CASA participants 2004
Christina Alfonso
From Utopia to reality: ideas that change the world
I would like to centre on the role utopias have had in the development of the
western world, placing special emphasis on utopias written by women at the end
of the 20th Century.
Utopias have been very useful in providing solutions and suggestions, visions
and ideas for the functioning of society. Utopias reflect beliefs of what an
"ideal" society should be like and also imply critiques of the current state of
affairs. For a long time women could only express themselves in fiction. As far
back as 1666 Margaret Cavendish understood that education was the key to
empowerment and wanted the benefit of education to extend to all women. Wishing
to share her ideas and unable to reshape her real world she created one in
writing: The Description of a New World Called the Blazing-World (1666),
considered to be the first utopia written by a woman. From the publication of
Cavendish's work, women did not cease to use the utopian mode of writing to
present revolutionary ideas such as the right of women to vote and the
redistribution of housework.
Some of the most prominent utopian writers of the end of the Twentieth century,
like Joanna Russ, are teachers. Russ, the author of the much-acclaimed utopian
work The Female Man (1975) is a pioneering teacher in women's studies and a
feminist critic. Russ was instrumental in founding the Women's Studies
Department at Cornell University and is currently Professor Emeritus at the
University of Washington in Seattle, where she teaches writing.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood, though not an academic herself, has become a
literary phenomenon as a strong model of Canadian literature and a major player
on the literary scene internationally. Her most famous utopian novel The
Handmaid's Tale is taught at most university courses on utopia. This work was
dedicated to her teacher at college Perry Miller who introduced her to
Puritanism and from whose teachings sprung, in part, The Handmaid's Tale.
Thus, through the example of utopias, we must conclude that teachers and
educators can help shape the world, either through direct action or by spurring
ideas in their students.
Vanessa Andreoti
I would like to propose a dialogue about the need for initiatives/strategies
deployed from within the formal systems of education (schools, colleges and
universities) to raise awareness amongst the young elites in Southern and
Northern countries about the effects of globalisation on peoples around the
globe and how some people are reacting to that in an attempt to negotiate their
autonomy (transnational literacy?). From my perspective this is an important
step towards building transnational solidarity and contaminating the formal
educational system that focuses on corporate profit motifs and constructs
individualistic subjectivities. Maybe some points for discussions could be:
should we put our energies in educating privileged people or should we
concentrate on the education of the disadvantaged? If we find a good enough
reason to go ahead, should we tell young people what to do and think (as has
been done by big campaigns like nosweat and fair trade) or shall we educate them
in a non-directive way so that they are autonomous to make up their minds and
choose their courses of action? How would we involve privileged young people who
seem not to care about others (not even their parents and peers)? How would we
involve privileged young people who are disaffected and have lost a perspective
for the future? What are the challenges and potential of helping privileged
young people reflect about the origins of their privilege and perceive that
their actions and choices affect other people and that they are benefiting from
a system of exploitation?
ARAS (Amsterdam Roundtable of Acrivists and Students)
Round Table: "Linking academic research with activism"
This Round Table is dedicated to confront the gap between academic research and
social movement activism. Groups are invited to hold short presentations about
local initiatives that attemp to bridge this gap.
The central focus is the exchange about existing and future initiatives for
forms of cooperation between social-political activism and research conducted
from within and without universities. In what ways can social movements
activities (including research) on the one hand and academic structures (eg.
educational structures, research) on the other hand enhance each other? What are
concrete forms of research, educational structures and other activitities within
the universities for constructive and permanent interchange of knowlegde?
After a short introduction and possible presentations of other groups about
their initiatives there will be sufficient space to discuss. The last half an
hour will be reserved for making concrete propositions for possible local
activities and for setting up broader networks for permanent exchange between
similar researchactivism-initiatives.
This Round Table is a first attempt to creatively envisage alternative
educational structures within the university and to work towards a broad and
inclusive concept of sharing and constructing knowledge. At the same time, it is
an invitation to rethink our engagement for social transformation as students,
scholars, professors, and of our universities itself.
Initiated by ARAS (Amsterdam Roundtable of Activists and Students), a local
group founded in 2003 that organizes debates at the University of Amsterdam
about current issues, with the aim to link activist engagement and academical
approaches.
Alana Lentin
Workshop: Academia in anti-racist or pro-immigration activism
I propose a workshop on the theme of academic/intellectual involvement in
anti-racist or pro-immigration activism. While the academic social sciences have
been a locus for the production of knowledge on 'race' and the processes of
racialisation, as well as on the specificities of contemporary politics of
immigration and asylum, there is often a lacuna between academics' theoretical
activities and their willingness to become involved in social movement politics
today. While this has not been in the case in the past, I propose that a central
reason for this is academics' heightened awareness in the current context of the
growing neoliberalisation of the scholarly market and the concurrent constraints
that this reality generates for potential social activism. As more research
centres and academic departments active in the field of racism studies and
interrelated themes have to seek funding for their activities from a diversity
of sources on the political spectrum, so it is becoming more difficult to ensure
academic freedom in this domain. A knock-on effect of this is the reluctance of
many academics to be seen to be 'taking sides' in the political debate. This
often leads to frustrations on behalf of social actors who decry a growing chasm
between the academic and the activist worlds. Scholars who remain committed to
social engagement in this field may run the risk of having their work devalued
as insufficiently 'objective' and therefore unscholarly. The proposed workshop
would bring findings from my own research into the European anti-racist movement
and the contemporary pro-immigration campaign and its links with the global
justice movement, in which a return of the intellectual can be noted in the
field of migration, at times to the exclusion of migrant social actors. We will
ask how may it be possible to find the necessary balance that enables academic
and non-academic actors to listen and learn from each other. What lessons can be
learnt from an historicisation of intellectual involvement in anti-racism, from
solidarity to the autonomous movement?
Alessandra Caporale
Presentation: Video Activism in the Italian Centri Sociali
With my presentation I propose a reflection on ethnographic film practice as the
possibility of an encounter between the researcher and the subjects and their
common work in the shaping of a new knowledge of reality. The participants in
the presentation will be asked to actively discuss the issues of authority,
objectivity, rhetoric, agency, multiple voices, spectatorship etc., and the
differences between fiction, documentary, experimental video practice and
ethnographic filmmaking.
The presentation will begin by assessing the impact of photography and
film-making on ethnographic methodology and how these practices have encouraged
the emergence of the current reflexive trend within anthropology. This `reflexive
turn' consisted in the recognition of the constructed and subjective nature of
representation, whether written or visual. Drawing on some scholars´ criticisms
of Indigenous Media studies to the rhetoric of `media empowerment' I will
discuss the issue of self-representation in contemporary ethnographic film
practice. Rather than celebrating the `transfer' of media technologies to
members of remote communities or the `appropriation' of media from contemporary
urban subcultures and social movements, this critique claims the need of an
analysis of the specific socio-cultural context in which media appropriation
takes place.
