Interview with Brian Holmes: Steps Toward a Cultural Strategy. by Michael Wilson.
Michael Wilson: Earlier this year, you were a part of a group of artists, students, educators, writers and theorists who came together at The Public School in an attempt to understand the crisis and to formulate radical responses. Were your recent pieces on this site conceived in light of that project? Brian Holmes: Of course. The students’ movement in California and around the US is a real opening for radical politics. It raises basic questions about what society has become and where it is going. I am a long-term critic of neoliberalism, I am convinced that this form of capitalism is totally unsustainable and unlivable. Since, however, it is squarely installed in the realms of knowledge, culture and information — since it is cognitive capitalism — it seems there is no more strategic point for opposition than the universities. That doesn’t mean that every point of opposition is not important, just that this one could become crucial if enough people would raise the basic questions of value, what’s society good for, how am I participating, which consequences does that have on others, etc. Those kinds of questions form the basis of the practical philosophy that interests me. The work at the Public School is one expression of this practical philosophy that comes to grips with the currently existing forms of society and asks how do these social forms make us who we are? How could we transform ourselves and the world we share? As the economy tanks and the basic insanity of the current mode of development reveals itself in the social unconscious, I guess there may well be increasing chances to get involved in this kind of thing. more... http://occupyeverything.com/features/interview-with-brian-holmes-steps-toward-a-cultural-strategy/ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
