Academic freedom and the enclosure of knowledge in the global university

A discussion of 'academic freedom' is timely as everywhere, across the planet, this long fought-for principle is under siege. Trends, already emerging in Africa in the 1980s, are extending to every part of the world, contributing to what we can call 'a global enclosure of knowledge. ' This is the restriction of access to education to the 'happy few,' as knowledge and education are becoming commodified and profitability is becoming the sole logic by which the university is structured. Here I examine the most salient ways in which academic freedom is affected by these developments (with special reference to the United States) and, most important, how we can resist them. First, however, I consider what we mean by 'academic freedom,' since it is a concept that has been evolving, taking on new meanings, and is presently used with different connotations

All the World Needs a Jolt. Social Movements and political Crisis in Medieval Europe

Tekst stanowi fragment rozdziału książki Silvii Federici Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, w której włoska filozofka przedstawia historię narodzin kapitalizmu od strony walk społecznych, tworzonych miedzy dwunastym a siedemnastym wiekiem organizacji autonomistycznych oraz ogromnej roli, jaką w ówczesnym oporze ogrywały kobiety. Federici, polemizując z wyznawaną także przez wielu marksistów linearną wizją historii pokazuje, że rewolucja kapitalistyczna była w istocie kontrrewolucją. Nie tylko przyniosła więcej przemocy, ucisku i realnego podporządkowania niż feudalizm, ale ściśle współdziałała z siłami starego świata w celu utrzymania społecznego i ekonomicznego status quo. Taka perspektywa pozwala Federici ukazać średniowiecze zupełnie inne niż to, które znamy z podręczników. To dlatego obraz świata, który wyłania się jej pracy wolny jest od wizji bezalternatywnej dominacji Kościoła czy od władzy feudalnej podporządkowującej sobie całość życia społecznego. W zamian Federici prezentuje epokę żywego oporu, niezliczonych ruchów społecznych i herezji oraz walk klasowych toczonych przynajmniej z taką samą intensywnością jak walki proletariatu zdwudziestego czy dziewiętnastego wieku.The text is a part of the chapter from Silvia Federici’s book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, in which the Italian philosopher describes the history of the rise of capitalism from the angle of social struggles, autonomist organizations created between the 12th and 17th centuries, and the vast contribution of women into the resistance in those days. Through polemicizing with the linear concept of history supported by many Marxists, Federici indicates that the capitalist revolution was indeed a counter-revolution, not only by causing more violence, repression and real subordination than feudalism, but also by cooperating with the forces of the old world in order to maintain the social and economic status quo. Such point of view allows Federici to see the Middle Ages very differently than the one we know from the textbooks. That is why the vision of the world that emerges from her work is free from the view that no alternative existed to Church domination, or from the view that social life was completely subordinated to feudal authority. Instead, Federici presents an era of real resistance, countless social movements and heresy as well as class struggles of the same intensity as the struggles of proletariat in 19th or 20th centuries

"A country with land but no habitat": women, violent accumulation and negative-value in Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins

In the work of Zimbabwean novelist Yvonne Vera, land is shown to be a complex and contested resource to which the typically abject fates of her female protagonists are inextricably bound. As she put it in a 2001 interview shortly before the publication of her final novel, “the connection between women and land in Zimbabwe is negative”. This article situates Vera’s work in the context of debates over Zimbabwean land reform, and considers examples of how the “negative” connection between women and land is articulated in her fiction through contrasting leitmotifs of abjection and habitat, culminating in the cautiously redemptive conclusion of her last published novel, The Stone Virgins (2002). The discussion draws on Silvia Federici’s work on women, the body and primitive accumulation and on Jason Moore’s theory of negative-value in the capitalist world-ecology, to account for why, in Vera’s work, the female body is invariably positioned, abjectly, at the nexus of colonial governance and what David Moore has described as Zimbabwe’s postcolonial regime of “violent accumulation”

