[iDC] musing on humanities and other jails

[Geert Lovink]

Dear IDC,

I was asked to tell you something more about the underlying ideas of
our INC, the Institute of Network Cultures here in Amsterdam (NL).

Like at other mailinglists you never know if people respond, and I
like that. There is no recipe for a 'good' posting. Often a lively
debate is sparked off by something random, a small observation, a
detail in the introduction, something personal. Essays you work on for
a long time remain unanswered. So be it. It's very much like the
weather (which often changes here).

I am not sure if I agree with this somewhat orchastrated and filtered
'discussion' mode. Maybe I am more in favor of forum software and
slightly more dirty conversations with higher noise levels but I know
that's not popular these days (with all of us having busy lives and so
on). There is already enough oversight and control on the Net.

My own work is hoovering between activism, arts and culture and extra-
mural (academic) research and theory. I never saw as part of
'education'. In my experience you learn outside of school, and that
has remained the case, even now that I part of an educational setting
(since 2004). School is about getting formal degrees. You sit there
and wait till it is over. I personally do not mind that overall
approach. Maybe this is my 1970s background of school as a prison.
There are always power relations in the edu field, and probably always
will be. There are teachers and students, and a equally unhealthy
social hierarchy amongst those who teach and do research.

Interesting work is mostly done outside the academic context, for
instance in activism, engaging with programmers and coders, arists,
and free exchanges between friends, comrades, and other who conspire
in the critical and speculative conceptual realm. Ideas appear when
you wait for a bus, dream, make a few notes. The idea that academic
write better and do more interesting work when that have 'tenure' or
get some time off I never bought.

This is the problem that I have with a general debate on 'the
humanities'. It is such a mythological general institutional
container, it is not my project. Is it worth defending? Very often it
is not. Often humanities are dull and asleep, and straightout
conservative. I really wonder if such organisational constructs from a
perspective of radical politics are defendable to start with. Authors
are. Libraries, for sure. To make your school, yes, that would be brave!

This is why I think, for instance, that theory cannot really have a
place inside academia. Once it exists and has developed to a certain
degree, it can be taught and find its legitimacy inside the
institutional politics, but this is not where it comes into being. And
that is why I like Trebor's emphasis on small initiatives outside the
School System inside this MobilyShifts project.

What we at INC have been doing lately is supporting forms of writing
and research that could not find a place inside the regular regime of
academic publishing. I like the idea that authors can gain control
over their publishing channels (not just tools). However, this can
only be, in part, be a concern of individual empowerment. I strongly
believe in mutual aid and collective support outside of the 'peer
review' logic.

More tomorrow!

Geert

[John Sobol]

first of all, I love this...

imagine if every local region did a census of species. regularly.
perhaps citizen collected like a human census.
indigenous and introduced, food, fibre, and habitat.
imagine if each community took as its first principle that any species
indigenous to that area must have
room to live sustainably in a coherent ecology. that the continuation
of biological diversity was a foundation goal for each local area and
the planet as a whole. plan that space. mean it.
not sure if this helps with humanities. to me it is the ecologies
which are more marginalised

and this:

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl> wrote:

Often humanities are dull and asleep, and straightout
conservative. I really wonder if such organisational constructs from a
perspective of radical politics are defendable to start with. Authors
are. Libraries, for sure. To make your school, yes, that would be brave!

--

Although no doubt in your own academic institutions there are very real
conflicts between the humanities and STEM (what gets taught, who gets hired,
who gets funding, who gets respect, etc.) I think it is a mistake to project
this conflict onto society as a whole. Because at a macro-level these two
'competing' curricula actually have a great deal in common, notably their
overlapping epistemologies and shared role in shaping the intertwined
industrial and intellectual architectures of America/Europe past and
present.

I know that some of you will object to my suggesting that there is a single
dominant epistemology in the humanities, but there is, and it is extremely
clearly defined by academia's immutable knowledge certification tools,
including marks, essays, footnotes, tests, dissertations, degrees,
peer-reviewed research, etc.etc. These authentication tools define knowledge
in the same way that science defines knowledge, i.e. as fixed facts. So at
an epistemological level there really is no crisis, just a shift in
resources.

At a social level there is indeed a crisis, but it arises as a consequence
of the unsustainability of this monological epistemology that has no ears to
hear the sound of its own imminent doom, not as the result of an internecine
squabble between social scientists and physical scientists. Ask yourself:
would a massive reorientation towards the humanities result in a massive
reorientation of society towards ecologically sustainable principles? I
don't see how anything more than blind hope could lead one to draw the
conclusion that it would. More teaching of Thoreau will not a green world
make.

