the provisional university

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Neoliberal Culture

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 05:00:00 -0400

In a recent article, ‘Time-Wars’, Mark Fisher illustrates the fallacy of yet another neoliberal faith: the belief that a reduction in social security - ‘red-tape social-democratic bureaucracy’ - would create a vigorous spirit of entrepreneurialism in cultural production. The effect, he argues, has actually been a dampening of culture in highly neoliberalized countries, like the UK and Ireland, as intellectual and artistic work is tied into a highly competitive, hyper-speed economy. Individuals have to constantly (re)produce to compete, representing and validating their work according to what is ‘current’. All this on top of the immediate and increasingly difficult pressures of living in expensive cities, paying rent, buying food. Under these conditions intellectual and artistic work, it seems, can only be undertaken on a short-term basis. Fisher quips that ‘only prisoners have time to read’.

He contrasts this with the important role which social securities, such as social welfare, social housing and student grants, have played in the creation of cultural forms like punk and post-punk. He also points to perhaps the most significant factor in all this: the existence of cheap and squatted properties during the 1980s in cities such as New York and London. Important because of the simple fact that today most of our time and energy is absorbed in paying astronomical rents (or repaying mortgages).

Rather than the dead hand of ‘individual entrepreneurialism’ it is a degree of security, the possibility of continuity over time, of solidarity and being-together, which leads to real invention and experimentation. Fisher writes:

“These developments precisely opened up a kind of time that is now increasingly difficult to access: a time temporarily freed from the pressure to pay rent or the mortgage; an experimental time, in which the outcomes of activities could neither be predicted nor guaranteed; a time which might turn out to be wasted, but which might equally yield new concepts, perceptions, ways of being.”

Indignados : austerity as a violation of human rights

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 04:53:04 -0400

“Human rights can reclaim their
redemptive role in the hands and imagination
of those who return them to the tradition of
resistance and struggle”

Costas Douzinas

This is the first of two articles by Marta Sánchez written as part of a research project on the 15-M movement at the Center for Human Rights in Nuremberg.

The Movement that Deconstructed the Crisis

“The struggle for our rights as human beings underlies everything we have demanded in every square and every demonstration in this historic year of global change”, proclaimed<http://dec10.takethesquare.net/english/> Take the Square in their Call for an Alternative Day of Action on Human Rights Day. Since its emergence, the indignados movement has engaged in a twofold process concerning human rights: on the one hand, the movement identifies and denounces the flaws of the current system that have led to a widespread violation of human rights, specifically economic and social rights.

The movement was born in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, in the context of a wave of protest that swept across Europe in reaction to the austerity measures chosen to address the crisis and the “financialization” of the global economic space. Since its emergence in May 2011, the indignados have been actively engaged in a public debate about the crisis and have promoted a deliberative process of deconstructing the mainstream discourse of political and economic power surrounding the global crisis, providing an alternative explanation of its causes and consequences. The indignados denounce the fact that economic interests have been prioritized over the interests and rights of the people; they appeal to human dignity, the reverse side of which is indignation.

On the other hand, the indignados are attempting to fill in the vacancies of the current system with their own communal spaces, guided by the principles of solidarity and self-organization and involving a collective protection of socio-economic rights. The occupy movements all over the world have one thing in common, as Mike King argues<http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/30/the-vacancies-of-capitalism/>: they all consider that the failures of the existing order, and the current global economic crisis, are an opportunity to fill the vacancies of a dying world while building a better one.

When the present social order makes life impossible for large numbers of people, these people will self-organize inside their communities while fighting for a just society that meets peoples’ needs. These movements, as such, are experimenting with new ways of ensuring human rights: their struggle is not only about being granted specific rights by governments, but it is also part of a larger political uprising in which people are starting to determine for themselves what they need and how they can help each other fulfill these needs.

With the aim of promoting a debate on the current economic and financial crisis, the indignados have recently launched the “dismantling lies” campaign (“desmontando mentiras<http://desmontandomentiras.tomalaplaza.net/>”), which under the slogan “we were sleeping, then we woke up” seeks to deconstruct the mainstream discourse of the political and economic power around the global crisis and provide an alternative explanation of its causes and consequences. The key issues for this campaign are, on the one hand, the austerity measures undertaken by the Spanish government under the recommendations of the European Comission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund; and, on the other hand, the contradictions in the architecture of the global financial system as such.