The central body of my presentation will relate to the results of my research on
"Video Activism in the Italian Centri Sociali" which I carried out as my PhD
subject at Napier University in 2003.
The focus of this native ethnography is the way in which film practice, employed
by the oppositional culture of the Italian Centri Sociali (CS), contributes to
the construction of this movement's counter-cultural identity. In this research
I focus on the ways in which the CS subculture adapts new media to the
principles of autogestione (DIY) and autoproduzione (independent production),
and turning communication into a new arena of experimentation with `horizontal'
forms of political representation. Drawing on the discourse and techniques of
Visual Anthropology, and to experiment with a methodology as close as possible
to my object of study, I used video technology as part of my fieldwork. I will
show some slides and clips of my visual work in the Italian Centro Sociale Forte
Prenestino.
In conclusion, I will put in evidence some of the parallels and
cross-fertilization between ethnographic film-practice and contemporary video
activism. I will show how these elaborate on the critical knowledge and art
practices of previous avant garde and counter-cultural movements and their use
of visual media as a tool of cultural critique.
Relevant Bibliography
Russell, C. Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video.
Durham: Duke University Press. 1999.
Atton, C. Alternative Media. London: SAGE. 2002.
Banks, M. & Morphy, H. Rethinking Visual Anthropology. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press. 1999. [1997].
Davies, C. A. Reflexive Ethnography. A Guide to Researching Selves and Others.
London and New York: Routledge. 1999.
Downing, J. Radical Media: Rebellious communication and social movements. (Eds.
Downing, J.D.H.; Villareal Ford, T.; Gil, G.; Stein, L.). London: SAGE. 2001.
MacDougall, D. Transcultural Cinema. (Ed. Taylor, L). Princeton: Princeton
University Press. 1998.
Alex Hache
Workshop: Ongoing projects of the Euromovements
Hello! I am an activist researcher, actually i am part of the project
Euromovements, european action research network for social transformation, you
can visit our webpage: http://www.euromovements.info. I am also part of a
collective involved in mapping and urban transformation that is located in
Barcelona, http://redactiva.tk. Actually i am developping a phd research in how
social movements use technology of information and communication, mostly my
problematic is based in understanding how do actors and groups communicate their
fights and resistances, and how do social transformation and ICT interact and
influence each other.
I will be giving a workshop around the ongoing projects and activities of the
euromovements network on saturday morning from 11h00 to 12H30 at Binnengasthuis,
Room 213.
To have an overvieuw of the project you can visit: http://www.euromovements.info/html/newsletter-euro-en.htm
and also the newsletter on activist research that we have recentely finished at:
http://www.euromovements.info/html/index.htm
I will also present two news projects, one focused on building a chronology of
social mobilizations in europe and a free online database and a directory of
groups and actors that are developping activist research, i do put downhere
those details, meanwhile i wish you a good travel towards amsterdam, see you
over there, cheers
Alex Hache, Invitation to activists, researchers and activist researchers to
join the Chronos project (direct link to dynamic archive, AlexHache_ChronosProject)
Invitation to activists, researchers and activist researchers to join the
Activist Research Directory (direct link to dynamic archive, AlexHache_ActivistResearchDirectory)
Alexandra Zavos -
Barbara Biglia
Presentation: Being within, without or in the frontier. Considering the(im)possible
relationships between academic and activist location for "critical research".
With this workshop we would like to investigate and talk about the conflictive
relationship of being within and/or without the academy. We would like to
analyse the influence of economic and power relations on our work as researchers
(founding, strategy of control &.) and the (im)possibilities this creates for an
activist analysis.
On the same line we want to situate ourselves, deconstruct our social-individual
constructed identity and look for new possibilities of being collectively. We
would like our analysis to emerge from our subjectivities (instead of from a
allegedly objective Science) and with a self-critical and reflexive perspective.
As a group (in a discussion between the coordinators and "Fractalidades" members)
we formulated a general question/problematic and then analysed it into different
sub-questions that would be discussed in the small groups.
General problematic: How do we make critical work (critical research and
critical movements/activism) to change the world when we belong to the
institutions we criticize?
Sub-questions:
Being and acting: The personal is political. Contradictions or continuities
between every-day life and activism, between individual and collective, private
and public spaces.
Truth=Knowledge(s) / Power: Dominant knowledge(s), individual / collective
knowledge production, how to break down the authority marked by institutional
positions.
Reflexivity and critical practice: What is critical? Washing up guilt? Being
marginalized or choosing to be a-normalised? We are being constructed, how do we
subvert this?
Effectiveness: How effective is our work? Responsibility and accountability.
Positionings: Power relations and relative hierarchies between different groups,
identities, positions. Possibilities and limitations in connections with others.
We will provide text and bibliographical references to as preliminary resources
for our exchange and discussion.
Andrea Virginas
3rd year Ph.D. student Debrecen University, Hungary
A view in-between
"What is the place of academics in today's society? Which responsibilities can
or should they assume? How can the communication between academia, social
movements and society be improved?" This is the cluster of questions I have been
most interested in when reading about the call for papers, and the fact that
such a topic has been proposed for discussion determined my will to apply.
Before proceeding with the draft, I have to make it clear that my contribution
to the workshop - even if presented as a paper - is to be based on my personal
experiences and observations as a part-time university lecturer and movie
magazine editor working in Romania and as a Ph.D. student doing my studies in
Hungary. These institutional affiliations allow for a multiple view on how the
academia is positioned in these two countries and also make possible reflections
concerning its relationship to the field I know best next to academia: that of
written and tele-visual media.
Three interesting phenomena deserve attention in this context: students and mass
media, teachers and mass media, and those, who - because of the radical social
changes nicknamed post communism happen to be students, teachers and mass-media
participants at the same time. Although natural at first sight - who else should
read and consume media if not the members of the academia - there are contexts
when the status of an intellectual is defined exactly by the distance it can
acquire from every public or mass communicational forum. I think that by paying
attention to academe members' attitudes in post-communist countries towards the
mass media as a communicational form we can offer interesting answers for the
question posed in the beginning. I must add that these answers will reveal a lot
about the traditions of being an intellectual in both Hungary and Romania, a
tradition strongly defined by an idea of impartial objectivity, not influenced
by sensation-seeking mass media or the money-driven privately funded education.
Therefore, I propose that for the CASA July workshop I will elaborate more
deeply - in the form of a paper presentation or just as a participant - on these
topics.
