Naming the capitalist elephant in the room: negative pedagogy.

• In Event: Marx, Education, Today

Abstract

This paper argues for the need to recover class antagonisms through a negative pedagogy that challenges the symbolic limits of capitalist consensus and addresses material inequalities. As Hernández in Petrova (2022) critiques, consensus-oriented theories like those of Habermas, Mouffe (2016), and Laclau (2020) seek to convert class conflict into agonism—reconciled difference—thus neutralizing its revolutionary potential. This domestication keeps struggles within the confines of liberal capitalist democracies. Instead, the paper calls for a decolonial epistemic shift that foregrounds structural inequalities affecting Indigenous, Black, and LGBTQ+ communities, focusing on class rather than solely on identity politics. It proposes that negative pedagogy can disrupt hegemonic norms and expose the centrality of class struggle in the pursuit of true material social justice.

Authors

• Raul Olmo Fregoso Bailón, University of Nevada - Reno

• Gergana Neycheva Petrova, Universidad de Guanajuato