Studying like a communist: Affect, the Party, and the educational limits to capitalism

Abstract

In an effort to theorize educational logics that are oppositional to capitalism, this article explores what it means to study like a communist. I begin by drawing out the tight connection between learning and capitalism, demonstrating that education is not a subset but a motor of political-economic relations. Next, I turn to the concept of study, which is being developed as an educational alternative to learning. While studying represents an educational challenge to capitalism, I argue that there are political limitations to studying for which we need to account. Specifically, studying is not in itself political, but only represents the possibility of politics. To make this claim and to address these limitations, I turn to Jodi Dean’s work on the communist Party. Dean posits the Party not as a master, director, or prophet, but as an infrastructure of affective intensity that maintains a gap in the order of things. I show that the Party is one way to organize and to defend study. Throughout the article, I illuminate the ways in which educational philosophers can contribute to political movement building by showing, developing, and refining the educational components of politics that many organizers and theorists neglect.

Keywords:

• Study
• affect
• communism
• political education
• Jodi Dean
• learning society

Notes

1. Most educational literature refers to ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘neoliberal capitalism.’ While there is some value in this term, I prefer to speak of capitalism for three related reasons. First, there is a tendency to write about neoliberalism without explaining what neoliberalism is, which can lead to a good deal of confusion and misunderstanding. Second, neoliberalism must always be seen as a particular manifestation of capitalism. And third, neoliberalism is but one facet of the contemporary capitalist order, and paying exclusive attention to it distracts us from the broader picture (see Malott & Ford, 2015). When drawing on particular authors, however, I honor their word choice.