Marx, Materialism and Education

This chapter wrestles with Marx’s re-centering of the materialist, rational kernel, at the heart of the historical development of society. It aims to understand how dialectical materialism helps us to analyze the social, historical unfolding of knowing, doing and being, in the world. It highlights the tensions and contradictions between identity and non-identity, and how this is reproduced educationally and pedagogically in historically-contingent ways. Such contingency connects to the lived experiences of individuals, communities and ecosystems, suffering at the intersection of political economic, socio-cultural, and ecological catastrophes. It focuses upon entanglements between subjects and objects, in understanding educational structures, cultures and practices. In so-doing, it connects idealism, materialism and storytelling, to show how humanism might emerge from the ways in which lived experiences condition the imposition of the universe of value.