Critical Race Theory, Democratization, and the Public Good: Deploying Postmodern Understandings of Racial Identity in the Social Justice Classroom to Contest Academic Capitalism

This essay discusses an academic capitalist knowledge regime (i.e. the increasing engagement of public institutions of higher education in market-based ventures) and the alterations to teacher and student behavior and the learning environment that result. Social justice-oriented university courses are positioned as sites where democratization and contestation of academic capitalism can be waged. The resistance of white students to curricular issues dealing with race is identified as a factor thwarting the counter-hegemonic potential of social justice-oriented courses and critical race theory (CRT) is offered as a corrective to ease student resistance to issues of race by encouraging postmodern understandings of racial identity. Ways in which CRT opens spaces for democratization, social justice, and the contestation of the academic capitalist knowledge regime are discussed.