Areti Crysanthou
Action/Documentary: berlageblokken actie
I'm participating in an action that takes place in Amsterdam the last three
months. The name of the action is "berlageblokken actie" and is against the
breaking of social houses in Amsterdam. I am making, together with my comrades,
a documentary about this action and we would like to present it in Casa
conference. We hope that it will be ready on time.
Ayse Koksal
Narratives in the Museum
This paper is based on my master thesis 'Reading the Museum Through Technology'
that I have conducted in 2002-2003 in I.T.U and Maastricht University. The
thesis covers the use of technology and the effect of it in the production of
knowledge.
Nowadays, especially after 1960s, the museums are under a rapid transformation.
This transformation was almost compulsory by the reason of that our society has
passed from industrial to information age. Because of the new technologies the
information is now everywhere, available to 'almost' everyone and much more
importantly it is reproducible in every second. Following the concept, many
philosophers such as Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger, Adorno began to discuss the
concept of 'the knowledge', about the existence of an abstract knowledge for
which science is looking for. In that connection, also the authority of science
over knowledge began to be questioned.
In that connection, the traditional museums that are based on traditional
concepts such as object-based collections, rigid classifications, authority of
curator over knowledge, linear way of communication, traditional education where
the educator (who knows) teaches the truth to passive visitor (who does not
know) have begun to be questioned. The basic dilemma was whether the museum
still is a place of education in an information age where no longer an abstract
knowledge is definite. Thus, the new museology bases its foundations on modern
concepts, such as the multivocality of objects (Heidegger, Barthes, Jordanova)
in the sense that every object produces and reproduces multiple meanings
simultaneously (Ricoeur, Hooper-Greenhill) through the multiple interpretations
(Gadamer) of active visitor who brings his own experience, social relations and
personality in the museum itself. In that context, the education is no longer
traditional but constructive (Hein) which is based on learning through
experience. Additionally, the museum is no longer the authoritarian educator who
gives the final answer to the visitors. However, the museum is just a medium
where the several messages are produced. The active visitors every time produce
their own narratives, which are all relevant in their museum experiences. Thus,
in the modern museum several knowledges are being shaped rather then
Knowledge(Roberts).
Following these concepts, the museums that are in favor of modern perspectives
adopted new ways of communication with the visitors. The constructivist
education which is based on experience requires much more interactive
representations of the objects and the use of technology. In that connection, in
practice we see that many museums begin to use of Internet, computers, games,
audio-visual technologies in their collections. Thus, the rise of the use of
technology should be perceived as the reflection of changing theories and
concepts in practice.
Ayse Nerek
Paper: Electronic media and Western Thought
The electronic media functions to destabilise the figure of the subject as it is
drawn in the traditions of Western thought; the Cartesian subject who stands
outside the world of objects. Computer makes for reversibility and easily
insertion of texts. Whether the integration is by an author or a collectivity,
the computer destabilises the subjects initiating a new situation of limits. The
consistently disruption of logocentric discourse and its attendant subject
develops an understanding that avoids totalising strategies ad stabilising
disclosures against the tradition that defines beings as contained, closed,
stable and finite entities. As Mark Poster notes, the computer lets the human
being recognise itself in the uncanny immateriality of the machine.
Albeit dispersing the subjects, releasing them from the fixity and hierarchy of
their positions in their world; the new experience may result with disconnection
from local and the real, while globalised society is being territorialised by
western aesthetic strategies and cultural formations. A variety of critical,
aesthetic, and cultural practices have become more and more relevant as they
critique, and subvert the languages and practices of global culture.. I want to
present a short paper leading to a discussion on the possibility of using
internet as an alternative tool for communication and action, trying to bring
out a critical view considering the experience mediated through text and image.
Ben Dorfman
Presentation: Culture, Media, Theory, Practice: Perspectives
Institute for Languages and Intercultural Studies,
Aalborg
The title of this presentation, "Culture, Media, Theory, Practice: Perspectives"
is also the title of an edited book volume to be released in August, 2004 in
connection with the new Culture and Media Studies (CMS) program in the Faculty
of the Humanities at Aalborg University, Denmark. As coordinator and principle
planner behind the program, I will discuss in this presentation the development
of the Culture and Media Studies program at Aalborg in three contexts: (1) the
milieu of humanistic study at Aalborg University, (2) the ongoing
transformations in Denmark's basic university law and (3) wider trends in the
"internationalization" of university education. Concerning the milieu of
humanistic study at Aalborg, I will describe the problems associated with
building what is intended as a "classic" humanities program in the context of a
"project-centered" pedagogy and committed to "socially applicable" knowledge
based in "problem solving," such as Aalborg's. This has provided challenges in
terms of transforming received problems in intellectual history into questions
of "contemporary" concern open to "empirical" investigation on the part of
students. From there, I will examine the challenge of building CMS in relation
to Denmark's current university reforms, which involve responding directly to
the demands of private employment sectors, the reorientation of all educations
to provide graduates ready to enter "business life" and the "modulization" of
educations into more American-style "pick-and-choose" curriculums for students.
These reforms have opened questions as to what kind of knowledge(s) CMS is to
provide, and whether the program has a responsibility to provide knowledge(s)
that resist as much as assist those reforms. Finally, the establishment of CMS
will be contextualized against the general background of "internationalization"
in university education, including the impending General Agreement on Trades and
Services (GATS): what varieties of cultural studies programs sell on the
international market, and how --- if not indeed should --- such questions inform
the content of cultural studies programs? Generally, this presentation will not
offer any final solutions to the above questions. However, its essential point
will be that one of the elements of contemporary cultural studies curriculum
production we need to be aware of is the ability of states, institutionalized
knowledge systems and capital markets to appropriate multiplicitous and even
opposed cultural-analytical epistemologies and methodological approaches. This
grants an often-surprising degree of agency to knowledges and academic
"competences" sometimes thought outmoded or marginalized --- an agency that must
be engaged. However, in engaging this agency, we should not fool ourselves:
insofar as they function within states, institutions and (especially) capital
markets, the existence of multiple cultural-analytical perspectives is allowed,
meaning they are at work on behalf of those entities. The question then becomes
on what terms we want that to do that work, and the precise dimension of the
choices involved with such labor.
Bolette M. Christensen
A place for academia in the fight for social change?
Knowledge, theory and intellectuals in the movements of diversity.
Opportunities, pitfalls and challenges
How can we, as students and scholars, teachers and theorists, contribute to the
movements we sympathise with and take part in? And in which ways may our
well-intentioned endeavours be constructive rather than destructive in relation
to these movements?
The movements in question are the field of alterglobalisation movements. The
starting point will be a discussion of the dynamics, strengths and resources of
this movement field, as well as of its vulnerability to pressures exerted on it.
