Conference Program

Through an intersectional lens (Collins, 2019), the paper analyses the growing alienation of students in Western schools. The hypothesis is that what is often described as disengagement (Reeve, 2025), cultural distance (Willis, 1999), misrecognition (Honneth, 2014) or vulnerability (Butler, 2015) are differentiated expressions of a broader structural and ontological condition of alienation (Rosa, 2010, 2014; Jaeggi, 2014, 2018), intensified by processes of proletarianization of attention (Stiegler, 2010, 2019).

Power domains and some forms of social exclusion (e.g. racism, sexism, ableism) redefine life and knowledge access (Mladenov, 2016) and are symptoms of a much bigger social injustice that works on economic (wage labor), cultural (self-sufficiency), and political (national democracy vs transnational power) levels (Fraser, 2013).

In the paper, we will analyse different domains to identify their intersection.

The first domain is cultural. The dominant Western culture in schools (Santos, 2016) is based on a linear, top-down disciplinary structure that assumes cumulative sequences and strict prerequisites. However, contemporary experience of all students is characterised by fragmentation, information overload, and methodological plurality, which produce personal patchy cultural backgrounds.

The second domain is generational. The rarefaction of physical spaces of autonomy among peers and adults' organisation of time limit the possibility of developing autonomous and self-conscious forms of experience and knowledge. In a context of demographic decline among under 25, the collective generational dimension weakens while the asymmetry between students and institution increases.

We also believe it is important to take into account the digital domain, not mentioned by Collins. The digital domain widens previous fractures. In addition to the digital divide in terms of access and algorithmic control, digital technology introduces topological, reticular, and associative logics that diverge from the causal and deductive structures typical of disciplinary teaching. While schools keep operating according to an analogical and sequential paradigm, students experience increasingly distributed, socio-material, and collaborative social practices of knowledge.

In this picture, institutional response focuses on “abilities” and translates structural and political tensions into “individual pathology” (Mladenov, 2016), naturalising inequality. Mainstream discourse speaks of support only for the most vulnerables. Actually, we all are “deficient beings” (Gehlen, 1988) and school itself is a support, and it works especially for “able” students. A school that chooses interdependence over self-sufficiency contributes to a just society. Society is just when it allows people who are burdened by the global economy and transnational violence to speak out about the policies that have affected them (see Fraser, transnationalisation of democracy).

Adopting an intersectional lens allows us to overcome linearity and take responsibility for individual patchy backgrounds, even through the dialogue with technology.

To open up microspaces of transformation within the school system, we believe it is necessary to adopt an intersectional, interactive, and interconnected perspective. This entails activating interventions that simultaneously engage multiple domains: the cultural domain, through a decolonial and relational approach; the generational domain, through co-design practices; the ability domain, through interventions fostering interdependence; and, lastly, the digital domain through forms of co-agency among human, non-human, and artificial agents.