The Movement’s Spearhead: Fight Back Austerity!

Austerity measures are one of the central issues for the 15M movement: from the beginning, the indignados have clearly stated that austerity harms the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, and that it worsens the living standards of a growing share of the Spanish population. The movement has called massive mobilizations in reaction to the announcement of further austerity plans launched by the Spanish government.

The last plan announced on July 13, 2012, aiming to cut up to 65bn euros<http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/07/13/inenglish/1342206062_759543.html> from the public budget this year, responded to recent IMF recommendations<http://ep00.epimg.net/descargables/2012/06/15/28203a21975aaf06b018939eb455602a.pdf> to stay the course of cutbacks and fiscal stabilization. The indignados rapidly reacted against the new measures and called them an “attack” on social rights. In an extraordinary assembly<http://actasmadrid.tomalaplaza.net/?p=3931> held on July 16, 2012, the 15M movement called for a “citizen reaction” against “the financial coup d’état” that is being perpetrated against the 99% of the population, and called to join the massive nationwide mobilization organized on July 19, 2012. Mass protests gathered thousands of people in over 80 cities around the country united against austerity<http://roarmag.org/2012/07/spain-protest-movement-austerity-indignados-crisis/>. in Madrid, a spectacular demonstration of hundreds of thousands<http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2012/07/19/actualidad/1342711453_843667.html> marched with one common goal: to fight back austerity.

The impact of austerity measures on the enjoyment of human rights has been highlighted by the United Nations independent expert on foreign debt and human rights, Cephas Lumina, who has warned<http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38901&Cr=austerity&Cr1> that the EU/IMF-imposed austerity measures and structural reforms in Greece may result in violations of the basic human rights of its people. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, following the appearance of Spain before the Committee on May 7, 2012, called on the government<http://cesr.org/article.php?id=1297> to review austerity measures which are causing disproportionate harm to the most vulnerable and marginalized groups and individuals.

These expressions of concern pick up what the 15M movement has been denouncing since its very emergence: that the austerity plans are mainly cutting expenditures on social investment, thus affecting the poorest segment of the country’s population. In its manifesto<http://madrid.tomalaplaza.net/2012/02/25/desmontando-mentiras-23f-contra-el-golpe-de-estado-financiero-nos-enganan/> of February 2012, the Working Group on the Economy of the Popular Assembly at Puerta del Sol denounced that the design of the cutbacks doesn’t address inequality, and as a result has a devastating effect on the fundamental rights of the most vulnerable segments of the population — while the wealthiest layer of society has hardly seen its living standards affected.

The main justification that has been offered for the implementation of these dramatic austerity measures is the need to tackle rising public debt and to consolidate the national budget. The indignados movement considers that in this process one essential step has been ignored: before tightening up public finances, the debt should be examined in order to determine whether it arose from legitimate public expenditures or whether it is the result of illegitimate transfers of public funds from taxpayers to the private sector, in order to compensate for the reckless risk-taking of Spain’s (corrupt and bankrupt) banking sector.

The 15M movement has therefore decided to create a platform for a “Citizen Debt Audit<http://auditoria15m.org/index.php/es>” with the objective of promoting a popular analysis of the government’s public debt and the private debt subject to become public through bailouts and cleanup plans. Through this platform, the characteristics of the debt will be revised in an open, participatory process, which will also have a comprehensive vision, analyzing not only economic and financial issues, but also the impact on gender, environment, culture and social and political aspects. The platform has promoted the creation of an International Citizen Debt Audit Network (ICAN<http://acampadabcninternacional.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/coordinated-efforts-in-europe-and-north-africa-to-fight-against-debt-and-austerity-eng-esp-holadeudocracia/>), that under the slogan “We don’t owe! We won’t pay!” held its first meeting in Brussels in April 2012, bringing together movements and networks from different European and North African countries that are fighting against austerity.

Redefining the Relationship Between Finance and Human Rights

The 15M movement has claimed since its emergence that the implementation of austerity measures can’t be seen as the only cause that is damaging the enjoyment of fundamental rights, but that the main cause of the crisis and of human rights violations lies in the very structure of the financial system, whose design has prioritized the market over the state as the principal driver and guarantor of human development. In its International Call for an Alternative Day of Action on Human Rights Day, Take the Square stated<http://roarmag.org/2011/12/call-to-action-alternative-day-of-human-rights-on-dec-10/> that “our freedom and dignity are under attack as a result of market dynamics and corrupt government institutions that are turning our local and global societies into increasingly unjust places”.

