Description:

Please join the Political Theory Colloquium as they host James Martel, Professor of Political Science, San Francisco State University; Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU; Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; John Seery, George Irving Thompson Memorial Professor of Government and Professor of Politics, Pomona College.

James Martel | The War Against Archism Can Start in the Universities
Abstract:   In this paper I will be arguing that the University system is a microcosm of power relations in the United States more generally. This is a site where class, gender and racial warfare are conducted by what I like to call "archism," the ubiquitous form of power based on hierarchy and stemming from capitalism that has dominated the world for the last 500 years. In the case of the US  University, all students, staff and  faculty serve both to facilitate and suffer from the negative  effects of archist domination. False forms of participatory democracy (academic senates, student government etc.). all act as models for the kinds of pseudo democratic institutions that characterize the United States more generally. Yet, for all of this, the university is also marked by the potential for critical form of resistance to archist power. Because of its decentralized nature and because universities are engaged in critical thinking and enjoy certain privileges, and further because they are readily constituted by small self organizing groups, they can also be nodes or resistance and can easily take on  a kind of council system formation that serves as a model in turn for the kinds of self organization that can be spread across other areas of life, work places, neighborhoods, etc. that can serve as the nucleus for a larger resistance to capitalist power.

Andrew Ross | The Rise of the Garrison University
Abstract:  I'll be analyzing how the managerialism of the "corporate university" segued into the heavily securitized mentality of the "garrison university" over the past eighteen months, and why Palestine proved to be the catalyst. I will also be giving time to the "resistance."

Jodi Dean | Safety and Scholasticide
Abstract:  This paper will reflect on the techniques of silencing, especially as they appear in connection with speech opposing occupation and genocide. It will consider the neoliberal economic context for fear and desperation in the US academy as well as the implications of scholasticide for possibilities of resistance to authoritarian attacks on the university.

John Seery | Care with Wrods, Care for the World
Abstract: Drawing from sound studies and musical performance (saxophone, in particular), Seery considers the possibilities for and threats to free speech and free expression under mounting forms of autocracy, both academic and governmental. His talk divides into four "movements": John Coltrane; Hannah Arendt; J.S. Mill; Mario Savio. The coda ends not on a trumpet blast with a rim-shot but, instead, a fade-out into the blues.