Interpellation, Counterinterpellation, and Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v9i12.186408Keywords:
Marxism, AlthusserAbstract
In a recent essay in Rethinking Marxism, as part of a special issue on the legacy of Louis Althusser’s thinking, Tyson E. Lewis takes up Althusser’s thinking on schooling, trade unionism, and seminars to delimit the concepts of interpellation, counterinterpellation, and disinterpellation respectively. While Lewis’s work is a crucial first step for understanding the little-known contours of Althusserian pedagogical theory, he does not elaborate key theoretical work done on the concept of counterinterpellation, namely that of the Marxist philosopher of language Jean-Jacques Lercecle. Engaging with Lecercle’s work deepens Lewis’s novel argument around the newly-coined term disinterpellation, which he distinguishes as fundamentally educational, as opposed to interpellation and counterinterpellation, which he calls forms of political activism. If one considers Lecercle’s derivation of the concept, Lewis’s characterization of disinterpellation as educational and counterinterpellation as political activism changes somewhat, and broaches fundamental questions for Marxist educational theory. In this essay - which is a comment on Lewis’s important step towards Althusserian pedagogical theory - I will present Lecercle’s account of counterinterpellation, setting this concept within the larger context of Althusserian philosophy. I then respond to the equivalence Lewis draws between counterinterpellation and interpellation to advocate disinterpellation as a model for Marxist educational theory and practice, a move which poses two important questions for critical educational theory in the Marxist tradition: Is there a forceless force within what both Gramsci and Althusser called balance of forces of the political terrain, and must education be that forceless force? I show these questions and their implications have important theoretical consequences for Marxist educational theory and practice in general, and the specific theory and practice Lewis advocates.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2018 David I Backer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with Critical Education agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).