Szembe.szeg

Szembe.szeg –Proletarian Pedagogical Perspectives

Abstract

Critical pedagogy is a kind of conceptual intrigue or strategem. I prefer to call it proletarian pedagogy, as it is, first and foremost, a pedagogy from a proletarian perspective. In much the same way that, within the tradition of operaismo (and the broader workerist current), the key to the mystery of capitalism lies in the proletarian viewpoint. That is, the point of view of our class—the working class (punto di vista operaio)—because the mystery, the “secret”(which, as Tronti says, is simultaneously what the existing order seeks to conceal, its very essence and its weak point), is in fact nothing other than the proletariat itself. From this perspective, capital is grasped as a totality through the lens of the historical struggle to overcome it—a practical standpoint that seizes capital by the roots (and here I am also indirectly suggesting that workerism is a form of critical-pedagogical praxis avant la lettre). This intrigue aims not to deny, resolve, or synthesize the contradictions of capitalist educational relations and their institutional (or dispositive) arrangements. Rather, to borrow Tronti’s words again, it seeks to disturb and intensify these contradictions—so that, as Freire taught, reality may be named, and thus the word can once again become ours. It is this intrigue, this oblique vision, this diagonal viewpoint (the idea that clarity is only possible by looking through the “stains,” as Žižek would say), that I would like to outline—very briefly, yet hopefully vividly enough to glimpse, through the cracks opened by today’s pedagogical conflicts, the deep, internal contradictions that constitute pedagogy itself.