tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80383513168291889222024-03-14T08:56:48.292+00:00DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIESCatherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-10906916962281837092011-04-19T10:43:00.003+01:002011-04-19T16:59:19.238+01:00More Crimes against Humanities! Closures at London Metropolitan University<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpMehiv1tGQZlsyPFC_D3nfkVNuqfk0NcDeZlFUnHt3D01YoUKMdPeXqVV934PYZDzHIr3quRPIS5jFZn7BeWJvIpcS77br5ATITprsTrbYy-8-2yCnUuFGOvEZFLOR3eOiBUsbxYvON4s/s1600/SAVE+HUMANITIES+AT+LONDON+MET+-+Philosophy%252C+History%252C+Performing+Arts...+%25281%2529.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpMehiv1tGQZlsyPFC_D3nfkVNuqfk0NcDeZlFUnHt3D01YoUKMdPeXqVV934PYZDzHIr3quRPIS5jFZn7BeWJvIpcS77br5ATITprsTrbYy-8-2yCnUuFGOvEZFLOR3eOiBUsbxYvON4s/s320/SAVE+HUMANITIES+AT+LONDON+MET+-+Philosophy%252C+History%252C+Performing+Arts...+%25281%2529.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> brings more woeful tidings of attacks on arts and humanities in the UK higher education sector, this time threatening courses, staff and students of Philosophy, History and Performing Arts at <a href="http://www.lmu.ac.uk/">London Metropolitan University</a>. Campaign links are given below, together with a summary of what has been going on at LMU by academics in Philosophy there.<br />
<br />
<ul><li><a href="http://t.co/vq1awor">Sign the Petition against these cuts </a></li>
<li><a href="http://lmusavehale.blogspot.com/%20">Save Humanities, Arts and Languages at LMU Blog </a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_166555240070076">Save Humanities at London Met Facebook Group</a><b><b class="search-query"> </b></b></li>
<li><b><b class="search-query"><a href="http://twitter.com/LMUsaveHALE"><span style="font-weight: normal;">@LMUsaveHALE on Twitter</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> (<i>HALE: </i></span></b></b><span class="bio"><i>Humanities, Arts, Languages & Education</i>)</span><b><b class="search-query"><a href="http://twitter.com/LMUsaveHALE"><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></a></b></b></li>
<li><a href="http://savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com/">Save London Met. Uni. Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415857&c=1">Times Higher Education article about the LMU cuts</a></li>
</ul><blockquote>A meeting of London Metropolitan University’s Academic Board yesterday [] approved proposals for the closure of Philosophy, along with its fellow Humanities subjects, History and Performing Arts – that is to say, it decided that they will not recruit from 2012/2013. This decision was extremely sudden. Until Tuesday evening of this week, when colleagues on Academic Board received papers for the coming meeting, it seemed that these courses were to be preserved. This was not the decision of the Faculty, which proposed to continue these courses, but of central management.<br />
The ground for the decision was ostensibly that of prospective profitability. However, neither Faculty nor central management have been willing to divulge the figures or the modelling methods used to reach this decision. Crude calculations on the basis of existing student numbers suggest that the University actually will lose more income than can be possibly saved in redundancies. This supposition is supported by the fact that when asked at the sub-committee of the Board of Governors meeting last night how much the cuts were expected to save, the Director of Finance replied that they had not yet made that calculation.<br />
Philosophy has been taught at LMU and its predecessor institutions (the University and Polytechnic of North London) since the 1960’s, and has offered a Single Honours degree since 1973. Since the 1980’s, the course has been distinguished by the fact that it provides equal coverage of both Analytic and European philosophy. Although it is now smaller than in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, it still maintains this breadth of coverage.<br />
Philosophy is extremely popular among its students and in last year’s Guardian student satisfaction survey came 29th out of 47 – far higher than the University overall.<br />
The decision to close History and Performing Arts is just as shocking as the decision to close Philosophy. History also achieves a far better than average satisfaction ranking – 48th out of 93, and Performing Arts is widely regarded as providing training at least as good as the Royal Colleges. The cutting of these three courses, following the decisions made earlier this year to close several other Humanities courses, leaves only a small rump of surviving courses, which will almost certainly be absorbed into other Faculties. It therefore seem likely that LMU will in a very few years be a University without Humanities. This is therefore another instance of that alarming trend, whereby, not only philosophy, but also other Humanities courses are deemed inappropriate for students in the post-1992 Universities.<br />
It is still possible that pressure from inside and outside the University will prompt reconsideration of this decision. If you wish to register a protest, please email:<br />
<ul><li>Prof Malcolm Gillies, Vice Chancellor - <a href="mailto:m.gillies@londonmet.ac.uk">m.gillies@londonmet.ac.uk</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Roddy Gallacher, Dean of Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Languages and Education - <a href="mailto:r.gallacher@londonmet.ac.uk">r.gallacher@londonmet.ac.uk</a></li>
</ul>With thanks in advance for your support,<br />
Jim Grant, Course Leader<br />
Dr Adam Beck, Senior Lecturer<br />
Dr Chris Ryan, Senior Lecturer</blockquote>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-79672545751720627002011-03-18T15:03:00.002+00:002011-03-18T15:10:08.417+00:00Save Philosophy at Keele!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcmS-bUiaarrVk1nF3LxrTzOiiLXbk1hrdG3zRVCQ7-2Y6eJx5Q8x6ej2uu91dlwkVsz5PRa8ZhrWBSPZmB0Li75qjhH4fB_Xm_cGayU0J1sgl_6S0gfNJl0DKta1Qn8GPseEE7aeaLCDg/s1600/leaflet+a4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcmS-bUiaarrVk1nF3LxrTzOiiLXbk1hrdG3zRVCQ7-2Y6eJx5Q8x6ej2uu91dlwkVsz5PRa8ZhrWBSPZmB0Li75qjhH4fB_Xm_cGayU0J1sgl_6S0gfNJl0DKta1Qn8GPseEE7aeaLCDg/s400/leaflet+a4.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">[<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_200915196594313&ap=1">Leaflet</a> by Enric G. Torrents]</td></tr>
</tbody></table><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> today reports on the worrying news of a threat to the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.keele.ac.uk/spire/ourundergraduatecourses/philosophy/#staff">Philosophy Department at Keele University</a>. It urges its readers to consider signing the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savephilosophyatkeele/">online petition</a> set up to register protest against a move to close this <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.keele.ac.uk/spire/ourundergraduatecourses/whatourstudentssay/whatourphilosophystudentssay/">successful</a> department. Please see below:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><blockquote>Keele was founded in 1949 by the philosopher <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.clanlindsay.com/alexander_dunlop_lindsay.htm">A D Lindsay</a>, an advocate of education for the working classes, and who thought of Keele as the 'people's university'. The University claims its current mission is 'to be recognised as the UK’s leading example of an open, integrated intellectual community.' [Peter Kail (Oxford) cited by <span class="post-footers">Brian Leiter, "</span><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/keele-university-considering-closure-of-its-philosophy-department.html">Keele University Considering Closure of Its Philosophy Department!</a>"<span class="post-footers">, <i>Leiter Reports</i>, March 17, 2011. <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/keele-university-considering-closure-of-its-philosophy-department.html">Read more</a> - </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>hyperlinks added by</i> <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a></span><span class="post-footers">]</span></blockquote><blockquote><div class="standfirst">Keele University is planning to shut down its <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.keele.ac.uk/spire/ourundergraduatecourses/philosophy/#staff">philosophy department</a>, a move critics describe as an “emblematic loss” that would damage the institution’s credibility.</div> Keele has judged that the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.keele.ac.uk/spire/ourundergraduatecourses/philosophy/#staff">department</a>, which teaches about 200 undergraduates, should be wound down without further admissions as part of a drive to save £6.5 million in staff costs over two years. <br />
The university also plans to close its <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://ethics-etc.com/2011/03/17/help-save-keeles-centre-for-professional-ethics-and-the-philosophy-department/">Centre for Professional Ethics</a>, which employs eight academics.<br />
[John Morgan, "<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415539&c=1">Keele's Philosophers Stare into the Abyss</a>", <i>Times Higher</i>, March 18, 2011: <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415539&c=1">read more</a> - <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>hyperlinks added by</i> <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a></span>]</blockquote><blockquote>Since May 2010 Keele University's Senate has been considering ways to deal with changes in funding for the university. On the 16th March a paper was released to the Senate containing formal proposals to deal with these changes in funding. One such proposal was the complete closure of the philosophy programme at Keele. This decision is not only totally unjustified, but is also a travesty to the academic credibility of the university.<br />
On the 7th April, the university Council will officially vote on the issue. This vote will either save or condemn the philosophy programme at Keele. This website has been set up to protest against the cutting of the philosophy program. Please support us in any way possible: the main way to do so would be to sign the petition that has been linked below. </blockquote><blockquote>But you could also do other things such as:<br />
<ul><li>Tell as many people as possible about the closure and get them to <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savephilosophyatkeele/">sign the petition</a>.</li>
</ul><ul><li>If you are a Keele student or Keele alumni please send to this <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:u7e65@students.keele.ac.uk">email address</a> a blurb about why <i>you </i>think that the philosophy programme should stay open. Entitle the email "Save Philosophy Blurb". As many as possible will be included in a document to be sent to the Vice Chancellor of Keele University.</li>
</ul></blockquote><ul style="margin-left: 40px;"><li>Get involved in the campaign at the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_200915196594313&ap=1">Facebook group</a> set up to help <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_200915196594313&ap=1">save Philosophy at Keele!</a></li>
</ul><blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://savekeelephilosophy.webs.com/">Save Keele Philosophy website</a></div></blockquote>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-72699525920850510902011-03-15T10:15:00.001+00:002011-03-15T10:42:45.727+00:00Autonomy? Part Six of a Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br />
<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/PococurantesLibrary.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="File:PococurantesLibrary.jpg" height="235" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/PococurantesLibrary.jpg/800px-PococurantesLibrary.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pococurante's Library in <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" class="extiw" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire" title="en:Voltaire">Voltaire</a>'s <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" class="extiw" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide,_or_Optimism" title="en:Candide, or Optimism">Candide, or Optimism</a> </i>(<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PococurantesLibrary.jpg">Public Domain Image</a>; Source: <i>Candide, ou l'Optimisme (Paris: Sirène, 1759</i>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> brings you the final part, below, of <b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/french/staff/dmcallam/index.html">David McCallam</a></b>'s important and timely <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities</a>, using the example of <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire">Voltaire</a>'s <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide">Candide: or, Optimism</a></i> (1759). You can read the earlier parts by clicking on the following links: '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Introduction</a>', '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/possible-worlds-part-two-of-manifesto.html">Possible Worlds</a>,' '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/ethos-part-three-of-manifesto-for-arts.html">Ethos</a>', '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/work-part-four-of-manifesto-for-arts.html">Work</a>' and '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/equality-part-five-of-manifesto-for.html">Equality'.</a> </span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Autonomy</span></span></b></div><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Today’s students are being recast as consumers, as customers. Via consumer choice and customer satisfaction, they are to discipline universities into becoming models of competivity, efficiency and market-responsiveness, thereby ‘driving up the quality’ of their educational ‘product’. Yet the very notion of ‘quality’ would require both institutions and students to have comparable aims, aspirations, starting points and outcomes; it would also require accurate, objective and stable means of measuring all of these elements. In the glaring absence of one-size-fits-all institutions, a population of student clones, and reliable and valid data by which to measure their comparability and compatibility, any notion of consumer choice is false, any idea of customer satisfaction is misleading. In reality, in the new higher education marketplace, a lot of students will be culturally constrained and financially obliged to shop at the Lidl of universities, not at the Waitrose, let alone the Harrods, of higher education institutions. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Some might object that money is being redirected to ‘widening participation’ schemes and bursaries for poorer students in order to offset this eventuality (even though the sums involved are paltry, and go nowhere near to compensating for the overall exorbitant hike in fees). The truth is that when universities are effectively recast as vending machines for degrees, some vending machines may well offer fair-trade products or discounted items, but they will remain first and foremost vending machines.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Within universities too, the new fees market means the increased adoption of private business practices. Already in research, we have moved from the industrial model of the Research Assessment Exercise (2008), and its talk of productivity and outputs, to the managerial model of the Research Excellence Framework (2014), with its key terms of impact, excellence and performance. In teaching terms, private business practice means workload quotas, performance-related evaluations and ‘outreach’ as the drive to tap new markets. This is the <i>soft power</i> of the free market, centred on competition, which relentlessly implicates university researchers and teachers in their own subjugation, in a process of constant self-disciplining to outperform their colleagues. The same goes for students. The same soft power constrains them, as consumers, to make educational choices which are presented as ‘free’, but which are heavily predetermined by the laws of the marketplace (credit, cost, interest, etc.). </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">As Jean-Jacques Rousseau pointed out in a <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile:_or,_On_Education">text published only three years after Candide</a>, ‘there is no form of enslavement so perfect as that which retains the appearance of freedom’. And for both students and university teachers, subjection lies at the core of the construction of their subjectivity as education consumers and entrepreneurial academics.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Yet the very activities engaged in by both students and lecturers in the classroom offer a powerful means of resisting and rejecting this free-market model. Antithetical to the bipolar economy of greed-fuelled boom and panic-stricken bust, or the schizoid nature of debt/credit (called ‘debt’ when punitive, ‘credit’ when seductive), the individual and collective reasons exercised in the arts and humanities seminar measure gain only in terms of critical autonomy, in gestures of imaginative invention, ethical critique or empathic insight. At once wary and witty, they provide the means to ensure that we do not collude in our own oppression. If only by increasing our power to question, they challenge the language and the logic used to justify the increasingly subtle forms this oppression takes. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">This critical autonomy succeeds because, unlike market minds, it is first and foremost self-aware: it the exercise of critical reasoning and a critique of reason too, invoking emotions, imagination and ethics to make its case. In a world where power operates and is modulated in exclusive, <i>encoded</i> forms – your PIN, computer password, work log-in, supermarket swipecard, student registration no., etc. – the arts class affords a space for an individual and collective <i>code-breaking</i>. Codes are broken in both senses of the term: social and moral norms are willingly transgressed, systems and structures of meaning are cleverly unpicked. Critical autonomy is thus generated by outwitting our everyday forms of collective constraint and self-regulation.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Published in 1759, what can <i>Candide</i> possibly tell us of these very modern forms of subjugation and emancipation? On the surface, its disciplines are military and physical, involving the apparatuses of armies, inquisitions and prisons. It seems to fall back more on the classical methods of brute force and internment, rather than applying today’s subtle and varied techniques of internalization as means of control (chief of which is debt as a devolved form of self-policing, for states as much as for individuals). After all, Candide is press-ganged and violently drilled in Bulgar (i.e., Prussian) military discipline, and is thrown into prison when he attempts to desert; the erstwhile maid Paquette is imprisoned and only released on condition of becoming her judge’s sex slave; Cunégonde’s splenetic brother, the Baron, is incarcerated by the Spanish, and made a galley-slave along with Pangloss; and the English admiral Byng is famously court-martialled and executed ‘to encourage the others’. Yet in Venice, Candide meets a deposed king who had lain on the straw of a debtor’s prison in London, whose last servant now leaves his master because no-one in Venice will advance him any ‘credit’. Dethroned, he drifts from place to place, in perpetual fear of being thrown back in gaol; debt has become his new prison, and is all the more effective in that it accompanies him everywhere he goes.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">What is more, a close reading of the Eldorado episode shows us that it is effectively governed by a form of soft power. Its people will their own internment between its high mountain walls and rushing rivers. Their ‘oath’ never to leave recalls Rousseau’s ‘perfect enslavement’ which ‘keeps the appearance of freedom’ and (he goes on) ‘thus subjugates the will itself’. It is a system conceived to make one’s behaviour behave (to paraphrase Foucault). And Candide recognizes the subtle and pervasive forces of conformity into which he and Cacambo would be co-opted if they stayed: ‘if we stay here’, he tells his companion, ‘we’ll only ever be like all the others’. This – and not the deceptive show of freedom and equality – explains the absence of courts and prisons in the kingdom. There’s no need of legal or physical constraints where the inhabitants willingly connive in their own subjection.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">In effect, Candide’s critical autonomy dates from his decision to leave Eldorado in pursuit of Cunégonde. He turns his back on this ‘utopia’, and its self-regulating, self-perpetuating conformity precisely because Eldorado has chosen to shut itself off from the realities of inquisitorial rule and cannibalism to the south, and the inhumanity of the slave trade to the north. This newfound critical autonomy is confirmed by Candide’s subsequent decision in Surinam to renounce Optimism and to contrive a plan to have Cunégonde brought to meet him in Venice. It’s an independence of mind that allows him to counter Martin’s pessimism, negotiate the worldly traps of Venice and Paris, and settle outside Constantinople where he and his fellows are not in and out of power as are the effendis, cadis, and pashas paraded past their windows, but in a state of empowerment, discoursing, dissenting, cultivating garden and minds.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">The ending of <i>Candide</i> lends itself to innumerable readings. In part, this is because the text plays with disparate and divergent narrative codes in wending its way to its conclusion. Candide’s tale thus evokes a medieval romance, an epic quest, a picaresque novel, moral satire, <i>conte philosophique</i>, Bildungsroman, modern parable or classic fable as well as the contemporary travel narratives of the grand tour and sentimental journey. Its universe may well be one ruled by brutish, explicit violence – war, torture, natural disaster, execution, enslavement and incarceration – yet even these forms of physical coercion and subjugation are <i>encoded</i> in the narrative. They offer Candide, and his fellow protagonists, opportunities to test the grand theories, worldviews or meta-narratives by which oppression is variously explained, justified or excused. Experiencing forms of extreme physical disciplining allows Candide to challenge and ultimately <i>break the code</i> of Pangloss’s Optimism or Martin’s pessimism, and sundry other ‘totalitarian’ philosophies (e.g., the ‘–isms’ of Catholicism, imperialism, even possibly nascent capitalism). And like Candide, the reader too gains in critical autonomy in ‘cracking the codes’ in the text, in ‘getting’ the parodies of Optimist language in the euphemistic descriptions of sex and violence, in reading at once a tale <i>denoting </i>various adventures in a universe of appalling, inhuman viciousness and a tale <i>connoting</i> sophisticated philosophical satire and light-touch political irony. Hence even Candide and Pangloss’s inquisitorial dungeons (the depth of physical oppression) can be rendered as ‘separate apartments of exceptional coolness in which one was never incommoded by the sun’ (the height of poetic liberty).<i> </i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><i>Candide</i> is thus very much a story for our times: one of confronting a succession of <i>crises of representation</i>. The world is presented, or rather represented, to Candide in a number of systematic, philosophical ways, of which the most insistently reductive is Pangloss’s Optimism. Yet the inchoate, arbitrary nature of events in the world, as experienced by Candide, gives the lie to these systems of representation and pitches them into crisis. And, as the etymology suggests, crises are the moments par excellence for <i>critical</i> autonomy to assert itself, for more intelligent questions to be asked, for codes to be broken (and definitively rejected where necessary), for self-awareness to challenge our own collusion in the processes of deceptive and oppressive system-building, and for alternative, tentative interpretations to emerge. And once again, as in <i>Candide</i>, so in the arts seminar in which it is read. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">When our own collective endeavours are threatened and shaken by events seemingly beyond our control or comprehension – a natural disaster, a financial crash, a political upheaval – it is then that the critical practices of the arts class empower us to make sense where little or none seems to be left. More than any other area of study, the arts and humanities teach us to negotiate and shape the shifting historical, political, philosophical, discursive and visual fields of meaning constituting our understanding of the world around us. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><i>A fortiori</i> then, when these fields of meaning appear to disintegrate, it is the arts and humanities students who can best recognize and manage such crises of representation. To give a few examples: in the face of a humanitarian crisis, they provide a voice for the voiceless; in an economic crisis, they are least surprised by the fluid, illusory nature of credit; in a political crisis, they propose alternative modes of action, and can draw on their own democratic practices to do so. In the twenty-first century, the critical autonomy gained in the arts classroom may prove to be at the very least a fundamental survival skill, and at best, an individual and collective guide into a more enlightened, humane future.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">But first, it leads us to the following, and final, manifesto principle:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><u><b><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-US">Article 5°</span></i></span></b></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-US">By educating us to be self-aware and critically autonomous, the arts and humanities ensure that we are less likely to collude in our own oppression; equally, they best equip us to manage society’s increasingly frequent crises of representation (political, economic, cultural, rhetorical, visual)</span></i><span lang="EN-US">.</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="FR">Further reading:</span></span></b></div><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="FR">Jean-Jacques Rousseau, <i>Émile, ou de l’éducation</i> (Paris, 1999)</span></span></li>
</ul><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Tzvetan Todorov, <i>In Defence of the Enlightenment</i> (London, 2010)</span></span></li>
</ul><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="FR">Michel Foucault, <i>Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France, 1977-1978</i> (Paris, 2004)</span></span></li>
</ul><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Further further reading (on <i>Candide</i>):</span></span></b></div><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">David Williams, <i>Voltaire: Candide</i> (London, 1997)</span></span></li>
</ul><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Roger Pearson, <i>The Fables of Reason. A Study of Voltaire’s Contes philosophiques</i> (Oxford, 1993), ch. 8 on <i>Candide</i>, pp. 110-136</span></span></li>