In fact, what the indignados are denouncing is that in the last decades, through the shaping of the financial structure inspired by neoliberal ideology, the state has abdicated many of its fundamental responsibilities towards its citizens — including the fulfillment of social and economic rights – leaving the responsibility of securing such public rights to the marketplace. Specifically, governments around the world have failed to fulfill the duty to protect human rights against the actions of third parties, as well as the duty to support the realization of human rights with the maximum resources available.

On the one hand, as Radhika Balakrishnan argues<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radhika-balakrishnan/occupy-wall-street-human-rights_b_1071586.html>, financial institutions have harmed human rights by taking advantage of government inertia. In the neoliberal era, not only have states failed to regulate the financial sector and protect people’s rights; they have actively encouraged financial deregulation, thereby exposing unsuspecting homeowners, pensioners, depositors and workers to grave financial risks. Clearly, this development goes directly against the state’s obligations under international law to step in to protect economic and social rights when an individual business or institution threatens to interfere with these rights.

On the other hand, the public funds spent in massive bank bailouts put into question the human rights principle that the state should use the maximum available resources to fulfill its human rights obligations, since it shows that public money has in fact been spent on saving the too-big-to-fail banks instead of providing social safety nets to support those most affected by the crisis. If there ever was an example of privatizing profits while socializing losses, this is it.

Leaving the fulfillment of human rights and needs to the market without any kind of corrective action from government has left an open space for financial institutions and banks to pursue further profits through unstable forms of speculation. Private investors ended up speculating with billions of euros worth in assets — assets that they often did not even own, but on which they had purchased complex derivates — thereby gravely affecting the livelihoods of millions of people, as the bursting of the housing bubble in Spain shows. While bankers enriched themselves, almost half a million Spanish families lost their homes since the crisis began. In a grand act of ‘accumulation by dispossesion<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulation_by_dispossession>‘, these homes subsequently entered into the possession of the same very banks that had so recklessly provided the mortgages for them in the first place.

For these reasons, the indignados movement has since its very inception demanded that the financial institutions, bankers, and speculators engaged in such behavior should be held accountable. In this line, 15M has launched a new initiative to hold accountable Rodrigo Rato, head of Spain’s fourth-largest bank Bankia, and his chief executives. Bankia, whose balance sheet is burdened with toxic real estate assets, requested public aid to the tune of 19 billion euros in May 2012 to clean up its accounts. The Rajoy government willingly provided the bailout for a final sum of 23.5 billion euros, constituting the single largest bank bailout<http://www.eleconomista.es/seleccion-ee/noticias/3998248/05/12/Bankia-could-be-the-biggest-bailout-in-history-at-235-billion-euros.html> in Spanish history.

Some weeks before, a budget adjustment plan introducing 27 billion euros<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17557172> worth in cuts in crucial social services had been approved. It was therefore to be expected that the people would react strongly against the Bankia bailout, even more so when it was revealed that the bank had manipulated its balance sheets in order to hide losses; and even then no government inquiry was launched to determine who was responsible, and whether or not the enormous transfer of public funds to this corrupt private financial institution was legitimate to begin with.

The indignados took the lead and decided to send out a clear message: “the era of impunity is over”. A campaign called 15MpaRato<http://15mparato.wordpress.com> was launched aiming to bring legal actions against Bankia’s chief executive. The working group driving the initiative presented a set of guidelines for action, started recruiting volunteer lawyers and looked for and identified more than 50 stockholders who felt they had been personally defrauded by Bankia and were willing to support the campaign. While the lawyers are volunteers, a massive lawsuit costs money, so the movement turned to “crowdfunding”, calling out to the masses of supporters through a specialized crowdfunding website for small donations. In less than a day, they raised 19,348 euros through 965 individual supporters, a number that exceeded the initial expectations (the organizers presented 15.000 euros as the required budget). The lawsuit was filed in June of this year and accepted by the Spanish National Court in July.

