MA Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy in the Centre for Cultural Studies at #Goldsmiths

Adorno Marcuse correspondence on the student left, dialectics, left fascism, Institute, distortions, travel, recuperation and more

Continue reading by clicking on the screenshot or here: adornomarcuse_germannewleft

 

The essay Resignation should also be read alongside this: adorno_resignation1969

Privatisation of the Intellect

So, are comments on student work also notes to self?

I wonder if there is a not a deeper impasse here in the idea that university ideal might still be construed as an institutionalised vehicle for more or less organised social mobility – intentional or not. Does the class composition of the, globally distributed, production processes of capital indicate significant success for this mobility model, or is the density of this composition to be evaluated differently now – with vast sections of the international theatre of production shrouded still (unless a building collapse of a sweated labour venue directs a frisson of attention for a brief spell). Social Centres in Bologna, but grunt level proletarianisation from Naples through to Nanking. This matches up with the claim that we can acknowledge a tendency for the imbrication of intellectuals and power to replace the perception/fantasy of some separate, prophylactic, independence for intellectual life. Such an acknowledgment can be called privatisation too.

Goldsmiths UCU and SU Rally against Austerity 15.5.2013

Goldsmiths UCU and SU Rally against Austerity – (THURSDAY) 6pm

• In the light of our 0.8% pay offer – well below the rate of inflation
• In the light of today’s story about the impact of tuition fee rises (that many courses are not good ‘value for money’)
• In the light of today’s OECD report warning that austerity policies ‘are widening the gulf between rich and poor’ in the UK
  

please come to the rally 6pm Thursday 16 May, RHB 137 to hear

Andrew McGettigan, author of The Great University Gamble (Pluto)
Aaron Kiely (NUS Black Students Officer)
Save Lewisham Hospital speaker
Romayne Phoenix (Green Party and CoR)
Lindsey German (Stop the War)
Rachael Maskell (Unite national officer)

Smirk or shambles.

Guardian May 13 2013

The Malignancy – newspaper piece for The Citizen Artist News (below the fold on page 1).

 

CitizenArtistNews3

Marxism for Beginners

Why when I look for trinkets for the kids can’t I find the things I assume would be best sellers in a certain bourgie corner of London?

For example, a set of building blocks with pictures of Marx, Engels, Mao…?

 

 

 

Update: And Giles is first with a design, though I had to get him to swap M.N Roy for his inclusion of Gandhi
http://bookleteer.com/publication.html?id=2808

Education at the Border – Edu Commission #2 #border #education

Here, the good oil… click image to download the report

Education_at_the_Border_Report2

Course Guide for lectures on Marx’s Capital 2013

Lecture course on Marx’s “Capital” at Goldsmiths: everybody is welcome

Capitalism and Cultural Studies – Prof John Hutnyk:

tuesday evenings from january 8, 2013 – 5pm-8pm Goldsmiths Room RHB 309. Free – all welcome.

No fee (unless, sorry, you are doing this for award - and that, friends, is Willetts’ fault – though the Labour Party have a share of the blame too).

****** weekly course reading guide is here: Cap and cult studs outline013********

✪

This course involves a close reading of Karl Marx’s Capital (Volume One).

90 minute lectures, 60 minutes discussion

The connections between cultural studies and critiques of capitalism are considered in an interdisciplinary context (cinema studies, anthropology, musicology, international relations, and philosophy) which reaches from Marx through to Film Studies, from ethnographic approaches to Heidegger, from anarchism and surrealism to German critical theory and poststructuralism/post-colonialism/post-early-for-christmas. Topics covered include: alienation, commodification, production, technology, education, subsumption, anti-imperialism, anti-war movement and complicity. Using a series of illustrative films (documentary and fiction) and key theoretical texts (read alongside the text of Capital), we examine contemporary capitalism as it shifts, changes, lurches through its very late 20th and early 21st century manifestations – we will look at how cultural studies copes with (or does not cope with) class struggle, anti-colonialism, new subjectivities, cultural politics, media, virtual and corporate worlds.