</ul><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="FR">René Pomeau, ‘Candide entre Marx et Freud’, <i>SVEC</i> 89 (1972), pp. 1305-1323</span></span></li>
</ul><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-20207141887336844022011-03-14T10:50:00.000+00:002011-03-14T10:50:13.635+00:00Equality? Part Five of a Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Voltaire_and_Diderot_at_the_Caf%C3%A9_Procope.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="File:Voltaire and Diderot at the Café Procope.jpeg" height="267" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Voltaire_and_Diderot_at_the_Caf%C3%A9_Procope.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Voltaire and Diderot at the Café Procope in Paris. Seated in the rear, from left to right: Condorcet, La Harpe, Voltaire (with his arm raised) and Diderot. [<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voltaire_and_Diderot_at_the_Caf%C3%A9_Procope.jpeg">Public Domain Image</a>: <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.fbls.net/litterature18salon.htm">Source</a>]</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> brings you Part Five of <b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/french/staff/dmcallam/index.html">David McCallam</a></b>'s persuasive <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities</a>, using the example of <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire">Voltaire</a>'s <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide">Candide: or, Optimism</a></i> (1759).<br />
<br />
The '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Introduction</a>', '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/possible-worlds-part-two-of-manifesto.html">Possible Worlds</a>,' '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/ethos-part-three-of-manifesto-for-arts.html">Ethos</a>', and '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/work-part-four-of-manifesto-for-arts.html">Work</a>' have already appeared. The final instalment of the Manifesto -- Autonomy -- will appear tomorrow. </span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Equality</b></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Politically, Candide moves in a world of feudal overlords, absolutist monarchs, autocrats and despots. Even utopian Eldorado is a consensual, if not constitutional, monarchy (in effect a sort of tyranny of conformity). The closest he comes to a republic is among the Oreillons, a South American tribe of cannibals who nearly roast him and Cacambo alive under the impression that they are Jesuits. It is true that Venice, where Candide stays for months awaiting Cunégonde, is styled a republic, although it is in fact ruled by a repressive patrician oligarchy. And Candide meets there only more deposed kings and a cynical, blasé aristocrat who dismisses England’s liberal parliamentary monarchy as corrupted by rabid factionalism. So the notion of democracy seems totally alien to <i>Candide</i>’s narrative universe.</span></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">We might then be tempted to think that we have improved on this situation; that our western democracies offer forms of civic freedoms, civil rights and equality before the law unimaginable to Candide and his fellows. Yet, before we get too smug, Jacques Rancière points out that what we call ‘democracy’ is really no such thing. First of all, our democracy is conceived of not as a fundamentally <i>political</i> entity but as a social one; it is characterized by such things as individual or minority rights, social mobility, and equal access to services and credit, etc. That is, it is reduced to a sort of egalitarian individualism whose defining feature is an inviolable freedom of ‘choice’. And by subtly effacing the collective civic nature of democracy, our systems of governance have substituted political equality with consumer equality. Thus our democracy’s showcase elections increasingly resemble a consumer challenge between three or four brands of washing powder (each promising to come cleaner than the others); a vote for either Pepsi or Coke. This is democracy as consumption, democracy as greed à la Thatcher, a share-owning, home-owning, self-serving democracy; and as we have recently discovered, in such a democracy the only thing we end up holding in common is <i>debt</i>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">This is also, or course, the democratic model currently being rolled out in higher education. (Yet free-market democracy and consumer equality have proven to be precisely the least equal and most unjust of modern liberal systems. As Danny Dorling has compellingly shown, over the last few years wage inequality in Britain has returned to levels not seen since the 1850s. Admittedly, we have greater general access to welfare, healthcare and education than our Victorian forebears – but for how long? When the government is hell-bent on selling off or tendering out public services, civic spaces and communal activities to competing private interests – and these include the voluntary sector – the Dickensian workhouse, not the arts and humanities workshop, best prefigures our collective future…)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Consumer equality in higher education clearly means the fees market with its attendant exacerbation of existing inequalities of access (a 40% drop in students from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds who said they are definitely going to university in the wake of the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf">Browne report</a>). As the US has decisively proven in this regard, educational inequality entrenches social immobility. Those few students from disadvantaged backgrounds who go to university in the US (3% from the lowest socio-economic quartile) are more likely to drop out, consolidating a lack of aspiration in their peers – ‘university’s not for the likes of us’ – thereby betraying higher education’s fundamental civic mission. On top of that, tuition fees consistently rise faster than inflation, so poorer households, already hit by wage inequalities, see the dream of university education receding ever faster away from them.</span></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">And yet let’s look at what is happening not <i>to</i> higher education but <i>within</i> higher education, specifically in its arts and humanities classrooms. Here a very different conception of democracy is at work. It is, as Rancière suggests, a truer democracy, one conceived of as ‘government by those who have no desire to govern’. It is the collective exercise of power in the absence of any title to exercise it. Let’s illustrate this with some stereotypes: it is the mousy young woman at the back finding her voice, the immigrants’ daughter relating a text to family experiences, the grammar-school lad confronting troublingly new worldviews. Those who haven’t spoken before, who didn’t know how to speak, who always spoke from a certain point of view, now speak together – as equals.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">It sounds idealistic, and yet we see it everyday in the arts faculties of our universities. This is democracy not as the ‘power of the people’ (already a self-interested ideological construct), but as the <i>empowerment of anyone at all</i>. Consumer equality is replaced (if only here, if only for a moment) with the equality of intelligences. At its best, students become the source of the questions, not their target audience; they ask questions to which they don’t have an answer and to which their teachers have no definitive response. Democracy, in this context, no longer resides in expressing the ‘popular will’ but in exercising collective reason(s) and collective imagination(s) – an exercise which both guarantees the democratic nature of the classroom and grants critical autonomy to individual students.</span></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">A similar equality of intelligences reigns between Candide and Cacambo. Their relationship is ostensibly that of master and servant. But as they travel picaresquely across South America, it is the servant who takes the initiative, speaks up, works out the situation and takes action. (This might be read as part of a more widespread eighteenth-century inversion of power between master and servant – think Almaviva and Figaro – yet its philosophical and pedagogical significance runs deeper than that of a daring plot device. It also goes beyond the ‘truth’ of the master-slave dialectic which subjugates the master just as much as the slave to its dynamic. Instead, it realizes a master-servant dialogue; and despite the restoration of a certain social hierarchy in the denouement, for as long as the pair exchange words, they do so as equals. Hence the scandal of Figaro is the scandal of equality and the promise of democracy inscribed in the very discursive fabric of a society of orders).</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">As Rancière again has pointed out, the apparent inequality of their positions as master and servant is only made possible by a inherent equality of intelligences: that even as Candide commands Cacambo, in the very act of commanding him, the master has to assume a speaking position of equality in order to be understood. And as for the fictitious master and servant, so for the arts lecturer and his or her students. The assumed knowledge disparity existing between lecturer and student is only allowed to obtain because of the fundamental equality of intelligences on which it is founded, and which permits any exchange of views at all. Hence the arts student, like Cacambo, takes the initiative, speaks up and ‘acts as interpreter’ – ostensibly for the lecturer, but in reality for the class, for his or her interpretive community. This is how Candide’s enterprising servant interprets again and again not just for his master but also for the reader.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Cacambo’s interpretations and Candide’s interrogations, along with other dialogues and personal stories, drive the narrative of their philosophical tale. In fact, to borrow Roger Pearson’s description of Voltaire himself, we might say that <i>Candide</i> ‘thinks narratively’; that it is a masterclass in thinking narratively. As much as anything else, then, the text’s mockery and denunciation of Pangloss is as a teller of a sole tale, as the narrator of a single metanarrative (Optimism) to which all else is unerringly subordinated. In contrast, Candide – and the Old Woman, Cunégonde, etc. – recount and relate <i>micro-narratives</i>, short stories, anecdotes in which they incessantly rehearse the acts of affirmation and resistance that structure their world. Even the Surinam slave has his tale to tell, forging a subjectivity out of the very terms of his subjection.</span></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Micro-narratives thus provide a further means of making speakers equal, of instituting a sort of discursive egalitarianism in the face of Pangloss’s Single Truth. For storytelling collapses hierarchies, its equality of tale-teller and listener being among the purest, oldest and most common of equalities; and one that is rediscovered daily in our arts and humanities seminars. Hence students are often tempted to interpret narratively, to relate anecdotes as a means of explaining how they read the text: how Pangloss reminds them of an Irish uncle, or how Candide’s adventures recall in places such and such an episode of <i>The Simpsons</i>… And as with their anachronisms, students should be actively encouraged to develop these anecdotes. Originally, anecdotes – such as those of Procopius – were secret and subversive histories told as witty, revealing correctives to the metanarrative of History structured around the acts of the great dead white male. And they retain this revealing, corrective function in the arts and humanities classroom, as in society at large.</span></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">The anecdote is, in a sense, narrative in its most elemental form, micro-narratives that debunk ‘History’ or ‘Philosophy’ or ‘Art’ and empower their speakers, at once levelling and enfranchising; a democratic discourse among others practised and learnt in the arts classroom.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">From all of which we can advance the following manifesto principle:</span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><u><b><i><span lang="EN-US">Article 4°</span></i></b></u></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span lang="EN-US">University arts and humanities classes constitute a genuinely democratic space, founded on the equality of intelligences of their members; at once levelling and empowering, they are the workshops of citizenship.</span></i></b></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Further reading:</span></b></span></div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Jacques Rancière, <i>Hatred of Democracy</i> (London, 2006)</span></span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: inherit;"></div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Daniel Dorling, <i>Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists</i> (Bristol, 2010)</span></span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: inherit;"></div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Roger Brown, ‘The Impact of Markets’, in <i>Higher Education and the Market</i>, ed. Roger Brown (New York, 2011), pp. 20-52</span></span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-13942387227322027682011-03-13T13:39:00.002+00:002011-03-14T10:08:09.573+00:00Work? Part Four of a Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Die_Gartenlaube_%281878%29_383.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="File:Die Gartenlaube (1878) 383.jpg" height="400" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Die_Gartenlaube_%281878%29_383.jpg/435px-Die_Gartenlaube_%281878%29_383.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Voltaire as a guest of Frederick the Great,<span class="description"> <i>Die Gartenlaube</i> (Leipzig: </span>Ernst Keil's Nachfolger, 1878), p. 383<br />
<span class="description"> [<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Die_Gartenlaube_%281878%29_383.jpg">Public Domain Image</a>]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> brings you Part Four, below, of <b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/french/staff/dmcallam/index.html">David McCallam</a></b>'s eloquent and thought-provoking <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities</a>, using the example of <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire">Voltaire</a>'s <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide">Candide: or, Optimism</a></i> (1759).</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><span style="font-size: small;">The '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Introduction</a>', '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/possible-worlds-part-two-of-manifesto.html">Possible Worlds</a>,' and '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/ethos-part-three-of-manifesto-for-arts.html">Ethos</a>' have already appeared. The last two instalments of the Manifesto -- 'Equality' and 'Autonomy' -- will be published in the next two days. </span></div></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Work</b></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">John Sutherland <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/30/university-tuition-fees-arts-courses-fail">notes</a> that if you are paying up to £50,000 for an undergraduate course, ‘you don’t want a good education, you want a good degree. The two are not identical’. In this way fees will not ‘drive up quality’, as market logic maintains, but they will certainly drive up grades. Again, the two are not identical. The endgame is a sort of educational stagflation where real intellectual growth flat-lines while the grade point average soars. Yet this makes sense for the fee-paying customer who demands product, but doesn’t give a damn for the processes of production. Degrees become commodities, goods divested of all origin or end, to be indefinitely exchanged against other commodities and services. And the students will not be to blame, for why should they read till midnight, write till dawn, cogitate, debate, disagree, query, chat, cite, and learn when their money’s down (albeit in exorbitant third-party loans) to do the work for them?</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Work. This is the nub of the question. For the common perception is that students don’t do ‘work’ at university, they ‘study’. (And study at university is itself often a stark departure from a school system that betrays its roots in the nineteenth-century mills and manufactures). So work at university, especially in the arts and humanities, is not at all recognizable as work. It clearly isn’t manual labour, it doesn’t produce material goods like a factory, it doesn’t generate profits like a company, and it doesn’t offer a service to customers. And yet nothing could be more productive. The arts seminar affords a very different order of productivity to those familiarly deployed by the market or indeed the state; for its primary mode of production is not economic but dialogic. It produces above all meanings, interpretations, theories, propositions, anecdotes, stories, chat, dissent, wit and questions. It is not utilitarian but value-based, that is, it is less concerned with quantities than with qualities. It can’t be calculated in terms of labour, since it is the fruit of unforeseeable elaborations. When text and class meet, what they produce is inimical to econometric measurement. And as such it is both an enigma and a threat to the prevailing socio-economic orders of work and production.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">This last point was strikingly brought home in France in 2006 when the neo-liberal presidential candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, sneeringly dismissed the humanities education required of civil servants as the insistence of ‘a sadist or an imbecile’. Why would, he asked, you ever want to know what the ticket clerk thought of <i>La Princesse de Clèves</i> (a brilliant, subtle seventeenth-century novel by Mme de Lafayette)? Or course, Sarkozy never stopped to consider what <i>La Princesse de Clèves</i> might ask of the ticket clerk… And the current British government’s concerted attack on the humanities is founded either on a similarly philistine arrogance or, more chillingly, an astute ideological demolition of a radically alternative model to their competition theory and market mantra. For the productivist and literal worldview championed by Sarkozy, and to a lesser extent his British counterparts, is challenged by all that is playful and literate in the arts classroom. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">The reason for this lies in its very means of production: language not labour. In generating discourse, that is, <i>language at work</i>, each of us contributes to discursive production to a unpredictably fluctuating degree, but none of us ever owns, appropriates or expropriates it completely or indefinitely. Discourse <i>makes sense</i> only insofar as it is shared, constituted by a given language community, as a given language community, for a given language community. It is the original ‘common wealth’, and as such, it manifestly fails to fit the capitalist mould. It is similarly anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian. It often just needs its users to wake up to their share in its collective exercise. And, oddly enough, it is precisely by taking part in this common enrichment via language that each of us simultaneously acquires the means to define ourselves more clearly, to deepen or enrich our own sense of self and gain in discursive autonomy. Giving ourselves over to this collective turns out to be the best way to affirm our individuality. If nothing else, this is the <i>work</i> of the university seminar, of the arts and humanities classroom.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">This discursive model of production is not without similarities to Candide’s garden. His journey over, Candide settles to share-cropping, effectively setting up a market-garden cooperative in which, as the text states, ‘each began to exercise his or her talents’ and ‘no-one refused to work’. Beyond the rather sexist division of labour in the commune (the women cook, sew and clean), what is perhaps most striking is the persisting presence of Dr Pangloss in this working community. Stubbornly purveying his obsolete Optimism, what possible use could he be there? And yet this is precisely his purpose, it seems. His lack of value or use in the collective serves to valorize further the others’ labours. Philosophically, his very existence in the group also ensures that Candide’s garden is not run on purely utilitarian grounds. As in the arts seminar, the apparently useless has significant use – and may even by its negative qualities come paradoxically to represent the greatest value of all. In the case of Pangloss, this means learning for learning’s sake, talking for talking’s sake, which yet intimates how valuable learning or talking is when set to work, as useless gold constitutes the value-index of other more practical, worked metals.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">But Pangloss’s very pigheaded cleaving to his philosophical system is also a reminder of how far the others have travelled philosophically, Candide especially. And to do so, they have undertaken, experienced or witnessed a huge range of works or labours. René Pomeau estimates that there are around 137 instances of artisanal or professional activity in the tale; at least 15 different forms of general employment figure there, including teachers, doctors, prostitutes, clerics, soldiers, merchants, servants and financiers. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Having said that, Candide is never among the more brilliant of them. He is trained as a soldier, yet hides in battle (then kills random civilians); as a merchant, he is consistently defrauded of his goods or wealth. And as the naïve apprentice metaphysician to Pangloss, he fails to hold true to any abstract philosophical system in the face of real-world experiences. Yet in the course of his travels he does excel at one thing: conversation. This is the most successful and explicit form of production in the text. And tellingly, it is what Candide, the Old Woman, Martin and others ship across oceans as their produce of choice. And as produce that is constantly in the process of being publicly produced, revised and refined, this discourse contrasts starkly with those other products freighted across the ocean which seem to want to deny the labour that brought them into being: the gold washed of its miners’ blood and sweat, and especially the sugar cleaned and bleached of the slaves’ torment, torture and pain. Yet the mutilated black slave in Surinam spells this deception out to Candide and Cacambo; his amputated hand, his severed leg, his chains are, as he puts it, the ‘price of eating sugar in Europe’. Yet unlike sugar and gold (today we might say – trainers and microchips), Candide’s conversation successfully resists inhuman commodification.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Another example of pitiless exploitation in the text is potentially even more interesting for twenty-first-century readers. At least as I interpret it. When the boat carrying Candide, Pangloss and their employer, the good Dutch Anabaptist, Jacques, cruises into Lisbon harbour, it is suddenly ripped apart by flash-storms generated by the devastating earthquake that famously razed the city to the ground on 1 November 1755, claiming over 10,000 lives by tremors, tsunami and fires. In the shipwreck, Jacques saves a sailor but drowns in the process. Now this sailor turns out to be a nasty piece of work. Thus Pangloss’s providentialism is flagrantly disproved: the virtuous Jacques is drowned, the vicious sailor rescued. Washed ashore along with Candide and Pangloss, the sailor looks around, whistles and says: ‘There’s something to be had here’. Then he sets about robbing the mangled victims of the quake, before carousing and whoring in the rubble with his spoils. </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Though Pangloss protests that the sailor isn’t showing much respect for the forces of Providence that saved him, the good doctor’s Optimism is ultimately an apology for the sailor’s behaviour. For, as Voltaire had remarked bitingly in his earlier ‘Poem on the Lisbon Disaster’, the Optimist justifies the violent but short-lived ‘evil’ of the quake via its subsequent longer-terms effects for ‘good’: heirs suddenly come into unexpected fortunes; masons, carpenters, etc. grow rich rebuilding the city; as in <i>Candide</i> the sailor takes money from the maimed and dying who no longer have any use for it, and reinvests it in the local entertainment industries. From partial evil emerges universal good. This is, of course, Optimism savagely mocked and rubbished.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">But I would like to offer another interpretation of the sailor’s action and the Optimist’s apology for it. It strikes me that what Voltaire is describing in the ruins of Lisbon is basically eighteenth-century <i>disaster capitalism</i>. As Naomi Klein describes it, this is when disasters are treated as ‘exciting market opportunities’, and natural catastrophes facilitate ‘orchestrated raids’ on the public sphere. In this much the avaricious sailor in Lisbon is an Enlightenment avatar of the free-marketeers buying up the public housing, hospital and schools in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, or the giant tourist companies snapping up the fishing beaches in Sri Lanka once the Boxing Day tsunami had conveniently wiped them clean of their fishing communities. (Increasing evidence suggests that the same processes are at work in earthquake-devastated Haiti). </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Pangloss is then an eighteenth-century Milton Friedman, each with his ‘shock doctrine’ (quite literally in the case of <i>Candide</i>’s quake) legitimating the swift and irreversible appropriation of goods and services before the crisis-racked society can react. The only real difference is that Pangloss is not working with the same distinction between public and private as Friedman is, instead Pangloss’s distinction is between the universal and the particular. But the best of all possible worlds and the freest of all possible markets share the same providentialism – that theirs is the natural order, and it couldn’t possibly be otherwise. The result is forms of philosophical speculation and financial speculation which also share a blithe indifference to their human costs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Of course, you may object that this is a wildly anachronistic reading of Chapter Five of <i>Candide</i>. And you’d be right. But I would refer your objection to the community of fellow readers, to the jury, so to speak, of my peers in the arts and humanities class. Since, as Stanley Fish has convincingly shown, it is the reader who constructs the text, the reader who shapes its meanings. Yet these subjective, imaginative projections onto the text and refracted, suggestive echoes received from it are not solely the reader’s invention. The reader himself or herself is at the same time a conductor of the prevailing interpretations of the class; he or she is an active member of an <i>interpretive community</i>. And that interpretive community underwrites the acceptability or unacceptability of the reader’s interpretations. They are not true or false, right or wrong, in any definitive, ahistorical sense. They are precisely the product, the work of a given interpretation at a given moment in a given community of readers. And the strength of the arts and humanities seminar is that it is the most pioneering, unconstrained of interpretive communities, given over entirely to the practice of interpreting.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">So we must not retrench behind the received wisdoms of a conservative literary, cultural or social history; and if a student ventures an anachronism or an anecdote we should actively embrace it and pursue it. For as <i>Candide</i> shows (manifest in the very name of its hero), the most ingenuous interpretations can often be the most ingenious. Literature, as Ezra Pound famously declared, ‘is news that stays news’; but it only does so by offering up to successive generations of readers an infinitely renewable number of interpretations. It only stays news by being anachronistic, by affording vitally suggestive, powerfully imaginative discrepancies of meaning across time and space. And it is precisely in this cultural-historical interval that meaning is created, that sense is made. (And what goes for literature is equally true of, say, history or philosophy). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">A text only exists insofar as it continues to ‘speak’ to us, and it ‘speaks’ to us only via the actual act of reading, and overwhelmingly in relation to our shifting, everyday concerns. Anachronisms, such as my earlier reading of Chapter Five of <i>Candide</i> are, then, productive, not prohibitive, of meaning. Again, this is a little recognized, highly valuable form of work. Historically, conventionally, we might still refer to <i>Candide</i> as the work of François-Marie Arouet, dit Voltaire. But it’s actually our work, the fruit of our interpretations. It actually makes more sense not to think it as part of the <i>Collected Works </i>of Voltaire, but as part of the <i>collective work</i> called ‘Voltaire’ – the author being nothing other than convenient shorthand for the site of our multiple, unpredictable, anachronistic readings.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">From all of which we draw the following manifesto principle:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><u><b><i><span lang="EN-US">Article 3°</span></i></b></u></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span lang="EN-US">Publicly funding the arts and humanities recognizes that all our collective activities are grounded in just that: </span></i><span lang="EN-US">col-lectio<i>, a shared reading or interpretation. The reader is then a viable alternative model of the worker, and the arts seminar a vital alternative mode of production.</i></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Further reading:</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><ul><li><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">John Sutherland, ‘English degrees for £27K –who’s buying?’, <i>The Guardian</i>, 30 Nov 2010, <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/30/university-tuition-fees-arts-courses-fail">http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/30/university-tuition-fees-arts-courses-fail</a></span></li>
