist that, as Stewart Martin very well points out, the problem lies in the fact that the old aspiration of radical pedagogies for a non-disciplinary education, which allows the autonomy of subjects, is now coincident with the needs of capitalism. What should be the “emancipatory objectives” of our projects then? The author does not reach any conclusion that resolves this paradox or answers this question either, but formulates another series of questions that may put us on track: should an emancipatory education be understood as a form of self-determination or as a liberation from self-determination? Should it be free from subjection – understood as the opposite of autonomy – or be an alternative form of subjection? Should education be a determination of life, or an emancipation from the determination of life? Autonomy or heteronomy?
Stewart Martin points out an idea that, although a bit tricky, we find suggestive: at the moment in which all aspects of life have been subsumed into capitalism, including educational systems, capitalism can be understood as a pedagogy in itself. The author suggests that, whatever the emancipatory pedagogies within advanced capitalist societies today, they should engage in the struggle to extract non-capitalist ways of life from capitalist ways of life… But well, the text talks about more things and with much less levity, so we highly recommend reading it 😉