The Work of the Combat Intellectual Behind Prison Walls: Strategies and Praxis from a Youth Detention Facility

• In Event: Pedagogies & Praxis: Curriculum and Implementation for a Youth College Jail Program

Abstract

The prison industrial complex is the modern plantation, disproportionately incarcerating those impacted by U.S. colonialism and imperialism, depositing them within the lower rungs of the capitalist order, as lumpenproletariat. Many youth in the secure facility are facing a lifelong cycle of incarceration. Formal education in such a space is up against decades of institutionalized penal logic and systemic educational failures. What, then, is to be done? A combat intellectual embraces intellectual pessimism and revolutionary will, focusing on class and racial consciousness. Teaching must adapt to these youth’s learning styles, revealing their class and racial positions within prison and society. A combat intellectual must continually refine interactive methods that integrate the youths' lived experiences within a historical and material analysis which locates class and racial subjectivity. Fostering this awareness is in pursuit of sparking an internal shift within the student, necessary for their mobilization both inside and beyond prison walls.

Author

• Nicholas Rodrigo, The Graduate Center, City University of New York