Silent Capitals: Institutionalized Reproduction, Subalternity and the Right to the City

This article examines the structural reproduction of inequality by tracing the interplay between cultural capital, institutional and urban spatial politics. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Pierre Bourdieu, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Henri Lefebvre, reframes the problem of unequal access to higher education not as a policy failure, but as a manifestation of deeper epistemic problem. While many analysts propose technical solutions to inequality —particularly through access programs for first-generation students—this study problematizes such efforts as symbolic compensations that obscure the foundational logics of exclusion. By situating education within broader processes of capitalist reproduction and colonial legacies, We critique how institutions aestheticize inequality while presenting themselves as inclusive. We argue that the dominant class not only defines what counts as legitimate knowledge, but also controls the spatial and institutional arenas in which recognition is possible. In this context, the subaltern is not simply excluded from education, but rendered unintelligible within its discursive and spatial regimes. Rather than offering prescriptive solutions, We foreground the need for a rethinking of how educational access problems are framed, by whom, and through which structures. Through the triangulation of Bourdieu’s theory of capital, Spivak’s conception of socialized capital and Lefebvre’s right to the city, the study offers a critical lens through which to reconsider the limits of educational justice under conditions of institutionalized inequality.