This field of social movements is first and foremost characterized by diversity;
in topical aims, in strategical and tactical approaches, as well as in kind of
connections to networks of established political and corporate actors. In
relation to economic and political globalization this movement field may be seen
as a context comprising both, with Castells, legitimizing identity connected to
civil society, identity for resistance connected to the building of defensive
communality, and project identity connected to the building of projects for a
new world. Rather than representing a unification of this diversity the movement
field may be seen as a fluid context for these complex dialectics of diversity.
The mode of organization in the global movement field is networking. The nodes
of the fluid networks are collective actors, localised in specific contexts, and
building internally upon networking as well. The loose and unstable coupling of
the networks of diversity represents both a strength and a vulnerability in
relation to pressures from the networks of dominance, i.e. the political and
corporate systems, and in relation to pressures from some tendencies inside the
movement field, e.g. groups with hegemonic aspirations.
Knowledge is a basic resource of the movements of diversity, both connected to
outward action and to constant self reflection, securing dynamics and creative
innovation of movement practices. So production of knowledge is central in the
movement field. This offers a place for academic endeavours in the field.
However, the intrusion of the institutionalised practices of academia may be
counterproductive in the context of diversity. The quest for reductive
interpretation, totalizing theories and all-embracing concepts may be more
corruptive than productive in the context of a diversity of action confronting a
world of complexity, multiplicity and endless variety of power relations at the
levels of the concrete.
In order to sustain the dialectics of diversity which constitute the movement
field, the intellectual, the student, the researcher, and the theorist, may have
to abstain from academic ambition and give up any claim for superior truth. But
then, concrete contextuality may be much more fun to deal with.
EEF (European Education Forum)
On September 18th to 20th 2003 the first European Education Forum (EEF) was held
in Berlin parallel to the Bologna conference of the EU educational ministers. A
platform, modelled on the conception of the social forums in Porto Alegre and
Florence, was created where everybody interested in the topic was able to
discuss the future of education policy in Europe and to share his or her ideas
of it. 500 pupils, students and teachers from 18 countries joined the first EEF.
At the second European Social Forum in Paris a group of the Berlin EEF
participants newly met about the necessary expansion of the EEF into a process
able to continue it. Rather than developments of commonly settled positions, the
EEF intended to encourage the persons concerned to have a critical argument with
European educational policy. This is meant to take place regularly in order to
have the intermediate discussions, activities and developments reflected,
analysed and shaped from the European grassroots. The workshop will describe the
aims and the principles of the EEF. We proposed to discuss the specific needs
for an education forum suited to the present developments of European education
policies, as well as the possibilities to enlarge this movement.
Esther Peeren
Carnival Territories: Politics of the Street in the Notting Hill Carnival and
Carnival against Capital.
My paper will explore the way carnival was/is used as a political tool in the
Notting Hill Carnival (particularly in the late 70s) and in the anti-capitalist
manifestation Carnival Against Capital (June 18th 1999). I will examine how
these two specific and non-traditional instances of carnival redefine the way
carnival has been considered in theoretical terms by, among others, Mikhail
Bakhtin and Umberto Eco. My argument will be that the specific socio-historical
circumstances of the two carnivals in question serve to overcome the dichotomy
by which carnival is either thought of as a reactionary safety-valve mechanism
by which the dominant order perpetuates its control over the masses, or as an
inherently revolutionary movement of "the people". I will also focus on the way
these two carnivals center on issues of territory, of staking a claim to
particular parts of London that become coded as symbolic locations of race or
class warfare.
Gerda Wever Rabehl
Academics for Love and Life roundtable
In my session, I would like to discuss very keenly sought after topics in
North-American and public school contexts: care, love, kindness, social
responsibility and the like. I will present care, kindness as situated within
particular horizons of reference, a horizon characterized, thanks to Platonic
and Christian philosohies and kapitalist economics, by notions of transcendence
and death.
Questions the discussion might address:
• How to understand, practice and speak of, care, love and nearness in our
positioning against an alienating and disaffecting background of meaning?
• How to meet the other in such alienation and in the constraints of pre-made
immutable sentences?
• What is the role of linguistic practices in the ways in which we cultivate and
foster love and kindess?
In our attempt to meet the aforementioned challeges, what are the respective
possibilities of:
• Marxist analyses of the relations between men and women
• Eastern traditions of thought
• The invention of new linguistic practices
What are the implications for epistemology and the construction of agency?
I would like to suggest these to be central themes and questions for discussion.
After a collective deliberation, I would also like to talk with participants
about a new, cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary project. This collaborative
project departs from the idea that we can investigate care, kindness and love as
an isolated phenomenon in an already established horizon. Instead, it aims to
explore conceptions and practices of love, care and kindness as they emerge from
various spiritual, economical, political and mythical traditions.
Gian Carlo Delgado
I am a mexican economist with a master degree at the Autonomous University of
Barcelona. Right now I am a PhD candidate on Ecological Economics at that same
university.
I am interested on participating at the CASA meeting with a presentation of a
paper on the "World Bank and the privatization of public universities'
scientific and technological research." It would be an actualization of a
chapter of the book "Imperialism and World Bank" that I wrote with John
Saxe-Fernandez which will be publish in Spain by Editorial Popular this year.
The original version is in Spanish but I could make the presentation on English
Herman van Wietmarschen
Workplace Left Analysis Biopolitics: Critical writing and
communication guerilla
Workplace Left Analysis Biopolitics is a place were people have met for 15 years
to analyse developments in bio- and medical technology and health care from an
anti-eugenic point of view. The Workplace is part of an anarchist collective
based in Wageningen (the Infocenter) that is involved with a variety of
political activism. We try to develop a critical, anti-eugenic, feminist,
anti-racist view on developments in the medical sector. Our views have to
compete with the large body of mainstream idea's although sometimes we find
surprising similar ideas about certain topics with certain people. We have to
fight to get our ideas visible to people and therefore we developed various
strategies which can be of interest.
Our views are regularly published in the form of articles for mainly small
leftist magazines. The great advantage is that they usually publish anything
submitted. We regularly try to get our views published in more mainstream media,
but it's almost always refused. Besides that we have created our own ways of
communication in the form of a website (http://www.biopolitiek.nl), an email
newsletter (nieuws@biopolitiek.nl) and a magazine (BioBrief). People who know us
and like our work can easily keep in contact with us and new stories we publish.
However more rigorous measures are often needed to get the neccessary attention.
Our political activist background together with writing skills provided us with
several strategies: organising demonstrations, communication guerilla and
networking. To get in the media it can be very useful to organise a
demonstration. Communication guerilla we used to sabotage a very technology
optimistic event. We created doubt and a different view on things with a little
piece of theater. Networking is very usefull to get information not easily found
in regular media, to support other groups and combine efforts.