Beside-the-mind: an unsettling, reparative reading of paranoia

Having undertaken a critical analysis of a transnational program of research to identify and intervene on the prodrome, a pre-psychotic state, here I experiment with an unsettling, reparative reading of its affective coils—paranoia. Etymologically joining para (beside) with nous (mind), “paranoia” denotes an experience beside-the-mind. I attempt to follow these roots, meeting a non-human figure—Coatlicue—as introduced through Chicana philosopher and poet, Gloria Anzaldúa. In the arms of this goddess, the prodrome points to the vitality and the milieu of paranoia, re-turning it as a capacity, calling for modes of attunement and apprenticeship, and perhaps protecting our psychological and political practices against yet another operation of colonialist capture. Challenging the subject, interlocutors, and form typically adopted by not just Psychology but Affect Studies too, I hope in this performative essay to also lift up the problems and possibilities of Walter Mignolo’s ‘border thinking’ as a means to open the potential decoloniality, and thus response-ability, of these fields within the present political moment

Consensus classification criteria for paediatric Behçet's disease from a prospective observational cohort: PEDBD.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to describe the main features of Behçet's disease (BD) in children in the largest prospective cohort to date and to propose a classification. METHODS: An international expert consensus group was formed to define a data set of minimal symptoms for the inclusion of patients. Patients were entered prospectively during 66 months. Experts classified patients on a consensus basis. The concordance of two international classifications was analysed in confirmed patients with BD. Comparisons of subgroups of patients helped define consensus criteria. BD-associated clinical manifestations were also investigated in three control diseases extracted from an independent data set (Eurofever). FINDINGS: In total, 42 centres from 12 countries included 230 patients; data for 219 (M/F ratio=1) could be analysed. The experts classified 156 patients (71.2%) as having confirmed BD. Males more often than females showed cutaneous, ocular and vascular symptoms and females more often genital aphthosis. Age at disease onset and skin and vascular involvement were lower for European than non-European children. Oral aphthosis was the presenting sign for 81% (179/219) of patients. The mean delay to the second symptom was 2.9±2.2 years. International classifications were not concordant with the expert classification. Our paediatric classification contains six categories, a minimum of three signs (each in a distinct category) defining paediatric BD. Three clinical signs discriminated our cohort from the Eurofever cohorts. INTERPRETATION: We present a comprehensive description of a large cohort of patients from both European and non-European countries and propose the first classification of paediatric BD for future therapeutic trials

Consensus Classification Criteria For Paediatric Behcet'S Disease From A Prospective Observational Cohort: Pedbd

Background We aimed to describe the main features of Behcet's disease (BD) in children in the largest prospective cohort to date and to propose a classification. Methods An international expert consensus group was formed to define a data set of minimal symptoms for the inclusion of patients. Patients were entered prospectively during 66 months. Experts classified patients on a consensus basis. The concordance of two international classifications was analysed in confirmed patients with BD. Comparisons of subgroups of patients helped define consensus criteria. BD-associated clinical manifestations were also investigated in three control diseases extracted from an independent data set (Eurofever). Findings In total, 42 centres from 12 countries included 230 patients; data for 219 (M/F ratio=1) could be analysed. The experts classified 156 patients (71.2%) as having confirmed BD. Males more often than females showed cutaneous, ocular and vascular symptoms and females more often genital aphthosis. Age at disease onset and skin and vascular involvement were lower for European than non-European children. Oral aphthosis was the presenting sign for 81% (179/219) of patients. The mean delay to the second symptom was 2.9 +/- 2.2 years. International classifications were not concordant with the expert classification. Our paediatric classification contains six categories, a minimum of three signs (each in a distinct category) defining paediatric BD. Three clinical signs discriminated our cohort from the Eurofever cohorts. Interpretation We present a comprehensive description of a large cohort of patients from both European and non-European countries and propose the first classification of paediatric BD for future therapeutic trials.Wo