</ul></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><ul><li><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Naomi Klein, <i>The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism</i> (Toronto, 2007)</span></li>
</ul></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><ul><li><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Stanley Fish, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="font-family: inherit;">Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities</i></span> (Cambridge MA., 1980)</span></li>
</ul></div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-6604928782103260892011-03-12T10:19:00.004+00:002011-03-16T09:34:30.747+00:00Ethos? Part Three of a Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities<div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEzy91L6-XiIcFTjS9cfjzXadF9ypPkonDe1d_DZnCJeNHtRYCGxzd395Yvb86xc7fauUp7MkA6dnIsNyPuGW0GW6m_IXlsPcA7DOhjGvxdxNg31e1DjO0ZsyragvkK1iQuf3peogIAnef/s1600/636px-Moreau_Sucre_crop.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEzy91L6-XiIcFTjS9cfjzXadF9ypPkonDe1d_DZnCJeNHtRYCGxzd395Yvb86xc7fauUp7MkA6dnIsNyPuGW0GW6m_IXlsPcA7DOhjGvxdxNg31e1DjO0ZsyragvkK1iQuf3peogIAnef/s320/636px-Moreau_Sucre_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: inherit;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">This engraving is from Voltaire's <i>Candide</i>: it depicts the scene where Candide and Cacambo meet a maimed slave of a sugar mill near <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" class="mw-redirect" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Surinam" title="Surinam">Surinam.</a> Its caption reads in English, "<i>It is at this price that you eat sugar in Europe</i>"; this line was said by the slave in the text. The slave has had his hand cut off for getting a finger stuck in a millstone and his leg removed for trying to run away. The drawing is by Jean-Michel Moreau; the etching of said drawing by Pierre-Charles Baquoy. The original is from the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moreau_Sucre_crop.jpg">Public Domain Image</a>]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> brings you Part Three of <b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/french/staff/dmcallam/index.html">David McCallam</a></b>'s eloquent and thought-provoking <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities</a>, using the example of <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire">Voltaire</a>'s <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide">Candide: or, Optimism</a></i> (1759).<br />
<br />
The '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Introduction</a>' and '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/possible-worlds-part-two-of-manifesto.html">Possible Worlds</a>,' the latter published yesterday, may be read <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">here</a> and <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/possible-worlds-part-two-of-manifesto.html">here</a>. The remaining three sections will continue to appear daily over the weekend and into next week. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Ethos </span></b></div></div><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-US">Candide</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> is about human suffering. It is about the ineluctable nature of human suffering in the world. It asks why a supposedly benevolent and all-powerful deity would let us suffer in so many seemingly unjust ways each day, and it exhausts the reason and tortures the bodies of its characters who ceaselessly ask themselves and each other this question. Granted, it does so in an ineffably witty, efficient prose, but it none the less litters its tale with the carnage of war, multiples rapes, deaths, beatings, mutilations, disembowellings and dismemberments. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">In the aftermath of a meaningless battle, ‘brains were strewn on the ground next to severed arms and legs’. Pangloss is hanged and subsequently dissected (and still lives); Cunégonde witnesses her family having their throats slit, while she is raped and stabbed and left for dead; the Old Woman sees her mother ‘torn limb from limb, cut up, butchered’ by lusting, warring Moroccans, then she herself has a buttock hacked off by starving janissaries; and Candide and Cacambo come across a black slave chained up and missing his left leg and his right hand. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">The finest metaphysical explanations offered by Pangloss or Martin cannot account for this excess of physical pain. Their fullest philosophical figures are no match for this much bodily disfigurement. Pangloss may maintain his thesis (Optimism) in the face of mounting antitheses (suffering, injustice, misery), but there can be no synthesis in this world. There is only the <i>prosthesis</i> of fiction, the false tale that tells the truth of pain, the imaginary extension of real suffering.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">This is part and parcel of the ethical role of literature, indeed of the arts. To let language do the work – prosthetically as it were – of actual missing limbs, broken bones and ravaged features. And crucially, in so doing, to rearticulate what had become excruciatingly dis-articulated; to remember what had been horribly dis-membered; to reconfigure what had been cruelly dis-figured. In this way the literary text bears witness, both literally and figuratively, to the cruel injustices and violent abuses implicit in its designations of physical pain (of the raped woman, of the mutilated slave). It is also a means of sharing suffering so that the reader ‘feels’ in the very language of the text the torments (or indeed the ecstasies) of its protagonists. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Thus the literary text generates that precious quality – empathy or fellow feeling. And, of course, this redoubled awareness of others’ suffering is not just an ethical characteristic of the text, it is also key to understanding its aesthetic impact on the reader. A heightened sensitivity to another’s pain, albeit that of a fictional character, necessarily renews one’s own susceptibility to suffering, it makes one feel more alive, it accentuates one’s own appreciation of all forms of feeling. Depriving someone of this experience is to deny them the possibility of greater empathy, in effect numbing them to the suffering of others. The opposite of the text’s aesthetic is the <i>anaesthetic</i> of a life without literature, without the arts. Empathy is crucial: it grounds both the universal ethical appeal of the work (increasing our susceptibility to the feelings of others) and the particular aesthetic charm of the work (sharpening and shaping our own sensibilities).</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Yet empathy in <i>Candide</i> derives from sentiment without sentimentality. For instance, the Old Woman can talk of the callous poisoning of her fiancé on their wedding night as a ‘trifle’, then go on to relate a succession of terrible misfortunes with similar stoical understatement because she knows from experience that everyone has his or her story to tell, and has cursed life at some point or other while persevering to live. She embodies a peculiarly dispassionate form of sensibility in the tale, one which feels yet keeps its wits about itself and can reason even as it suffers or hopes. Empathy or fellow feeling, yes; but one which disagrees promptly and punctually with its fellows because disagreement is a mark of respect, not of disdain. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Put another way, any consensus of feeling or thought is only legitimate if at the same time it admits of dissent, if it is formed in a community founded on a mutual freedom of critique. Informed consensus is only made possible by what we might call a founding <i>dissensus</i>. Candide and Martin illustrate this point perfectly as they travel across the seas, arguing incessantly for fifteen days straight without coming any closer to agreement than when they first set sail. But all the while, as the text has it, ‘they were speaking, they were communicating ideas to one another, they were consoling one another’. Unlikely as it sounds, disagreement consoles, argument engenders empathy. Hence when both end up in the fabled garden near Constantinople, it is not to reconstitute the ‘pre-established harmony’ of an Eden, or of a feudal Westphalian castle, but a consensus of dissenters and, as such, one requiring constant upkeep – ‘il faut cultiver notre jardin’, after all… And my point is that this same salutary <i>dissensus</i> exists and flourishes in the better arts and humanities classrooms of our universities.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Ethics and empathy also come together in the creation of ‘characters’ in literature. Each character (from the Greek <i>ethos</i>) speaks in a different voice, and as we read empathically, he or she allows us to try out that voice, that viewpoint, for ourselves. Each gives us access to tastes, sensibilities and values which are not our own, not those we have inherited, often unconsciously, from our national or cultural traditions. We re-evaluate our own ethical positions for having provisionally espoused those of imaginary characters just as surely as children learn their values in the first place through trial-and-error imitation of the adults around them. Characters speak for us as other to ourselves, as though we were Other. And sometimes, in the greatest texts, they do so with such force and clarity that we prefer their words to ours; or rather, their words speak through us, as Other, to our friends, colleagues, strangers in the ‘real’ world. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">In a process that has been beautifully described by Antoine Compagnon, a particular turn of phrase or a spell-binding line of poetry speaks to us and only to us, or so we feel (this is soli-<i>citation</i>); so we identify ourselves with it and appropriate it as our own (<i>citation</i>); in order to do this, we underscore it, repeat it, memorize it, excerpt it from its context (ex-<i>citation</i>) and use it in the world beyond the text. And by this process of soliciting-citing-exciting, the voice of the text speaks through us and makes us other to who we are and to who we were; and for as long as we speak those words, and only those words, we experience the thrilling (exciting?) illusion of being simultaneously ourselves and someone completely different, without for a moment having the alienating sensation of ceding our emotional and moral independence to another living-breathing person. A literary citation is thus empathy <i>à l’état pur</i>.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">This also goes some way to explain why literary texts, when studied with attention and care, inspire in us such love and loathing and shake up so thoroughly our received wisdoms and unquestioned ‘truths’. It also underlines a fundamental ethical mismatch between what happens to receptive, intelligent readers in an arts seminar and what modern university bureaucracy asks of them afterwards. Which student is it who is being asked to assess his or her ‘satisfaction’ with my literature course? Today’s entitled consumer or the reader whose worldview has been transformed by stepping into <i>Candide</i>’s narrative universe with his or her classmates? How can the punctual ticking of boxes ever be a legitimate measure of the lifelong relevance of being challenged by Kant or Shakespeare, of having no easy answers to Candide’s eternal questions? (Ethics, after all, isn’t just about comforting the afflicted; it’s also about afflicting the comfortable). Admittedly, this is something of a misrepresentation of the aims of the National Student Survey (NSS). But not because the NSS cares about individual student satisfaction. It couldn’t care less. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">These rhetorical questions misrepresent it because the NSS is only another means of consolidating universities in their new role as businesses and brands, competing with each other for the student vote, i.e., for the student dollar. The dubious rationale goes, as <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble">Stefan Collini</a> has shown, if students are ‘satisfied’, they will pay; if not, they won’t. And those universities who don’t give student satisfaction will not get the income to keep trading and will therefore either close or be forced to ‘drive up the quality’ of their educational product. The NSS is the insidious measure that ensures Browne’s fetish of competition enters the public space of the university – the better to break it up and sell it off. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">So while arts and humanities students study, analyse and interpret the meaning of loss, suffering, humiliation, mediocrity, ugliness, disillusionment and unhappiness in great works such as <i>Candide</i>, their institutions talk exclusively of satisfaction, impact, excellence and success. No room in the boardroom for failure or feeling. Ironically enough, the two visions are not as far apart as they might initially seem, since the market-led, competition-driven obsession with ‘excellence’ goes hand in hand with the deteriorating working conditions, the misery of casualization, and the slashing of pensions for the very staff who are constantly exhorted to deliver it. Likewise, student ‘satisfaction’ is increasingly accompanied by chronic stress, depression, counselling and result-fixated intellectual impoverishment. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">What, we might wonder, would a market-minded vice-chancellor make of Samuel Beckett’s famous definition of the artist as one whose very condition is ‘</span>to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world’? Very little, I suspect. For university management culture is like Pangloss: it only asks questions to which it already presumes to know the answer. When, in turn, teachers, researchers and students are asked to confirm the same answer, it is euphemistically called ‘consultation’. It is a far cry from Candide and his quest ever to question better.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Of the three principal forms of social control bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment, Candide sees <i>technology</i> at work in Eldorado, traffics in <i>markets</i> around the globe, but is mercifully spared any protracted experience of <i>bureaucracy</i>. Arts and humanities departments, on the other hand, are more than familiar with a regime of incessant tests, interviews, appraisals, evaluations, questionnaires, focus groups, meetings, forms, memos, reports and audits. The result, as Michel Foucault would say, is the fascism of everyday life. Not the ‘enormous fascisms that surround and crush us’ but ‘the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives’. The result is the production of subjects without agency. Products of an inhuman conditioning by the powers of bureaucracy inhabiting a public space ostensibly dedicated to the study of the ‘human condition’.</span><br />
<br />
<div>But our text offers us again the strategies with which to fight back and reclaim our shared humanity. To the pre-determined structure of the questionnaire or the agenda, it opposes the improvisation of chat, the garrulousness of characters who <i>always</i> say more than is necessary, or other than what is expected. (Thus Candide’s picaresque stories, those he tells and those he elicits of others, contrast with Pangloss’s economy of explanation; his colourful interpretation of the French verb <i>causer</i> meaning ‘to chat’ exceeds and overwhelms the Doctor’s more literal sense of <i>causer</i> as ‘to produce an effect’). Chat, like the literature that enshrines it, puts language to work in new, unruly and inventive ways; ways that are almost completely alien to administration. Hence the arts and humanities in which (literary, philosophical or historical) chat is not only the object of discussion but also its medium of communication are disciplines formed by intellectual indiscipline. Despite the best efforts of the management to encourage interdisciplinarity (just another internal market?), these academic subjects have the innovative tendency to generate instead what <span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.fabula.org/atelier.php?Lire_interpr%26eacute%3Bter_actualiser">Yves Citton</a></span> calls <i>indisciplinarity</i>. What I would call new rules for living together drawn from the unruliness of reading together.</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.fabula.org/atelier.php?Lire_interpr%26eacute%3Bter_actualiser"><br />
</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><u><b><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Article 2°</i></span></b></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><i>By increasing our capacity for empathy, the arts and humanities make us ethically more aware and aesthetically more alive; and they do so through forms of language (dissenting, citing, chatting) which often defy institutional control</i>.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="FR">Further reading:</span></span></b></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="FR">Antoine Compagnon, <i>La Seconde main ou le travail de la citation</i> (Paris, 1979)</span></span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: inherit;"></div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Matthew Taylor, ‘Twenty-first century enlightenment’, at:</span></span> <span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/315002/RSA_21centuryenlightenment_essay1_matthewtaylor.pdf">http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/315002/RSA_21centuryenlightenment_essay1_matthewtaylor.pdf</a> (London, 2010), especially regarding empathy</span></span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: inherit;"></div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Michel Foucault, ‘Preface’, in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, <i>Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia</i> (London, 1984), pp. xi-xiv.</span></span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-58357325786230637912011-03-11T15:02:00.003+00:002011-03-12T11:21:07.367+00:00Possible Worlds? Part Two of a Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6jAA22ZTsS1GuKv6Xq5mlldojPiiSkDx3CaY0H15kNJQuYBrOpOQVnJlKQxO2gbGVFLeSyrFPnXGiv5ApqHoUkGnamTYAxlBZQUr6TBBB-E0UFGDwRwPu0xTaFAToVhU3Z9HJmVN2arw6/s1600/VoltaireCandidFrontis1762.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6jAA22ZTsS1GuKv6Xq5mlldojPiiSkDx3CaY0H15kNJQuYBrOpOQVnJlKQxO2gbGVFLeSyrFPnXGiv5ApqHoUkGnamTYAxlBZQUr6TBBB-E0UFGDwRwPu0xTaFAToVhU3Z9HJmVN2arw6/s400/VoltaireCandidFrontis1762.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Frontispiece and first page of chapter one of an early English translation by T. Smollett et al of </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire">Voltaire</a>'s <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide">Candide: or, Optimism</a></i> , printed by J. Newbery, 1762. [<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VoltaireCandidFrontis%2BChap01-1762.jpg">Public Domain Image</a>]</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> is delighted to publish Part Two of <b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/french/staff/dmcallam/index.html">David McCallam</a></b>'s Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities, using the example of</span><span style="font-size: small;"> <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire">Voltaire</a>'s <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide">Candide: or, Optimism</a></i> (1759). </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">Introduction</a>', published yesterday, is <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/optimism-or-manifesto-for-arts-and.html">here</a>. The remaining four sections will be published daily over the weekend and into next week, with 'Ethos' appearing tomorrow. </span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Possible worlds</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf">Browne Report</a> into funding higher education in England was depressingly reductive, judging the worth of university education almost exclusively in economic terms. Only those subjects deemed capable of growing the economy were hailed as fit for funding. The general good, in other words, is nothing more than GDP. No mention of university’s moral transformative capability, its democratizing potential or its civic duty. No defence of its role in providing personal enrichment, cultural apprenticeship or aesthetic pleasure. Society, in Browne’s vision, is competition, not conversation; it is entrepreneurial, not inclusive. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">This is the world, as <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/politics/higher-education-and-social-justice-%E2%80%93-should-we-care/">Matthew Taylor</a> presents it, of the hedge fund, the NHS internal market, X Factor and the Turner Prize where ‘the imperative of competition has become all-pervasive’. This is today’s world, Browne says, and there is no alternative. And in such a world those academic disciplines caricatured as having no clear economic utility should have their public funding withdrawn in its entirety. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">This, of course, means chiefly the arts and humanities – accessory, self-indulgent, esoteric pursuits of knowledge for its own sake. The <i>otium</i> or idleness of personal interest, not the <i>negotium</i> or market savvy of business interests. Yet, is it not intriguing to note that the arts and humanities are also the principal academic sphere from which an innovative critique of this blinkered econometric world view comes? Is it not significant that Browne wants to asset-strip precisely that intellectual domain in which powerful and imaginative alternative worlds are constantly being proposed, explored and debated? In this sense, the arts and humanities are the prime site of resistance to Browne and the coalition government’s economic instrumentalization of university education. What they ‘produce’ instead is critically empowered citizens with the capacity to envisage a different future from the one presented to them. The reason for this is simple: their students and teachers live and breathe in other possible worlds.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">So in stark contrast to Browne’s university, it might be better to speak of our <i>multiversity</i>. This is not a reference to <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2007/febmar/wagneressay.html">Clark Kerr’s multiversity</a> of the 1960s, an institution which geared itself increasingly to the utilitarist needs of the corporate economy. Rather, our twenty-first-century multiversity is characterized by a publicly funded diversity of provision (adult, part-time, vocational, career-break modalities) and a plurality of informed opinion. It is the institutional equivalent of quantum mechanics’s many-worlds theory, of <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://criticismetc.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/ascent-to-the-heights-ernst-blochs-a-philosophy-of-the-future/">Ernst Bloch’s ‘multiverse’</a> as a horizon of possibilities, of an infinite number of simultaneously realizable ‘tendencies and latencies’, of <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths">Borges’s garden of forking paths</a>. And far from being a secondary string of subjects, a form of cultural ornamentation to the applied sciences, the arts and humanities should be the very model for the academic disciplines of the twenty-first-century multiversity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The new institution could take as its motto the slogan of the anti-globalization movement: ‘Another world is possible’. It could even say: ‘Other worlds are possible’. It could go so far as to cry: ‘Other worlds are possible and real’. For this is what great works of art, of writing, of thinking constitute. The artist, wrote Henri Bergson, ‘creates the possible at the same time as the real when he carries out his work’. The possible and the real enter into a new relationship in the arts and humanities; and it is not just the artist but also the arts student who creates at once new possibilities and new realities each time that he or she interprets a text or image. (This is, incidentally, a more radical and empowering way of interrogating the world around us – the ‘real’ so to speak – than the commodification of the real by modern mass media, as in ‘reality TV’, ‘real-life magazines’, ‘24-hour news’ or ‘real-time messaging’.