Introduction: A Specter Haunts Adult Education: Crafting a Marxist-Feminist Framework for Adult Education and Learning

Abstract

Over one hundred years ago, Marx and Engels argued that Europe was haunted by the possibility of an alternative way of organizing social life.¹ Today, the field of adult education finds itself in a complex position vis-à-vis recent transformations in the global economy, the practice of democracy, and the purposes of adult education. We face the onslaught of the demands of the knowledge economy and the rhetorical promises of the policies of lifelong learning. To this challenge we have responded with calls to our historical vocation, the transformation of social conditions, and the cultivation of community. It is clear that today this same ghost is haunting us as well. However, our ability to navigate this difficult terrain is complicated by a growing sense that we are facing the limits of the explanatory power of traditional theoretical paradigms. At the same time, we are increasingly frustrated by the co-optation of the social purposes of adult education by the agendas of capital through constructs such as human-capital theory, the knowledge economy, neoliberalism, and imperialism. Our capacity to resist this co-optation depends on our ability to generate transformative praxis, a unity of theory and action based in truly critical and useful forms of knowledge. Thus, the theories we use to guide our inquiries are of the utmost importance.