****** weekly course reading guide is here: Cap and cult studs outline013********

The lectures/seminars begin on Tuesday 8th January 2011 between 5 and 8pm and will run for 11 weeks (with a week off in the middle) in the Richard Hoggart Building (Room 309), Goldsmiths College. You are required to bring their own copy of the Penguin, International Publishers/Progress Press or German editions of Karl Marx Capital Vol I. We are reading about 100 pages a week. (Please don’t get tricked into buying the abridged English edition/nonsense!)

Education Commission Report No 1

Click on the boot to download and read the full report, or here EdCommReport1

Snitching about…

was sent this by the folk at V.I.S.A. (Victorious International Student Army):

 

Stop the Snitching: What We Mean By Non-compliance

 

The pastoral idyll is dead. It was bulldozed long ago only to be overlain with a grid of barbed wire. If it ever had any real existence, it is now best described as a border fence, an internment camp, an interrogation room at the dock or airport. What we mean by this, is that the argument that attendance records – from lectures, classes, tutorials – need to be kept for pastoral reasons is now untenable. It needs to be jettisoned, however much nostalgia or regret we may feel in doing so. It is no longer safe or strategic to record attendance, for whatever reason, now that the border crosses us in our places of work and learning.

 

If the border is a social relation and not a thing, then we must pay attention to the ways in which we are reproducing, enabling and enforcing that border in our day-to-day lives. The most obvious way we might do this is, of course, the demand that teaching staff act as border agents by forwarding attendance records to the UKBA. Three missing strikes and you’re a terrorist. Goldsmiths UCU were quick to adopt a position of non-compliance, and has re-affirmed this stance in a recent statement. We need to be clear, however, about exactly what we mean by non-compliance, and alert to those who might be in a weaker position, from which non-compliance becomes more difficult to uphold.

 

Regarding the latter, two groups immediately spring to mind: administrative staff, and international students themselves. Admin staff are easier for management to single out, scapegoat, and threaten with punitive measures. Even a well-meaning attendance record kept for pastoral purposes can become a border snitch if intercepted once in administrative hands. Alternatively, lying on attendance registers makes teaching staff liable. To co-opt a reasonably repugnant, and thankfully now redundant, phrase from the US military, the best policy with regard to non-compliance is: don’t ask, don’t tell. If the data is never recorded, it can’t be passed on. Simple.

 

Management will, however, undoubtedly try to fulfill the UKBA’s demands whilst at the same time seeking to sidestep hostilities from staff and students. ‘Light touch’ is management-speak for this covert-cavity-search-on-campus approach. If they are unable to get the information they need from teaching or admin staff, rest assured they will exploit the vulnerabilities inherent in the precarious status of international students directly. We need to make it clear – strikes, occupations, public refusal – that any requirement or request that demands international students act as their own border agent, or assumes them to be criminal or terrorist until proven otherwise, is in blatant contradiction of our position of non-compliance. We need to make sure our non-compliance doesn’t leak. Stop the snitching – solidarity across the board and the border.

 

Love and rage,

 

Goldsmiths Migration Solidarity

School for Study

See this (click on the pic to be taken to the website):

Welcome notes Goldsmiths CCS – JH #newterm

 

a million urgent fiddles to do on the blog, website, ordering of books or some such, then meetings, campaigns, the fucking UKBA, new students, information emails, a student shafted by MET/UKBA, colleagues in disciplinary hearings in need of support, general chaos, and marking, lets not forget the marking, and the plagiarism cases than need to be – well, second offence really should get more than a book thrown at them – but then there is the welcome drinks, the welcome party, the welcome seminar, tutorial and photo opportunity. I lay myself down on New Cross Road and wait…

The Education Commission. :: a militant inquiry into privatisation and immigration controls in education ::

Students, lecturers, admin workers and anybody else interested in education are invited to join a new group aiming to research and take action around the current conditions in the education sector.  In the wake of the UK Border Agency’s revocation of London Met’s Highly Trusted Sponsor Status and consequent plans to deport potentially thousands of international students along with further plans for privatisation across the sector, we propose to investigate and take action around the changing nature of the education in the UK since the abolition of the EMA and mass increase of university tuition fees in 2010. We aim to draw together student, parent, and education workers’ experiences as well as available data in order to produce and disseminate as accurate a picture as possible of the current state and trends in higher education in the UK.  We do so in support of and solidarity with current and future struggles in education. Our next meeting is on Wednesday 26th September at 6.30pm at London Met Holloway Road campus (the tower building next to Holloway Road tube station). Here is a link:http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/about/buildings/tower-building.cfm

Anybody interested in participating should contact: contact.edu.comm[at]gmail.com. This project has been initiated by Plan C London, it is however open to individuals and groups to get involved.