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Let us take the literary text as an exemplary form of alternative world-making in the arts and humanities. Let us then consider one of the finest examples of this imaginative play between the real and the possible, that is, Voltaire’s <i>Candide, or Optimism</i>. Its organizing principle is a sustained satirical attack on the Christian and Providentialist readings of <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds">Gottfried Leibniz’s <i>Theodicy</i></a> which promoted the notion of Optimism: that God, in his infinite wisdom, omnipotence and benevolence, created the best possible world from all the ‘compossible’ cosmic permutations available to him. According to this theory, the world is conceived and organized in such a way as to <i>optimize</i> the general good and minimize evil as a regrettable but necessary part of the natural order. As the providentialist poet Alexander Pope put it, ‘All partial Evil’ contributes to ‘universal Good’. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In <i>Candide</i> this Optimist philosophy is mischievously and repeatedly reduced to its slogan of ‘All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’, a view voiced in the tale by the blindly, stubbornly Optimist Dr Pangloss. The irony of Pangloss’s position is that his Optimism precisely excludes all hope – all <i>optimism</i> as we understand the term today – since for him the world cannot possibly be otherwise than it is, being the best of all possible worlds. Yet the adventures of Candide, the eponymous hero of the tale, give the lie to the crushing fatalism of Pangloss’s philosophy, shaping and suggesting alternative worlds with each twist of the plot. They also contradict the opposite but equally abstract and systematic thinking of the pessimist Martin whose Manichean belief in the ultimate triumph of evil over good in the world could be summed up as ‘All is for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds’. </span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Candide’s tale also undermines more subtly another perfect world system, that of the utopian community of Eldorado. Whereas other literary texts might connote a better world, utopian texts denote it, explicitly delineating its various perfections. This leads to the paradox of the utopian text, Eldorado in this case, denying the reader the very possibility of imagining a better world otherwise. In this sense, utopia is just as fatalist, fixed and hopeless (there being nothing left to hope for) as Pangloss and Martin’s visions of the world. It is perhaps no coincidence that Candide exits Eldorado only to confront the realities of slavery in Surinam, a juxtaposition of two forms of entrapment in social systems demanding above all conformity to their rules – the one beyond-the-human, the other beneath-the-human.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">It is rather Candide’s practical, resourceful servant Cacambo who advises him ‘when you don’t get what you expect in one place (<i>dans un monde</i>), you get it in another. It’s a great pleasure to see and do new things’. To be realistic, as Cacambo undoubtedly is, is to create the possible. And the way to do this, Cacambo suggests, is by exercising one’s curiosity, a trait both he and Candide share in spades. Thus unlike Pangloss who rarely asks questions and always elicits the univocal answer of ‘all is for the best’ from his readings of the world, the curious Candide incessantly interrogates those around him and those he meets, not to confirm his pre-established opinion or to get a definitive response, but precisely to <i>question better</i>. Hence he sees new pertinences arising from his variously impertinent questions. And this is the role of the reader, of the student, of the arts and humanities too. The university has to create a space for the exercise of this Candide-like attention, this curiosity, this credulity which teaches not facts and certainties, but how to question better.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">As <i>Candide</i> amply proves, there is no single text, but the site of many possible readings. Pangloss’s problem is that he has only one interpretation of the world. The same goes for Martin and, in a different way, the same is true of the utopian vision of Eldorado. Yet instead of such utopias, <i>Candide</i> opens up for its readers what Dominique Maingueneau calls ‘paratopias’. These are spaces of critical negotiation and experimentation between places in the real world (e.g., Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Venice) and their fictional forms. Paratopias make imaginative room between the actual and the fictional for other possible worlds to exist and be explored, worlds in which we are invited to reconfigure our beliefs and desires. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">The ultimate paratopian situation is that of Candide’s garden at the end of the narrative. It is situated just outside Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) and is thus poised on multiple thresholds over and above the discursive space between a fictional and a real Turkish capital. For instance, the garden sits on the cusp between East and West, between the city and the sea; the garden is also where art and nature meet; and it is an excellent place for cultivating not just natural produce but also dialogue between civilizations, faiths and peoples. Its situation makes of it a literary version of the famous ‘Sublime Porte’ or ‘High Gate’ that gave entrance to the chambers of power in the city under Ottoman rule. So Candide’s final situation forms a sublime doorway from the actual to the fictional, from the real to the possible, and back again. The garden as supreme paratopia also contrasts with the Old World of Europe (identified with Pangloss) and the New World of the Americas (where we meet Martin and visit Eldorado), with their respective forms of Optimism, fatalism and utopia.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">The literary text also frees its reader from the prevailing narratives of the ‘real’ world, be they eighteenth-century Optimism or the economic determinism of Browne’s report. <i>Candide</i> is particularly successful in challenging in this manner the metaphysical causality typical of Pangloss and Martin’s way of thinking. To this end it deploys a hubristic narrative causality, involving far-fetched coincidences, improbable accidents and even resurrections from death (the ultimate other world), which makes a mockery of all other causal theories, destroying them by a sort of narrative <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. In this way <i>Candide</i>’s story reasserts the necessity of chance in life and employs an explicit lack of realism to reclaim the ‘real’ for its readers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">One of the more significant social impacts of reading literary texts is the way their paratopias and invitations into alternative worlds oblige the reader to cleave to two beliefs simultaneously. To invest a belief in the fictional world of the text (to suspend one’s disbelief willingly) and to retain a belief in the actual world and its everyday reference points (to remain suspicious of the fiction). Readers who engage in this game of double beliefs, of credulity and scepticism combined, will arguably be more proof against single-minded extremism, will be less tempted by the simplistic vision of the fanatic or the strident appeals of the fundamentalist. That the arts and humanities immerse their students into simultaneously varied, often starkly divergent, belief systems allows these same students to rehearse the moral and mental gestures necessary for participation in a pluralist and tolerant society. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">As Yves Citton explains, this works a bit like inoculation. As with inoculation, the reader takes a shot of the noxious beliefs exposed in a given fiction the better to build up a resistance, an immunity to the full-blown ravages of the integral belief system. In this way Candide naïvely applies Pangloss’s Optimist theory to his lived experience, which ultimately cures him of it; he is henceforth inoculated against the Doctor’s Optimist fundamentalism. (As if to reinforce the classic Voltairean assimilation of fanatical thinking with infectious disease, Pangloss catches the pox, which costs him an eye and an ear, although his eventual treatment does not cure him of his Optimist zeal. Nor does his falling foul of the rival superstitious intolerance of the Inquisition. Indeed, he clings to his Optimist beliefs even in Constantinople… from where the practice of inoculation was first exported to the West.)</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">So, the manifesto principle established from this study would be:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><u><b><i>Article 1°</i></b></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i>At the heart of societies keen to foster tolerant multiculturalism, the arts and humanities provide an essential and unique site for negotiating and experimenting with linguistic, philosophical and cultural plurality</i>.</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Further reading:</b></div><br />
<ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.fabula.org/atelier.php?Lire_interpr%26eacute%3Bter_actualiser"><span lang="FR">Yves Citton, <i>Lire, interpréter, actualiser. Pourquoi les études littéraires?</i> </span></a><span lang="EN-US"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.fabula.org/atelier.php?Lire_interpr%26eacute%3Bter_actualiser">(Paris, 2007)</a> – I am deeply indebted to this book for many of the ideas not just in this section but in all the sections of this Manifesto</span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: inherit;"></div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span lang="EN-US">Lubomír Doležel, <i>Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds</i> (Baltimore, 1998)</span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: inherit;"></div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span lang="FR">Dominique Maingueneau, <i>Le Discours littéraire. Paratopie et scène d’énonciation</i> (Paris, 2004)</span></li>
</ul>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-59431413590349616232011-03-10T14:40:00.006+00:002011-03-14T10:11:55.002+00:00Optimism? or, A Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2wzUZiU6AxfyXYkLotWH7RTXlx_qNcW1l1KIHPrOLu3X9MkzpxzK9oUHOC6zBxgPIYzhl_MllFe2XbjFAC5p7YfB88PEFTJz8lc5A-ccLmz3MeiVUKE7Vrusx6qpLVkHp_h4uis6MBtiV/s1600/1755_Lisbon_earthquake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2wzUZiU6AxfyXYkLotWH7RTXlx_qNcW1l1KIHPrOLu3X9MkzpxzK9oUHOC6zBxgPIYzhl_MllFe2XbjFAC5p7YfB88PEFTJz8lc5A-ccLmz3MeiVUKE7Vrusx6qpLVkHp_h4uis6MBtiV/s400/1755_Lisbon_earthquake.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Lisbon, Portugal, during the great <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" class="extiw" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake" title="en:1755 Lisbon earthquake">earthquake of 1 November 1755</a>, mentioned by <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire">Voltaire</a> in <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide">Candide: or, Optimism</a></i> (1759)</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">.<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> Original copper engraving held by: Museu da Cidade, Lisbon. Reproduced in: <i>O Terramoto de 1755, Testamunhos Britanicos = The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, British Accounts</i>. Lisbon: British Historical Society of Portugal, 1990. (<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1755_Lisbon_earthquake.jpg">public domain imag</a>e)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;">Today, <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> is delighted to publish the introduction to a timely, and meticulously argued, Manifesto for our cause authored by <b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/french/staff/dmcallam/index.html">Dr David McCallam</a></b>, Reader in French Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Sheffield.</div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit;">Below is the first instalment. The remaining five sections will appear daily from now on, beginning with '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/possible-worlds-part-two-of-manifesto.html">Possible Worlds</a>' tomorrow. [Also see further instalm<span style="font-size: small;">ents: '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/ethos-part-three-of-manifesto-for-arts.html">Ethos</a>', '<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2011/03/work-part-four-of-manifesto-for-arts.html">Work</a>', 'Equality' and 'Autonomy'.]</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><style>
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</style> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>A Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities: </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>The Example of <i>Candide</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Introduction</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In Autumn 2010 both the Browne Report and the coalition government’s Comprehensive Spending Review concluded that state funding for universities in England had to be slashed by 80%. For university arts and humanities subjects, this effectively means that 100% of their public funding is to be wiped out in a single stroke. In a crude attempt to backfill the gaping deficit produced in their finances by this decision, universities are thus forced to ramp up student fees, tripling them from their present level to as much as £9,000 per year per student. These will be payable from Septembr 2012 onwards. In other words, public investment in universities (taxes) is to be replaced by private debt (fees).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s easy to see here just further evidence of a concerted ideological assault on public services (councils, health, police, etc.), each in turn to be broken up and tendered out to private contractors. More proof of a deep-rooted political drive towards privatization; a sharp shift from the engaged citizen towards the entitled consumer… While the effects of this ‘neo-liberal revolution’ in higher education, as it has been called, have so far been localized, and occasionally personalized (Sussex, Middlesex, KCL, Bristol, Glasgow, etc.), it will not be long before they are savagely felt across the entire sector, with no institution likely to escape unscathed. Nor is this egregious development peculiar to the English university system. In fact, if this can happen in England – engine of the world’s fifth largest economy, home to some of the world’s best universities, yet soon to have the world’s most expensive higher education – then other countries should seriously sit up and take notice.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Writing in the wake of the Browne Report, James Vernon made a very telling, prescient point. In the face of this unprecedented and unconscionable attack on the university as a civic institution, and particularly in response to the casual depreciation of its arts and humanities education, <i>now</i> more than at any other time before, we need ‘to rearticulate the purpose and role of the humanities in ways which justify renewed public investment in them’. Or again: ‘The defence of public universities is intricately tied to arguments that can establish the public value of the humanities’. This Manifesto is one such attempt to rise to Vernon’s urgent challenge.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">So what is this Manifesto? In essence, it is a vindication of the arts and humanities as the most valuable of social and cultural practices. And it is overtly partisan, as all good manifestos should be (as Stendhal allegedly said, I have too much taste to be impartial). Its principal points are distilled into five Articles. But each Article is also the conclusion of one of five subsections – entitled ‘Possible Worlds’; ‘Ethos’; ‘Work’; ‘Equality’; ‘Autonomy’ – each of which combines reflections on the public value of the arts and humanities with specific reference to an exemplary literary text. That text is Voltaire’s inexhaustibly intelligent <i>Candide, or Optimism</i>. The choice of text is twofold. Firstly, it is a return to the Enlightenment sources of our current dilemma: to the eighteenth-century establishment of universal values (equality, justice, toleration), a contemporary cultivation of critical autonomy and a nascent democracy of feelings – all of which went hand in hand with the emergence of global markets, the rise of state bureaucracy, and a new rationalist faith in technology. Secondly, and more facetiously, the choice of text is a wilful provocation to those who like to dismiss classical ‘literature’, (scornfully pronounced <i>li-rit-cha</i>) as the acme of preening pointlessness, as the epitome of effete self-indulgence. And as if to drive the point home, this literature is <i>on ne peut plus français</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">So here are, in brief and upfront, the five Articles of this Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i>Article 1°</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>At the heart of societies keen to foster tolerant multiculturalism, the arts and humanities provide an essential and unique site for negotiating and experimenting with linguistic, philosophical and cultural plurality</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i>Article 2°</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>By increasing our capacity for empathy, the arts and humanities make us ethically more aware and aesthetically more alive; and they do so through forms of language (dissenting, citing, chatting) which often defy institutional control</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span lang="EN-US">Article 3°</span></i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-US">Publicly funding the arts and humanities recognizes that all our collective activities are grounded in just that: </span></i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">col-lectio<i>, a shared reading or interpretation. The reader is then a viable alternative model of the worker, and the arts seminar a vital alternative mode of production</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span lang="EN-US">Article 4°</span></i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-US">University arts and humanities classes constitute a genuinely democratic space, founded on the equality of intelligences of their members; at once levelling and empowering, they are the workshops of citizenship</span></i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span lang="EN-US">Article 5°</span></i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-US">By educating us to be self-aware and critically autonomous, the arts and humanities ensure that we are less likely to collude in our own oppression; equally, they best equip us to manage society’s increasingly frequent crises of representation (political, economic, cultural, rhetorical, visual)</span></i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Each section, and each article, is followed by brief suggestions for further readings, unashamedly in both French and English. (There are no footnoted references - this is a Manifesto, after all, not an academic article).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">For this <i>Introduction</i>, proposed further readings might be:</span></div><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">James Vernon, ‘The end of the public university in England’, <i>Inside Higher Ed</i>, 27 Oct 2010, at: <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/globalhighered/the_end_of_the_public_university_in_england">http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/globalhighered/the_end_of_the_public_university_in_england</a></span></li>
</ul><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Stefan Collini, ‘Browne’s Gamble’, <i>London Review of Books</i>, 4 Nov 2010, at: <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble">http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble</a></span></li>
</ul><ul style="font-family: inherit;"><li><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘The neo-liberal revolution in British Higher Education’, <i>La France et la crise</i>, 5 Nov 2010, at: <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://lafranceetlacrise.com/2010/11/05/the-neo-liberal-revolution-in-british-higher-education/">http://lafranceetlacrise.com/2010/11/05/the-neo-liberal-revolution-in-british-higher-education/</a></span></li>
</ul>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-18794298553050393332011-02-27T15:27:00.004+00:002011-02-27T16:01:56.907+00:00Proposed Cuts at Glasgow University's School of Modern Languages and Cultures<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0Stf8b1V_UQ" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="255" width="400"></iframe><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Stf8b1V_UQ&feature=related"><span style="font-size:85%;">Protest by students and staff in the cloisters at Glasgow University</span></a><br /><br /></div><a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> expresses its solidarity with academics, students ad support staff in departments currently fighting savage proposed cuts. The Departments particularly targeted are Nursing, Adult Education, Anthropology, Modern Languages and Social Work. The wonderful provision in Modern Languages would be reduced to just two languages if the most extreme proposals receive assent. But there has been extremely lively resistance to the proposals, as this <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/courses-face-axe-under-university-cost-cutting-courses-face-axe-as-university-looks-to-reduce-its-costs-1.1084092">BBC report indicates</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Please sign the </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">"</span>Help Save Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow" <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/glasgowmodernlanguages/">online petition here</a>. Also, do please check out and 'like' the <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Modern-Languages-and-Cultures-at-University-of-Glasgow-under-threat/179538408755444">Facebook page</a> devoted to the Campaign.<br /><p style="font-size:12px;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><strong></strong></span></p><blockquote><p style="font-size:12px;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>A LEADING Scottish university has drawn up plans to scrap or merge a raft of courses as part of moves to save £20 million over the next three years.</strong></span></p> <p style="font-size:12px;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The controversial proposals from Glasgow University include the merging of history, archaeology and classics and the scrapping of several modern languages. Other courses to face the axe include nursing, anthropology and social work, and the university is also seeking a review of its high-profile Centre for Drugs Misuse Research.</span></p> <p style="font-size:12px;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The university is also considering cutting back its provision of evening and weekend classes, which cater for up to 5000 adult learners a year. The university’s Dumfries campus would also be hit, with courses in the liberal arts cut in favour of an expansion in environmental management.</span></p> <p style="font-size:12px;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The proposals from the university’s senior management group, which will make combined savings of some £3m, are part of a wider strategy to find £20m in savings by 2012-13. <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/courses-face-axe-under-university-cost-cutting-courses-face-axe-as-university-looks-to-reduce-its-costs-1.1084092"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Read more</span></a> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">[</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/courses-face-axe-under-university-cost-cutting-courses-face-axe-as-university-looks-to-reduce-its-costs-1.1084092">The Herald, February 9, 2011]</a></span></p></blockquote><br /><blockquote>We call on the minister responsible for higher education to do everything in his power to influence the management of the University of Glasgow and to ensure that the university continues to fulfil its historic role as an outward-looking institution rooted in the community that it serves rather than working primarily to maximise income in the international marketplace. In this respect the recent British Academy report urges universities to "adopt a wider definition of' internationalisation' rather than focus simply on the recruitment of overseas students'. The University of Glasgow must continue to serve the needs of Scotland in providing excellent higher education that can open up international and European perspectives for the young people of Scotland, giving them the opportunity to develop high-level linguistic skills and intercultural understanding as part of a broad-ranging humanities education. <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/26/glasgow-dons-unite"><span style="font-style: italic;">Read more</span></a> [<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/26/glasgow-dons-unite">Letter to The Guardian from Glasgow University Staff, February 26, 2011</a>]</blockquote><br /><p style="font-size: 12px;"> </p><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">[...] I am saddened at its proposals to defenestrate its excellent modern languages department. As the university seeks to save £20m over the next two years, it plans to withdraw several language courses as well as curtail its adult education programme. One of the reasons why so few Scottish students take advantage of well-funded opportunities to study overseas, such as the <a href="http://www.eaec.eu.com/index.php?id=32" title="">Erasmus placements</a>, is because of our poor language skills. So, at a stroke, Glasgow will exacerbate our global illiteracy while turning its back on thousands of overseas students. Rarely before have we seemed so narrow and introspective.