23 May 2009
the student occupation in zagreb
[Thanks to Tihana for the translations]
'stop fees'
'we've got nothing to lose but our fees'
'knowledge is not a commodity and underneath it is an intervention into the 1968 slogan. in our case it' let us be real(istic), let's demand the possible'
'money for education, not for the army'
[These are my impressions. Apologies to anyone involved if I've gotten things wrong - please email me corrections!]
Invited to give a paper at the occupied Philosophy faculty, we arrived on day 31 of the protest. The first striking thing about the occupation, to protest against the introduction of tuition fees, is its sheer size. Unlike Philosophy departments in the UK, often small addenda to larger Humanities or Social Science schools, here Philosophy is truly the Queen of the Sciences. As such, Philosophy at Zagreb includes all humanities and most social science subjects, and the faculty is made up of somewhere between 6000-7000 students. The occupation is not only huge in terms of the size of the buildings, but also in terms of the number of students still there, even after a month. The protests started after the government proposal was discussed and an occupation was proposed by a Capital reading group (although there is some dispute as to whether this is where the original idea came from - no matter, it happened). The occupation has received widespread media coverage.
'This is a caricature of the minister of education with "don't take off your panties it's not necessary" written below. We got it from our comrades in Split.'
Every evening a Plenum is held in a main lecture hall, where issues relating to the occupation (whether to appear on media programmes, how and when to end the occupation, how to handle certain endorsements) are raised and voted upon. During the day, a huge number of talks, performances and films screenings are organised (on the day I spoke, you could have also watched Blade Runner, heard another talk, watched a gig, etc.). Each day a rather beautifully designed newsletter is distributed which includes both the schedule and a translation of a philosophical or political text (day 31 saw an extract from Lyotard). The occupiers have also produced a parody of a Croatian tabloid newspaper which features ironic suggestive pictures of female students, forced to Page-Three-ify themselves in a projected debt-heavy educational future.
Some of the students sleep there every night (Tihana told me there was an early discussion about whether they should pass a rule about mandatory contraception). Posters and photographs relating to the occupation line the hallways and the building itself is covered in slogans along the lines of 'knowledge is not for sale'. Walking to and through the building you truly feel that the faculty has well and truly been taken over. Some of the Professors are behind the occupation, others are not. A minority of students have objected as well, and were invited to put their arguments forward at a presentation. The pro-fee arguments (that students will attend more if they have to pay, for example) were not well-received: the idea of a student held by those protesting at the university is not merely that of a 'client' who completes a course, but of a fully-engaged, active member of a large student body. The protesters are right.
One of the cleverest things about the protest is the decision to 'de-charismatify' the action. Learning from the mistakes of the 60s, where students 'leaders' came to stand in for the voice of a generation (Dutschke, Cohn-Bendit), the Zagreb occupation has no clear figureheads (a fact that drives the media mad). Each night a statement is read by two different students, and everyone takes turns to run the plenum. It feels like a genuinely collective, democratic event.
What future for the occupation? The government hope that it will dissipate of its own accord, as summer approaches. If there is a hiatus, it is likely that the occupation will resume again in September. With the level of organisation that the students have, I can see this happening. Having seen what fees has done to UK academia, the students at Zagreb have a real insight into the depressing state of the neoliberal university, and what must be done to stop it spreading to the four corners of the globe.
'stop fees'
'we've got nothing to lose but our fees'
'knowledge is not a commodity and underneath it is an intervention into the 1968 slogan. in our case it' let us be real(istic), let's demand the possible'
'money for education, not for the army'
[These are my impressions. Apologies to anyone involved if I've gotten things wrong - please email me corrections!]
Invited to give a paper at the occupied Philosophy faculty, we arrived on day 31 of the protest. The first striking thing about the occupation, to protest against the introduction of tuition fees, is its sheer size. Unlike Philosophy departments in the UK, often small addenda to larger Humanities or Social Science schools, here Philosophy is truly the Queen of the Sciences. As such, Philosophy at Zagreb includes all humanities and most social science subjects, and the faculty is made up of somewhere between 6000-7000 students. The occupation is not only huge in terms of the size of the buildings, but also in terms of the number of students still there, even after a month. The protests started after the government proposal was discussed and an occupation was proposed by a Capital reading group (although there is some dispute as to whether this is where the original idea came from - no matter, it happened). The occupation has received widespread media coverage.
'This is a caricature of the minister of education with "don't take off your panties it's not necessary" written below. We got it from our comrades in Split.'
Every evening a Plenum is held in a main lecture hall, where issues relating to the occupation (whether to appear on media programmes, how and when to end the occupation, how to handle certain endorsements) are raised and voted upon. During the day, a huge number of talks, performances and films screenings are organised (on the day I spoke, you could have also watched Blade Runner, heard another talk, watched a gig, etc.). Each day a rather beautifully designed newsletter is distributed which includes both the schedule and a translation of a philosophical or political text (day 31 saw an extract from Lyotard). The occupiers have also produced a parody of a Croatian tabloid newspaper which features ironic suggestive pictures of female students, forced to Page-Three-ify themselves in a projected debt-heavy educational future.
Some of the students sleep there every night (Tihana told me there was an early discussion about whether they should pass a rule about mandatory contraception). Posters and photographs relating to the occupation line the hallways and the building itself is covered in slogans along the lines of 'knowledge is not for sale'. Walking to and through the building you truly feel that the faculty has well and truly been taken over. Some of the Professors are behind the occupation, others are not. A minority of students have objected as well, and were invited to put their arguments forward at a presentation. The pro-fee arguments (that students will attend more if they have to pay, for example) were not well-received: the idea of a student held by those protesting at the university is not merely that of a 'client' who completes a course, but of a fully-engaged, active member of a large student body. The protesters are right.
One of the cleverest things about the protest is the decision to 'de-charismatify' the action. Learning from the mistakes of the 60s, where students 'leaders' came to stand in for the voice of a generation (Dutschke, Cohn-Bendit), the Zagreb occupation has no clear figureheads (a fact that drives the media mad). Each night a statement is read by two different students, and everyone takes turns to run the plenum. It feels like a genuinely collective, democratic event.
What future for the occupation? The government hope that it will dissipate of its own accord, as summer approaches. If there is a hiatus, it is likely that the occupation will resume again in September. With the level of organisation that the students have, I can see this happening. Having seen what fees has done to UK academia, the students at Zagreb have a real insight into the depressing state of the neoliberal university, and what must be done to stop it spreading to the four corners of the globe.