Nevertheless, while they prosecute bankers and speculators demanding accountability, the indignados simultaneously move beyond a focus on individuals, clearly stating that judging those responsible for the crisis is not enough; that the relationship between finance and human rights as such should be re-conceptualized at a much more fundamental level. The structural dependence of the state on private financial capital has been greatly influenced by a recent process, referred to as the “financialization” of the global economy over the past three decades. This process has lead to a situation in which the financial system as such has an enormous impact on the overall performance of politico-economic structures and institutions, thereby affecting the socio-economic rights of the people on an increasingly global scale.

The indignados denounce governments worldwide for having allowed such a permissive environment for speculation to thrive, and even more so, for acting as the guarantor of private bankers by assuring that the losses of their reckless risk-taking will be covered by increasingly unaffordable bailouts with public money. Yet at the same time, governments have refused to act as the guarantors of their own citizens, who are now losing their homes in foreclosures and forced evictions. There have been countless bailouts for financial institutions making losses on bad mortgages; but there has not been a single bailout for those homeowners who lost their livelihoods in the process.

Therefore, the indignados advocate<http://madrid.tomalaplaza.net/2012/05/17/15m-o-barbarie/> a drastic redefinition of the relationship between finance and human rights, one that would require “a ‘revaluation’ of life and a ‘de-financialization’ of reality”, in other words, a radical new approach that would prioritize people’s rights over economic interests. That has been one of the central demands of the movement since the very beginning, when thousands of people took to the streets in Spain under the slogan<http://madrid.tomalaplaza.net/2011/11/15/reclamamos-otro-modelo-leido-en-el-foro-de-sol-13n/> “we are not commodities in the hands of politicians and bankers!”

Hydra

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 05:42:54 -0400

I recently visited the Hydra Bookshop in Bristol. It was opened in November of last year by the Bristol Radical History Group. It is an inspiring place. There is just one room lined with books that are rarely available in other bookshops. There are some seats and a couple of tables in the middle for people to sit and read. Behind the counter along the back wall you can buy Zapatista coffee.

The group who opened it got a good deal on the building because it was one of the less popular areas of town. It was in a bad state at first but it wasn’t hard gathering a large group to clean it up. The money to run it is mostly made through the coffee as they are committed to selling their (non-commercial) books at a lower price than Amazon. Any money that is made goes back in to the shop. They’re hoping they can make it bigger, to have a wider selection of books but also to put on more and bigger events (they hold regular talks on radical history and contemporary politics).

The name may have been inspired by the historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker who borrowed the Hydra as a metaphor in their wonderful book (which is in the shop): ‘The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Saves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic’. The Hydra was a mythical beast born of Typhoon (a hurricane) and Echidna (half woman, half snake). Hercules was challenged to slay Hydra but every time he cut off one of its heads two more grew in its place. Th book recounts the many forgotten experiences of connection and struggle which emerged in response to the intensifying processes of global capitalism in the 17th and 18th centuries. Every time the ‘Herculean’ power of the market and colonization sought to suppress these insurgencies two more appeared somewhere else.

The insurgents were all sorts of people: the commoners of Ireland and Scotland, vagabonds, privateers, pirates, prostitutes, slaves from the West coast of Africa. Threaded together through their mobility, a mobility which was at once their plight and their power, these motley assemblies combined in unlikely places to develop new forms of cooperation and resistance. In port cities like Bristol, for example, taverns provided spaces for people to drink and brawl, but also for them to meet and share materials and words. They did not (necessarily) talk about politics or discuss ways of overthrowing the status quo but they did talk about their common problems and how to escape them. They did this by producing alternative forms of exchange, or commons. These alternatives were as mundane as bartering and sharing food but from such small and concrete moments comes the possibility for something else.

Notes on ‘activist research: workshop on collective research for social change’

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 08:54:00 -0400

On Saturday, July 14^th, twenty people came along to Seomra Spraoi to participate in the provisional university workshop on activist research.

Many of the projects in Europe (and further and field) that we have been in contact with, for instance through the KLF network, have used activist research as part of political projects and autonomous education. Examples include the Critical Counter Cartographies project (North Carolina) or the Precarias a la deriva group (Madrid). This workshop was very much a hands on attempt to reflect on and analyze aspects of the social world which are most relevant from the point of view of radical social change.

