Radical Pedagogical Homesteading: Returning the ‘Species’ to Our ‘Being’

Abstract

This chapter engages with Marx’s critique of capitalism from the perspective of worker alienation from their own free conscious activity. Given that the unequal power dynamics of social class under capitalism permeate all aspects of our society, Marx’s insight can be applied to academia where much of the labor done by students is ‘estranged labor’, hence estranged learning. Since this estranged learning happens in the classroom and around course work, this chapter invites instructors to explore ways that they can return students’ ‘species’ to their ‘being’ by practicing ‘radical pedagogical homesteading’ (RPH). The inspiration comes from Shannon Hayes’s work Radical Homemakers (2010) in which she argues for the reuniting of the ‘day job’ with the ‘creative self’ in order to serve a “life-giving economy” for the workers and the planet, as opposed to an alienated one that is subsequently destroying both.

I was born in 1964 in New Jesrsey, USA to white middle-class parents, both of whom were from the UK and grew up in London during World War II