Civic engagement
UEL academic hosts 10-part seminar series on culture, power and politics
Professor Jeremy Gilbert will be joined by illustrious guests for thought-provoking discussions
By Lee Pinkerton
Two academics from the University of East London (UEL) are stepping off campus and onto a side street in east London more famous for its open air market than for academic discourse.
This spring and summer, Professor of Cultural and Political Theory Jeremy Gilbert and Reader in Cultural Theory Debra Shaw, along with selected guests, are hosting Culture, Power and Politics, a series of 10 free public seminars.
Professor Gilbert said, “The series was initially started after conversations we had with activists around projects like the New Economy Organisers Network, Compass and The World Transformed, about the lack of good quality radical political education available to people who were not attending university courses."
Rather than holding the debates in one of UEL’s many lecture theatres, the decision was made to hold them in a basement gallery on Ridley Road in Dalston, east London.
Dr Shaw inaugurated the collaboration with the Doomed Gallery and taught a series of preparatory lectures earlier in the year, before inviting Jeremy to take the baton.
He said, “Symbolically we think it’s important that it not be held at a university, as it can seem more accessible to people if it’s not in an academic building.”
“I choose the seminar topics based on a combination of what issues have been current and important in the news and the wider culture recently," explains Professor Gilbert, "and what interesting work is currently going on in cultural studies, cultural theory, sociology, economics, history, politics and philosophy that I think people should hear about.”
The series opened on April 24 with a discussion on a timely topic: ‘#metoo / #ImWithHer: feminism, liberalism and the politics of gender’. Professor Gilbert was joined by guests Professor Mandy Merck and Catherine Rottenberg.
The panel discussed questions like what Harvey Weinstein’s exposure and fall tell us about the moment; how gendered relations are changing; and the condition of feminism in the 21st century.
On May 1 Professor Gilbert will be joined by Hilary Wainwright to discuss ‘Democracy in the Streets: Fifty Years of 1968’. Hilary Wainwright has been involved in radical politics since the 1960s, playing a key role in the British left-wing movement.
On May 8 Maurizio Lazzarato joins Professor Gilbert to discuss ‘Work, Debt, Creativity, Resistance’. Dr Lazzarato is best known for having coined the term ‘immaterial labour’ as a way of describing the many forms of work in the contemporary economy that do not produce physical outputs. Professor Gilbert and Dr Lazzarato will explain how those ideas have developed and why they are so relevant for contemporary radical politics.
On May 15 Professor Eric Alliez and Dr Maurizio Lazzarato will discuss their new book Wars and Capital, introducing some of the key arguments and ideas from this important new work.
On May 22 Sarah Bufkin and Professor Alan Finlayson join Professor Gilbert to discuss Eyes Right: Trumpism, Brexit and the rise of the alt-right.
On June 12 Dr Debra Benita Shaw discusses Art, Glitch, and Politics The rise of digital ‘glitch’ art and how it privileges noise over signal and aestheticises error.
On June 19 the seminar is on ‘The Right to the City: politics, place and policy in neoliberal London’ with Dr Anna Minton and Jacob Mukherjee of Generation Rent.
You can check out topics for the whole series on the website culturalstudiesresearch.org
All sessions take place from 6:30pm – 8:30 pm at the Doomed Gallery: 65-67 Ridley Road, Dalston, London, E8 2NP. All welcome – there is no charge and no booking required.
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