08 December 2009
solidarity university, proletarian or working class, & c.
From Bue:
Just today a new free 'solidarity university' was announced in Vienna in a squatted university building as a spillover from the general student protests there. They have already established a lot of international links and seem very enthusiastic about the project, though so far I haven't found any sources who are able to clearly formulate what their ideas and plans are. But of course this is something completely new.
By the way I recommend the edu-factory mail-list, which has all sorts of stuff around global university politics, including news, manifestoes and heated debates.
René:
Addition to online lectures: Prof. Helen Graham's inauguarl lecture 'Border Crossings: Thinking about the International Brigades before and after Spain', which took place on Thu 3 December, at Royal Holloway. It is a truly insprirational and powerful lecture, full of hope and possibilities.
Sam:
Things get reflexive.
Jason:
Proletarian or working class?
It's no exaggeration to say that these two words represent two separate paradigms. With Ruskin begins the tradition in English literary criticism of foregrounding the working class experience, and treating class more generally not as the function but as the motor or defining principle of culture and society. With Ruskin there is something morally wrong with capitalism. But there is a real intellectual gap between civil society, the place of working class experience, and the word "proletarian".
The term "proletarian" has been taken up by French philosophy not just in order to signify the politicization of the working class, but of its political aspiration as the "declassé". This can be traced back to Blanqui, perhaps. So in this sense "proletarian" is really an idealized version of its meaning for Marx, which was sociological and rooted in workers' labour struggles. French philosophy has forced "proletarian" towards signifying that universal element or quality in society capable of affecting a revolution. And of course the point of a revolution is precisely to be open, not just to working class experience, but to the demands of all sectors of society.
What is the objective of a Proletarian University? Is it to equip people with degrees? Or to facilitate knowledge for the excluded? I don't think Ruskin is that relevant to this debate precisely because the excluded is no longer just the working class, but students in general. Students are the new proletariat, or one of its decisive elements. They don't have the luxury to practise alternative forms of education outside the system. The value of a degree may have been commoditized, even "cheapened", by the privatization of the university; but that doesn't mean that the value of the degree is not worth fighting for, because essentially the degree is that little piece of paper that students are being equipped with as the universal condition of entering the labour force.
Teachers have a duty to provide students with the intellectual tools to function in capitalist society. This means a degree. The degree has become the ideological weapon of educational policy. Give students the power to win it back.
Just today a new free 'solidarity university' was announced in Vienna in a squatted university building as a spillover from the general student protests there. They have already established a lot of international links and seem very enthusiastic about the project, though so far I haven't found any sources who are able to clearly formulate what their ideas and plans are. But of course this is something completely new.
By the way I recommend the edu-factory mail-list, which has all sorts of stuff around global university politics, including news, manifestoes and heated debates.
René:
Addition to online lectures: Prof. Helen Graham's inauguarl lecture 'Border Crossings: Thinking about the International Brigades before and after Spain', which took place on Thu 3 December, at Royal Holloway. It is a truly insprirational and powerful lecture, full of hope and possibilities.
Sam:
Things get reflexive.
Jason:
Proletarian or working class?
It's no exaggeration to say that these two words represent two separate paradigms. With Ruskin begins the tradition in English literary criticism of foregrounding the working class experience, and treating class more generally not as the function but as the motor or defining principle of culture and society. With Ruskin there is something morally wrong with capitalism. But there is a real intellectual gap between civil society, the place of working class experience, and the word "proletarian".
The term "proletarian" has been taken up by French philosophy not just in order to signify the politicization of the working class, but of its political aspiration as the "declassé". This can be traced back to Blanqui, perhaps. So in this sense "proletarian" is really an idealized version of its meaning for Marx, which was sociological and rooted in workers' labour struggles. French philosophy has forced "proletarian" towards signifying that universal element or quality in society capable of affecting a revolution. And of course the point of a revolution is precisely to be open, not just to working class experience, but to the demands of all sectors of society.
What is the objective of a Proletarian University? Is it to equip people with degrees? Or to facilitate knowledge for the excluded? I don't think Ruskin is that relevant to this debate precisely because the excluded is no longer just the working class, but students in general. Students are the new proletariat, or one of its decisive elements. They don't have the luxury to practise alternative forms of education outside the system. The value of a degree may have been commoditized, even "cheapened", by the privatization of the university; but that doesn't mean that the value of the degree is not worth fighting for, because essentially the degree is that little piece of paper that students are being equipped with as the universal condition of entering the labour force.
Teachers have a duty to provide students with the intellectual tools to function in capitalist society. This means a degree. The degree has become the ideological weapon of educational policy. Give students the power to win it back.
