notes from session #2
Protocol yesterday:
Underlining the reservations over the official declarations
Professing-
seriousness: As a manner of carrying on regardless
privilege escalation and vulnerability
Urgency:
Pluralism : that moves away from universalism; relationality that is not dependent on the binaries of the one or the many;
We need to preserve diversities, and prevent the omologation of different traditions;
A commitment to freedom of ideas and its linkages to preserve the independence of education;
Education as an abolitionist project attempting to move away from from the injustices of 'subjugated subjects' produced by education.
Thoughts on the Declaration:
- Declare to whom?
to ourselves, as a statement of intend.
- taking over the concept of declaration? is it "empty"?
- no shopping list of what we wish for
- we need to clarify:
what makes us non-aligned?
who is we?
self ... what? -authorized? -organized? - ...?
what if we declare ourselves unaligned?
if we talk about non-alignment, should we also talk about alignment?
non-aligned with structure, aligned with what makes sense for us / people?
whom do we relate to and what power lies in that?
what effect shall / will the declaration have? what does it matter?
what could be a paradoxical declaration?
proposal:
if we do have to have a positive declaration, no don't s on it, but what can be said?
we need to say something that people want to listen to, the truth:
you have no way out.
why do we need to say that?
what is happening: de-schoolarization, growing infinite amount of knowledge,
so what to do? let s work on the paradox!
----
2sided declaration
hopelessness <-> ability to act / action-plan
"you wont have a house in your fucking life"
create crises (escalation, compression, crises)
-find a starting point where we connect the interests that are circling around the summit
- the exodus towards within -> there is no way out.
- the declaration drafting process should consider the content and the form of the declaration.
- moving away from dichotomies and focus on practical
-"the proletarians have no ideal to realize"
- the collective processes and what is the knowledge being produced in them?
- how to enter writing mode? how can we write a declaration?
- we seem to need to remind us, of something.
- thinking of paradoxical writing technics, more then paradoxical content, as the setup as such is already very paradoxical.
- the conclusions can contradict, fork, change,
- we need to start with epistemology
- non-linear,
may be we should drop the idea of a declaration or only continue talking about it as such.
may be we need the wrong format in order to do the right thing.
Notes for Drafting Process
Proposal: That we declare ourselves to be non aligned; Question is who do we address this to ?
Can we have the term non aligned after all the discussion that has taken place about it?
The idea is emptied out, as compared its historical roots; alignment and tis linguistic context in english and in german
Who are we as a group, and there idea of a singular 'we' in this group; unaligning for ourselves needs to be clarified; the different interest, the education group, the trade unioninst and the independent art practitioner; The declaration to ourselves makes more sense, but unaligning for ourselves with a critical goal may be a starting point;
What about the place of the self in this entire place;
Is the idea of the unalign a question of the declaration or the preamble statement;
Rather than using a declaration we can think of using a reminder, and not seek creating something new, but going back to the older forms that we may have been thinking ; We are aligned with what people are doing;
The world cannot survive without ___
What is the context of getting together?
Should we re-occupy universities and stop their daily grinds?
Bifo- what can a paradoxical declaration be? There is no way out- and a positive declaration may well start with a recognition of the failure that confronts us; The new generation demands and expects less than the older generation did, which is a paradox;
Knowledge- not what is known or what can be be known;
The disjunctive sense of having to do something because we are hopeless;
The I can/ I cant paradox
As a format to think of what the declaration can be; A Campaign for housing rights for instance is ' you wont have a house in your fucking life'
What we can do is to come together and produce a set of crisis; a process of escalation, that may result in a resolution;
Non Alignment - With the genealogy that leads us to the use of the term that makes it unproductive though
The Inside and the outside: The exodus towards within ( alternative value practices) but also through understanding of the limitation; `the question of language ;
The question for form v. content in thinking about the declaration;
That we have a single phrase, that we can use to declare a reminder more than anything else; in the form of a declaration=
What culture we are talking about? Could we consider culture as the common platform for individual and societal capability building for the production and circulation of the individual and collective identities?
It is important to develop anti-hierarchic situations of cultural exchange even production.
To work non-aligned is to perhaps collectively and individually destablize attention-economies, neo-liberal fitness requirements of being present in all fields at all times...
It is wrong to see the summit as a failure and to adopt a declaration of failure. Rather than a failure it hopefully had been a starting point. In terms of trade unions I think this work should be continued!