The workshop began with some discussion of how social change takes place, a question which is always relevant for research of this kind. Participants discussed the importance of lived experience, often experiences of material inequality, and the ideas that emerge from experience as important factors in social change. It was also noted that change often occurs through a wide array of everyday practices which are not linked to any explicit political discourse or organizing. The example of the rejection of Catholic Church in Ireland was given to indicate the way people can undermine forms of power and authority in their everyday lives without necessarily creating a political movement. It was also noted that while everyday experience is important, without some level of utopian vision our struggles will remain limited. As the facilitator, I introduced my understanding of social change by way of three quotes. The first one, Marx and Engels famous one from the German Ideology, goes like this:

“Communism is not an ideal to which reality must adjust itself, but the real movement that destroys the present state of things.”

I understand this in terms of two points. Firstly, radical social change does not begin from abstract visions of the future which we then impose on the world or convince others to go along with. Secondly, radical social change is rooted in forms of conflict, frustration and tension which are already happening around us and which give rise to everyday practices that point towards alternatives to ‘the present state of things’. What I think Marx and Engels are talking about here is that fact that, in their time, communism didn’t refer to the vision of a post-capitalist future society, but much more importantly to the actual everyday ways in which workers across Europe were doing things (dodging work, breaking factory machines, helping each other, forming unions) that, in the here and now, worked to undermine capitalism. The second quote comes from Raoul Vanneigem:

“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth”.

This evocative statement attests to the fact that when political ideology becomes separated from everyday experience it becomes a dead language, it fails to resonate with us. In other words, political analysis or ideology must always relate to and feed off the everyday practices happening all around us. The final quote comes from the Zapatista slogan ‘caminamos preguntando’ – we walk forward questioning. This highlights that political struggle and analysis is not about having all the answers but about continually asking questions. In sum, I wanted to highlight the importance of everyday experience for social change, the importance of relating everyday experience to political analysis, and the importance of continual questioning in that process of analysis. These ideas underpinned the way the workshop was structured.

Following this, the main part of the workshop began. We focused on the issue of rented accommodation. Because the workshop would be based on collective reflection on our shared experience, it was useful to focus on an issue of which we all had experience. I introduced four ‘lenses’ through which we could reflect on an analysis our experiences. The lenses were:

Experience: experience simply brings us back to what it is actually like to live in rented accommodation, to the frustrations, the tensions, the difficulties but also the positives. It from these everyday experiences that change can ultimately come.

Strategies: this lens focuses on the things people already do to make living in rented accommodation more bearable or more sustainable. These include getting rent allowance, moving outside the city to get a cheaper/better place, moving in with friends to create community and so on. It is important to recognize that there are already practices taking place through which people actively shape the way they live and their housing situation.

Controls: this lens recognizes that while people organize themselves in order to improve their situation or survive in it, there are many factors which block or limit our capacity to do this. These include the deposit, the fact that you need references, contracts, the fact that landlords frequently operate outside the law, the absence of tenants’ rights legislation and so on.

Actors: this lens draws out attention to various groups or organizations that are involved in a situation, including the people who live in rented accommodation, the people who own it, the people who make money out of it and the people who make the rules.

Having introduced these lenses we broke into groups of 5 and discussed each one. After about 25 minutes of discussion the groups came back together to share what they had discussed. Meanwhile, I wrote down what people were saying on the flipchart. The issues that arose included: the transience of rented accommodation; feelings of insecurity and the difficulty of creating a real ‘home’; the power imbalance between tenant and landlord; the joy of sharing a house with friends; the things we do to create community in shared accommodation; the possibility of negotiating with landlords; the legislation that exists; the control implied by references from previous landlords; the absences of alternatives and a long etc.

After only 25 minutes discussion it became clear that by collectively reflecting on our own experience we can draw a map of the experiences, dynamics and actors which operate in and shape a particular social situation. This is particularly important in social movements where, in my own experience, people rarely discuss their own experience. It is also important because engaging with the level of everyday experience can allow us to do a number of things. (a) It allows us to understand what is most important in rented accommodation for those of us who live in it; (b) it allows us to identify where some of the most important issues might lie, and this is essential to politically intervene in a situation; and (c), through talking about our experience together we can develop a way of talking about and understanding our situation which is based on our experiences – this is a kind of creation of a political language through which to critically reflect on the issue, a political language which is steeped in experience and which we actively create together.