At least not the way Thoreau is taught today in humanities classes. Stripped
of all experience, of all subjectivity, of all revolutionary courage and
sweaty effort. But if we threw away marks and picked up shovels, threw away
essays and picked up journals, threw away degrees and picked up the will to
change and challenge and dream. If we actually taught Thoreau's real lessons
by living them, instead of teaching literate lessons about his book, then
the true crisis would come into focus at many levels. And that is the crisis
between fixed facts and possible futures, between sustainable wholes and
unsustainable parts, between pride and humility on an evolutionary scale.

To make your school, as Thoreau did, that would be brave. To argue that we
need more tenured humanities profs is not. Our world is in crisis and if the
humanities are to be of any help whatsoever in saving it for our children,
their transgressive and radicalizing legacies will need to be reclaimed and
reenacted far beyond the classroom and the campus, on behalf of our unknown
futures and not our overglossed past.

It seems to me that Mobility Shifts may already be helpful in these
respects. I look forward to more...

John Sobol

--
www.johnsobol.com
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[naxsmash]

This is much like the mission of the Public School -- http://all.thepublicschool.org/

If we actually taught Thoreau's real lessons by living them, instead of teaching literate lessons about his book, then the true crisis would come into focus at many levels. And that is the crisis between fixed facts and possible futures, between sustainable wholes and unsustainable parts, between pride and humility on an evolutionary scale.
To make your school, as Thoreau did, that would be brave. To argue that we need more tenured humanities profs is not. Our world is in crisis and if the humanities are to be of any help whatsoever in saving it for our children, their transgressive and radicalizing legacies will need to be reclaimed and reenacted far beyond the classroom and the campus, on behalf of our unknown futures and not our overglossed past.
It seems to me that Mobility Shifts may already be helpful in these respects. I look forward to more...
John Sobol
--
www.johnsobol.com
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[Janet Hawtin]

Post by John Sobol
first of all, I love this...

room to live sustainably in a coherent ecology. that the continuation
of biological diversity was a foundation goal for each local area and
the planet as a whole. plan that space. mean it.

This started for me here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html
It is a science project an ecology project which is interdependent on
making the local human community sustainable and happy. This is an
integrated systemic approach, participative governance at a human
scale, respect for the music which brings people together, planning
for the agricultural and cottage industry crafts, community choices as
a part of ecological management. A small farming community but an
interesting precedent/proof of concept?

It was a strong contrast to this:

http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_is_on_the_verge_of_creating_synthetic_life.html

This is a science project which takes as a given the existing economic
and political context and works to make a product to fit that context.
The science might be brilliant, but it feels defined by its congruence
with subjective competitive thinking. The assumption that human
population growth is an unending given the marginal reference to an
ethics process, ecological interaction is out of frame, the focus on
the probable investors and on signing one's name in a life form.

Tragedy of the commons thinking is related to game theory as a means
of selecting predictable outcomes. Which was used to select
competitive people and deselect people who were motivated by ideas
like public service. In this movie they talk about self interest as a
rational objective approach
because it was thought to produce predictable outcomes.

by Adam Curtis The Trap: Fuck you buddy (6/6)

The Trap: The Lonely Robot (1/6)

They are deliberately provocative programs but raise some interesting
questions. A review of the program:
http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/adam-curtis-the-trap/

It feels related to Patrick Crogan's experiences:

"This year my UK univ is (aside from rounds of voluntary and soon
compulsory redundancies, demotions, etc) rolling out its new 'workload
model' that quantifies what we do in units known as 'bundles',
resulting in me slated to teach across 5 modules instead of 3 last
year (can't believe how inadequate my productivity has been!); we also
have an online assessment submission and processing system being
rolled out (after a 'consultation' process after the decision had been
made) that virtually compels staff to read and provide feedback online
(the time required and departtmental stationary budgets will preclude
printing out student papers).

Major benefits: students have even less need to actually come to
university; management gets a whole new set of surveillance metadata
on staff 'productivity'."

Gardner Campbell's post about testing and quantitative analysis:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=1499
and this concept about the impacts of specific incentives.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cobra_effect
and back to Howard Rheingold on cooperative literacies.
http://cmapspublic3.ihmc.us/rid=1JM1F3253-10P3TPN-YFL/Toward%20a%20literacy%20of%20cooperation.cmap
where what is rational for an individual is irrational for a community.

janet