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" > <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/27/kevin-mckenna-education-scotland-cuts"><span style="font-style: italic;">Read more</span></a> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">[</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/27/kevin-mckenna-education-scotland-cuts">Kevin McKenna, The Observer, February 27, 2011]</a></span></blockquote><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/27/kevin-mckenna-education-scotland-cuts"></a><p></p>DefendARTSandHUMShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16423440810828540860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-22005536481083769532011-02-27T14:40:00.004+00:002011-02-27T15:04:07.812+00:00The Art of Protest<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ourkingdom/fight-back-reader-on-winter-of-protest" target="_blank"><img title="Fight Back" src="http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/placeholder.gif" alt="Fight Back" border="0" height="60" width="468" /></a><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><span><br />The <a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> website is back in action after an unplanned and unavoidable break in communications. Apologies for that.<br /><br />Our first post flags an upcoming event in London, </span><em><a style="color: rgb(0, 97, 191); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" href="http://culturalstudiesresearch.org/?p=656">The Art of Protest: a seminar to launch Fight Back! A Reader on the Winter of Protest</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span> <em>March 2, 14:00 - 17:00,</em> The Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London.<strong><br /></strong></em><br /><span> The aformentioned Reader</span><span style=""> </span><span>is embedded below</span><span style=""> but is also available<br /></span><ul><li><span style="font-size:100%;"> <a style="color: rgb(0, 97, 191); text-decoration: none;" href="http://felixcohen.co.uk/fightback.pdf">as a PDF</a> for <span style="font-weight: bold;">FREE</span> (large 6mb file)<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004OR1OG4">on Kindle</a> for just £1.48</span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;">in print, from 24 March</span></li></ul><p><strong><strong><em><em>Help Spread the Word</em><em>: </em></em><span style="font-weight: normal;">Tweet </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 97, 191); text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal;" href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23fightbackUK">@fightbackUK</a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> and like </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 97, 191); text-decoration: underline; font-weight: normal;" href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fight-Back-A-reader-on-the-winter-of-protest/154373581282436">its Facebook page</a><br /></strong></strong></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><strong><strong><a title="View Fight Back on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/48950923/Fight-Back" style="margin: 12px auto 6px; font: bold 14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">Fight Back</a> <object id="doc_455108785038261" name="doc_455108785038261" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" style="outline: medium none;" height="600" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf"> <param name="wmode" value="opaque"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"> <param name="FlashVars" value="document_id=48950923&access_key=key-2ir0rz8p4iuprf7tfnhf&page=1&viewMode=list"> <embed id="doc_455108785038261" name="doc_455108785038261" src="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=48950923&access_key=key-2ir0rz8p4iuprf7tfnhf&page=1&viewMode=list" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="opaque" bgcolor="#ffffff" height="600" width="100%"></embed> </object></strong></strong></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><strong><strong></strong></strong></span></div>DefendARTSandHUMShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16423440810828540860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-1535474888270232462011-01-26T16:24:00.001+00:002011-01-26T16:25:18.474+00:00Michael Chanan at Cultural Capital<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="225" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/19161582?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=80ceff" width="400"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_768556810">Video by Michael Chanan.</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/01/protest-movement-film">New Statesman Video Blog No.1</a></div><br />
<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> is very happy to relay the news that the <i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/01/protest-movement-film">New Statesman</a></i> has announced a collaboration with the documentary film maker and film scholar <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/staff/MichaelChanan/">Michael Chanan</a>, who has been filming some of the events fuelling the protest movement in the UK. Focusing on the arts, both within and outside academia, he is building up a picture of the movement as it develops.<br />
<br />
Michael, whose previous films include <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.detroitruinofacity.com/">Detroit Ruin of a City</a> and <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.americanwhoelectrifiedrussia.co.uk/">The American who Electrified Russia</a>, will be posting videos on the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/01/protest-movement-film"><i>NS</i> </a><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/01/protest-movement-film">Cultural Capital blog</a> every week or two, leading to a feature-length campaign documentary.<br />
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<i>Michael Chanan also blogs at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://putneydebater.wordpress.com/">Putney Debater</a></i>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-62146808458873567792011-01-14T14:24:00.000+00:002011-01-14T14:24:10.726+00:00"Can't Cut This!" Arts Against Cuts<div style="text-align: center;"><object height="325" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/T7eQ73w4EvY?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/T7eQ73w4EvY?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="325"></embed></object></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T7eQ73w4EvY#%21">SUARTS Priority Campaign</a> - <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.suarts.org/cantcut">Can't Cut This</a>.</span></b></div><br />
<blockquote><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">''</span><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com/">Arts Against Cuts</a></b> collective invite everyone to another weekend of learning, sharing, planning and organising on <span class="text_exposed_show">Saturday, January 15th, and Sunday, the 16th, in <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?client=safari&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&q=camberwell+college+wilson+road&fb=1&gl=uk&hq=camberwell+college+wilson+road&hnear=camberwell+college+wilson+road&cid=0%2C0%2C3141566556738722881&ll=51.473939%2C-0.086088&spn=0.00687%2C0.014763&z=16&iwloc=A">Camberwell College of Art</a>, London 10:00 - 18:00</span><br />
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Following on from the fantastic <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/arts-against-cuts-the-long-weekend/">Long Weekend at Goldsmiths</a> in December, the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/rad-video-of-the-turner-prize-teach-in/">Turner Prize Tate and National Gallery teach-ins</a>, the Book Blocks and the many occupations and actions that emerged from this meeting, <b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com/">Arts Against Cuts</a></b> are organising another weekend of action, planning, imagining, working and thinking together.<span class="text_exposed_hide">...</span><span class="text_exposed_show"> <br />
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We will make sure that all the knowledge, ideas, tools and projects which emerge from the event will be disseminated and put into action in streets and public spaces across the country and be shared by all those in the anti-cuts movements. The Direct Weekend will be a feast of non stop workshops and presentations, how-to sessions and skill shares, and a lot of free space for spontaneous creation of events and actions. Its not important what art is but what it does, and right now it has the potential to turn the crisis of cuts into an opportunity for change.<br />
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Working towards the National Demo on the 29th of January and beyond, we are inviting all those who are interested in creative forms of resistance to join us this weekend.</span><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">''</span></b><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"> <br />
(link to <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?client=safari&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&q=camberwell+college+wilson+road&fb=1&gl=uk&hq=camberwell+college+wilson+road&hnear=camberwell+college+wilson+road&cid=0%2C0%2C3141566556738722881&ll=51.473939%2C-0.086088&spn=0.00687%2C0.014763&z=16&iwloc=A">map location</a>) <br />
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For more information about who <b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com/">Arts Against Cuts</a></b> are and the schedule of the event please visit: <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://artsagainstcuts.wor<wbr></wbr>dpress.com/</a></span></blockquote>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-12552763371915990932011-01-13T12:17:00.001+00:002011-01-13T12:18:07.546+00:00"Embrace the Arts": Irish Higher Educational Strategy<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV_RwrnhnbcIRX0qJEyO3BrEze3plonHZxF_lalhK9N7JN55hChErPUvd9c6iuXAz18y1UsjHfbriZLfm8lKcU4-DXn_E1BcFwx4dtWMSOG6jTLUa7gMDsYEh2mTV19Fy0wWcxK9UUtj7P/s1600/Kells.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV_RwrnhnbcIRX0qJEyO3BrEze3plonHZxF_lalhK9N7JN55hChErPUvd9c6iuXAz18y1UsjHfbriZLfm8lKcU4-DXn_E1BcFwx4dtWMSOG6jTLUa7gMDsYEh2mTV19Fy0wWcxK9UUtj7P/s320/Kells.jpg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells" title="Book of Kells">Book of Kells</a>, Folio 33r eight-circle cross carpet page - in the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KellsFol033rCarpetPage_v2.jpg">public domain</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> heard, via the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://publicuniversity.org.uk/2010/12/06/join-the-campaign/">email list</a> of the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://publicuniversity.org.uk/">Campaign for the Public University</a>, o</span><span style="font-size: small;">f th</span><span style="font-size: small;">e very positive stance </span><span style="font-size: small;">towards Arts and Humanities education in the</span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="color: black;"> Irish Government’s newly published <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.hea.ie/en/node/1303">National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030</a></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">, also known as the Hunt Report. Some excerpts are given below.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">However, the Republic of Ireland is not likely to continue to be an "<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ire">abundant land</a>" for public university education more generally. Sadly, the Hunt Report also recommends<span style="color: black;"> the introduction (or increase) of upfront student fees and a reduction in the number of higher education institutions.</span></span> </div><br />
<b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.hea.ie/en/node/1303">National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030 - Report of the Strategy Group</a></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.hea.ie/files/files/file/DoE/DES_Higher_Ed_Main_Report.pdf">PDF</a> of main report from which the below excerpts have been drawn]</span><br />
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<blockquote>One of the most fundamental questions in planning for the future is: what are the right skills for the graduates of 2015 and of 2030 and what mix of skills should we pursue as learning outcomes of higher education? To address the societal needs over the coming years, increased attention must be paid to core skills such as quantitative reasoning, critical thinking, communication skills, team-working skills and the effective use of information technology. The emphasis has switched from over-specialisation towards deeper and broader disciplinary foundations, with learning objectives that explicitly seek to nurture in students the creativity, enthusiasm and skills required for continual engagement with learning. In this context, the arts, humanities and social sciences have a key role to play. The Innovation Taskforce emphasised the importance of independent thinking and ‘the development of creative, high-skilled graduates as well as lifelong learning, mentoring and continuous professional development’. [p. 35] <br />
[...]<br />
While most discussion of research focuses on the hard sciences, it is the arts, humanities and social sciences that have consistently attracted the largest numbers of students, and these are the domains in which Ireland has made a real global impact.This can be seen in the achievements of Irish people in literature, music, and the arts, and in the extent to which Ireland benefits from its reputation in these areas.There are also very compelling social and economic reasons to develop our capabilities in these areas, including advancement of our understanding of the very rapid changes taking place in the Irish economy and society, better-informed public policy-making, and development of the creative and analytical skills that will be valuable in a global economy that is increasingly dominated by knowledge-based services. [p. 38]<br />
[...]<br />
In the advancement of human knowledge and understanding, Ireland has its own distinctive contribution to make. As an island of scholarship, scientific discovery, creative arts and innovation, Ireland attracts independent thinkers and entrepreneurs from around the globe.The Irish language, culture and the creative arts are primary sources of our distinctiveness and we should deepen our understanding of these and capitalise on their inherent cultural value and on the cultural and literary qualities that make us distinctive and interesting internationally. [p. 51]<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">[...]</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Embrace the arts, humanities and social sciences as well as science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Research in the arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) addresses areas of fundamental importance to society – areas that impact on enterprise, job creation and public policy. In the Irish context, these disciplines study values and practices that are central to our national identity, our sense of self, and to how we progress as a society. They are important drivers of economic and social innovation, promote ways in which the economy is managed and developed, and suggest how individuals can engage and participate in civil society. Concrete examples of the social and economic impact of research in AHSS include the performing arts, creative industries, financial services, and tourism. [p. 67]</span></blockquote>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-42533492034593480482011-01-08T15:17:00.003+00:002011-01-08T15:41:26.637+00:00"Affect and the Politics of Austerity: An interview exchange with Lauren Berlant"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicWdezvYNN5mBjHHaDpEHmN32_EYMENRIwk_O8gueL3xGoWLNIWQNtCiTZiF7OkhSLQHXxRshcI_IGsJTfHmmHJ5VB0LWa03u8pC4kGLUUuQCsDlHdnu1RLSyIMykBVF875_GMe_pTBS9h/s1600/Plenty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicWdezvYNN5mBjHHaDpEHmN32_EYMENRIwk_O8gueL3xGoWLNIWQNtCiTZiF7OkhSLQHXxRshcI_IGsJTfHmmHJ5VB0LWa03u8pC4kGLUUuQCsDlHdnu1RLSyIMykBVF875_GMe_pTBS9h/s320/Plenty.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><h6 align="center"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sir Andrew (</span><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_McKellen" style="font-weight: normal;">Ian McKellen</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">, L) bids adieu to Susan Traherne (</span><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meryl_Streep" style="font-weight: normal;">Meryl Streep</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">) on the steps of the Foreign Ministry in the film version of David Hare's play </span><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenty_%28film%29" style="font-weight: normal;">Plenty</a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> (</span><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Schepisi" style="font-weight: normal;" title="Fred Schepisi">Fred Schepisi</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">, 1985), in part an acute study of some of the early affective conditions, after the Second World War, for the rise of neo-liberalism in the UK</span>.</h6></td></tr>
</tbody></table>One of the most useful activities in defence of their disciplines in which Arts and Humanities academics can engage, at present, is, wherever possible, the turning of their scholarly attention to analyses and public discussions of the production of present conditions. Such acts of deconstruction and uncovering may turn out to be the most effective forms of resistance.<br />
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One Humanities academic who has been doing this most compellingly, and for many years, is <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://english.uchicago.edu/faculty/berlant">Lauren Berlant</a>, the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://english.uchicago.edu/" title="University of Chicago">University of Chicago.</a><br />
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Berlant has written about the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://experts.uchicago.edu/experts.php?id=211">production</a> of legal and affective public spheres in the United States from the 19th century to the present: in particular, formal and informal modes of social belonging or citizenship. These might be organized according to political, racial, sexual, or economic status; they might be forged in everyday life. She also works on the public circulation of emotions like trauma, love, optimism, and political depression. She is the author of <i>Our Monica, Ourselves: Clinton and the Affairs of State</i> (2001), <i>The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship</i> (1997) and <i>The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia and Everyday Life</i> (1991), as well as <i>The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture</i> (2008). She is currently writing about the "<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://english.uchicago.edu/faculty/berlant">negative emotions</a> that bind subjects to normativity despite the stresses of contemporary everyday life: <i>Cruel Optimism</i> is largely a book about affective experiences of neoliberalism, and their aesthetic mediations." <br />
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Below is an excerpt from a very recent exchange with Berlant on the current 'politics of austerity' in the UK and elsewhere by <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.variant.org.uk/39_40texts/berlant39_40.html">Gesa Helms and Marina Vishmidt</a> for <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.variant.org.uk/"><i>Variant</i>, <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">issue 39/40</span></span></a>. You can read the whole interview <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.variant.org.uk/39_40texts/berlant39_40.html">here</a>.<br />
<ul></ul><blockquote><span class="s2">Lauren Berlant: <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/20/spending-review-fuss-polly-toynbee">Polly Toynbee</a> wrote a great sentence about the savage cuts of the new austerity: “The price of everything was laid out, but not the value of anything about to be destroyed.” What does it mean for a symbolic relation to be too expensive, an unbearable burden? The image of the good life is too dear; something has to be sacrificed. The attempt to associate democracy with austerity – a state of liquidity being dried out, the way wine dries out a tongue – is fundamentally anti-democratic. The demand for the people’s austerity hides processes of the uneven distribution of risk and vulnerability. Democracy is supposed to hold out for the equal distribution of sovereignty and risk. Still, austerity sounds good, clean, ascetic: the lines of austerity are drawn round a polis to incite it toward askesis, toward managing its appetites and taking satisfaction in a self-management in whose mirror of performance it can feel proud and superior. In capitalist logics of askesis, the workers’ obligation is to be more rational than the system, and their recompense is to be held in a sense of pride at surviving the scene of their own attrition.</span></blockquote>See also Berlant's research blog <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://supervalentthought.com/">Supervalent Thought</a> for more of her work on these questions, and especially the recent post <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" class="title" href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_236804889" rel="bookmark" style="text-decoration: none;" title="Permanent Link: Crossover/Combover: A performance piece (Approach 3: from ASA 2010)">Crossover/Combover: A performance piece (Approach 3: from ASA 2010)</a>. <br />
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<div style="text-align: right;"><i><b>Thanks to JDR and JC for the links.</b></i></div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-59549961365241268622011-01-06T13:09:00.001+00:002011-01-06T13:11:04.182+00:00Blue Sky Thinking<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitTYSraZKpjnpEZe5Etle6QWqxCtZFD_sX8H0PaJTcyZb7WBjMpa_LiQrZxumPiUXGMEQcIMG7IGhE_EJ0hWBYLadnpqu0lKxke8hecfgRAZLwFYnTPfffpunAEsWrEXk5uiQaInukWxmX/s1600/banner-goldsmiths-480x380px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitTYSraZKpjnpEZe5Etle6QWqxCtZFD_sX8H0PaJTcyZb7WBjMpa_LiQrZxumPiUXGMEQcIMG7IGhE_EJ0hWBYLadnpqu0lKxke8hecfgRAZLwFYnTPfffpunAEsWrEXk5uiQaInukWxmX/s320/banner-goldsmiths-480x380px.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.lasthours.org.uk/news/goldsmiths-student-occupation/">Banner from a student occupation at Goldsmith's in 2009</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> wishes its readers a Happy New Year. If 'happiness' is difficult right now, let's work towards a well-informed, thoughtful and <i>activist</i> 2011 in defence of our subjects.<br />
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To this important end, our opening post of the year passes on some recommendations for essential reading and listening that were first made by members of our <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://on.fb.me/defendARTSandHUMS">Facebook group</a>.<br />
<div class="standfirst"><ul><li><h1><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=414766">Poetic justice - arts backed by state and science by industry</a></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></h1></li>
</ul><blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Observer offers blue-sky thinking in appraisal of global higher education. Sarah Cunnane reports</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
Business should pay for degrees in subjects such as science and technology, with public funding directed towards the arts and humanities, according to the head of the Institute of International Education.</blockquote></div><blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"> In an interview with <i>Times Higher Education</i>, Allan Goodman said it was the duty of universities to produce "as many poets as physicists" and argued that more businesses should show willing to fund the more "commercial" subjects.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> "It's expected that private investors will want their money to go towards the subjects that are more vocational," he said. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">"Governments should hear that, and maybe shift more resources to support culture and the arts, subjects that won't get that private funding." </span><span style="font-size: small;">[<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=414766">read the rest of this article</a>].</span></blockquote><ul><li><h2><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/12/29/richard-smith-battling-the-assault-on-the-humanities/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Richard Smith: Battling the assault on the humanities">Richard Smith: Battling the assault on the humanities</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;">29 Dec, 10 | by British Medical Journal Group</span></h2><blockquote><h2><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Having decided that higher education is no longer a public good, the coalition government has cut completely the funding for teaching the humanities. This is a desperately short sighted move, and at a meeting at the </span><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www2.lse.ac.uk/home.aspx" style="font-weight: normal;">London School of Economics</a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> just before Christmas speakers spelt out the value of the humanities.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> [<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/12/29/richard-smith-battling-the-assault-on-the-humanities/">Read the rest of Richard Smith's article here</a>. <i style="font-weight: normal;">Smith was the editor of the BMJ until 2004] </i></span></h2></blockquote></li>
</ul><div class="post-head"></div><ul><li><h2><span style="font-size: small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/12/30/richard-smith-medicines-need-for-the-humanities/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Richard Smith: Medicine’s need for the humanities">Richard Smith: Medicine’s need for the humanities</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;">30 Dec, 10 | by BMJ Group</span></h2><h2><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I spoke as well at the meeting on valuing the humanities at the London School of Economics</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">, and I argued that medicine needs the humanities badly.</span><b> [<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/12/30/richard-smith-medicines-need-for-the-humanities/">Read the rest of Richard Smith's article here</a>.]<i style="font-weight: normal;"></i></b></span></h2></li>
</ul><ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"><b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2011/01/martha-nussbaum-interview-podcast-alain-de-botton-value-of-humanities-university/">At PROSPECT Magazine</a> </b></span></li>