In this presentation I would like to share a little more of the usefullness and
difficulties of the strategies used by the Workplace. We hope to generate a
diskussion about what strategies to use in what circumstances. And we hope to
learn more about how to strengthen our position (as a small collective) in the
power field of mainstream thought.
Aysel Yavuz -
Kerim Kurkcu -
Nazli Eda Noyan - Neşe Doğusan
Heterotopia
"Heteretopia" is an interdisciplinary creative group founded by an art
historian-sociologist, architects, and a designer who work on visual codes of
everyday city life in the context of social and artistic realm.
This group named itself after Michel Foucault's concept of "heterotopia", which
is defined as "the coexistence in an impossible space of a large number of
fragmentary possible worlds" in his article "of Other Spaces". Istanbul is a
global developing city where a lot of ethnic groups, migration issues and
unorganized urban structure reside. Therefore this city is an excellent resource
for exploring the concept. Through this exploration we focused on some parts of
the city working with the locals from different backgrounds themselves. As a
group, coming from diverse disciplines strengthens the creative outcome and the
argument that has been developed in site-specific excursions. In each project
the architectural, sociological and artistic methods and tools that include
structures, installations, video recording, digital photography and interviews.
Who we are:
• Aysel Yavuz; Architect, Student in master program in Faculty of Architecture
in Istanbul Technical University. ayselyavuz@hotmail.com
• Kerim Kurkcu; Desinger,architecture students, 8. term. Faculty of Architecture
in Istanbul Technical University. kerimkurkcu@yahoo.com
• Nazli Eda Noyan; Artist, graphic designer, instructor, Ph.D. candidate.
Bahcesehir University, Visual Arts and Communication Design.
edanoyan@bahcesehir.edu.tr
• Neşe Doğusan; Research Assistant, Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul Technical
University. nesedogusan@superonline.com
Projects:
a. Transpassing the Courtyard;
2003 March-June: This project takes place in a historical district in Istanbul
where immigrant people from rural areas of Turkey live. It is a collabration
with the local people in a space facilitated by "Oda Project"(an artists group).
Its aim is to create and promote an alternative courtyard with the habitants
through interactive projects. Detail information may be found at
http://www.geocities.com/heterotopia2002/p_courtyard.html
b. Urban Flashes
(Istanbul 2004); http://www.geocities.com/heterotopia2002/uf.html Claiming
Space: Within our practice, how shall we value or use the structures which are
developed totally randomly against professional designs? Or shall or should we
use them at all? Heaven & Real Heaven: A local or minor action and a proposal
for creating consciousness about these areas and our rights as citizens.
c. Temporariness of Permanency;
What is our gradation of temporiness? Will these buildings make our life time?
Or be just like temporary tents collapsing with a strong wind? What's the
"permanent"? A long life-span temporary structure unfairly long enough? How
"permanent" is it? The documotional deals with the dichotomies, crossovers and
relationships between Tarabya Hotel and Tarabya Hotel itself in Turkish Movies;
"simit" vendors on the streets and "simit palaces", markets and the empty market
places.
d. Academic Gaze; relations in between subject and object;
What is the Academic gaze? How could relations in-between the subject and the
object be defined in academic researches? In academic and institutional
researches we take ourselves out from the human, time and place triangle
although what we're trying to do is in essence very human. From this point on,
as a project we're planning to question the institutional konwledge through the
redesigning of Istiklal Street in Istanbul. All the changes in the city plan are
decided as a result of institutional knowledge. But what are the methods for
bringing together for such kind of knowledge and how do they intersect with the
life dynamics? Examples:
• 1) The law about making the shops' sign boards in İstiklal Street all alike.
• 2) Renovation process of some streets in Cihangir.
• 3) The gentrification process of French Street in İstanbul (the ending of a
street's own dynamics and redefining it through new hosts).
• 4) The closing of Talimhane to pedestrian traffic for the forthcoming NATo
meeting.
Hugo Pezzini
The Latin American Literature of the Neoliberal Crisis: The Emergence of a
Postmodern Posthegemonic Heterotopy
Pezzini's presentation takes the form of a presentation of research gathered
together in the form of a critical-theoretical book completed in 2003.
Ingrid Hoofd
The problem with activism and academia: the ongoing problematic repetition of
the Eurocentric subject as the centre of liberatory social change
My paper will explore the issue of what exactly goes on at the subjective
borders of activism and academia. What spaces, tools and narratives are being
used and created through our ‘hybrid’ practices? What are we, as socially
engaged academics and activists, really producing at conferences like for
instance CASA 2004? I will make the bold statement that there are a number of
issues and notions around academia and activism at play that have not yet been
adequately addressed, and which, despite (or maybe because of!) all the good
intentions, in fact seriously play into the technologically enhanced repetition
and enforcement of current global hegemonies around class, race and gender. More
seriously, this paper will argue that, despite the still pervasive modernist
belief to the contrary which tends to perceive resistances and power as arch
opposites, the spread of oppressive technological Eurocentrism and the partly
liberating (be it antiracist, feminist, or alter-globalist) humanist
appropriation of these technologies actually go hand in hand, in an ever faster
and more powerful way. Despite the widespread and often debilitating
oppositional politics of both academia and activism towards each other, activism
could then nonetheless similarly be regarded as a specific Western or European
project that resulted from the Cartesian splitting off of bodily and material
action from high academic thought. In the European context then, both activisms
and academic endeavours appear as seemingly opposing elements, while they
actually both provide the discourses par excellence for the fantasy of the
Western subject to be reiterated, as much as the new technologies provide the
tool par excellence to spread this imaginary globally. Paradoxically then, every
activism and left-wing theoretical practice will necessarily appropriate and
repeat such technological Eurocentrisms, always envisioning at the centre of
liberation the idea of individual intentionality and sovereignty.
Ipek Celik
Ph.D. student Department of Comparative Literature New York
University
Teaching Resistance Poetry--Literary Scholar's "Search for Truth"
In his article recently published in the New York Times (May 21, 2004) Stanley
Fish --- the literary theorist, and professor of English literature --- suggests
the academics not to "confuse [their] academic obligations with the obligation
to save the world" since "our job is not to change the world, but to interpret
it. While academic labors might in some instances play a role in real-world
politics it should not be the design or aim of academics to play that role" [My
emphasis]. Then he describes the task of academic work: "the search for truth
and the dissemination of it through teaching." By presenting such an argument
based on the musty idea of attaining "academic objectivity" detached from
ideology and politics Fish is not only abolishing the academics' social
responsibility but he is also enclosing the "search for truth" as an inept,
self-governing mental exercise. Getting trained in the same discipline with the
author of this article, I have additional concerns with Fish's form of argument
on the academic and her/his political engagement by a use/abuse of the language
of literary criticism. A student of literature has to dissect and analyze the
meaning of interpretation for Fish, the professor of English literature, and how
he employs the term within the confines of conventional literary criticism. Then
one has to inquire into how interpretation or the analysis of a piece of
literature may be detached from/ attached to the political dynamics of its
social context: Where does the literary text stand with regards to the
"real-world politics" and how does it respond to the latter?
