Sharing tactics of rebellion, weaving strategies of refusal within, against and beyond the neoliberal, neocolonial university:
An online/offline interactive workshop
For more information, see: http://undercommoning.org/strategy-session-001/
Facilitators: Members of the Undercommoning Core Collective
Organizing Equality Conference – London ON, 25 March 2017
Preamble
By now, we all (ought to) know the horrific dynamics of labour exploitation in academe. What should be done? The Undercommoning initiative rejects the idea that we should redeem or save the university-as-such: it is part of the neoliberal, neocolonial system and must be abolished in favour of new models. Such models might inhabit the spaces and structures of today’s university – in fact, we are building them here and now, within, against and beyond the university-as-such.
How can we reenvision the university — or the spaces to be reclaimed within it — as a platform for anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles? How can we reappropriate the (already stolen) resources of the university towards revolutionary transformation? How can we resist the nostalgia for the liberal university-that-never-was and acknowledge its complicities with classed, raced, gendered and settler-colonial power, while at the same time reclaiming and redirecting our collective energies from the institution? How can we refuse the enclosure of knowledge, study, community and radical politics within the university and generate new commons, or undercommons, for collective liberation?
Instead of a panel, members of the Undercommoning Core-Collective will facilitate a structured discussion of tactics and strategies to help us find common cause. Participants will be offered a framework to share and reflect on the methods of struggle they have employed in the past, and hopefully find new ways to collaborate. The session will be live-webcast as part of Undercommoning’s ongoing online series of tactics and strategy workshops (those who wish may remain anonymous or have their identities concealed). All participants are required to help us build a warm, convivial and critical atmosphere of solidarity.
