Adam Harper is “currently doing a PhD in Musicology at Oxford. He writes for Wire magazine and blogs at Rouge’s Foam.” He also finds time to write for the Guardian:
Aware that reality itself is the territory on which they’re fighting the government, many student protesters have been challenging the government-sponsored realism they now find so dubious with playful surrealism.
Ah, “government-sponsored realism.” Not economic reality, as discussed here, which might lead those protesting to a larger, more troublesome understanding of the world. It’s just a cruel and dubious fabrication to be swapped for something more flattering and congenial. Students Make Protest an Art Form, reads the headline. And how could mere reality withstand the fearsome repertoire of the contemporary artist?
Few things summed up this battle for reality better than the statue stood in the main quadrangle of University College London, greeting visitors to the student occupation there. Placed in front of banners reading “Art Against Cuts” was a post-cubist humanoid figure assembled from found objects and painted silver.
By Muhammad’s beard. Empires will topple.
In front of it was a sign announcing that “THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING.”
I trust readers are all stocked up on canned goods and ammunition.
Upon entering the occupied Jeremy Bentham Room, one noticed strange details among the hundreds of posters covering the walls: references to Harry Potter characters (“Albus Dumbledore Was a GREAT MAN”), a neo-classical statue made to carry a mock-up Pokéball (which, as anyone born between 1985 and 1995 knows, is where Pokémon are kept when not in battle), puns so terrible and esoteric they become hilarious (“They say cut back, we say Feuerbach,” in homage to the 19th-century philosopher) and complete non sequiturs (“HUMBUGS ARE ZEBRA EGGS”).
It’s dangerous, dizzying stuff. Now hand me your wallet. You’ll soon be feeling an urge to bankroll more of this.
Someone else spent several hours in the Parliament Square kettle dressed as a bright pink Star Wars stormtrooper, the Bansky-esque gesture beautifully counteracting the lines of armour-clad riot police.
See? You’re warming to their demands already.
Sound-systems enabled spontaneous raves amid the cops and burning benches, with crowds bobbing in time to the wacky syncopated beats and pitch-shifted vocals of Major Lazer’s Pon De Floor.
Oh no, they’re fighting back with abstract disco.
Such displays could easily be dismissed as infantile and hedonistic, but they play an important role in outwardly showing confidence and boosting internal morale. In some cases they also serve a practical purpose.
I know, you can’t wait.
A group of demonstrators, dubbed the “book bloc,” brought giant polystyrene shields to the protest, each covered and painted to look like a famous work of philosophy, political theory or literature.
Practical.
Alongside titles by Hegel, Derrida, Adorno, Badiou, Debord and Orwell was Just William, ironically understating the ensuing conflict between the civil disobedience of the young and the full weight of the Metropolitan police. When the two sides clashed on Whitehall, the book bloc’s attempts to counter police force with thought created images that were both powerfully symbolic and disarmingly tongue-in-cheek.
Now the image of art students armed with giant polystyrene shields is, I grant you, mildly amusing. As is the belief that mentioning Derrida adds gravitas to the cause. But “powerful symbolism”? “Countering force with thought”? Bask in that conceit. I’m sure taxpayers across the nation spotted these details and gasped at the staggering cleverness of it all, promptly forgetting the less edifying spectacle of rioters, thuggery and presumed entitlement to the labour and earnings of others: “Just look at how esoteric those art students are – they’re using Styrofoam and non sequitur! Here, Maurice, give them some cash.”
In the comments, Mr Harper adds,
After I finished my degree I did in fact work in a call-centre for two years to fund my postgrad work. Now I’m doing PhD research, hoping to be a lecturer and teacher when I ‘grow up.’
At which point, comment seems unnecessary.
“Judging by the examples YOU quoted the students aren’t being very creative, are they? It’s not ‘carnivalesque’, just arrogant and silly.”
Well then obviously I disagree with you – we simply disagree, that’s perfectly fine. It’s not an argument, it’s certainly far from somehow self-evident to me that the students ‘aren’t being very creative’ based on my own examples.
And I said they *’feel’* they’re being misrepresented. I was merely reporting on the mood of the student movement. I couldn’t possibly say whether the protests are ‘actually’ ‘objectively’ being misrepresented. Read and respond to what I wrote, not what’s in your paranoid minds.
Karen,
You’re arguing with someone who thinks we’re ‘narrow’ and ‘frightened’ and ‘paranoid’ and we ‘resent’ ‘creative’ students who ‘dared to think bigger’.
And he thinks David is ‘bullying’ him.
I repeat: if you don’t like the headline, pull the article. Or publish elsewhere. I suspect the kudos (if that’s the word) of a CiF piece (*snorts*) blinded you to the headline and now you’re bleating that the title wasn’t yours. The piece has your name on it, it’s yours. If you don’t like the headline, pull. Like I said before – grow a spine and stop bleating (“It wasnae me! A big boy did it and ran away”).
DT took your words and fisked them. Get used to it – it’s called peer review, though I’m not sure given the whining we’ve had from you that you qualify as the good Mr Thompson’s peer.
“It’s way below the standards of twenty-first-century academic”. You wish. To be honest, Mr T’s ripping you a new hole is way ABOVE the standard of most debate in the humanities.
You should thank him for the service he’s done you.
