Open discussion tomorrow  | 13.00-14.00, 102 room Pavilion Parade.
This is an event organised within the Student Engagement week.

This presentation stems from the mistrust and alienation that surrounds Engagement Week 2014 organised by Brighton University Student Union. The underlying thesis (or, better said, intuition) of this presentation is that the university, as an institution that is not just complicit but also instrumental in the implementation of a neoliberal rationality, has not only discouraged self-organisation but also has criminalised protest. In this context, I will argue, our bureaucratic Student Union has not “engaged” in the current struggles that take place within the university, but rather has been more interested in policing academic institutions with the objective of securing what is seems to be the most precious asset: student experience. Such concept, ambiguous as it is, is surrounded by a another terms, some of which excel in ambiguity as well (concepts such as student satisfaction or, my favourite, student engagement), to the extent that one wonders whether “student experience” could be considered as the effect of university management discourse. Where does the Student Union stands on the current political-economical landscape? Why do we need an engagement week in which, for example, commit ourselves to good causes? Isn’t the struggle over an autonomous university a good cause enough for the increasingly precarious mass of students? or is the university so enmeshed in and captured by contemporary capitalism that it is not worth reacting, as André Gorz argued in 1970? And what’s more, can the university, as the collective Edu-factory asked, be create place for a community of “struggle and exodus, for the political composition of differences in a space-time of class, just as the factory was for the working class”?

Please note that this will not be a paper about my work. This presentation is aimed at offering a space of reflection for the University’s postgraduate community (who’s being constantly reminded through unimail that we need a postgrad leader) with regard to the current state of affairs at our institution and, more concretely, the role NUS and especially our Student Union plays in it. It is also meant to build up for the “Protest and the University of Brighton” symposium that will take place in May.
Everyone welcome!

The next work in progress seminar will take place tomorrow Tuesday (18th February) with Michael Neu‘s presentation: ‘On Ugly Lifes”. You can find an abstract below. The seminar will take place at 1-2pm in Pavilion Parade, room 102. We’ll meet in the foyer a couple of minutes before to show the way to those unfamiliar with the building. Hope to see you all there!

This is a paper on the ugliness of human lives in liberal capitalist democracies, or immaculate liberal societies, as I shall call them; ugliness not as a physical attribute but as a facet of conduct and attitude. When I talk about ugly conduct, I mean human complicity in suffering (I focus primarily on human suffering, but think that what I say might apply to non-human suffering as well). Indifference about suffering is what I refer to as ugly attitude. The people whose ugly lives I write about have both of these features; they are complicit in suffering and indifferent about it – both about the suffering itself and their being complicit in it. The discovery of complicity and indifference might require a degree of attentive silence and reflection, rather than the frenetic study of daily news. It is not clear to me whether or not, and to what extent, indifferent accomplices (i.e., those who engage in ugly conduct and hold ugly attitudes) are suitable subjects of moral condemnation. Some of them might well be, assuming anybody is; others might not. I am going to talk about human beings, then, who are complicit in, and indifferent about, suffering; who ought not to be that way; and whom it is difficult to condemn – and not always possible to deplore.

Equality, Vulnerability, Precarity

Reading Judith Butler’s Precarious Life and Frames of War

Pavilion Parade, University of Brighton

30th April – 11th June 2014

In this term-long reading course, hosted by the Critical Studies Research Group and the Understanding Conflict Research Cluster, we will engage in a close critical reading of Judith Butler’s Precarious Life (2004) and Frames of War (2009). In these texts Butler further develops her recent ethical work, offering a theory of generalised precariousness to interrogate the conditions necessary for a life to be livable. She situates her analysis in the context of modern warfare, focusing her critique on the ‘war on terror’ and the Israeli State’s occupation of Palestine. This course will be relevant to those interested in philosophy, political theory, history, law, sociology, war and peace studies, memory studies, gender studies, queer theory, international relations, cultural studies and geography.

The reading course is free and open to all members of University of Brighton and University of Sussex. All sessions will be held between 16:00 and 18:30 on Wednesday afternoons in B5 Pavilion Parade, BN2 1RA.

To register interest please contact Tim Huzar: t.huzar1@uni.brighton.ac.uk.

The Critical Studies Research Group (CSRG) was founded in 2011 by postgraduate students in the School of Humanities, University of Brighton, with the aim of providing an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of critical ideas and practices in light of the socio-political struggles we face today. The challenges that interdisciplinarity might pose are counteracted by our shared interest in the role and scope of critical thought and practice in the context of contemporary capitalism. For more information on the CSRG, please visit: brightoncsrg.noblogs.org.

The recently established Understanding Conflict research cluster brings together expertise in humanities and social sciences from across the University of Brighton. The cluster aims to develop, over a number of years, a valuable interdisciplinary synthesis for understanding and engaging with the forms and legacies of recent and contemporary violent conflict.

Course Outline

All sessions will be held between 16:00 and 18:30
on Wednesday afternoons in B5 Pavilion Parade, BN2 1RA.

Precarious Life

30th April

‘Explanation and Exoneration, or What We Can Hear’ – Chapter One
‘Violence, Mourning, Politics’ – Chapter Two

7th May

‘Indefinite Detention’ – Chapter Three
‘The Charge of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel and the Risks of Public Critique’ – Chapter Four

14th May

‘Precarious Life’ – Chapter Five
‘Violence, Non-Violence: Sartre on Fanon’ in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 27:1, 2006

Frames of War

21st May

‘Introduction to the Paperback’
‘Introduction: Precarious Life, Grievable Life’

28th May

‘Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect’ – Chapter One
‘Torture and the Ethics of Photography: Thinking with Sontag’ – Chapter Two

4th June

‘Sexual Politics, Torture, Secular Time’ – Chapter Three
‘Non-Thinking in the Name of the Normative’ – Chapter Four

11th June

‘The Claim of Non-Violence’ – Chapter Five
Mills, C. (2007), ‘Normative Violence, Vulnerability and Responsibility’, Differences, 18:2
Jenkins, F. (2007), ‘Toward a Nonviolent Ethics’, Differences, 18:2