It Doesn’t Just Get Better, This is Political

by Micha Cardenas.

“There is nothing “universal” about the university anymore except the 
universality of emptiness. Students and professors spend their waking 
lives covering up this void with paltry declarations and predictable 
nonactions. The void should no longer be avoided; it should be unleashed.

“A future that would not be monstrous would not be a future; it would 
already be predictable, calculable and programmable tomorrow. All 
experience open to the future is prepared or prepares itself to welcome 
the monstrous arrivant, to welcome it, that is, to accord hospitality to 
that which is absolutely foreign or strange.”
– Points, Jacques Derrida

"As I considered these issues, I realize more and more that those of us 
in academic, students, faculty and staff, live our lives inside of 
outdated institutions that do not represent us, much less welcome us. I 
realize that I live much of my life inside of this institution created 
and structured in 1960, in a time in which misogyny, homophobia and 
racism were far more accepted. Jorge Mariscal, a professor at UCSD, has 
researched the founding documents of the university and revealed a great 
deal of the actual language of institutional racism in the founding 
documents, such as in the decision about where to geographically place 
the campus. As we find ourselves to be aliens, or unwelcome monsters 
from the future, in these outdated institutions, it is up to us as 
participants in them to change them or leave them behind. Today I am 
still hoping that the dream of education can be served to some small 
degree in these outdated institutions and so I’m willing to put in the 
work to change them. Projects such as Agitprop’s upcoming 2837 
University continue the long history of creating free universities to 
provide people with a space to imagine what education can and should be."

more...
http://occupyeverything.com/features/it-doesnt-just-get-better-this-is-political/

_______________________________________________
NetBehaviour mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour

Reply via email to