At the CASA Meeting 2004, around the above questions and the age-old
institutional confines of identifying "real literature" and "high-art" outside
political propaganda, I would like to open to discussion the literary scholar's
possibility of raising consciousness for social responsibility by benefiting
from the unfinished character of literature as an ongoing production providing a
compelling motive for decision in political struggle rather than being an object
of comfortable contemplation. But how can a teacher of literature reinforce
constructive reading of the text that dislocates canonical structures of
definition, perception and expression, and subvert the hegemonic boundaries on
representation in order to communicate social consciousness to her/his students?
What are the alternative pedagogies within the restrictive institutional
framework of a literature department for building an organic link between the
student's self and society and obliterate the illusory distance between the
personal and the social, and also the fictive and the political space and time?
At this point I will refer to my experience of teaching an undergraduate class
on poetry of resistance at the New York University. Reading and analyzing the
works of a group of poets speaking from variety of contexts (Greek, Turkish,
Lebanese-American, Palestinian etc) about civil wars, decolonization,
anti-imperialism, ethnic conflicts, military regimes, and so on has been a
difficult task since most of the students have grown up embracing the
de-politicization in the American culture and the erasure of social
responsibility for the sake of a violent individualism. These ideological
barriers however provide the stimuli for a search of alternative strategies to
make the engaged poetry accessible to these students. A psychological,
sociological, political and philosophical analysis of the poetics of a community
of poets who have played differing roles at critical historical moments (as
activists, resistance leaders, identity-makers/ breakers, exiles etc.) promises
to evade the gridlocks-on expression and therefore thought-that debilitate
action and collectivity. Mobilizing poetry?s emotional vigor, density of
signification as a means of production in continual evolution gives the student
the opportunity to reproduce her/his own patchwork out of the narrative
possibilities. Poetry offers new ways of seeing and increasing perception in the
age of commercial image bombardment with the narcotic effect that weakens the
sites of acute sensation. It also evokes critical thinking against the
mainstream media monopolies on the dissemination of the "Other's" representative
images and promotes a more inclusive identification of the self and its
relationship to the Other and to the social context. During the meeting I would
like to explore how a literary scholar could expose the performativity of a
poetic text in order to create a network of communication between the reader and
the text as a social product to mobilize action and deconstuctive agency.
John Duda
New models for activist research:networks and resources
This workshop is a combined presentation of several projects and networks:
Mobilised Investigation, Infoespai and a European Guide for Social
Transformation.
Mobilised Investigation (MI) is a network on research-activism established in
2002. It offers a platform for the exchange and development of investigation
which confronts power relations within our societies. Its main focus is social
studies and how to transform these into tools for social movements.
Infoespai is a social-political centre in Barcelona for coordination of social
movements. It is a cooperative of groups involved in building up new networks,
alternatives and political actions. It is a project of construction of a
self-managed tools net and resources to produce, to recollect, to spread and to
transform information. http://www.infoespai.org
The European Guide for Social Transformation is interactive guide to social
transformation. A multilingual list on activist(-research) groups in a dynamic
database. It wants to facilitate processes of evaluation, self-reflection of
social movement actors and wants to be a tool of social transformation.
Julius Nil
I host a radio show on Resonance 104.4 fm in London
(http://www.resonancefm.com). The show is called One Reason To Live and each
week I invite one guest to choose one piece of music. We then spend an hour
listening to the piece and analyzing it musically, socially, emotionally, etc.
The idea is to bridge the gap between purely personal and purely academic
reactions to music.
I'd like to roam around CASA with a portable audio recorder and talk to
attendees about a piece of music. I'll record the conversations and broadcast
them on my show. So, essentially, my workshop would consist of gathering
material which would be turned into a radio show on musical theory and practice.
The show would be broadcast a week or two after CASA. Attendees would be invited
to listen to the show via the web. So, my workshop would not happen at a
specific time and place, but would be an on-going project throughout the
conference.
In order to make this work, I need a little help from you and the other CASA
organizers. I need to let people know that this will be happening, so they can
give a little thought to a single piece of music to discuss. Also, if people
could bring a copy of the piece to CASA which I could then take with me to
London, that would be a great help. If you can get the word out that this will
be happening during the conference, I would be grateful: people should come
prepared with a single piece of music in mind (and, preferably, a copy on CD).
I would like to be involved in a workshop or discussion revolving around arts
practice, academic theory and their space of interaction. Having been an active
musician for the past 12 years, and then returning to academia, I am surprised
by the lack of engagement between these two worlds. Too much academic treatment
of rock music (I hesitate to use the term "popular music," since what I'm
interested in is far from popular), fails to deal with the music at the level of
the aesthetic, choosing instead to take sociological approaches. Such approaches
ignore the implicit, yet powerful, politics that are both voiced and activated
by aesthetic choices in the music itself. I am interested in discussing why
academia is unable to engage the aesthetics of rock, when it is apparently
comfortable dealing with the aesthetics of other media from classical music to
television. I would be interested in exploring why academia turns to sociology
to explain rock and the false premise that the sociological is more political
than the aesthetic. I would like to exchange ideas of how academia can better
engage with its artistic subjects (generally) and with rock music
(specifically).
Madhuresh Kumar
Students Activism, Social Movements, and Markets in Universities : A Perspective
As the neo-liberalism, globalisation, privatisation and reforms are becoming
buzzword the projects of social welfare have suffered almost everywhere in the
world, slowly and gradually "social" is giving way to "economic". So market,
capital, investment, efficiency, competition, and returns have occupied centre
stage in our universities, and the critical, intellectual engagement, free
thinking and students activism are slowly and gradually taking a back seat due
to increased career pressure, parental expectation, reduced intellectual
freedom, and open spaces in the universities. I hereby propose to share my
experiences of the growing onslaught of liberalisation in Delhi University and
Jawaharlal Nehru University -- two premier universities of the country - in
Delhi, and also elsewhere in India. I propose to explore following questions in
a roundtable discussion :
a. How has the growing privatisation impacted the course structures and syllabi
in universities ?
b. How has the privatisation impacted the general administration and employment
in colleges and universities ? For example most of the teaching appointments are
now made on a yearly contract giving all the power to authorities and thereby
control over the intellectual freedom and critical engagement of the teachers
and staff with the issues of social and political concerns.
c. What are the ways in which privatisation and market has impacted the opening
of new colleges, universities, and fund allocation by the governments ?
d. How have the increased pressures affected the participation of students,
teachers and staff in to issues of social concern and the interaction with
community organisations, and social movements?
e. How has these changes in our institutions been manifested in society at large
?
