Richard Hall, Professor of Education and Technology at De Montfort University will be launching his new book, The Hopeless University: Intellectual Work at the end of The End of History (published by MayFly books).
Richard will speak about the themes of the book, and there will be short responses from Joel Lazarus from the University of Bath and Lisa Palmer from the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at DMU. Dr Rob Weale from the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at DMU will then briefly discuss the production of his new album of the same name, which is in dialogue with the themes of the book. The album is available here: https://soundcloud.com/user-800094563
The book argues that “The hopeless University is a flag bearer for a collective life that is becoming more efficiently unsustainable.”
Faced by the realities and lived experiences of intersecting crises, the University has become hopeless, in two respects. First, it has become a place that has no socially-useful role beyond the reproduction of capital, and has become an anti-human project devoid of hope. Second, it is unable to respond meaningfully with crises that erupt from the contradictions of capital. Thus. in its maintenance of business-as-usual, the University remains shaped as a tactical response to these contradictions.
The Hopeless University examines the structures/forms, cultures/pathologies and activities/methodologies of the University, in order to question what kind of higher learning we yearn for and deserve. In looking at the ways in which the University represents our entangled, intellectual existences, Richard Hall asks whether we might compost the structures, cultures and activities that engender hopelessness and helplessness. Might other modes of intellectual work and higher learning be possible?
In addressing this question, individuals and communities are invited to consider the potential for reimagining intellectual work as a movement of sensuous human activity in the world, and as a refusal of its commodification. As widespread social struggles against capitalism are revealed, we are reminded of our ability to make history. Thus, we must discuss how to reimagine and recycle intellectual work in society. We must discuss how to compost The Hopeless University as an indignant movement of dignity.
Richard Hall is Professor of Education and Technology at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He is Director of the Institute for Research in Criminology, Community, Education and Social Justice. Richard is a National Teaching Fellow and writes about life in higher education at: http://richard-hall.org
The book is available as a free download from http://mayflybooks.org/?p=302
Bookings will close 1 hour prior to the start of the event, and registrants will receive a link to join the online event 24hrs before the event, via their provided email address.