THE ABOLITION OF THE
UNIVERSITY
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Open Library of
Humanities (OLM)
Deadline: 1st
November 2015
In 1968, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and his colleagues at the
University of Nairobi called for the abolition of the English department. They
attacked an enduring colonial legacy and envisioned an intellectual renaissance
in Africa. In 2012, at the University of Glasgow: “Forty years after Ngũgĩ and
his colleagues argued for it in Nairobi, the abolition of the Scottish
Department was achieved by managerial diktat in Glasgow.” Two institutional
interventions: the first driven by the desire to liberate education from
epistemological and pedagogical domination; the second, by the neoliberal
business model. This special edition seeks to consider the chequered history of
the westernised university, to diagnose its embattled present, and to imagine
its future.
In recent months, academics, non-academic staff, students
and their allies across the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, Albania,
Finland, Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere, have staged protests against
neoliberal reform of universities. Wendy Brown argues that the evolution of
neoliberalism from a set of economic policies into mode of reason imperils not
just liberal institutions but democracy itself. Education across the board is
jeopardised by the corporate university model. The liberal arts face multidirectional
threats, of extinction and irrelevance. Yet as Gayatri Spivak suggests, if the
humanities is the ethical healthcare of society, what resources can we summon
to reform, destroy, transform, or re-create the university? Or less innocently,
as Bill Readings suggests, simply foster a space where academics (and students)
can “work without alibis” in acknowledgement that radical possibilities are
constrained by the societies in which universities are situated.
This special edition calls for a cross-disciplinary
response, from the humanities and social sciences to all critical, creative and
deviant positionalities. Diverse submissions are encouraged from policy reform
to short stories. In particular, the edition reaches out to those who
traditionally or purposefully find themselves outside the ivory towers: those
not included and unassimilated.
Contributions will be considered around (but not limited to)
these themes:
- · The western / imperial history of the university
- · Literary / creative representations of the university
- · Epistemologies / pedagogies of possibility
- · Western imperial humanism and the humanities
- · The co-option of postcolonial / Black / queer studies and ‘minority’ / transnational / diasporic literatures
- · Education in an age of neoliberalism / neo-colonialism
- · New models for higher education, including cooperatives, free schools etc.
- · The pedagogy of debt
- · The ‘Student As Producer’
- · Accelerationism and competition in the university
- · Activism: Strike / Occupy / Transform (In / Against / Beyond)
- · Resistance through radical poetics / humanisms
The special collection, edited by Lou Dear (University of
Glasgow, l.dear.1@research.gla.ac.uk)
and Martin Eve (Birkbeck, University of London, martin.eve@bbk.ac.uk), is to be
published in the Open Library of Humanities (ISSN 2056-6700). The OLH is an
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded open-access journal with a strong emphasis
on quality peer review and a prestigious academic steering board. Unlike some
open-access publications, the OLH has no author-facing charges and is instead
financially supported by an international consortium of libraries.
Submissions should be made online at: https://submit.openlibhums.org/ in
accordance with the author guidelines and clearly marking the entry as [“The
Abolition of the University,” SPECIAL COLLECTION]. Innovative submissions that
do not clearly fit the submission guidelines are welcome and we encourage
authors to contact the editors to discuss this. Submissions will then undergo a
double-blind peer-review process. Authors will be notified of the outcome as
soon as reports are received.
See: https://www.openlibhums.org/2015/05/14/cfp-the-abolition-of-the-university-deadline-nov-1st-2015/
OPEN LIBRARY OF HUMANITIES: https://www.openlibhums.org/
***END***
‘Human Herbs’ –
a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs
Posted here by Glenn
Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski
Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com
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