Following a short break we returned for the second half of the workshop. At this stage we were running over time so this part of the workshop was a little bit rushed. In this part we took another look at what had come out of the previous discussion and identified what we would like to know more about. We focused on a couple of examples from each lens. For instance, for the experience lens we chose to focus on the experience of landlords themselves and the experiences of migrants – a group which were not heavily represented at the workshop but who form a significant part of people living in rented accommodation. Having identified what we wanted to know more about we broke into groups of 5 once more. Each group reflected on 1 of the lenses and developed research strategies and methods for ascertaining more information or greater understanding of their issue. After 10 minutes we came back together to see what the groups had come up with.

The strategies the groups came up with reflected most of the ways in which researchers go about doing research. They included interviews, focus groups and drawing on existing statistics (quantitative data) or research (by contacting university-based researchers or organizations that do research). Novel strategies for contacting hard-to-reach groups wee also suggested, including setting up facebook pages.

Importantly, most of the research strategies involved coming together with others who were affected in some way by rented accommodation. This is important for a number of reasons. First of all, as noted throughout the workshop, one of the difficulties of living in rented accommodation is the individualization it creates. If, through the research process we are constructing relationships with others, however, we can create moments or spaces which de-individualize rented accommodation and which create relations between people in this shared situation. Secondly, many of the research strategies suggested had a collective dimension – such as focus groups or community consultations. These strategies are both moments of research and moments of creating collectivity – or community – among those affected. In both these instances we see that researching for social change becomes a process of social change in itself. Thirdly, activists are typically concerned about failure to engage with people beyond the social movements or the ‘activist scene’. This relates to the question of difference, working and building relationships with people who are different from us. Often, if we take a very ideological stance on an issue the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are greater. However, by coming together around a shared question in a scenario in which participants can participate in the creation of analysis and a political language to analyze shared experience, boundaries can be weakened and relationships across difference can be established. Finally, through the research process we can create allies by contacting, meeting and listening to advocacy organizations, academics, trade unions and others who are involved in a given issue. These allies are very important in terms of the research but may prove useful in terms of wider campaign work or organizing as well.

At this point we were running 30 minutes over time and the workshop came to an abrupt end. There are lots of issues which could have been covered and addressed but were not due to time constraints. For instance, it would have been interesting to look at ways of recording and presenting the results of research (e.g. audio-visual media) as well as ways of opening up the research process to the public (e.g. if you are interested in a researcher’s work, instead of meeting for a coffee you can ask her to give a talk on the issues and so make your learning process open to all). It would also have been interesting to examine some examples of activist research. Perhaps some of these things can be addressed in a future workshop.

Mick O’Broin

"The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common But leaves the greater..."

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:57:00 -0400

“

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

”

- Unknown author, 17th century

Revolt in Quebec

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:10:00 -0400

In February, the Liberal government in Quebec, led by Jean Charest, announced a proposed tuition fee hike of 82% to be phased in over the next five years. This dynamic is by now becoming familiar, as are the justifications. Charest argued that the fee increase was intended to bring Quebec’s universities in line with neighboring provinces. Even after the tuition fee hike, it was argued, students in Quebec would be paying less than students in other parts of Canada, not to mention America or even the UK. The fees were about making things more ‘equal’ but they were also about ‘economic common sense’: how could Quebec’s universities compete globally without financial contributions? This is the same form of argument that justifies the commodification of knowledge, privatization of university spaces and the subordination of research and teaching to vacuous output measures.

The response in Quebec has been striking for two reasons.

Firstly, there has been an overwhelming and sustained rejection of the proposed hike by the student population. This is partly explained by a strong history of social and political struggle but there is always more to such events than ‘historical’ causality. For a good overview of the strategy and organization of the movement check out Peter Hallward’s article from a couple of months ago. What marks the student movement out is their commitment to being the ‘public’ willing to fight for their right to a public good: education. In contrast, economists, politicians and media continue to argue that fee increases are just a necessary part of making a ‘competitive university system’, part of a route back to economic growth. The same cold logic used to justify every attack on social life: there is no other way.

