The Self-Education of Rae Spiegel (Raya Dunayevskaya): Child Radicalism and Abolitionist Pedagogies at the Crossroads of Great Migrations

Abstract

Abstract: This essay explores pedagogies of abolition in the wake of World War I through the intellectual biography of Rae Spiegel, the child revolutionary who became economist, feminist, and Marxist-Humanist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya. Anchoring her work in the tradition of nineteenth-century abolitionists, Dunayevskaya co-constructed schools of insurgency and outlets for the creative expression of subjugated peoples, including youth, for over sixty years. Offering critical and contextual readings of Dunayevskaya's archives of girlhood, this study locates the roots of her abolitionist pedagogies in Black study, cross-racial and cross-generational collaborations, and "Baby Red" revolts against schooling across two empires. It argues that Dunayevskaya deployed story, personal history, and the archive as pedagogical invitations to self-teaching and radical forms of collectivity.