Think about a course that you are currently most excited about teaching. Why is this an important course? How does it deepen one’s understanding of the world?
This coming semester I am teaching a course on Class and Racial Capitalism: Theory and Method. I am excited about teaching the class because it connects to the profound moment we are living, the exposure of global inequalities due to Covid and the global uprisings that are coming out of this moment of racial capitalism.
The course seeks to provide a solid basis in key Marxist theories, working through the multiple ways that Marx approached the study of capitalism – as structure, as process, as history. We then go on to look at the many thinkers who have grapped with Marxist theory in their own contexts and struggles of colonialism, slavery, gender oppression, dispossession. These include Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Cedric Robinson, Angela Davis, Silvia Federici, David Harvey and others. How can we understand capitalism as it has evolved till today, in all of its racialized and gendered aspects, and how can we move beyond capitalism?
I have uploaded many videos from this course to my website along with suggested readings, so they can be accessed there. I will keep adding more videos to this site: https://www.sujathafernandes.com/theory-for-social-change/
What are the five most salient materials from your course, and why is each important?
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
Marx’s Manifesto was written as an urgent call to arms, for the proletariat of the world to rise up against the bourgeoisie. It is eloquent, poetic and yet deeply analytical. All academic writing does not have to be staid, sterile, and unbiased. I ask my students to use Marx’s manifesto as a guide to write their own manifestos about the issues that affect them today.
This is a 2014 documentary film by Goran Olsson, which is based on the 1961 essay by Frantz Fanon from his book The Wretched of the Earth. It is narrated by the American emcee Lauren Hill. Fanon was a Martinique-born intellectual and revolutionary who sought to think about the contradictions in colonial society, especially the relation between colonizer and colonized as a racial one. The film takes old footage from anti-colonial struggles across the globe paired with quotations from Fanon’s text.
Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism
Robinson wrote one of the most important reworkings of Marxist theory, showing how capitalism and class have been inextricably linked to race from the beginnings of Western civilization. We can’t truly understand capitalism and how to end it without taking into account the centrality of race to its constitution and ongoing existence. Black Marxism also shows the importance of the Black radical tradition as an important anti-capitalist force, and with the recent global uprisings we can see the salience of Robinson’s work today.
Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class
I first read this book when I was in high school and it deeply shaped my feminist and political consciousness. Before theories of intersectionality became popular, Davis was talking about how the lives of Black women are shaped by multiple axes of oppression and how Marxists need to understand the interlocking of these systems in order to truly challenge them.
Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero
Federici provided one of the key engagements with Marxist theories of production and reproduction, showing how theories of class must account for women’s unpaid reproductive labor. She was a well-known international activist who spearheaded the Wages for Housework campaign, and in this series of essays she talks about why domestic labor should be valued and recognized like industrial wage labor. For Federici, reproductive activity fulfils a central role in capital accumulation and should be turned into a site of struggle.
What is a dream course that you’d be interested in teaching in the future?
A dream future class would be one on decolonization and storytelling. What kinds of narratives and possibilities were produced by the geopolitics of colonial encounter? The key texts would include anti-colonial and post-colonial novels from writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gabriel García Marquez, Amitav Ghosh, and the Dalit writer Gogu Shyamala. I would pair this with scholarly texts such as Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman, The Intimacies of Four Continents by Lisa Lowe, and other decolonial thinkers.
What is a book that changed your life as a high schooler?
One book that had a major impact on me was the novel 1984 by George Orwell. I was in my final year of high school during the Gulf War, and I remember getting to the section of the novel where Orwell discusses how war is never about serving justice or military necessity, but is waged by the ruling classes of hierarchical societies in order to subjugate their own populations and keep their dominance intact. That was a radical notion for me, it helped me to unpack some of what was going on in the world around me from a more critical stance.
What is one piece of advice you would give to new teachers?
My advice to new teachers is to be comfortable with some degree of silence in the classroom. Students can feel intimidated to speak up in front of a group and often our impulse as teachers is to jump in to fill the silence by talking more. I pose challenging questions and topics to the students, and then give them a bit of time to process and speak. Sometimes this might mean uncomfortable moments of silence, but I like to sit with it. My experience is that, almost always, it produces engaged and thoughtful discussions.