</ul><blockquote><span style="font-size: small;">We brought together Martha Nussbaum and Alain de Botton to discuss the value of the humanities, the respective flaws and virtues of British and American universities, and whether academics themselves should shoulder some of the blame for the current crisis in the humanities. <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/prospect-magazine-in-conversation/id400449576#" target="_blank">Click here</a> to download the podcast.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> [<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2011/01/martha-nussbaum-interview-podcast-alain-de-botton-value-of-humanities-university/">go to this page in PROSPECT Magazine</a>]</span></blockquote>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-74812089400679310332010-12-28T13:55:00.001+00:002010-12-28T14:01:49.583+00:00Looking back at 2010, Getting Ready for 2011<div style="text-align: center;"><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tQLOj_-lyZI?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tQLOj_-lyZI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQLOj_-lyZI&feature=player_embedded">Student Protests 2010 (Music (c) Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip)</a> Also published at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ourkingdom/student-protests-2010-music-c-dan-le-sac-vs-scroobius-pip">openDemocracy.net </a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Lest we forget... <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> gears up for more campaigning in the New Year by posting links to two invaluable items: an activist video -- above -- that may serve to remind us just how angry many in our societies are about badly-broken, politicians' promises, and an anger-inducing article -- below -- that deftly traces some of the ideological origins of the Higher Education financing reforms of recent times. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Indeed, Simon Head's cool-headed <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/grim-threat-british-universities/">essay</a> for the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/grim-threat-british-universities/">New York Review of Books</a> is one of the best analyses of the neo-liberal attacks on higher education to have yet appeared. It makes for chilling but essential reading. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> will be back in the New Year!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><b></b><b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/grim-threat-british-universities/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Grim Threat to British Universities by Simon Head | The New York Review of Books</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The British universities, Oxford and Cambridge included, are under siege from a system of state control that is undermining the one thing upon which their worldwide reputation depends: the caliber of their scholarship. The theories and practices that are driving this assault are mostly American in origin, conceived in American business schools and management consulting firms. They are frequently embedded in intensive management systems that make use of information technology (<span class="caps">IT</span>) marketed by corporations such as <span class="caps">IBM</span>, Oracle, and <span class="caps">SAP</span>. They are then sold to clients such as the <span class="caps">UK</span> government and its bureaucracies, including the universities. This alliance between the public and private sector has become a threat to academic freedom in the <span class="caps">UK</span>, and a warning to the American academy about how its own freedoms can be threatened. (Read the rest of this article <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/grim-threat-british-universities/">here</a>)</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">With thanks to SG for the latter link.</span></b> </div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-28963267978684080672010-12-20T14:22:00.000+00:002010-12-20T14:22:27.926+00:00Valuing the Humanities: Nussbaum, Ladyman, Rees, Smith and Lawson at the LSE<div><div style="text-align: center;"><object height="300" width="300"><param name="movie" value="http://www.mixcloud.com/media/swf/player/mixcloudLoader.swf?v=20"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="flashVars" value="feed=http://www.mixcloud.com/api/1/cloudcast/lse/valuing-the-humanities.json&embed_uuid=8518ced3-e86a-4356-8969-9c74c3618e4f&embed_type=widget_standard"></param><embed src="http://www.mixcloud.com/media/swf/player/mixcloudLoader.swf?v=20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="feed=http://www.mixcloud.com/api/1/cloudcast/lse/valuing-the-humanities.json&embed_uuid=8518ced3-e86a-4356-8969-9c74c3618e4f&embed_type=widget_standard" width="300" height="300"></embed></object></div><div style="clear: both; height: 3px;"></div><div style="color: #999999; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; margin: 0pt; padding: 3px 4px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/lse/valuing-the-humanities/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=cloudcast_link" style="color: #02a0c7; font-weight: bold;">Valuing The Humanities</a> by <a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/lse/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=profile_link" style="color: #02a0c7; font-weight: bold;">London School Of Economics</a> on <a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=homepage_link" style="color: #02a0c7; font-weight: bold;"> Mixcloud</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;">To listen to the presentations listed below, please click on the "Play" symbol above. Be warned of a small problem with microphone feedback about two minutes into this recording - the audio problems are quickly resolved. </span></span><br />
<blockquote style="color: black;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.bpa.ac.uk/2010/11/">"Valuing the Humanities"</a> was a panel discussion, organised by the <a href="http://www.bpa.ac.uk/2010/11/">British Philosophical Association</a> and the <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/forumForEuropeanPhilosophy/">Forum for European Philosophy</a>, which took place at the <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/">London School of Economics</a> on December 17, 2010, with:</span></div></blockquote><blockquote style="color: black;"><ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"> James Ladyman,Professor of Philosophy, University of Bristol; co-editor, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science</span></li>
</ul></blockquote><blockquote><ul style="color: black;"><li><span style="font-size: small;">Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago</span></li>
</ul><ul style="color: black;"><li><span style="font-size: small;">Lord Rees of Ludlow, President of the Royal Society, Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College Cambridge</span></li>
</ul><ul><li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Richard Smith, Former editor, British Medical Journal; Director, Ovations Institute</span></span></li>
</ul></blockquote></div><div style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; height: 3px;"></div><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: right;"><a href="http://jamesgordonfinlayson.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98:valuing-the-humanities&catid=36:seminars&Itemid=59">Thanks to GF for the link</a></div></div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-78647196909718277842010-12-20T13:02:00.000+00:002010-12-20T13:02:39.652+00:00"Facts on fees and the fallacies of ‘fairness’" by James Vernon<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqEyGJJwZPGpPG6ziJEgsu_nggZ38lUBhptGRna313V-8QTsMB9mZM1rsXo0FFaSb9B6WaKGyaLG91dUfqwKOc8-_LNe9ZGXInSVlc1JgnQITKj8V1HBLRfZGR5GUzhy_Iq2BAKPzwHJoN/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqEyGJJwZPGpPG6ziJEgsu_nggZ38lUBhptGRna313V-8QTsMB9mZM1rsXo0FFaSb9B6WaKGyaLG91dUfqwKOc8-_LNe9ZGXInSVlc1JgnQITKj8V1HBLRfZGR5GUzhy_Iq2BAKPzwHJoN/s320/photo.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em>A photo from the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37921&id=171644132870152#%21/album.php?aid=38202&id=171644132870152">"I wouldn't be here!"</a> (if tuition fees were raised) photo campaign by students supporting the <a href="http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/welfare/">University of Kent Occupation</a>, the last UK student occupation standing and intending to keep going through the festive season. Please support the students in any way you can. Here are links to their <a href="http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37921&id=171644132870152#%21/pages/University-of-Kent-Occupation/171644132870152?v=wall">Facebook page</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/UKCAntiCuts">Twitter feed</a></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table><em><a href="http://twitter.com/UKCAntiCuts"></a></em><em><br />
</em><br />
<em><a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> republishes </em> <span class="authors"><span class="author vcard"><a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/james-vernon">James Vernon</a></span>'s article<a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/james-vernon/facts-on-fees-and-fallacies-of-%E2%80%98fairness%E2%80%99?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=201210&utm_campaign=Nightly_2010-12-20%2005%3a30"> "Facts on fees and the fallacies of ‘fairness’"</a></span><span class="authors">, first published at <a href="http://opendemocracy.net/">openDemocracy.net</a> on December 19, 2010:</span><span class="timestamp"><abbr class="published" title="2010-12-19T16:58:25+00:00"></abbr></span><br />
<br />
<div class="meta"><div class="submitted"> </div></div><em> </em><br />
<em>What is the real nature of the government's legislation on higher education; what will be the consequences; and what relationship does it have to reducing the deficit? An important exchange on this issue is taking place <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alan-finlayson/david-willetts-is-trying-to-conjure-away-dangers-of-higher-education-refor">here</a>, between Alan Finlayson and Tony Curzon Price. Now a striking contribution with strong claims has been submitted to <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/james-vernon/facts-on-fees-and-fallacies-of-%E2%80%98fairness%E2%80%99?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=201210&utm_campaign=Nightly_2010-12-20%2005%3a30">OurKingdom</a>.</em><br />
<br />
The Coalition’s narrow victory in the vote on university tuition fees will surely not mark the end of the debate or of student protests. And nor should it. Despite the Labour Party’s eleventh hour adoption of a position mostly intended to embarrass the Liberal Democrats the level of debate in the House of Commons mainly served to emphasize the poverty of our current parliamentary politics. A greater diversity of opinion and sophistication of argument would be apparent in almost every student union debating chamber. As Ministers ignore or seek to criminalize protesters they ingeniously insist that they will listen to arguments. So here are eight facts about fees and their fairness that we have heard remarkably little about.<br />
<ol><li>The cut of 80% - with 100% in art, humanities and social sciences – for teaching in the higher education sector is considerably in excess of cuts in other areas of government expenditure. It is supposed to a save a total of £2.9bn for the exchequer, a paltry figure when compared to other areas of government expenditure. In the league tables so beloved of our current generation of politicians it places Britain at the bottom of its OECD competitors in terms of levels of public investment in higher education.</li>
<li>This draconian cut will not save money for the exchequer in the short term. Any saving will have to wait until students in the class of 2012 pay back their loans which The Independent reports even the Department of Business, Skills and Innovation expects only 25% of them to do so. So the supposed cut will actually initially increase the size of the deficit. Indeed, the government will need to borrow over £5bn more to provide the initial loans – even though like any good loan shark they’ll be borrowing at rates lower than the 4-5% they’ll be charging students. It is, as David Willets has acknowledged, essentially an accounting trick to enable the government to make sub-prime loans to students with no guaranteed income. Experience in the US, which remains the government’s model of private provision, suggests that eventually the loans themselves will be privatized to make the system sustainable for the exchequer. </li>
<li>The Coalition insists that most universities will charge £6,000 but, as the independent Higher Education Policy Institute has demonstrated, to survive let alone succeed many will quickly reach for the £9,000 limit. For the £6000 fee, double what most students currently pay, universities will actually receive less (about £1300 for most degree programmes). In any market, even in the artificially created one for higher education, it is unlikely that students will be prepared to pay more for less. While the privileged will remain able to speculate on their futures by investing in premier league degrees, the rest will be forced to pay for second class degrees. As English universities lust for more income to survive or compete globally, and the current fee structure of £6,000 represents a cut in their funding, it is only a matter of time before Vice Chancellors start lobbying government to remove the £9,000 upper limit. At this point it is likely that the government will turn to private loan companies and cheaper private universities with online provision to help fund an increasingly variegated system with new third class degrees that maintain a fig leaf of access while privilege prospers.</li>
<li>While the Coalition has been at pains to make £6,000 not £9,000 the headline figure this is not the real cost of a university education, just the tuition cost for one year. At most campuses accommodation, subsistence and learning needs are around £8,000 and in London they are higher still. The real cost of a university education is therefore close to a total of £50,000. Very few people from low-income families, despite all the last minute additions to the current bill, will be able to countenance such an investment in their future.</li>
<li>Not all graduates will benefit from speculating on a university education as a private investment by earning substantially higher earnings over their lifetimes – particularly those in the arts and mature part-time students. And then there are those who drop out. Again experience in the US suggests that as fees rise and students work other jobs to help offset their loans drop-out rates rise. There is no recognition that university graduates, let alone those who do not graduate, are a diverse group with different life and career trajectories. Even though these students will only have to repay their loans if their incomes exceed £21,000 many will face a full thirty years of repayment that will surely also negatively impact their ability to raise mortgages and become home-owners.</li>
<li>One of the biggest fallacies of the current debate is not just the assumption that only graduates benefit from their higher education but that conversely public investment should only be restricted to those areas of social life that are truly collective and universal in provision. This is nonsense. If higher education has become a private good because not all of the population benefit from it then we should follow this logic in to other areas – like unemployment benefit. Can we really imagine or countenance a system in which unemployment benefit is considered a private good delivered only by way of loans that have to be paid back?</li>
<li>We should have no time for the old and familiar argument that there is no alternative. The graduate tax is a fairer tax on prospective earnings than the proposed system and has been dismissed because the Coalition, and too many universities, insists that there is no way of cooking the books to make it reduce current government expenditure. Yet there are other alternatives. With 80% of the public supporting a rise in expenditure on higher education an argument for its funding through increased taxation is there to be made by any political party that truly believes in social mobility and public investment in the knowledge economies of the twenty first century. Given that no such mainstream political party currently exists we could at the very least call for a continuation of the same mixed economy of public and private funding by increasing top-up fees in the hundreds rather than the thousands to offset a cut of 10-20% sustained in other sectors.</li>
<li>And, finally, as this vote has been rushed through in the wake of considerable public protests and unease, we should not accept the logic of acting quickly. There is no state of emergency here. The Browne Report did indeed deliberate at length but its brief was narrow and its proposals have failed to win the support of anyone but the majority of Vice Chancellors. The future of higher education, and the future of our democracy are too important to be vandalized by poorly conceived and badly argued legislation. Vandalism does not just happen on the streets.</li>
</ol> <ol><li><div id="rights-logo"> <img alt="Creative Commons" src="http://www.opendemocracy.net/sites/all/themes/od2/images/cc-banner.jpg" /> </div>This article is published by <span class="attributionname">James Vernon</span>, and openDemocracy.net under a <a class="attributionname" href="http://opendemocracy.net/license/cc" rel="work-license">Creative Commons licence</a>. <abbr class="license" title="permits reproduction distribution">You may republish it without needing further permission</abbr>, <abbr class="license" title="requires attribution">with attribution</abbr> <abbr class="license" title="prohibits commercial-use">for non-commercial purposes</abbr> following <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/">these guidelines</a>. These rules apply to one-off or infrequent use. </li>
</ol>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-21918443289580638242010-12-18T14:25:00.003+00:002010-12-18T14:33:17.256+00:00The humanities and the sciences depend on each other, so cutting humanities funding hurts the "hard" subjects too<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLGZOiZSzaBBt6OzZgZgKJOSKhAzzLAfVoZtnJLM5eahQ4lLb0tMTfK6hZE4gtVPo2lgeeuVMte76Gs2oSgac9e5lw0yGEC5rJP0aCaxoxN_oICllQQ5Q9mf6Tcix0AydDSU6KeRBh8mOi/s1600/Vitruvian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLGZOiZSzaBBt6OzZgZgKJOSKhAzzLAfVoZtnJLM5eahQ4lLb0tMTfK6hZE4gtVPo2lgeeuVMte76Gs2oSgac9e5lw0yGEC5rJP0aCaxoxN_oICllQQ5Q9mf6Tcix0AydDSU6KeRBh8mOi/s320/Vitruvian.jpg" width="233" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Leonardo da Vinci's </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci" title="Vitruvian Man"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Vitruvian Man</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">, a vivid example of the cross-fertilization of art and science during the Renaissance.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="entry-summary"></div><div class="entry-summary"><a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/"><strong>DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</strong></a><strong> republishes the below article by </strong><a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/darian-meacham"><strong>Darian Meacham</strong></a>,<strong> </strong><a href="http://westengland.academia.edu/DarianMeacham"><strong>senior</strong> <strong>lecturer in philosophy</strong></a><strong> at the University of the West of England. It first appeared at </strong><a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/darian-meacham/humanities-and-sciences-depend-on-each-other-so-cutting-humanities-funding-hurts-hard"><strong>openDemocracy.net</strong></a><strong> on December 17, 2010.</strong><br />
</div><div class="entry-summary"></div><div class="entry-summary">The UK educational reforms, with their utilitarian emphasis on Science and Engineering, demonstrate no understanding of what makes for a good science research environment. The meeting of speculative and experimental sciences, as well as other areas of the humanities like literature, creates a general atmosphere of creativity, intellectual tension, and reciprocal engagement. It is probably impossible to nail down this atmosphere in any exact terms, but most scientists (in the broadest sense of the word) have a sense of it; it exists as much in a general culture as in a specific domain of academic life. <br />
</div><div class="entry-summary"></div><div class="content entry-content"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11627843" jquery1292681368785="13">The UK government has made staggering cuts in England’s university teaching budget</a>, alongside cuts in research funding. The humanities have been particularly badly hit. The <a href="http://www.bis.gov.uk/.../10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf" jquery1292681368785="14">Browne review of higher education funding</a> suggests that whatever remains of the funding for university teaching be funneled into ‘priority’ areas like business, engineering, and medicine. Universities are now responsible for raising the rest of the money needed to pay for teaching through increased tuition fees. However, university vice-chancellors have warned that tuition fees will not be enough to cover the funding gap, especially if there is a lag between the cuts and tuition rises. The feared result of these policies is that many humanities and basic sciences departments will be forced to close or radically downsize. There are many important issues and questions at stake here surrounding who should bear the cost of a world-class higher education and how. But these issues aside, one thing seems unequivocal, these cuts and recommendations for the distribution of the remaining funds are short-sighted and display a disturbing lack of understanding of the scientific enterprise as a whole and its contribution to our civilisation.</div><div class="content entry-content"><br />
</div><div class="content entry-content">The sciences do not work in isolation from one another, but rather have always engaged in a continuous process of cross-fertilization. This is why, after decades of increasing specialization, there is renewed emphasis on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdisciplinarity" jquery1292681368785="15">interdisciplinarity</a>. Since its beginnings, progress in the scientific endeavour as a whole has often proceeded in this manner. One need only think of Leonardo, Leibniz, or Goethe to see how this cross-fertilization, even within one mind, has stimulated great discoveries. As these thinkers demonstrated, research in the humanities is not divorced from the natural sciences; it simply operates in different registers. For example, the humanities may explain phenomena in terms of how they are experienced rather than in causal empirical terms. In doing so, fields like philosophy, psychology, and even literature can often be, in a sense, theoretically one step ahead of the natural sciences, especially in cognitive and neuroscience, and those areas related to the study of the senses; sniffing out clues and pathways—like scientific truffle pigs—which the natural sciences can follow-up with empirically verifiable causal explanation. This is certainly not their only value, but the humanities’ contribution to the overall development of the sciences should not be overlooked. Philosophy, especially, is best understood in relation to the great project of science as a whole: the investigation of the world by means of rationality. The sacrifice of the humanities at the altar of deficit reduction will be a blow to this project and to the society we have painstakingly built upon it.</div><div class="content entry-content"><br />
</div><div class="content entry-content">This rather abstract story about science can be illustrated with some more examples. By exploring sense perception, researchers in perceptual psychology, cognitive science, and neurology are making wonderful progress towards being able to help people who have lost one or more of their senses compensate or re-adjust their sensory manifold so as to engage in many activities they otherwise might not have been able to (<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2659800/?tool=pubmed" jquery1292681368785="16">1</a>,<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19286002" jquery1292681368785="17">2</a>,<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20943415" jquery1292681368785="18">3</a>,<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20855904" jquery1292681368785="19">4</a>,<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17027393" jquery1292681368785="20">5</a>,<a href="http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~rosenblu/book/SeeWhatImSayingBook2/SeeWhatImSayingBook/Home.html" jquery1292681368785="21">6</a>). <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vhw1d" jquery1292681368785="22">Some of this research was recently showcased on an episode of the BBC’s science program Horizon</a> which featured scientists like <a href="http://www.lottolab.org/" jquery1292681368785="23">Beau Lotto</a>, whose own groundbreaking work on perception is an excellent example of how arts and sciences can stimulate one another, even within one lab. As I watched this program and marveled at some of the applications of this research, I noted that much of what I saw being concretely elaborated using modern technology like <a href="http://www.fmri.org/fmri.htm" jquery1292681368785="24">fMRI</a> scans and hypersensitive cameras to track eye movement had already been theoretically elaborated within the sub-domain of philosophy that I work within, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/" jquery1292681368785="25">phenomenology</a>. Philosophers like <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/" jquery1292681368785="26">Edmund Husserl</a> (1859-1938) and <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/merleau-ponty/" jquery1292681368785="27">Maurice Merleau-Ponty</a> (1908-1961) had already theorized the total integration of the senses, the importance of the ‘body-schema’ (a sort of plan that consciousness has of the body as it is lived as opposed to the actual empirical physical body object), the importance of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology" jquery1292681368785="28">Gestalt</a> whole to the perception and comprehension of individual objects, and had described a process whereby consciousness brings forth information from the past, without the individual being aware, to form our perception of the present. All of these things are now being empirically elaborated by natural scientists in an effort to unlock the mysteries of sensory perception. Merleau-Ponty’s seminal work, the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=tOCZPO6EFQAC&dq=phenomenology+of+perception&source=gbs_navlinks_s" jquery1292681368785="29">Phenomenology of Perception</a>, is filled with philosophical meditations on the kind of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion" jquery1292681368785="30">optical illusions</a> that fascinate neurologists, cognitive scientists, and perceptual psychologists today (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_of_Perception" jquery1292681368785="31">7</a>). This should not be read as a plea for more attention to be paid to phenomenology (although I of course think that would be a great thing). Philosophers like Merleau-Ponty used the science of his day to investigate and criticize both philosophical and scientific paradigms, for example, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/" jquery1292681368785="32">behaviourism</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitivism_%28psychology%29" jquery1292681368785="33">cognitivism</a>. They constantly referred to the most up to date science they could to make theoretical predictions that are now being tested and examined empirically. These philosophers, and many still living ones, would have loved to be in the lab alongside these cutting edge researchers in the natural sciences, comparing their findings and trying to push the science ever further.</div><div class="content entry-content"><br />