Spin Out!

This sure is a spin out invite. Free drinks! :) – Actuall;y, I think its a prank, put up by my ‘friends’…

Dear Professor Hutnyk

Just a few places remain at our inaugural Senior Higher Education Leaders’ Symposium which is taking place on Tuesday 30th October.

This is an ideal opportunity for you to meet leading experts in higher education, followed by dinner at Imperial College London with guest speaker Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor of The Open University.

The Symposium commences at 1pm, with a drinks reception starting at 6pm. Presentations and seminars include:

‘The Emergence of the Skills Training Agenda in the UK’
Professor Peter McCaffery, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, London Metropolitan University

‘Researcher Development – A case study from Australia’s Go8 universities’
Professor Shelda Debowski, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Notre Dame, Australia

‘International Trends in the Development of University Teaching’
Professor Graham Gibbs, Retired Director of the Oxford Learning Institute, University of Oxford

‘Modelling the Benefits and Costs of Blended Learning’
Professor Diana Laurillard, Professor of Learning & Digital Technologies, London Knowledge Laboratory, Institute of Education

‘Leadership and Management Training – Do we need to become more like corporates?’
Sir David Watson, Professor of Higher Education and Principal, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford and Professor Jill Jameson, Professor of Education, University of Greenwich

‘Future Strategies for Researcher Development and Training’
Dr Douglas Halliday, former Dean of the Graduate School, Durham University and Professor Shelda Debowski

If you are able to join us please confirm your attendance by registering via this link:

http://www.epigeum.com/downloads/conference.html

Please note there is no charge for attending the Symposium or dinner. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me, and I very much hope you are able to join us.

Kind regards

Wendy

Wendy Harbottle
Sales & Marketing Manager
<snip>
www.epigeum.com <http://www.epigeum.com/>

UK & Europe
1 Kensington Cloisters
5 Kensington Church Street
London, W8 4LD

USA
Cambridge, MA Office
One Broadway, 14th Floor
Kendall Square, Cambridge
MA 02142, USA

Epigeum Ltd is a spin-out company of Imperial College London,
www.imperial.ac.uk

London Met Demo Friday 28 Sept 2012

From London Met UCU:

London Met – Defend Our Students – London Demonstration Friday 28/9

Dear all,

London Met UCU, London Met Unison, and London Met SU have called a London-wide mobilisation and march from ULU (Malet Street) to the Home Office (Marsham Street, Victoria) for Friday 28th Sept. Assembling at Malet Street for 1pm. Under the banner: ‘Amnesty Now – Save London Met – No to Privatisation’. This initiative is supported by London Region UCU, and University of London Union (ULU).

This Friday (21/9) the High Court will consider granting an immediate injunction (an effective ‘stay’) in favour of London Met Uni and against the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Such an injunction should allow for a full Judicial Review of the UKBA’s decision to revoke London Met’s Highly Trusted Sponsor (HTS) Tier-4 licence – an action that has condemned over 2,500 of our students to either forced university transfer or deportation.

However, even if an injunction is granted it will only be a temporary reprieve until the outcome of the Judicial Review itself – which is expected to take at least several months to be heard. Meanwhile, our license to recruit international students is still suspended, our current international students are still in limbo – particularly if they have more than this academic year to complete, and our courses/jobs still threatened.

If an injunction is not granted then we will be in the fight of our lives – not only for all our international students against an immediate and very real deportation threat but for the very survival of London Met as a public university.

We are refusing to sit on the sidelines and by mere observers of our destiny as others shape it. We are therefore fighting as hard as we can for our students, our university, and for real justice. We will have much more chance of winning that fight with your support and solidarity – as wonderfully expressed during last Friday’s UK-wide solidarity events.

Last week’s TUC Congress in Brighton unanimously supported the call for an immediate amnesty for our students

We now need your support once more – particularly, if you are based in London. We want as many trade union banners as possible on next week’s march/demonstration – along with as many colleagues as you can bring. This is not just a fight for London Met – this is a fight for public education as a whole.

