ABSTRACT
Revolutionary political pedagogy is an intervention in the present order of things, a force of contestation that not only insists that there are alternatives to the present social formation but-and more importantly-develops visions of what those alternatives might look like-or, at the very least, elements of what they entail. A prerequisite to this intervention and imagination is an adequate and accurate understanding of the current moment, of the contours of present-day life, the determinations of our time. And such an understanding of these determinations, in turn, demands that we grasp the historical forces and events that have placed us here. As Marx remarked in the opening of his treatise on historical materialism, we do indeed make our own history, but not as we would necessarily like; rather, we do so only “under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” These bear down on us, weighing “like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” 1 While nightmares are by defi nition unpleasant, they can be productively troubling in that they can force an unresolved tension to the surface. Actually, sleep psychologists maintain that the nightmare is more than a signal that we need to address an overlooked or repressed issue. The nightmare itself is a working-through of tension.