</div><div class="content entry-content">Other examples of the way that science progresses in bits and pieces, but also as a whole endeavor that involves many different disciplines coming together, are not hard to find. <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/lamarck.html" jquery1292681368785="34">Jean-Baptiste Lamarck</a> (1744-1829) was a French biologist and an early proponent of evolutionary theory who believed that phenotypic characteristics acquired during a lifetime could be passed down to successive generations of offspring. The mechanism of Lamarck’s theory of evolution has of course been abandoned with the development of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis" jquery1292681368785="35">Modern Evolutionary Synthesis</a>. Lamarck himself was much less sure of the mechanism of evolution than of the general validity of the idea of evolution in accordance with natural (not divine) laws, and probably would not have hesitated to revise his theory on the basis of Darwin’s findings and of discoveries in genetics. One place where Lamarckian ideas about evolution were kept alive was in the more esoteric regions of Freudian psychoanalysis. In his <a href="http://www.ebooks-for-all.com/bookmarks/detail/Moses-And-Monotheism/onecat/0.html" jquery1292681368785="36">writing on religion</a>, Freud proposed that there could be meaning structures active in an individual’s psychic life that were inherited through a ‘phylogenetic heritage’, meaning not just culturally passed down, but somehow also inherited through biological mechanism (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_and_Monotheism" jquery1292681368785="37">8</a>). Widely derided for ‘Lamarckianism’, Freud’s theory about the inheritance was dismissed. His defenders argued that he had been misunderstood and was not a Lamarckian after all. But, what is interesting is that recent calls for a revision of Modern Evolutionary Synthesis have included research that brings Freud’s claims back into the picture, although in a drastically revised form. Psychologist <a href="http://www.mountsinai.org/profiles/rachel-yehuda" jquery1292681368785="38">Rachel Yehuda</a>, for example, has produced <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19813242" jquery1292681368785="39">findings</a> which suggest that some forms of trauma may have an heritable epigenetic effect which interferes with the physiological capacity of offspring to deal with stress—pretty much what Freud would call a ‘phylogenetic heritage’ in psychic life (<a href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/155/9/1163" jquery1292681368785="40">9</a>,<a href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/157/8/1252" jquery1292681368785="41">10</a>,<a href="http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/90/7/4115" jquery1292681368785="42">11</a>,<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19813242" jquery1292681368785="43">12</a>). Researchers like Kevin Laland and those who work with him at the Laland Lab in St. Andrews University are also doing fascinating work in exploring the relation between human evolution and culture (<a href="http://lalandlab.st-andrews.ac.uk/publications.html" jquery1292681368785="44">13</a>). This kind of cutting edge science is the fruit of a holistic understanding of science. </div><div class="content entry-content"><br />
</div><div class="content entry-content">It would be silly to suggest that Husserl, Freud, or Merleau-Ponty came up with the science before the scientists. For one thing, these philosophers and the natural scientists whose work relates to theirs are working largely in different scientific registers or vocabularies; the former aiming to investigate psychic and perceptual experience qua experience, the latter looking to uncover the causal and physiological mechanisms behind such experience. But I do think that the meeting of speculative and experimental sciences, as well as other areas of the humanities like literature, creates a general atmosphere of creativity, intellectual tension, and reciprocal engagement. It is probably impossible to nail down this atmosphere in any exact terms, but I think most scientists (in the broadest sense of the word) have a sense of it; it exists as much in a general culture as in a specific domain of academic life. It is within this kind of ‘rational milieu’ that different areas of the vast enterprise we call science can feed off of and push each other towards new discoveries, even when sometimes the findings at first seem quite outlandish and divorced from scientific rationality as it is now conceived (as is the case with Freud’s ‘phylogenetic heritage’). </div><div class="content entry-content"><br />
</div><div class="content entry-content">Lord Browne and the current UK government do not seem to think that this kind of research or the kind of teaching that will lead students and potentially future researchers into this kind of creative scientific thought is a ‘priority’. This narrow view of progress and rationality displays a frightening lack of comprehension of the best enlightenment thinking upon which the UK’s scientific, economic, cultural, and political strength was in large part built. </div><div class="content entry-content"><ol><li>Corney D, Haynes JD, Rees G, Lotto RB. The Brightness of Color. PLoS One. 2009;4(3):e5091. Epub 2009 Mar 31</li>
<li>Clarke R, Lotto RB. Visual processing of the bee innately encodes higher-order image statistics when the information is consistent with natural ecology. Vision Res. 2009 May;49(11):1455-64. Epub 2009 Mar 13;</li>
<li>Kuhn G, Tatler BW. Misdirected by the gap: The relationship between inattentional blindness and attentional misdirection. Conscious Cogn. 2010 Oct 11.</li>
<li>Kuhn G, Kourkoulou A, Leekam SR. How magic changes our expectations about autism. Psychol Sci. 2010 Oct 1; 21(10): 1487-93 </li>
<li>Sagiv N, Ward J. Crossmodal interactions: lessons from synesthesia. Prog Brain Res. 2006; 155:259-7;</li>
<li>Rosenblum, L.D. See What I’m Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 2009</li>
<li>Cf, M. Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception, C. Smith (trans.), London: Routledge Classics, 2002, pp. 6, 41.</li>
<li>S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism in The Pelican Freud Library Volume 13: The Origins of Religion, ed. Albert Dickson, Middlesex: Penguin, 1985, p. 343</li>
<li>Yehuda R, et al. Vulnerability to posttraumatic stress disorder in adult offspring of Holocaust survivors. Am J Psychiatry. 1998 Sep; 155(9): 1163-71</li>
<li>Yehuda R, et al. Low cortisol and risk for PTSD in adult offspring of holocaust survivors. Am J Psychiatry. 2000 Aug; 157(8): 1252-9</li>
<li>Yehuda R, et al. Transgenerational effects of posttraumatic stress disorder in babies of mothers exposed to the World Trade Center attacks during pregnancy. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2005 Jul; 90(7): 4115-8 </li>
<li>Yehuda R, Bierer LM. The relevance of epigenetics to PTSD: Implications for the DSM-V. J Trauma Stress. 2009 Oct 7. [Epub ahead of print] </li>
<li>KN Laland, J Odling-Smee & S Myles. How culture shaped the human genome: Bringing genetics and the human sciences together. Nature Reviews Genetics 11: 137-148 doi:10.1038/nrg2734 </li>
</ol></div><div id="rights-logo"><img alt="Creative Commons" src="http://www.opendemocracy.net/sites/all/themes/od2/images/cc-banner.jpg" /> </div><div id="rights-text">This article is published by <span class="attributionname">Darian Meacham</span>, and openDemocracy.net under a <a class="attributionname" href="http://opendemocracy.net/license/cc" jquery1292682250316="46" rel="work-license">Creative Commons licence</a>. <abbr class="license" title="permits reproduction distribution">You may republish it without needing further permission</abbr>, <abbr class="license" title="requires attribution">with attribution</abbr> <abbr class="license" title="prohibits commercial-use">for non-commercial purposes</abbr> following <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/" jquery1292682250316="47">these guidelines</a>. These rules apply to one-off or infrequent use.</div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-19928457493229010632010-12-15T13:30:00.002+00:002010-12-15T13:54:15.707+00:00David Willetts is trying to conjure away the dangers of higher education reform with the magic word 'choice' by Alan Finlayson<div class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW0z3xmPK_ckiyWY5g05K21-Ok1vdNPzRsQdgVV9PJh7ch_4M5sJLItdludzede6euq7v_GaIBEqJJjnbMcYFqrKExvhyphenhyphenpIxwyGeGcW81Knea4GIE9kkfKK7FcxSo3XLeSkg-A6tnSBrcv/s1600/1_fullsize.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW0z3xmPK_ckiyWY5g05K21-Ok1vdNPzRsQdgVV9PJh7ch_4M5sJLItdludzede6euq7v_GaIBEqJJjnbMcYFqrKExvhyphenhyphenpIxwyGeGcW81Knea4GIE9kkfKK7FcxSo3XLeSkg-A6tnSBrcv/s320/1_fullsize.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="size12 ArialNarrow12" style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://justlikethat.homestead.com/TC_NotLikeThat.wav" target="_blank">"Not like that - like that!" </a></span><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://justlikethat.homestead.com/TC_NotLikeThat.wav" target="_blank"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="size12 ArialNarrow12" style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> - <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Willetts">David Willetts</a> pays homage to <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Cooper">Tommy Cooper</a><br />
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<b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> republishes <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/alan-finlayson">Alan Finlayson</a>'s article, below, which first appeared at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alan-finlayson/david-willetts-is-trying-to-conjure-away-dangers-of-higher-education-refor">openDemocracy.net</a> on December 15, 2010</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">There are many different kinds of magic trick. Some require the use of cards; others balls and cups. But for all of them, one technique is the most important: misdirection. While your attention is fixed on the magician’s left hand, you don’t notice what is happening on the right. Of the many practitioners of such magic, David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science, is one of the best. As far as I am aware he doesn’t do card tricks. But he does do misdirection, making you look one way when the real trick is happening elsewhere. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here is Willetts, speaking on BBC <i>Newsnight</i>, appearing to make many thousands of pounds disappear: </div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">“There’s been several references during the programme to ‘paying the fees’. Of course they are not going to ‘pay the fees’. The taxpayer is going to provide the money for students, of course then to pass the funds on to the university. No family is going to have to reach into their back pocket to pay for their child to go to university.” </div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Fees are going to increase from just over three thousand pounds to as much as nine thousand pounds (while in many cases universities will receive less than at present). But because the money is not demanded from the student up-front, Willetts believes he can make you think it doesn’t exist. Later he made the point this way: “It’s a contribution from the graduate. It’s not from the student,” as if, on graduating, students turn into entirely different people. The same sleight of hand is used by the salesman who promises you a car and thousands of pounds in ‘cashback’ without anything to pay on the day of sale. With one hand he tries to make you think that you are getting a free car and free money, while with the other he is preparing the high-interest loan agreement that will haunt you for decades. </div><div class="MsoNormal">On the same edition of <i>Newsnight</i>, Willetts explained to a student worried about the future quality of university teaching that the fees reform would make everything better. He explained:</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">“Our philosophy is that the money should come through the choices of the student…what I want to see is universities looking out and thinking what exactly is the teaching experience we offer our prospective students and how can we make sure that it is world-class so that students want to come to this university…they won’t be able to get money through quangos any more, they’ll only get it through the choices of students.” </div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">There are several levels of misdirection in this market logic. Willetts implies that universities currently get money without having to get students, that they get it in some obscure and shadowy way, and that students have no choices about where to study. He also falsely implies that at present university teachers never have to think about what their students want and need. All of this is chaff to prevent us from noticing the historic shift in policy. Universities - under consistent attack for three decades and from all political parties – now take the final step across the Rubicon. With the removal of all national funding from the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and its drastic reduction in others, higher education in the UK has ceased to be a public good. It is now a wholly private and tradable commodity. That will be the case in Wales and Scotland just as much as in England, notwithstanding the fact that students in the devolved regions will receive funding for the fee increases. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The choices that will be most enhanced by this are not those of the student, but rather those of investors in for-profit university education, who will soon have a lot more choice about where to put their money. Speaking at Oxford Brookes University in June of this year, <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/david-willetts-oxford-brookes-university-challenge">Willetts proposed</a> a “cost-effective means of spreading educational opportunity in straitened times”. Universities currently both teach and examine. Willetts’ proposal was to separate these out and to create “new institutions that can teach, but do so to an exam set externally”. That would mean that more FE colleges could teach degrees and that it would be easier to develop “non-traditional” higher education institutions that would provide a “real competitive challenge to universities”. As I have argued elsewhere, those “non-traditional” providers will be private and for-profit companies such as Apollo Inc. Their interest will lie in providing a cheap service, with a high and quick turnover of students. One can easily imagine these new institutions teaching to exams set by a for-profit qualifications agent, itself well motivated to provide assessments agreeable to institutions that want to appear as successful as possible. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On<i> Newsnight</i>, answering a question about the harsh impact of his reforms upon particular subject areas, Willetts said:</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">“We are not against social sciences. These are changes that operate fairly across all disciplines. I am not sitting in a government department – and nor is Vince Cable – trying to pick the subjects that students should do or trying to tilt the field against one discipline or in favour of another. What we believe in is well-informed choices by students”. </div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">But Willetts does sit in a government department, thinking about exactly how those students will be informed. As he explained on November 3 to the readers of the <i>Daily Mail</i>, he plans to introduce a new system of “kite-marks” validating degrees and providing customers with the information they need to make a purchasing decision. These kite-marks will indicate how highly employers rate universities so that, <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1326071/Ministers-declare-war-university-fees-set-hit-9-000-year.html#ixzz1818SBYG">as Willetts was quoted as saying</a>, “At last, students will be able to see the courses that can get the jobs they aspire to and those that do not perform well”. This is a very particular way of determining the quality of education. The question it raises is not ‘Who will educate the educators?’ but ‘Who will assess the assessors?’</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Waving his left hand, Willetts tells prospective students that they won't have to pay any money, will be free to choose whatever university they want and will be better informed about the products available. But with a wave of his right hand, he makes the public university disappear, invites a range of new interests to access wholly new income streams flowing out of the pockets of students and their families, and puts in place mechanisms by which the government set the criteria according to which universities will be judged. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Lots of things are wrong with our universities. The quality and the extent of teaching are variable. The system is under pressure from high numbers and low pay. University management is too often inexperienced and inept. Policy is driven by elite concerns to the detriment of most. Social, cultural and technological change have increased the number and the kinds of things there are to know, as well as the range of people that need to know them. Responding to all that needs careful thought. It needs a confident academic profession, thinking hard and engaging honestly in dialogue with other citizens. </div><div class="MsoNormal">But Willetts and Cable, Osborne and Cameron, have bypassed all that effort and controversy through the application of self-interested market dogma. They have begun building a higher education system that will make some people (probably people who don’t pay taxes in the UK) lots of money, at the same time as it gives governments new and important powers over the regulation of the content and form of university education. And they have done so while saying the magic words of ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’. Hey presto. Watch out for their next trick. </div></blockquote><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">This article is published by <span class="attributionname">Alan Finlayson</span>, and <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alan-finlayson/david-willetts-is-trying-to-conjure-away-dangers-of-higher-education-refor">openDemocracy.net</a> under a <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" class="attributionname" href="http://opendemocracy.net/license/cc" rel="work-license">Creative Commons licence</a>. <abbr class="license" title="permits reproduction distribution">You may republish it without needing further permission</abbr>, <abbr class="license" title="requires attribution">with attribution</abbr> <abbr class="license" title="prohibits commercial-use">for non-commercial purposes</abbr> following <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/">these guidelines</a>. These rules apply to one-off or infrequent use. For all re-print, syndication and educational use please see read our <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-enquries-syndication#Republishing">republishing guidelines</a> or <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:theo.edwards@opendemocracy.net">contact us</a>. Some articles on this site are published under different terms. </span></i>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-10928348839273388282010-12-15T12:03:00.000+00:002010-12-15T12:03:28.530+00:00The Exchange of Knowledge<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgECLIJ18Sz2IxNZOXZKsy3eRDBVEGivPP4W0Mx12zfBzeuNjIgMoGTaWyGQK00F-EBxw3rvfMEfL6MbRbFhwkdN41-cRE38VjCiS-QZgeSqjcv0xzd_DB1sEusxgFgQGpW_CBYZGjpgw1u/s1600/slade_protest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgECLIJ18Sz2IxNZOXZKsy3eRDBVEGivPP4W0Mx12zfBzeuNjIgMoGTaWyGQK00F-EBxw3rvfMEfL6MbRbFhwkdN41-cRE38VjCiS-QZgeSqjcv0xzd_DB1sEusxgFgQGpW_CBYZGjpgw1u/s320/slade_protest.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo of the Slade School of Art Protest by <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://mutablematter.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/re-imagining-protest/">Angela Last</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><blockquote><i>Il y a dans l’échange des savoirs non pas un équilibre, mais une croissance formidable que l’économie ne connaît pas. Les enseignants sont titulaires d’un trésor incroyable – le savoir – qui prolifère et qui est le trésor de l’humanité.</i> </blockquote><blockquote> <i>In [the exchange of knowledge] there is no equilibrium at all, but a terrific growth which economics does not know. Teach[ers] are the bearers of an unbelievable treasure – knowledge – which multiplies and is the treasure of all humanity.</i> </blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;">[<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.ceras-projet.org/index.php?id=1541">Michel Serres</a> - quote highlighted, and originally translated, by </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://mutablematter.wordpress.com/">Angela Last</a>]</span></blockquote><i><br />
</i><br />
With yesterday's <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11988333">vote on tuition fees in the House of Lords</a> going the way of the UK Coalition Government, very sadly, we now await the publication of University prospectuses detailing actual fees increases, as well as, more importantly, government announcements on the precise cuts to be made to university teaching grants.<br />
<br />
But <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414573&c=2">we will not wait quietly or passively</a>. And we need to focus our attention even more intently than before on how best to move forward with our campaign against the marketisation/privatisation of higher education, and, specifically, against the effects of this on Arts and Humanities education in the UK and elsewhere. <b>Please join our <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_126239564097301&ap=1">Facebook group</a>, or comment below, if you'd like to be a part of this exploration.</b><br />
<div id="content"><div class="post"><h2></h2><div class="entry">In the meantime, <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> salutes the recent actions of the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.scgrg.org/">Social and Cultural Geography Research Group</a>. With around 460 members <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.scgrg.org/">SCGRG</a> is one of largest and most active research groups of the Royal Geographical Society. In the context of UK cuts in higher education and the associated rise in tuition fees, it has just replaced its regular <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.scgrg.org/mission-statement/">mission statement</a>, with the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.scgrg.org/">following</a>, beautifully worded position statement:<br />
</div><div class="entry"><blockquote>The committee of the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (RGS-IBG) would like to express their personal support for the geographers and other students who have sought to open up creative spaces to challenge the inevitability of such rapid and deep public spending cuts in higher education. Our position is that creative, innovative thinking is critical to social and ecological justice, and the stripping away of the intellectual capacity of higher education, through the removal of public funding for teaching and its replacement with a market for students and for knowledge, is detrimental to the achievement of more equitable ways of thinking and living.<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><i>“To illustrate the importance of knowledge sharing, I would like to tell you a little lesson in economics: I have a block of butter, and you have three Euros. If we proceed to do a transaction, you will, in the end, have a block of butter, and I will have three Euros. We are dealing with a zero sum game: nothing happens from this exchange. But in the exchange of knowledge, during teaching, the game is not one of zero sum as more parties profit from the exchange: if you know a theorem and teach it to me, at the end of the exchange, we both know it. In this knowledge exchange there is no equilibrium at all, but a terrific growth which economics does not know. Teachings are the bearers of an unbelievable treasure – knowledge – which multiplies and is the treasure of all humanity.” (</i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.ceras-projet.org/index.php?id=1541">Michel Serres</a>)</div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Gail Davies (Chair) and the rest of the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.scgrg.org/committee/">committee</a>. With thanks to <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://mutablematter.wordpress.com/">Angela Last</a> for the quote and translation</span></div></blockquote><br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><b>With thanks to ER for the link</b></div><br />
</div></div></div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-87994358335048017142010-12-13T13:26:00.002+00:002010-12-13T14:12:51.323+00:00Three views on the House of Lords' vote tomorrow on the tuition fees rise<blockquote><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgahYYuYGUXRRt5vCZwnqPWA-DsYWkhl8TPq5nRN0I67vzwbe1bwxDs83H5R5JZ2Am_eYpjnRYntlGHfuDCTiqtlA7bMSJiGv-rkwwL3HEATeUvGeEPTYERVjIFvUpGLyQPpyEBSUboSGda/s1600/lords.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="254" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgahYYuYGUXRRt5vCZwnqPWA-DsYWkhl8TPq5nRN0I67vzwbe1bwxDs83H5R5JZ2Am_eYpjnRYntlGHfuDCTiqtlA7bMSJiGv-rkwwL3HEATeUvGeEPTYERVjIFvUpGLyQPpyEBSUboSGda/s320/lords.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/feist/15.html">The House of Lords</a> where a vote will take place tomorrow on the tuition fees legislation</td></tr>
</tbody></table><a href="http://exquisitelife.researchresearch.com/exquisite_life/2010/12/an-open-letter-to-the-house-of-lords-on-tuition-fees.html"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">An open letter to the House of Lords on tuition fees</span></strong></a><strong><span style="font-size: large;"> by William Cullerne Bown</span></strong></blockquote><h3 class="entry-header"><blockquote><h3 class="entry-header"><em><span style="font-size: small;">To All Members of the House of Lords</span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">On Tuesday [December 14] you will have the opportunity to either approve or reject the statutory instrument raising the cap on tuition fees charged by universities to £9,000. How well has the government made its case?</span></h3></blockquote></h3><div class="entry-content"><div class="entry-body"><blockquote><div class="entry-body">Vince Cable began his speech to the House of Commons in the debate on Thursday by saying:<br />