Please send messages of support to mark.campbell_home [at] btopenworld.com

In solidarity

Mark Campbell
London Metropolitan University UCU (Chair)
UCU National Executive Committee (London and the East HE)
SERTUC Public Services Committee (Vice-Chair)

H.Ed Horror Show (‘Exporting UK Higher Education’ – BIS)

If you were missing the Olympics, here is another bread and circuses event that may or may not have the G4S doing security.

(click the screenshot to go to the confluence website):

Anyone remember the Hotel Nikko in Sydney August 1991? (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/740)

 

New Scanner for Student monitoring to be introduced (by your border-agent-tutor)

Trinketization must-have item of the week! this new electronic gadget from Opticon: website http://www.opticon.co.uk is a barcode scanner about to be rolled out at Queen Mary, to be used by seminar leaders to register attendance at seminars by scanning students’ ID cards.

[i am reliably informed from deep inside the administrative apparatus]

forget the new iphone five, this is the trinket you need for the proper management of scholarship in the knowledge economy

its sleek design makes it an oh so slick silver status object, with curved corners™

first an arm and a leg in fees, then electronic tagging as the staff are made agents of UKBA. FFS.

A reminder of the Centre for Cultural Studies position against being agents of the Border regime here.

Update:

—– Forwarded Message —–

MESSAGE FROM CCLS Director and Head of Dept, Laws

Dear all,

As a result of the tightening of immigration rules, from this academic year
onwards all universities must monitor students’ lecture attendance on an
ongoing basis. This encompasses students from all postgraduate taught
programmes. The attendance monitoring exercise will require the assistance
of academic staff members and guest speakers teaching postgraduate modules.
We have purchased scanners that read students ID cards. There is one scanner
per module. Each module convener must ensure that the person responsible
for the weekly lecture brings the scanner into the class, gives it to
students to record their attendance and brings it back to CCLS/Mile End
reception as appropriate.

It is VITAL that this is done every week as continuity is required when
checking for absence.

Scanner control

Modules taught at LIF OR CH SQ can collect and return scanners to LIF
reception.
Modules taught at Mile End OR at IALS by department staff can collect and
return scaners to Mile End Law Reception

We will start the monitoring exercise from week one, although for the first
two weeks it is trial run as class lists are not yet known. Your help in
implementing this is very important. As you know, foreign students are vital
for us and we must do what is required by the authorities to ensure our
right to sponsor student visas is not affected.

If you have any queries please contact Aqib (Ext. 8091 A.Khan@qmul.ac.uk or
Wendy Ext 8104 ccls-helpdesk@qmul.ac.uk).

There are some basic guidance notes attached -

Many thanks in advance for your collaboration with this task.

Kind regards,

Spyros and Valsamis

Malignancy Ed

UKBA demo weds

URGENT
Come to the demo on Wednesday 5th Sept and protest against the UKBA– defend London Met students! 
Wednesday 1pm outside the Home Office’s headquarters in Marsham Street, SW1P4DF
Supported by: London Met’s UCU and Unison union branches

…

but:

“The National Union of Students are fully backing the demonstration on Wednesday and we’re asking people to bring to bring suitcase/bags so that we can use them build a massive pile in front of the Home Office and we are asking everyone to bring their national flags!”

I have to say I am dismayed that NUS and London Met SU are calling on people to bring their country’s flags to the demo on weds. As an internationalist, and for other reasons, I’d find it deeply discomforting to carry my own national flag for this. Let alone that some nations barely support their ‘internationals’ (surveillance etc) and when they do it is along the lines of getting them along to the grotesque celebration of Nations we have just endured under the 6 ring oilypigs circus. I’ll come for international solidarity, as a worker of the world etc… Not on behalf of some fake elitist nationalist ecumenium.

Surely the only way to pull this off is if you carry the flag UPSIDE down, as a signal for distress! Good grief, Nationalism is not the message here – the jingoism of the the #closingceremony teaches that at least. Money for parades, yet education is shafted.

The bring a suitcase idea appeals. I even may have one with a Qantas flying kangaroo sticker on it :). Upside down of course.

See you there. Red salute.