The Students are Revolting

This week I came across the Situationist International inspired document On the Poverty of Student Life created by the students of Strasbourg University in 1966. It opens thus: "It is pretty safe to say that the student is the most universally despised creature in France, apart from the policeman and the priest." I also found a really interesting recently reworked version of this document from 2006 It comes in a handy pdf format and was reproduced and distributed at the eindexamen exhibition of the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.

The recent student protest in London (9 November 2011), in regards to tuition fees, spawned placards that stated "Scrap Tuition Fees" and "Free Education". And, according to the Guardian newspaper, chants included "David Cameron – fuck off back to Eton". While reports say there were 4,000 police on the streets, the protest 'passed off peacefully'.

Paris in May 1968 showed a different picture, when the students came out in support of the workers. The students and the authorities had been in conflict for months leading up to this event. Slogans said "The more you consume, the less you live. Commodities are the opium of the people." and were accompanied by Situationist graffiti.

The above is an iconic image from May 4 1970. This student, from Kent State University, was shot and killed by the Ohio National Guard along with three others. Consequently this became known as the May 4 Massacre. While this protest was over the US invasion of Cambodia, the strikes that followed involved a nationwide closure of universities and colleges.

I wasn't sure when the next upcoming student protest was in the UK, so I typed 'next student protest' into google. I found a student website where students were asking the same question. One answered: "Not sure... I hope the police know in advance so they can be ready with their water cannon and student-eating dogs." Someone else had also voted for this remark. However, I think it is the 29th January 2012 in London.

The next public sector strike is Wednesday 30th November when university lecturers will also be striking.

Links:
Students at the Heart of the System by Anna Chism
Guardian Blog - Student Tuition Fees
Situationist-inspired animated strike map

The English Summer Riots: Signification and Group Behaviour

Paris May 1968 Riots

The following text is from Fèlix Guattari's Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (1972) and I think it serves well as an analysis of the August riots in England:

The gang of young men that forms spontaneously in a section of town does not recruit members or charge a subscription; it is a matter of recognition and internal organization. Organizing such a collective depends not only on the words that are said, but on the formation of images underlying the constitution of any group, and these seem to me something fundamental - the support upon which all their other aims and objects rest. I do not think one can fully grasp the acts, attitudes or inner life of any group without grasping the thematics and functions of its 'acting out' of phantasies.

You cannot relate the sum of a group's phantasy phenomena to any system of deductions working only with motivations made fully explicit at the rational level. . . . There is, to start with, a kind of solidification, a setting into a mass; this is us, and other people are different, and usually not worth bothering with - there is no communication possible. There is a territorialization of phantasy, an imagining of the groups as a body, that absorbs subjectivity into itself. From this there flow all the phenomena of misunderstanding, racism, regionalism, nationalism and other archaisms that have utterly defeated the understanding of social theorists. (pages 35-36)

Please click below to see related link:
Paul Gilroy speaking on the August 2011 riots

The Scene of Teaching

This was the "Scene of Teaching" at the University of Leeds on Wednesday November 24th 2010:



I shot this video outside the Parkinson Steps. I think the students were coming up from the other institutions south of Leeds uni - Leeds Metropolitan University and also the other colleges on the edge of the city - to tie up with the University of Leeds students.

When I entered the Ziff building I overheard a security guard saying a building had been occupied. While we were in there, a lock-down started and after finishing our coffee we had to leave via the fire exit which was manned by campus security.

The "Scene of Teaching" reference above is from a chapter on Bill Readings 1996 book The University in Ruins. This is part of the opening of the chapter:

The replacement of culture by the discourse of excellence is the University's response to 1968. In the face of student critiques of the contradiction between the University's claim to be a guardian of culture and its growing commitment to bureaucracy, the University has progressively abandoned its cultural claim. Forced to describe itself as either a bureaucratic-administrative or an idealistic institution, it chose the former. And consequently there is no way back to 1968: a repetition of the radical postures of the late 1960s is not adequate to resist the discourse of excellence. This is because the discourse of excellence can incorporate campus radicalism as proof of the excellence of campus life or of student commitment...

Well, I hope Readings is wrong, but I feel he's probably right. Capitalisms skill in re-routing desires back into the main system has historically been the sign of its success.

Relates websites:
The University of Leeds
May 1968
The University in Ruins