Abstract
This article develops a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between schooling and capitalism in the present from a Post-Marxist perspective, critically reconsidering how students engage with schooling and labor in the context of 21st-century capitalism. Drawing on Paul Willis’s classical Marxist ethnographic study, Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs, this article uses key theoretical elements proposed by Willis as a foundation for debate and further development from a Post-Marxist perspective. Willis’s work demonstrates how working-class students ultimately reconcile their roles as workers, despite initial resistance to schooling and awareness of capitalist ideology. His study highlights students' experiences as active subjects engaged in cultural processes that shape their relationship with education and labor. However, changes in the contemporary capitalist landscape require fresh analysis. In response, this article integrates key concepts from the theories of Hardt, Negri, and Žižek to extend Willis's ideas. The first section proposes new ways to understand how schooling functions within emerging modes of production and temporal structures, drawing on the concept of the “social factory.” This is followed by a discussion of penetration, half-rejection, and counter-school culture. Using the notion of “fantasies,” the article rethinks these concepts to explore the relationship between subjects and consciousness.
Author Information
Autthapon Prapasanobol, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan
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