Secondly, the strength and solidarity of the student struggle over three months and counting, including a general strike on attending classes, and culminating in a massive turn out of 100,000 students to mark the 100th day of the protest, led to the introduction of ‘Law 78’, commonly known as the ‘truncheon law’. This banned protests in or around university campuses and restricted popular assemblies. Amnesty described the law as ‘violating freedoms of speech, assembly and movement in breach of Canada’s international obligations.’ This draconian response says much about the efficacy of the student movement, and their ungovernability through ‘normal’ mechanisms of control and pacification. The response has been a broadening of social and political disaffection as large numbers of the wider population have come out to support the students: up to 300,000 in cacerolazo, or pot-clanging protests organised through neighborhoods. This broadening of the movement is not just due to outrage against the law but to growing commonality with students, a commonality which has been forged through shared nightly protests but also through public assemblies, the new form of democratic commons which has become so prevalent in the past few years. In the case of Quebec commonality is also being found in the common condition of debt faced by growing numbers of citizens. The dominant symbol of the movement was the red square, with the slogan ‘carrément dans la rouge’, which means ‘squarely in the red’, a potent symbol for us all.

For more visit the website of Classe, the umbrella organization for a number of student groups involved in the movement.

Activist research: workshop on collective research for social change

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:40:00 -0400

Where: Seomra Spraoi

When: 14th of July, 3pm-6pm

How: register by emailing mickbyrne@gmail.com

What:

Effective activism or political organisation requires an understanding of the world around us and the kinds of issues and struggles we want to intervene in. But everyday life, government policies or forms of power that go on around these issues are usually complex, even contradictory. We can’t understand them based on inherited ideologies, so how can we understand them?

Activist research is a way of doing just that. Forget your prejudices about academic research - this is about using research to engage with and change the world. This workshop provides some tools, some ideas and some activities to learn about how activist research works and how we might use it.

Openhere conference-festival 28th june-01 July

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 10:27:00 -0400

Open-here is kicking off a series of workshops and discussions around the themes of digital commons and open-source production/exchange this Thursday at the science gallery.

You can see the programme here: http://openhere.data.ie/

Some Provo Uni people are just back from a conference on the knowledge commons in Leicester which addressed a lot of these issues, so we’re looking forward to this. One of the highlights looks to be the discussion on ‘the communism of capital’ on Sunday at 3pm, which will (presumably) address the ambiguity of the commons with regard to capitalist valorization in the context of immaterial/cognitive capitalism, on the one hand, and forms of production/exchange which are excessive to capital, on the other.

Crisis and Revolution now available in English

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:24:16 -0400

Crisis and Revolution, the sixth book from the Madrid-based activist research collective Observatorio Metropolitano, is now available as a free-to-download PDF. Mick O’Broin and Patrick Besnihan from the Provisional University were part of the team that translated and edited the book.

You can download the PDF here.

Mick O’Broin also has a review of the book in the latest issue of Interface: a journal for and about social movements, which you can access for free here.

Some of you may remember the talk we organised with Bea and Mario from the Observatorio Metropolitano in Seomra Spraoi, in the Autumn of 2010, or their text ‘Towards a Euro-mediterranean social strike’ which we translated a while back.

Hedge Schools lecture: video now available

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 12:21:00 -0400

Hedge schools were one of the original inspirations for the Provisional University project, as described in our text Better Questions on the University. Last May Patrick Bresnihan gave the first in a series of lectures organised by Occupy University. In his talk he focuses on the hedge schools as autonomous spaces of learning, situating them in relation to wider dynamics in the latter decades of the 18th century.

You can watch the video here.

No Borders Ireland Gathering

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 04:57:21 -0400

August 26-27, 11am-7pm, Seomra Spraoi, 10 Belvidere Court, Dublin 1

On Friday 26th and Saturday 27th of August, Seomra Spraoi will be host to the first gathering of the No Borders network to take place in Ireland.

No Borders campaigns struggle alongside those effected for freedom of movement, for the freedom for all to stay in the place which they have chosen, against repression and the many controls which multiply the borders everywhere in all countries. This gathering is working towards establishing a network of individuals and grassroots organisations within Ireland and abroad who are working on the questions of migrants and asylum seekers.

Read more here

Weekend at City Arts: series of talks and workshops

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:50:56 -0400

Come down to the old City Arts building this weekend (friday and saturday) to discuss NAMA, public space and the university!