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">“The instrument represents a central part of a policy that is designed to maintain high-quality universities in the long term, that tackles the fiscal deficit and that provides a more progressive system of graduate contributions based on people's ability to pay.”</div>This statement accurately reflects the case made in recent weeks by the government for its policy on tuition fees. There are three central planks - that it will reduce the deficit, that it is progressive, and that it is necessary for the wellbeing of universities. But how well are these three claims supported by the evidence?<strong> [Read William Cullerne Bown's full letter </strong><a href="http://exquisitelife.researchresearch.com/exquisite_life/2010/12/an-open-letter-to-the-house-of-lords-on-tuition-fees.html"><strong>here</strong></a><strong>)</strong></div></blockquote><blockquote><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Excerpt from </span></strong><a href="http://lordsoftheblog.net/2010/12/12/lords-voting-on-tuition-fees/"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Lords voting on tuition fees</span></strong></a><strong><span style="font-size: large;"> by Lord Knight</span></strong><br />
<h2></h2><div class="entry-title"><span style="font-size: small;">By convention we do not reject executive orders. As the unelected chamber we do not consider that we have the mandate to overturn the executive in that way.</span></div><span style="font-size: small;">That leaves the Lords with a delicate judgement on Tuesday, if the majority do not support the government’s position. These changes are not implementing a manifesto commitment, indeed they are in direct opposition to a clear election pledge from one of the coalition partners. They will increase the deficit not reduce it (</span><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/only-a-quarter-of-all-graduates-will-pay-off-loans-2158168.html" modo="false" target="_blank" title="only 1/4 of graduates to repay loans"><span style="color: #611c26; font-size: small;">see today’s Independent</span></a><span style="font-size: small;">). On that basis it may be possible to win the argument that this is sufficiently exceptional to overturn the convention. <strong>[Read the rest of Lord Knight's column </strong></span><a href="http://lordsoftheblog.net/2010/12/12/lords-voting-on-tuition-fees/"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>here</strong></span></a><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>] </strong></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Excerpt from </strong><a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2010/12/complexities_coalition_government"><strong>A close vote on tuition fees</strong></a><strong> by Bagehot's Notebook at The Economist</strong></span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-size: small;">I was taken aback to learn that serious figures in the coalition suspect the tuition fees legislation—in its current form—may never go through.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The reason? There are two houses of parliament, and the upper House of Lords is a place with strong ideas about doing the right thing and curbing what their lordships identify as government folly and excess. <strong>[Read more at <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2010/12/complexities_coalition_government">Bagehot's Notebook</a>]</strong></span></blockquote></div></div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-49143317330987750382010-12-13T12:25:00.009+00:002010-12-13T19:27:56.882+00:00What happened on Thursday<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGP0h4Bjqb1ovIbeJPGa7MA5v5FJBhOt05JbAG59ENGGazfLMNqvSew2vCaNc4f4f3xn75U0MW3ln_BWmziBCPBxPiIIrdHZVQFKcJ0pIvN5waWUMYSWJ9iWZID8JIQWy15HVxApYPLU5s/s1600/Our++Present.jpg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGP0h4Bjqb1ovIbeJPGa7MA5v5FJBhOt05JbAG59ENGGazfLMNqvSew2vCaNc4f4f3xn75U0MW3ln_BWmziBCPBxPiIIrdHZVQFKcJ0pIvN5waWUMYSWJ9iWZID8JIQWy15HVxApYPLU5s/s320/Our++Present.jpg.png" width="226" /></a></div></div><blockquote>December 9<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> 2010 saw the UK parliament pass into legislation the right for universities to charge up to £9,000 per annum tuition fees for undergraduate courses. It also witnessed another day of student and staff protest in London and elsewhere, with an estimated 30,000 demonstrators. Again the vast majority of protest was entirely peaceful, intelligent, and inspiring. [<b>Martin McQuillan</b>, <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.thelondongraduateschool.co.uk/thoughtpiece/the-english-intifada-and-the-humanities-last-stand/">The English Intifada and the Humanities Last Stand</a>]</blockquote><b>Members of the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://on.fb.me/defendARTSandHUMS">Facebook group</a> joined last Thursday's protest in London against the rise in tuition fees, stage one of the coalition government's move to 'fully marketise'/privatise the English higher education system. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Below is a moving account of the protest by one of our group's members. Further eloquent accounts can be found here at the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/11/cold-tired-fearful-kettled-children">letters' page of <i>The</i> <i>Guardian</i></a>. And you can also view philosopher Nina Power's photographs of last Thursday's protest <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://infinitethought.cinestatic.com/index.php/5501/">here</a>.</b><br />
<br />
<b>This entry is particularly dedicated to </b><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://infinitethought.cinestatic.com/index.php/5502/"><b>Alfie Meadows</b></a><b>, a Philosophy student at Middlesex University, studying in a department that has already been <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/may/17/philosophy-closure-middlesex-university">condemned by cuts</a>. The UK Police watchdog (Independent Police Complaints Commission) is currently investigating Thursday's events after 20-year-old Alfie was left with bleeding on the brain by a police truncheon. There's a video about what happened to him <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsnt2A_m2TU"><b>here</b></a><b>.</b></b><br />
<br />
<b>Alfie, we salute you, and other protestors, for your courage in placing yourself on the frontline of the democratic, lawful defence, that day, against the attacks on our education system and rights. We wish you a speedy recovery. There will be a peaceful protest about what happened to Alfie in London <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://infinitethought.cinestatic.com/index.php/5505/">tomorrow</a>.</b><br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><b>What Happened on Thursday</b></span><br />
<b> </b>Emma Jackson<br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<i>On Thursday I went to demonstrate against the proposed increase of tuition fees, the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://emacampaign.org.uk/">abolition of EMA</a> [the </i><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Maintenance_Allowance"><i>Education Maintenance Allowance</i></a><i>] and massive cuts to higher education. I ended up being held against my will, firstly in Parliament Square and then on Westminster Bridge. Other people had worse experiences than mine, I was not hit by the police or charged at by horses but I regard what happened to us as a form of police violence. What follows is my account of the day. </i><br />
<br />
So where to start? I could start at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.ulu.co.uk/">ULU</a> at 12 when we arrive at the demonstration. It’s noisy and big and heartening. My friend Hannah, who is not famed for punctuality, wants us to get there in time to hear <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarvis_Cocker">Jarvis Cocker</a> speak at the rally. I don’t know if he did or not, we could hear some voices in the distance that sounded amplified but it could’ve been anyone. Maybe I should start at Westminster, because that’s the bit you want to know about but the bit between ULU and Westminster is a happy, lovely protest and should be mentioned. The sun is shining and the people are in good voice. The <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.soas.ac.uk/">SOAS</a> salsa band provides a rhythm. We go past loads of riot police at Waterloo bridge, all wearing their cheery blue baseball caps, as if to say ‘yeah, we’re fun kind of guys…’, clad in exoskeleton, helmets in hand. We don’t go down Whitehall but round the back past St James Park. Then we’re there at Westminster. A crowd gather round the SOAS band and have a dance. I break off and go to a café on Whitehall to get a coffee and use the toilet. Not much to report.<br />
<br />
I bump into my friends Andy and Sara. The mood is still good, a few daft young lads are walking about, posturing with their bits of balsa wood from the placards, but come on, balsa wood… Shortly after this, someone throws a burning bottle in the direction of the police. He is restrained by demonstrators. The police appear to be sealing off the exits and we start to think about leaving. This is the first part of how being <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling">kettled</a> effects you, the thought of not being allowed to leave makes you want to leave. We edge over to the exit by the treasury. ‘Can we leave?’ I ask the female police officer in riot gear. ‘There is a full containment’. ‘Oh ok’. We’re stuck. <br />
<br />
Time passes. A load of people with a sound system walk towards the treasury, it looks like it might kick off so we walk away. Two lads stripped to the waist get on people’s shoulders and… it’s a dance off. ‘I can’t believe we just ran away from a dance off’ says Sara. This goes on for a while. At this point it is like being trapped in a really shit festival. People are lighting fires to keep warm and you get that festival smell of burning plastic. My feet are cold. There’s a scuffle at the treasury, some of the dancers are climbing up the walls and we hear the sound of breaking glass. We find what seems like a safe place, a slightly raised island with a big tree on it and a statue. I figure we can’t get charged by horses on here so it seems like a good base. Also on our island are what look like Further Education students, they look freezing and are huddled round a quite pathetic little fire. I go and ask the police near us, who are guarding a street called ‘Little Sanctuary’ (oh the irony!), if we can leave. The police officer says ‘You have been free to leave all along. You can get out at Whitehall’. We do not trust this information but reckon it’s worth a try so we walk over in that direction. A very helpful man in a ‘domestic terrorist’ t-shirt tells us that they have closed Whitehall again. I don’t much fancy the look of what is going on up there, it looks crowded and potentially dangerous. My instinct is that we are better off on our island. Getting home is important, staying safe, more so. We retreat to our little hill. Maybe time for another biscuit.<br />
<br />
Then we see the police charging on the crowd for the first time, coming from Whitehall. People are running and shouting and there is some kind of clash at the treasury. We watch from afar but things have changed now, no more shit festival. On parliament green we see a big fire, I don’t know what’s burning but it’s made of plastic. The smoke obscures the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben chimes. It’s all gone a bit heavy metal. More time passes, we eat some of Andy’s wine gum sours. In an outbreak of mass conformation to national stereotype a long orderly queue is forming up to one of the riot police lines. We can see from our vantage point that no one is getting out of there. And we decide that no way are we queuing. Eventually the queue dissolves.<br />
<br />
Then people start to move from the treasury nearer to us. A few windows are being smashed in the building we are facing. Maybe it’s time to leave the island. We walk over to the green. Another group of people are huddled around a fire. A riot police officer is talking to them and then comes over to us, visor up ‘Do you want to go home ladies?’ (in a chirpy Yorkshire accent) ‘so do we, just move to that corner there and you can get out.’ Another part of the process, the proverbial ‘good cop’. We walk over to the corner. Again the animal instinct to keep to the high ground is kicking in and Hannah, Andy, Sara and I stay on the wall of the green. Our other pals get further through the crowd and that’s the last we see of them. People are squashing into this corner and no one is getting out. Then someone shouts ‘Is anyone under 16?’ Maybe they have decided that 5 1/2 hours is the appropriate time to keep children penned in, in the freezing cold? A few kids make it to the front and are pulled out. The rest of us wait. At this point there is no agitation, no violence, and no signs of any cameras. The press van has long left the square. The police are forming two lines on the road that goes from parliament to Westminster Bridge. Because we are up high, we keep feeding the information down to the other people. Andy reckons that the police will make us past their lines while they pull out people they think they recognise. It’s happened to him before. It looks like we are getting out.<br />
<br />
The police draw back their line slightly and I step down off my wall. I’m a bit squashed, claustrophobic and frightened so I look up at the night sky. The people next to me are singing in Spanish. One girl is having a panic attack and everyone makes way so she can go back to the green. We chat to some of the young people around us. Two lads debate whether to go home before they go out ‘But I’m wearing a Nick Clegg, Dick Head t-shirt, mate. I can’t go out in this!’ You see, we still think we’re going home soon. One woman starts to shout ‘let us out’. ‘This is how it works’, says Andy, ‘now everyone is thinking ‘shut up, we want to go home’ you are, aren’t you? I am’. He is absolutely right, but that’s how it gets to you. Every now and again people shout ‘let us out, let us out’. I’m not sure how long we are held in this spot, time has gone weird. And then some real movement. We are indeed directed through the police lined street. I think we’re out and it’s like the demo has started again ‘No ifs, no buts, no education cuts’ and the chant ‘We’ll be back. We’ll be back’ loud and clear. What I am thinking in my head as I walk hand-in-hand with Hannah past the riot police is ‘shame, shame on you’. But I don’t shout because I’m cold and frightened. I try and look as many as I can in the eye. One guy with a megaphone (American accent) is saying to the police ‘Can I say, you all look FABULOUS, I just LOVE what you’re doing with those visors right now.’<br />
<br />
It looks like they’re letting us go over Westminster Bridge. But then it stops. I talk to an ex-student of mine who has been pushed to the ground twice today in the police charges. There is a police line in front that isn’t moving. This is not good, I think. We are on a bridge over a massive river. Picture Westminster Bridge, if you know it, the barriers on the sides are fairly low. If it kicks off on here, I think, someone is going in the river. The police are also behind us. Keep in mind all these police are in full riot gear. Their faces are mostly covered. They are wearing helmets and they have big round plastic shields in front of them. But there is no conflict. The odd outburst of ‘let us out, let us out’. Some protesters start doing the hokey cokey to keep warm and then the Macarena. Then they go and do the dances for the police. There are now three lines of police backlit by the lights of their vans and the houses of parliament and a load of peaceful protestors some of whom are doing the hokey cokey. A bizarre scene.<br />
<br />
I am worried about the vans. Maybe they will put us all in the vans. Surely that’s illegal? But surely this is illegal? The rules seem to have left the building. I see a friend who is working as a legal observer. She has seen a girl with a bald patch at the front of her head where the police have pulled her by the hair. She has also seen people getting beaten up at the treasury. She thinks we may be here for some time. <br />
<br />
Two hours later, they start to let people off the bridge. They funnel us through another police line and we are let out one at a time. You have to walk in single file through a corridor of police in riot gear. One of them shines a bright light in my face and asks me to remove my hat. They are filming us. It is at this point that I get upset. I think to myself ‘do not show them any weakness’ but I have to admit, I am a bit teary. Me and Hannah walk past about 100 metres of solid riot police and then another 50m of normal police. We find Sara and Andy and cross the Hungerford Bridge, full of normal people, doing normal things unaware of what has just happened. <br />
<br />
We were kettled for 8 hours. What will stay with me is the sight of those backlit police lines on the bridge and the sound of the song ‘if you think this is illegal, clap your hands’. </blockquote>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-75662998058733749412010-12-09T10:38:00.006+00:002010-12-09T11:08:24.876+00:00"The Mask of Anarchy" by Michael Meranze<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ypJaF9MDVQWFbtwuqzCEd4V91KdPwAk5rkqsxl3ZY99bveDfkC5RiDhXVUrnPVpLgY0HntBDxZNRBxAoMqMpXo8_nrOW5TSf7QqzdfBjGTFjYd0uJOcoDERJduorUV8VSCiig2JL7mIe/s1600/Shelley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ypJaF9MDVQWFbtwuqzCEd4V91KdPwAk5rkqsxl3ZY99bveDfkC5RiDhXVUrnPVpLgY0HntBDxZNRBxAoMqMpXo8_nrOW5TSf7QqzdfBjGTFjYd0uJOcoDERJduorUV8VSCiig2JL7mIe/s320/Shelley.jpg" width="201" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://faculty.mercer.edu/glance_jc/english264/eng264_images/manuscripts/Shelley.jpg">The first lines from Shelley's The Mask of Anarchy</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>As we look forward to a mass march in London today, one taking place to demonstrate to MPs, voting this afternoon on the coalition government's proposed tuition fee rises, the strength of the arguments and the feeling against this policy, let us seek some <a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2010/12/universities-need-reform-but-market-is.html">more inspiration</a> from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_Anarchy">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a>, and his poetic statement of the principle of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_Anarchy" title="Nonviolent resistance"><span style="color: #0645ad;">nonviolent resistance</span></a>.<br />
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<a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> brings you an excerpt from <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2010/12/mask-of-anarchy-part-i.html">Michael Meranze's</a> stirring two <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2010/12/mask-of-anarchy-part-i.html">part essay</a> about higher education policy in the UK and the US, named after <a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2010/12/mask-of-anarchy-part-i.html">Shelley's political poem</a>.<br />
<blockquote><a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2010/12/mask-of-anarchy-part-i.html"><strong>The Mask of Anarchy (Part I)</strong></a><strong> b<i>y Michael Meranze</i></strong><br />
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<i>I met Murder on the Way—<br />
He had a mask Like Castlereagh<br />
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;<br />
Seven bloodhounds followed him:<br />
<br />
All were fat; and well they might<br />
Be in admirable plight,<br />
For one by one, and two by two,<br />
He tossed them human hearts to chew<br />
Which from his wide cloak he drew.</i><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_Anarchy">Shelley, <i>The Mask of Anarchy</i></a><br />
<br />
The dapper Cameron has replaced the corpulent Castlereagh; England does not lead but follows the austerity bloodhounds; and the police kettle rather than kill protesters. But the English state is once more threatening to eat its common folk in the interest of the authority of capital. Despite large and growing protests including massive displays on November 10th and 24th and numerous campus occupations, the Tory-little Tory coalition plans to bring the bill to allow universities to raise student fees<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/01/tuition-fees-cap-vote"><span style="color: #dd6599;"> to a vote in Parliament on December 9th</span></a>. With this vote, Cameron and Clegg accelerate their effort to end the public university in England and throw students and potential students into debt for decades. At the same time, as Iain Pears <a href="http://boonery.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-humanities-talk-given-birkbeck.html"><span style="color: #dd6599;">has argued</span></a>, the state will game the system against the humanities and social sciences by holding the costs of certain science and priority courses unnaturally low while pushing universities to emphasize education for business instead of the business of education.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" name="more"></a><br />
But the attack on the public university and the nature of education is only part of an effort to shift the costs of society onto the poor, the working-class, the elderly, and the young. As <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n22/ross-mckibbin/nothing-to-do-with-the-economy"><span style="color: #dd6599;">Ross McKibbon has pointed out </span></a> there is no true economic necessity or rationale for the Coalition budget and its cuts to services across the spectrum. It only makes sense politically: as an effort to protect the banks (for whom there always seems to be enough money) and to attack the entire notion of welfare or, as it might be better termed, “shared responsibility.” The Department for Work and Pensions <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/05/housing-benefit-cuts-impact-dwp"><span style="color: #dd6599;">apparently ignored a report</span></a> that suggested its cuts to housing support would affect nearly a million poor people. As in the United States the Coalition is asking the English to believe that a crisis caused by the machination of the finance sector must be solved by cutting support from the poor, the young, and the elderly. The new Conservative-Liberal Democratic government seeks to push through what Thatcher and new Labour never could: the liberation of the wealthy from any obligation to the society that they inhabit. <br />
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Neither the students nor labor nor local officials are sitting quietly. The students have planned another massive demonstration—this time at the House of Parliament itself—<a href="http://anticuts.com/2010/12/02/9-december-2010-march-on-parliament-poster/"><span style="color: #dd6599;">for December 9th</span></a>. This protest is only the end of <a href="http://anticuts.com/2010/12/03/london-releases-battle-plan/"><span style="color: #dd6599;">a series of events planned throughout the week</span></a>. <strong>[</strong><a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2010/12/mask-of-anarchy-part-i.html"><strong>READ MORE</strong></a><strong>]</strong></blockquote><br />
<h3></h3><strong>Now, read </strong><a href="http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2010/12/mask-of-anarchy-part-ii.html"><strong>The Mask of Anarchy (Part II)</strong></a><strong> by Meranze which takes up parallel circumstances in the</strong> <strong>US.</strong>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038351316829188922.post-58232668785098637762010-12-08T10:27:00.002+00:002010-12-08T13:36:27.295+00:00Let them speak Java? Jean-Luc Nancy in Defence of the Arts and Humanities<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjebuWFx2uQ_eex9cT79p_EEA70fMjhHxD97loXmdn_u_NHqzaVEEH4l4HVtlTe_07ShGbDXsU9uKLoIlpnvJ-c8L_oAIdb9IHdWFq5CThj74fbVkA6c4jR0qEbEwHSaMZbfBWQPUhYoRe/s1600/java_programmers_brain_screensaver_preview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjebuWFx2uQ_eex9cT79p_EEA70fMjhHxD97loXmdn_u_NHqzaVEEH4l4HVtlTe_07ShGbDXsU9uKLoIlpnvJ-c8L_oAIdb9IHdWFq5CThj74fbVkA6c4jR0qEbEwHSaMZbfBWQPUhYoRe/s320/java_programmers_brain_screensaver_preview.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.adok.com.br/">Animated Java Programmers Brain Screensaver courtesy of ADOK Desenvolvimento de Sistemas</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><strong></strong><br />
<blockquote><strong>"A single language alone, cleansed of the bugs of reflection, would make the perfect university subject: smooth, harmonious, easily submitted to pedagogical control." </strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Nancy"><strong>Jean-Luc Nancy</strong></a></blockquote></div><strong></strong><br />
In November, the <a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/">DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES</a> campaign website <a href="http://defendartsandhums.blogspot.com/2010/11/faustian-bargain-by-gregory-petsko.html">published a post</a> about the 'phasing out' of degree courses in French, Italian, Russian, and classics, as well as theater, at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Recently, a great open letter by the important French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy in defence of these subjects (filled with his <a href="http://www.ucm.es/info/nomadas/18/avrocca2.pdf">characteristic</a> references to organ transplants!) came to our attention. <br />
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The letter is reproduced in full below. Should you not have had the undoubted benefit of a higher education which majored, or minored, in the subject of French, a translation is available <a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=2708">here</a>.<br />
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<blockquote><i>Choisir entre supprimer le français et supprimer la philosophie... Quel beau choix ! Enlever plutôt le foie ou le poumon ? Plutôt l'estomac ou le coeur ? Plutôt les yeux ou les oreilles ?</i><br />
<em>Il faudrait inventer un enseignement strictement monolingue d'une part - car tout peut être traduit en anglais, n'est-ce pas ? - et strictement dépourvu de toute interrogation (par exemple sur ce qu'implique la “traduction” en général et en particulier de telle langue à telle autre). Une seule langue débarrassée des parasites de la réflexion serait une belle matière universitaire, lisse, harmonieuse, aisée à soumettre aux contrôles d'acquisition.</em><br />
<em>Il faut donc proposer de supprimer l'un et l'autre, le français et la philosophie. Et tout ce qui pourrait s'en approcher, comme le latin ou la psychanalyse, l'italien, l'espagnol ou la théorie littéraire, le russe ou l'histoire. Peut-être serait-il judicieux d'introduire à la place, et de manière obligatoire, quelques langages informatiques (comme java) et aussi le chinois commercial et le hindi technologique, du moins avant que ces langues soient complètement transcrites en anglais. A moins que n'arrive l'inverse.</em><br />
<em>De toutes façons, enseignons ce qui s'affiche sur nos panneaux publicitaires et sur les moniteurs des places boursières. Rien d'autre !</em><br />
<em>Courage, camarades, un monde nouveau va naître!</em></blockquote><div align="right"><strong><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">Thanks to RG and JDR for the link.</span></em></strong></div>Catherine Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15844538902594202591noreply@blogger.com0