Schools as sites of advanced capitalism : reading radical inequality radically

This chapter was precipitated by an existential crisis at confronting the situation of children in one of the poorest areas in western Sydney, Australia. Concerned about the question of how research can possibly make a difference to these children’s lives, it seeks new methodologies and epistemological positions from which to read the radical inequalities that characterise the workings of advanced capitalism in our schools today. Braidotti (2014) offers a Deleuzian analysis of advanced capitalism as a process ontology that codes and recodes the rules that construct our socio-economic relations. She argues that we cannot use the existing language of universities based in logic and a linear sequence of cause and effect because advanced capitalism does not work like that. Advanced capitalism contradicts itself, changes the rules with perfect ease and panache, and does not care for anything other than immediate profit. In advanced capitalism, subjectivities are produced in which difference is capitalised upon and highly valued in terms of creating new markets but these differences are subsumed into a market economy, disconnected from the emancipatory potential of making a difference in the world.