I focus on the salient concerns besetting education as a whole and higher education in particular. Gramsci’s name today is synonymous with hegemony while Althusser famously formulated the two-part constitution of the political state: the ideological state apparatus (ISA) and the repressive state apparatus (RSA). The military, as Althusser would say, is the repressive apparatus of the state, while the ideological apparatus is made up foremost of education. I draw upon these theories in exploring the connections between militarisation and privatisation, and militarisation as a state of emergency. A state of emergency impinges on public and private life, raising the spectre of a semi-totalitarian state in its crudest form, the military state.
Source: The Nation August 17, 2021 00:11 UTC