Margalit Laufer
Wat is Sociale Driegeleding:
Het leven van ieder mens in de samenleving, speelt zich af in drie gebieden: de
cultuur, het recht en de economie. Elk gebied in de samenleving heeft zijn eigen
taak. De taak van de cultuur is een heel andere dan die van de economie, en elk
gebied kan zijn taak alleen vervullen wanneer het onafhankelijk van de andere
gebieden kan werken. Want een gebied kan alleen op de juiste wijze met een ander
gebied samenwerken wanneer het niet door dat andere gebied wordt overheerst.
Het getal drie in het woord Driegeleding verwijst naar deze drie gebieden:
cultuur, recht en economie. Het woord geleding duidt erop dat deze drie gebieden
in de samenleving zodanig samenwerken, dat de mens én zichzelf in vrijheid kan
ontwikkelen (cultuur), én zijn gelijke rechten vindt ten opzichte van zijn
medemensen (recht), én kan genieten van en deelnemen aan de bevrediging van zijn
behoeften (economie).
Een eerste stap in het oplossen van (maatschappelijke) vraagstukken is het
herkennen van deze drie gebieden.
Een volgende stap is in te gaan zien waar en op welke manier het ene gebied het
andere overheerst.
De laatste stap is dan het (maatschappelijk) vraagstuk terug te brengen naar het
gebied waar het hoort en het van daaruit op te lossen.
Steeds meer mensen kunnen, op de plaats waar ze leven en werken, vanuit deze
inzichten weer aansluiten bij hun eigen waarheidsgevoel. Van daaruit zijn ze ook
in staat uiting te geven aan hun behoefte om zelf mee te beslissen en betrokken
te zijn bij de vraagstukken die op hen af komen. Alleen mensen zelf kunnen de
samenleving veranderen. We kunnen uit de feiten leren dat anderen, politici of
economen, niet in het belang van mensen handelen maar vanuit een politiek of
economisch belang. Een centrale macht ontneemt de mens zijn mondigheid en de
verantwoordelijke verbinding met zichzelf en zijn directe omgeving.
Sociale Driegeleding is een houvast om de complexiteit van de maatschappelijke
vraagstukken te ordenen en terug te brengen naar de menselijke maat. Van daaruit
ben je zelf ook weer in staat de eigen verhouding tot problemen in de
samenleving helder te bepalen.
Michiel Bot
I would like to talk a little bit about a case in which academics do have
considerable influence on public opinion and important collective decisions:
European debates on immigration and minority cultures. The problem in these
debates is usually not so much that the voices of neoliberal conservatives are
the only ones that are heard, but that even academics whom I would have
considered leftist or progressive have joined hands with these conservatives in
the xenophobic defenses of monocultural national identities that have become
dominant during the past decade. In the Netherlands, this tendency can even be
perceived in a domain that should be a privileged site for critique: literature.
I could give a presentation on the two novels that the popular Moroccan-born
Dutch writer Abdelkader Benali has written so far, and on the ways in which they
were received. Bruiloft aan zee [Wedding by the Sea], which came out in 1996,
can be read as an original deconstruction of cultural stereotypes. However, many
critics read it as a testimony of an exemplary Moroccan-Dutch who rightly
distantiated himself from his backward values. Benali claims to be frustrated
about this reception, but the dominant ideology of integration seems to have
infected him as well. His second novel, De Langverwachte [The Long-awaited]
(2002), is a tedious piece of assimilationist propaganda, yet precisely this
book was awarded the prestigious Librisprijs 2003. My presentation would be a
critique of Benali's second novel, but also, and in particular, of the many
critics who neglect their task of taking distance from dominant ideologies and
of imagining change. A twenty-minute presentation and subsequent discussion
would be ideal.
Murielle Lucie Clément
Silence and Violence. Can Silence be violent? Can Violence be silent?
In the sessions, we could explore these two questions. We could think of the
silence of society toward certain academics or their discoveries. On the other
hand, the silence of academics towards certain societies and certain society’s
tendencies is worth analyzing as well. This could form the start of the
discussion. Participants are required to reflect on a case where silencing
academics has occurred. Examples can be taken from contemporary history or in a
more ancient contextual period as long as the cases are relevant to the topic.
However, the emphasis will be put on reflection and discussion more than on an
exhaustive listing attempt.
Few track of reflection could be: What was the purpose of such a silencing? How
did it affect the academic field? Society? Did it have any impact at all? How
did it become known? Who, what was violated?
Nazil Eda Noyan
Home Truths project
http://www.girlsawthesea.net/EVGERCEKLERI/index.html
In 2002, Turkey revised the 75-year-old civil code to advance women's and human
rights to demonstrate the willingness to be a part of a more contemporary,
civilized world, to create closer ties to European Union and forward the process
of modernization. But theory and practice do not always go together hand in
hand. Now the effort needs to be made to transform the social mindset of our
people.
The HOME TRUTHS project is a campaign consists of 6 related components aiming to
create awareness, and an environment to debate about the new improvements in the
human rights through curiosity, humor, and interactivity. It's an investigation
of how to utilize interactivity & participatory narration in design and design
in the public space. In CASA meeting the campaign would be discussed in detail
from the begining to the outcome and each campaign element would be exhibited.
Nina Marolt
I have been thinking about offering a workshop that would address the issue of
anarchist organizational principles, as employed by the Movement for Global
Justice, and question the relation between the anarchist praxis and theory (with
anarchism being strongly based on its practical component). That would also
raise the issue of possible historical differentiation in the development of
anarchist thought - old and 'new' anarchism - that could potentially be based on
the different relation with the practical approaches. Moreover, the anarchist
organizational principles employed by the Movement and 'new anarchism' could
maybe even provide the most coherent response to the conditions we are exposed
to in a globalizing world. The workshop would be run in a form of a debate
concerning preconceptions related to anarchism, the 'old' anarchism and the way
anarchism is being put into practice by the Movement for Global Justice,
possible anarchist elements that could be discerned in the approaches best
suited for dealing with the effects of globalization and also, more
specifically, in the current managerial trends (horizontalization of
structures).
Octavi Comeron -
Cornelia Graebner
I have been talking with Cornelia Graebner to prepare something about the idea
of trying to discuss the dialectics of theory/practice or acting/spectating from
understanding language as space of action. This means that in our current
media-world the fight for the meaning of language could be one of the political
keys between Academy/Theory/(and Arts) and the social field. The form for this
(workshop, roundtable, discussion..) is still open.
