ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what work in poststructuralism, feminism and postcolonialism enables as part of a materialist analysis, rather than what it forgets. It argues that there is a whole dimension of intervention in the public work of curriculum building and policy-making that is profoundly polysemic and heteroglossic, where matters of what counts and in whose interests official knowledge and cultural capital work are far from unambiguous and clear cut. Michael Apple's project of political analysis of curriculum and policy had a shaping influence on those of us working to critique and rebuild political economies of school knowledge. The chapter suggests that Apple's continued insistence on a political economy of educational knowledge is crucial. It is a matter of seeing politics and political work differently, in terms of a materialist politics of discourse rather than raw analytic truths, in terms of provisional coalitions to meet the pragmatic needs of particular marginal groups, rather than essential alliances and solidarities.
