Pushing Culture into Politics

The humanities in UK universities have been the subject of a sustained and growing attack from the government and its outriders in the media for the last five years. Cultural theory has been vilified, and its teachers and researchers dismissed as a ‘woke brigade’ intent upon de-platforming exponents of the legitimate concerns of the moral majority. This Gramscian war of position clearly has the twin goals of shifting ‘common sense’ decisively to the right and either capturing and reconfiguring or generating powerful alternatives to institutions of civil society, including universities. Prominent liberal figures within such institutions have deprecated this assault on formerly treasured sites of cultural power, but a more radical standpoint would see the current ‘culture wars’ as a particularly violent skirmish in a longer campaign not only against the proto-fascism of authoritarian populists, but also the progressive neoliberalism of extreme centrists. Radical voices therefore find themselves openly targeted both by the Telegraph and the Guardian and – within universities – are frequently excluded from the mainstream political disciplines. This day-long symposium will offer an opportunity to hear from postgraduate and senior researchers working at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences who are refusing to accept this doubly marginalised position, but are making concerted efforts to push radical cultural projects into the political arena. Coming together as the neoliberal era reaches what may well be a terminal crisis, we will ask what role can research in the humanities play in shaping and propagating radical alternatives?

Welcome: Tom Cornford (9.30-9.45am)

Session 1: The Politics of Contemporary Sound Cultures (9.45-10.45am)

• Malcolm James (University of Sussex): The computational turn, black diasporic sound culture, and its political implications
• Brahma Prakash (Jawaharlal Nehru University): Politics on the DJ: Sonic Hindutva and its Musical Alternatives in India

COFFEE BREAK (10.45-11.15am)

Session 2: Planetary Engagements (11.15am-12.35pm)

• Tom Cornford and Tony Fisher (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama): Planetary Politics, A Manifesto for the Manifesto
• Carla Lever (University of Cape Town): Reimagining Tragedy in the Global South: Positions, Provocations and Proposals
• Dani Ploeger (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama): The Rojava Co-Operative for Democratic Technologies

LUNCH (12.35-1.30pm)

Session 3: Creative Interventions (1.30-2.50pm)

• Ariel Kahn (Middlesex University London): Literatures of “Home”, History, and Hybridity
• Shreya Ila Anasuya (King’s College London): An Array of Worlds as a Rose Unfurling in Time (Research Informing Practice in Creative Writing)
• Houman Sadri (University of South-Eastern Norway): Myths of ‘Home’

TEA BREAK (2.50-3.20pm)

Session 4: Reparative Futures (3.20-4.40pm)

• Maria Grazia Turri (Queen Mary University London): Futuring social justice through the arts
• Jemma Desai (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama): “What do we want from each other after we have told our stories?”
• Joe Parslow (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama): everything I know about queerness, I learned through death, or Tracing Queer Hope

Keynote Speaker: Gargi Bhattacharyya (University of East London), followed by discussion (5-6.30pm)

DRINKS (6.30-7.30pm)

Host or Publisher Royal Central School of Speech & Drama