Talking Shop 6: The Citizen

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:37:29 -0400

Monday 25 July, 7pm Seomra Spraoi

The idea of the citizen has a long and ambigous history. In the Campaign for the Old City Arts Building we have been using this term to talk about ourselves as political actors and as people with rights, specifically the right to use empty NAMA buildings. But while citizenship can be used in this way, to talk about people’s politics as opposed to the state, it also raises important questions. For example, many people are excluded from official citizenship on the basis of nationality or race. Citizenship also describes the legal relation between people and the state, a relation which many people oppose.

In this Talking Shop we’ll talk about the idea of the citizen and question the politics wrapped up with that term.

Talking Shop 5: Debt

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 07:09:13 -0400

The next talking shop will focus on the idea of debt and will take place on Monday 11 July at 7pm in Seomra Spraoi

The two suggested texts, which should provide a starting point for discusion, are David Graebers ‘Debt: The First Five Thousand Years’ and the recent Documentary by Katerina Kitidi and Aris Hatzistefanou called ‘Debtocracy’.
The Graeber text gives a breif history of debt from an anthropological point of view, conecting its inception to a history of slavery and state sanctioned violence.The documentary focuses on Greece’s particular crisis in the context of the recent history of IMF and World Bank intervention. Particular highlights are an explanation of the concept of ‘odious debt’ and Equador’s unorthodox handling of their sovereign debt in 2006.
David Graeber, ‘Debt: The First Five Thousand Years’: http://www.metamute.org/en/content/debt_the_first_five_thousand_years

Debtocracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKpxPo-lInk

Campaign Launch Video

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:54:00 -0400

For those who missed the launch of the Campaign for the Old City Arts Building on June 11, video of talks which took place can be found here:

http://campaigncityarts.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/campaign-launch-video/

'All power to the free universities of tomorrow'

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 03:26:00 -0400

The Copenhagen Free University began in 2001. It was an attempt to reinvigorate the emancipatory aspect of research and learning, in the midst of an ongoing economisation of all knowledge production in society.

It operated for six years out of an apartment. The question they asked themselves was:

what kind of university do we need in relation to the everyday?

This is in sharp contrast to the prevailing model, increasingly removed from the lived conditions, needs and desires of most people in society.

In 2010 a law was passed in Denmark that forbid the use of the name ‘University’ for any Institution other than those authorised by the state. The reason was to stop ‘students from being disappointed’.

Below is a statement against his law from those who were involved in the Copenhagen Free University. While their project stopped in 2007 the need to resist the ongoing colonisation of our thought and learning is more urgent than ever.

“We call for everybody to establish their own free universities in their homes or in the workplace, in the square or in the wilderness. All power to the free universities of the future.”

Read the full statement here.

Talking Shop Session 4: The Gift and Autonomous Social Movements

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:04:18 -0400

The Talking Shop is a new discussion forum organised by the Campaign for Old City Arts Building, Dublin Housing Action and the Provisional University, but open to everyone. Our fourth session looks at the gift and autonomous social movements. 27th June 7:00 – 9:00pm Seomra Spraoi

This talking shop will explore non-market relations, in the form of gift/reciprocal exchange as a means of moving away from social interaction conditioned by the logic of the market and monetary gain. The giving of a gift, which need not be material but can be a contribution to a group, creates an obligation for reciprocation with the receiver being expected to return something of equal or greater value later on. This doesn’t mean that it becomes about self-interest rather it can lead to the construction of a social fabric of relationships, between people who in other cirumstances would not have interacted. Two questions we will explore are, To what extent do social movements use reciprocal exchange ? and, Is it possible to escape from the colonisation of market imperatives?

For some background people might like to watch one or both of the following videos by David Graeber:

Human Economy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Myy4eeIp8o

and

We are already Communists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcK7rkajHKE&feature=related

Breakfast at Old City Arts Building, this Friday, 8-9.30

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 05:35:20 -0400

You are invited to breakfast this Friday from 8am to 9.30am at the (old) City Arts Building, 23-25 Moss Street, Dublin 2

We’ll be having breakfast with activists from the Campaign for the Old City Arts Building and passers-by and chatting about our campaign. All welcome.

Warm creamy porridge served up with sounds of tyres squeezed on tarmac , engines, pedestrian crossings and shouting outside…for now

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:25:33 -0400