The Class in Race, Gender, and Learning

Abstract

This chapter revisits our initial explication of a Marxist feminist framework for educational research and pedagogy, originally published in Educating from Marx: Race, Gender, and Learning (2011). In that text, we argued that any serious consideration of education from a Marxist feminist approach would need to address five key theoretical considerations. These considerations included a theory of the social, a theory of capitalist social relations and difference, a theory of knowledge, a theory of consciousness and learning, and a theory of social change. These five theoretical challenges, based in the ontology and epistemology of dialectical historical materialism, require ongoing engagement with expanding forms of feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and anti-imperialist knowledge. In this chapter we revisit the claims of this framework, renewing our understanding of an explicitly historical materialist feminist analysis. We do so through an analysis of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) work in educational institutions, which allows us to examine how social difference, oppression, and justice are articulated from different theoretical standpoints. We highlight the limitations of an approach to race and gender that builds from a neoliberal reading of oppression and trauma and instead offer a discussion of the co-constitution of social relations of race, gender, and class.