Ragni Serina Zlotos
Workshop: Political activism, academics and media: Possibilities and limits of
PR and media works
In this workshop everyone with and without experience in this field is invited.
We will discuss for what communication and media work is useful, and for what
maybe unuseful. Please come with your suggestions, your questions and your
opinion about this topic. Afterwards there will hopefully be enough time for
some practical work: You will have time to develop a media strategy for a
self-chosen topic or event.
Robert Maier (title only)
Choosing a Language - Where Spectating Is Not An Option (or something along
these lines)
Saskia Poldervaart (title only)
Utopianism and the alterglobalisation movement
Sue Wilks
I would like to screen a video (that I made recently) at the CASA meeting. The
video is formed of two (ten minute) narrative threads that each offer a case for
resistance to oppression (social and institutional) from the same subjective
viewpoint. With regards to CASA, it is the second case for resistance that is
particularly pertinent to the concerns of the meeting, as it deals with my
(previous) role as a lecturer in art and design who experienced the deregulation
of the English further education sector in 1992. It was at this time that
further education became assimilated by a managerial ethos that originated in
the financial sector with initiatives such as 'Value for Money Auditing'. Such
strategies resulted in art education (as a process of critical, creative,
qualitative learning), being reduced to multiple-choice question's and
quantitative outcomes. The first narrative is relevant as it contextualises the
diverse influences that constitute the resisting subject (who protests in the
second narrative). This video presents the complexities involved with notions of
resistance for there are no clear divides between oppressor and oppressed, and
we have become adept in policing ourselves.
Timothy Horras
The Abolition of the Intellectual
The scholar Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) strikes us as somewhat of an anomaly in
the ranks of academia. Here is a typical interpretation of his position within
the academic and larger intellectual world: "Burke's work as a theorist of
literature and criticism is all the more impressive in that he had little formal
training" (John Hopkins University Press). Is it not interesting that this lack
of formal certification is not only noticed but moreover is considered a point
of interest in his development and reputation as an intellectual figure? Why
indeed should we be interested by this fact - the idea that an intellectual
(allow me for the moment to use this phrase) could be produced outside of the
university institution?
I want this to suggest a contradiction - bluntly, between the intelligentsia's
purported egalitarian values and the reality of their (our) de facto segregation
from the wider public(s). What are the fundamental differences in the social,
cultural, and economic situation which have allowed this discrepancy? The
answers lie in a complex and multifaceted series of shifts which, I want to
argue, have cloistered the intellectual within the Ivory Tower of academia and
sequestered her from interaction with the community or communities at large -
resulting in the intellectual's mere observation of social movements instead of
her action within and fomentation of such.
I wish to explore the implications of this contention and propose some tentative
remedies suggested by a revision of Antonio Gramsci's figure of the organic
intellectual: specifically I want to urge students of my generation to live up
to Gramsci's imploration that there should exist "the same unity between the
intellectuals and the simple as there should be between theory and practice.
That is, if the intellectuals [are] organically the intellectuals of the masses,
and...[make] coherent the principles and the problems raised by the masses in
their practical activity, thus constituting a cultural and social bloc"
My solution involves what I hope to be a radical revision of current theory and
practice on this topic; the renunciation of the position of the "co-opted
intellectual," a strategy of (re)integration with the non-academic world in a
new vocational position and finally the relinquishing of the term "intellectual"
itself, taking a cue from Michel Foucault's incredulity toward the term.
Tobie Marven
I am interested in doing a workshop on programs that arrived from activism roots
such as women, gender and queer study and equality and disabilty studies
responsiblity of being involved in activism in there education. I wrote a paper
on liberation education based on Paulo Freire's philosophies. I look into gender
and queer studies connection and responsilbity to his theories as well as other
examples such as alternative schools and social forum workshops where his
thoeries are put into practise.
Ward Rennen
Urban Regeneration or Segregation?
In an increasingly interconnecting world, capital, businesses, highly educated
employees and tourists appear to have become more flexible, place unbound and
dynamic. As a result, urban economies are ever more vulnerable to external
developments. Within neo-liberal views, this demands an active engagement of
local governments in attracting and retailing relevant social-economic actors.
In this context, many cities turn to regeneration programs to improve their
infrastructure, green spaces, housing stock, public places, cultural and leisure
attractions as vehicles for economic development. Often, this development is
most present in city centers. While regeneration programs increase the quality
of urban life significantly for a part of the urban population. Other parts of
the population are increasingly excluded from city centers. Rising real estate
prices, cleaning of uncanny zones and a homogenisation of commercial spaces are
a few factors that turn many public urban spaces into spaces that are only
useful or enjoyeable for the middle and upper classes. Due to this development,
a great diversity of people and activities move towards the edgdes of city
centers, turning those into lively areas, which often become future zones of
gentrification. The restucturing of urban spaces does not only limit itself to
changes that take place in space. Transformations in the representation of
cities and their populations can be witnessed as well. In this introductory talk
the general dyanmics of the processes sketched above will be outlined. In
addition, attention will be paid to both the dangers as well as the
opportunities of contemporary urban regeneration developments and changes in
representations of cities.
Zita Farkas
What's the use of theory anyway?- The Theory and Practice of Gender studies in
Romania and Hungary
Gender and Queer studies are two areas within the academy that have actually
grown out of social movements, most of all if we think about their history and
route in the american society. After a fight for recognititon as 'sciences' and
finally safely within the walls of academy, an on-going debate arise mostly in
the field of gender studies about the use or misuse of theory in the
disadvantage of social activism. The route of Gender studies in Romania and
Hungary is different. Since it appeared after the fall of communist regimes, in
the academia gender studies is a very new and marginal research area, a
borrowing from the west-most of the people involved in it come from english and
american departments. Their existence within universities can be even considered
a social movement in itself. The presentation will give examples how they try to
bring together theory and practice.
Zsusanna Varga
The politics ofEnglish studies: Academics in the East and the West
My proposed paper intends to provide a summary of the situation of Hungarian
academics of English studies before and after 1989. I shall argue that while
Hungarian academics pursuing English ( and other western language) studies were
closely allied with dissidents, nevertheless, they perceived the post-1989
expansion of their field with ambivalence and found it difficult to accommodate
themselves to teh newly arisen loss of authority. This particular kind of loss
of social authority coincided with a slight redefinition of English studies in
Great Britain: the 1990s saw the broadening of the definiton of English studies
in Great Britain, gradually, although reluctantly, embracing the idea that
English studies exist in non-English speaking countries as well.
My paper wishes to outline the possibilities of further readjustments within the
field practised in the East and West and examine the ways of developments in the
life of a homogenised European higher education system.