My initial idea is that A-sophicide can be an open forum where anyone share experiences or ideas about academia as an institution and its practice of knowledge production. It can be a response to the hierarchical organization of academia dominated by state institutions and private corporations, and its far reaching effects on society and environment.
I strongly feel that contemporary academia is unable to produce critical knowledge and people. On the contrary, it has become a source of injustice and exploitation at many different levels. As it is, it can only work in accord with the capitalist production of knowledge for profit and social control, and its self-sustainment. Every part of the academic machinery; laborers, students, researchers and tutors together with rest of the society and the environment,which are at the receiving end of the academic activity, suffer in diverse ways from the inhuman relations. More and more, academia is taking on an integral role in the capitalist transformation of society. It is not only a victim as a fresh market, but has become the inventory of ideas and the source of justification for neo-liberal hegemony. As academics we need to resist where we feel most at home.
I hope, with the forum, we can share experiences, locate problems, suggest solutions and alternatives, search for patterns and tendencies, organize and mobilize for change both at the local level and the academia in general.
The idea of the blog is indeed novel and we need to take it up. Indeed in our pursuit for understanding and to gain a deep insight into the world we live in, and in the pursuit of knowledge we sometimes failt to comprehend our own experiences, to place ourselves in this world. We have fret over it at times in private conversations, sometimes as an outrage, sometimes as promises which we would like to do something about in order to change a few things. Yet, then the needs of everydayness and for reasons sometimes out of our hands we just keep moving on failing to look at the same things we fret over and dislike in the environments where we are caught up. I think the sharing of our experiences might contribute a way to look at our own positions as academic, and how we can engage from there to the issues we very much like to write, talk and teach about. I think the blog will do something in this regard. Having said, I would like to add a few lines which are in terms of things which we can consider, and which have not yet been highlighted by Ali.
If people have to talk about their experiences of the academia, something which ought to be here is missing. How is knowledge produced, what kind of questions people find it valid to ask, why do they ask when they ask certain questions, why do they leave out some others which seem to be related question. How does academia as a whole shape our understanding of the questions we keep on asking? is it because academia is based on a certain understanding of knowledge production or the methods and the way of reasoning itself limits our possibilities of enquiry? maybe an intellectual history of an idea and people's experiences surrounding it would be a fine idea? do people work on something because they really like it or their likes are themselves fashioned by what they anticipate will be appreciated in the academic world? are there experiences of people working in isolation and not getting appreciated? I would suggest that the blog will be incomplete if we only look at the interactions of the academics with just their immediate surroundings and their struggle within it to find their space and their voice, because then it leaves out an aspect which is missing that is the idea of creating knowledge, of dealing with issues? are they bogged down because they do not have economic security or they are forced to do in hours which they dont want to do? is academia also a space which alienates people from their own labour power or from their own deeply held motives and beliefs? and how do they engage with it? do they manage to create their own space? and if so how? what does it take to do so? can one really take up an independent exercise? do they critically engage with what they do? what does this mass industry of producing phds mean for this world? what kind of work or research are they doing? does it also speak to reality around them? how do they engage with this world around? what are the things which people would like to talk about but consider it as taboo? or are stopped in their speaking because they think that no one would listen to them? how do they, it at all break out of this mould? is there a well-bred cynicism about how things go?
My initial idea is that A-sophicide can be an open forum where anyone share experiences or ideas about academia as an institution and its practice of knowledge production. It can be a response to the hierarchical organization of academia dominated by state institutions and private corporations, and its far reaching effects on society and environment.
ReplyDeleteI strongly feel that contemporary academia is unable to produce critical knowledge and people. On the contrary, it has become a source of injustice and exploitation at many different levels. As it is, it can only work in accord with the capitalist production of knowledge for profit and social control, and its self-sustainment. Every part of the academic machinery; laborers, students, researchers and tutors together with rest of the society and the environment,which are at the receiving end of the academic activity, suffer in diverse ways from the inhuman relations. More and more, academia is taking on an integral role in the capitalist transformation of society. It is not only a victim as a fresh market, but has become the inventory of ideas and the source of justification for neo-liberal hegemony. As academics we need to resist where we feel most at home.
I hope, with the forum, we can share experiences, locate problems, suggest solutions and alternatives, search for patterns and tendencies, organize and mobilize for change both at the local level and the academia in general.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the blog is indeed novel and we need to take it up. Indeed in our pursuit for understanding and to gain a deep insight into the world we live in, and in the pursuit of knowledge we sometimes failt to comprehend our own experiences, to place ourselves in this world. We have fret over it at times in private conversations, sometimes as an outrage, sometimes as promises which we would like to do something about in order to change a few things. Yet, then the needs of everydayness and for reasons sometimes out of our hands we just keep moving on failing to look at the same things we fret over and dislike in the environments where we are caught up. I think the sharing of our experiences might contribute a way to look at our own positions as academic, and how we can engage from there to the issues we very much like to write, talk and teach about. I think the blog will do something in this regard. Having said, I would like to add a few lines which are in terms of things which we can consider, and which have not yet been highlighted by Ali.
If people have to talk about their experiences of the academia, something which ought to be here is missing. How is knowledge produced, what kind of questions people find it valid to ask, why do they ask when they ask certain questions, why do they leave out some others which seem to be related question. How does academia as a whole shape our understanding of the questions we keep on asking? is it because academia is based on a certain understanding of knowledge production or the methods and the way of reasoning itself limits our possibilities of enquiry? maybe an intellectual history of an idea and people's experiences surrounding it would be a fine idea? do people work on something because they really like it or their likes are themselves fashioned by what they anticipate will be appreciated in the academic world? are there experiences of people working in isolation and not getting appreciated? I would suggest that the blog will be incomplete if we only look at the interactions of the academics with just their immediate surroundings and their struggle within it to find their space and their voice, because then it leaves out an aspect which is missing that is the idea of creating knowledge, of dealing with issues? are they bogged down because they do not have economic security or they are forced to do in hours which they dont want to do? is academia also a space which alienates people from their own labour power or from their own deeply held motives and beliefs? and how do they engage with it? do they manage to create their own space? and if so how? what does it take to do so? can one really take up an independent exercise? do they critically engage with what they do? what does this mass industry of producing phds mean for this world? what kind of work or research are they doing? does it also speak to reality around them? how do they engage with this world around? what are the things which people would like to talk about but consider it as taboo? or are stopped in their speaking because they think that no one would listen to them? how do they, it at all break out of this mould? is there a well-bred cynicism about how things go?