Tag Archives: neo-liberalism

Events, Past Events

Common Ground: Democracy & Collectivity in an Age of Individualism

We live in an epoch of personal choice, hyper-mobility, celebrity-worship and fiercely competitive labour markets. But this is also the age of networked communication, of global culture, of Occupy and the new politics of ‘the Commons’.

What are the connections and tensions between such apparently diverse tendencies, and do they help democracy to develop, or render it impossible?

This public seminar, marking the launch of Jeremy Gilbert’s book Common Ground (Pluto Press),  will discuss the relationship between collectivity, individuality, affect and agency today, asking whether personal freedom is the great achievement of our era — or if individualism is actually forced on us by capitalist culture, fatally limiting our capacity to solve the problems that we can only solve together.What forms of politics, culture and philosophy might take us beyond the limits of traditional conservatism or banal individualism?

At: Brilliant Corners, 470 Kingsland Road, Dalston, London, E8 4AE

Speakers: Anthony Barnett, Lisa Blackman, Mark Fisher, Jeremy Gilbert
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Past Events

Hauntology with Mark Fisher

Ghosts of My LifeCCSR welcomes Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? author Mark Fisher to launch his new book Ghosts of My Life, in conversation with the London-based artist and writer Laura Oldfield Ford. Are we, as Fisher argues, haunted by futures that failed to happen?

“Ghosts Of My Life confirms that Mark Fisher is our most penetrating explorer of the connections between pop culture, politics, and personal life under the affective regime of digital capitalism. The most admirable qualities of Fisher’s work are its lucidity, reflecting the urgency of his commitment to communicating ideas; his high expectations of popular art’s power to challenge, enlighten, and heal; and his adamant refusal to settle for less.” Simon Reynolds, author of Retromania and Rip It Up and Start Again.

Venue: Room US.G.17, University of East London, University Square Stratford, 1 Salway Road, E15. 1NF

Events, Past Events

Radical Space

radical space cover v3Our conference for 2013 will address the problematics of space both as concept and as lived social reality, with a particular emphasis on the tension between spaces of control in the context of contemporary neoliberalism, spaces of resistance and the apocalyptic spaces which emerge from war, forced migration and the failures of consumer capitalism.

What are the politics of space in contemporary contexts? How can we re-think space beyond the public/private divide? How do spatial arts re-configure space and the way in which it is experienced? What new configurations of space may emerge from burgeoning forms of community? How do the theatres of contemporary war force a re-assessment of spatial concepts? Is it still possible for the notion of virtual space to function in opposition to the striated space of contemporary cities?

We are pleased to announce that Deborah Dixon and Carl Lavery of Aberystwyth University,  Dimitris Papadopoulos (University of Leicester) and the independent artist Joanna Rajkowska have been confirmed as keynote speakers. The conference will also offer the chance to participate in movement workshops and performative explorations of space.

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

FULL PROGRAMME

RADICAL SPACE PAGE

Events, Past Events

CCSR Annual Lecture 2013: Tariq Ali

TA_Cafe Oto_ 8_11_10 (1)CONFLICTING  LEGACIES, HUGO CHAVEZ AND MARGARET THATCHER: Neo-liberalism and new wars versus social justice and peace

Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written over two dozen books on world politics and history. His novels, including the series known as the ‘Islam Quintet’, have been translated into many languages. He is a longstanding editor of the New Left Review and writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Guardian

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Events, Past Events

City and Space

This is the third seminar in our Culture & Polity series in which our invited speakers will be examining the city both as a concept and as a space marked by social and cultural divisions and in which conflicting notions of community emerge. Has the economic downturn restructured the suburb from paradise to pressure cooker, making it the new inner city precariously perched on the edge? What are the political consequences of the impact of privatisation on city space? The award-winning film-maker John Smith will also present his film ‘Blight’ which revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, which provoked a long and bitter campaign by local residents to protect their homes from demolition.

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Events, Past Events

Security, Community & Democracy

This is the second seminar in our Culture & Polity series in which our invited speakers will be examining the post-neoliberal subject as produced by the strategies of behavioural economics, security screening and the discourse of virology. What is the meaning of community and the social under these conditions? What forms of governance emerge from new techniques of securitisation and behaviour management and what are the implications for democratic processes?

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Events, Past Events

Digitisation and Value

This is the first seminar in our Culture & Polity series, interrogating urgent questions of cultural change in the context of new forms of community, contemporary commodity forms and government policy.

This session will bring together a range of perspectives on the question of digitization and value, from the spheres of media and cultural studies, digital arts practice, and open source enterprise. To what extent do networked digital technologies enable new forms of human subjectivity, social organization and expressive new forms of culture? Do digital production tools and networked communications provide new modalities of intensity and sensation? Or do the materialities of digitization merely extend the field of neoliberal authority? Can technology offer new tools for building communities and potentially emancipate impoverished groups and environments? How do we conceive of value in a digital world?

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Events, Past Events

Radical Foucault – An International Conference

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The Centre For Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London will be hosting a major international conference on September 8th-9th, 2011 which will re-assess Michel Foucault’s contribution to radical thought and the application of his ideas to contemporary politics. What does it mean to draw on Foucault as a resource for radical politics, and how are we to understand the politics which implicitly informs his work?

Keynote speakers will be Stuart Elden, Professor in the Department of Geography, Durham University, one of the founding editors of Foucault Studies and Mark Kelly, Lecturer in Philosophy, Middlesex University, author of The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault (Routledge, 2009). Please see full call for papers here.

Past Events

The Politics of Pain – Keep Calm & Carry On?

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On December 8th 2010 CCSR held a seminar on the implications of ideas of shared ‘pain’ which have become so central to the coalition government’s discourse of austerity. Speakers were Kate Pickett (co-author of The Spirit Level), Michael Rustin (of UEL and Soundings), and Jeremy Gilbert. Matthew Reisz, writing in the THE, noted how the event coincided with students taking to the streets ‘ahead of last week’s tuition-fees vote’ and the occupation of part of UEL’s campus. An Audio Recording of the seminar is available here and a copy of Jeremy’s paper ‘Sharing the Pain’ is available here.