I loved the way Lindsay presented this video! Channelling Subterranean Homesick Blues. It is refreshing that she doesn’t rely on generic powerpoint slides. The drawings and using the post it notes to reveal the information makes the video feel interactive and as though she is talking directly to you even though the session is asynchronous. I found this video very engaging and she manages to get a lot of information across in a short amount of time (20 mins).
Some thoughts on The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study:
I found this book very difficult to follow, I’m out of practice in reading texts like this and I find it even harder to digest when reading on a computer screen, not sure why, maybe because I’m in a more relaxed posture if i’m reading a book? Anyway there is so much in this I found it difficult to get my head around and formulate my thoughts.
It cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment
I was thinking about this quote and at times it can feels as though there is an intellectual property on ideas – people can be guarded with information and students may be reluctant to share work in case someone copies them. In my experiences at university both as a student and tutor I haven’t always found it to be sharing environment even though it should be a place where enlightened people come together to share ideas.
There is a push and pull going on where students start out being idealistic, wanting to change the world, but in many ways university professionalises them, tries to put them into boxes and make them employable. Also with the high tuition fees it’s not an inclusive space.
We are committed to the idea that study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice. The notion of a rehearsal—being in a kind of workshop, playing in a band, in a jam session, or old men sitting on a porch, or people working together in a factory—there are these various modes of activity. The point of calling it “study” is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present.
Early primary education seems more communal, classes are structured in a way that students play and learn together – learning can be fun, we lose this as we make our way through the education system. As Cyndi Lauper once sang “money changes everything”, degrees are now looked at in terms of their monetary worth – and of course they are because it’s crazy amount of money. It becomes all about the grade and if the students are getting what they paid for.
I found the interview section of the book easier to follow, there’s a great section where Fred Moten talks about his kids playing a game:
“dad, we have a box, and we’re going to let you open this box, and if you open the box, you can enter into our world.”That’s kind of what it feels like: there are these props, these toys, and if you pick them up you can move into some new thinking and into a new set of relations, a new way of being together, thinking together. In the end, it’s the new way of being together and thinking together that’s important, and not the tool, not the prop. Or, the prop is important only insofar as it allows you to enter; but once you’re there, it’s the relation and the activity that’s really what you want to emphasize.
Isn’t that what going to university should be about? Opening the box and stepping into another world of new thinking and community? Teaching shouldn’t be about someone who knows more than someone else. And teachers don’t have to have all the answers. We all have different experiences that than be beneficial to others and there’s so much opportunity to learn from each other if we let it happen.
HARNEY, Stefano and MOTEN, Fred. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. (2013)