Education and Struggle

Narrative, Dialogue, and the Political Production of Meaning

"WE ARE THE STORIES WE TELL. The series "Education and Struggle" focuses on conflict as a discursive process where people struggle for legitimacy and the narrative process becomes a political struggle for meaning. But this series will also include the voices of authors and activists who are involved in conflicts over material necessities in their communities, schools, places of worship, and public squares as part of an ongoing search for dignity, self-determination and autonomy. This series focuses on conflict and struggle within the realm of educational politics based around a series of interrelated themes: indigenous struggles; western-Islamic conflicts; globalization and the clash of worldviews; neoliberalism as the war within;colonization and neocolonization; the coloniality of power and decolonial pedagogy; war and conflict and the struggle for liberation. It publishes narrative accounts of specific struggles as well as theorizing "conflict narratives" and the political production of meaning in educational studies. During this time of global conflict and the crisis of capitalism, Education and Struggle promises to be on the cutting edge of social, cultural, educational and political transformation.

Central to the series is the idea that language is essentially a dialogical production that is formed through a process of social conflict and interaction. The aim is to focus on key semiotic, literary andpolitical concepts as a basis for a philosophy of language and culture where the underlying materialist philosophy of language and culture serves
as the basis for the larger project that we might call dialogism (after Bakhtin’s usage). As the late V.N. Volosinov suggests “Without signs there is no ideology”, “Everything ideological possesses semiotic value” and “individual consciousness is a socio-ideological fact”. It is a small step to claim, therefore, “consciousness itself can arise and become a viable fact only in the material embodiment of signs”. This series is a vehicle for materialist semiotics in the narrative and dialogue of education and struggle."