“it’s called peer review”
“To be honest, Mr T’s ripping you a new hole is way ABOVE the standard of most debate in the humanities”
I’m speechless. We are talking about this http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/jrma sort of thing, right? If you are in fact a scholar of the humanities like I am, and not just making an obscenely massive assumption about them based on trenchant hearsay (way to have a reasoned political position), then perhaps we really do live in completely different realities. As I said, there’s little point in hashing this out with you. Simply by appearing in the Guardian – *once* – I was already irredeemably guilty.
Well, since you ask I peer review for four medical journals, two international that you will have heard of, two national specialty journals that you won’t have.
My use of the term “peer review” was loose in this context. But if you insist on publishing mendacious rubbish and then whine about the title, and if Mr T shreds your text, peer-review just about covers it. he’s something of an expert in carving apart the kind of crap you wrote with such glee. He does it with some elegance. You just can’t take hearing a contrary view without crying like a girl.
“Simply by appearing in the Guardian – *once* – I was already irredeemably guilty.”
Oh, do grow up.
“Mendacious” should have read “meretricious”.
Well I’m a little surprised to hear someone who peer reviews four medical journals using the phrase “crying like a girl”. Very impressive.
As a foreigner, I don’t have much of a bone her. Still, I do recognize ‘crying like a girl’ as a medical term.
Yours,
-S
Oh, sorry Adam. Which part of “crying like a girl” did you not understand?
The part where you resorted to it in a pathetic attempt to hold your ground. Stylish – real big and clever.
Dr Cromarty: maybe he’s a Northern type? Try “crying like a big girl’s blouse”.
“Still, I do recognize ‘crying like a girl’ as a medical term.”
It sure is, as we doctors call it: bleedinheartgrauniadpseuditis. It can be infectious, but once immunised, it can be a great source of amusement.
Just telling it like it is, Adam. Don’t shoot the messenger.
So this is what happens when I take a day off. Well, before things get too personal and unpleasant…
One point I’d hoped to convey is this. The students’ work mentioned in Adam’s article and similar efforts seen locally are presumably the result of strong feeling and strong motivation. There’s a peer group cause, something to get excited about, something close to home. Despite this, it doesn’t impress. Nor does it serve the function apparently assigned to it. If the object is in part to make the public see how valuable art students are, and how valuable unchecked subsidy is, and to make taxpayers do without in order to pay for more of this… then, well, it’s not a tremendous success.
So far as I can make out, the “surrealism” mentioned above doesn’t add depth to the issue; it doesn’t address the economics or the root of the problem; it doesn’t offset the violence and dishonesty we’ve seen, nor does it diminish the prevailing sense of indulgence and entitlement. If anything, it amplifies that impression and confirms expectations. As a “radical” way to argue for public subsidy of art students (for instance), it doesn’t cut much ice. Better ways may exist, but they aren’t in evidence above.
On a more quantifiable note, BOM raises another economic point. The public sector employs around 20% of the UK’s workforce – notable in itself – and *40%* of our graduates. As graduates in ‘soft’ subjects are particularly likely to wind up in the public sector, the taxpayer is picking up the tab for their studies and their subsequent paycheques. And so a question arises. Is it sustainable to have 40% of graduates in parts of the economy that produce no wealth?
http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/2010/12/christmas-riddle.html
David,
”
And so a question arises. Is it sustainable to have 40% of graduates in parts of the economy that produce no wealth?
”
This is a bit harsh. The problem with teachers, health-workers, sanitation-personnel and others in the employment of the state is not that they don’t produce any wealth – they do for sure. The problem is that since their services are tax funded and their salaries are government regulated, the wealth they produce cannot be determined by the market. While we do know what their services cost, we cannot know what they are worth – ie how much we rather would pay for them than for something else.
Thus the problem is not that they are employed by the state, but rather that they are /only/ employed by the state. We have no competitive and fair market-mechanisms that can determine their worth and thereby determine whether they are worth the price they currently are charging.
I’d be happy to keep the Norwegian state -provided services if they were commercially operated in fair and non-preferential competition with other providers.
Respectfully yours,
-S
Simen,
“This is a bit harsh.”
I don’t mean to sound pejorative about the public sector per se and I take your point about the problem of value measurement. But the general structural issue is worth noting. Especially if we consider graduates whose degree isn’t directly relevant to the job they find themselves doing, except insofar as “a degree” is expected and used to justify salaries and benefits.
This seems appropriate…..
“There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes… Many students say they are pursuing their subject out of love, and that education is an end in itself. Some give little thought to where the qualification might lead. In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting. Nearly half of engineering students admitted to this.”
http://www.economist.com/node/17723223
David, thanks indeed for a reasoned response! The only point I would make is that the displays that I wrote about weren’t intended as carrying a direct political message (only in the most abstract sense, re: dreams / reality metaphors), much less argue and demonstrate the value of public subsidy, nor (I hope) did my article actually imply that. I wasn’t ‘making a case for public subsidy’ but merely reporting on some of the stranger things I’d seen, which were certainly far from being the “work” of “art students” (which I hadn’t in fact suggested was the case). All kinds of students have done handmade stuff for the protests, it never looks dazzling, and for every example of this weirdness there are countless more conventional arguments / demonstrations of intent on display on the streets, on the internet and in the media.
The protests are just protests, and can’t be read as funding applications or exams. The object of the surrealism isn’t to make the public see how valuable or clever [art] students are (which I never argued, though which you saw being implied and I guess I can understand that), but just to have a bit of light-hearted, potentially subversive fun. If it’s not your bag, I understand, but as I said it’s much more of an internal morale / confidence thing than PR, just part of the ‘joy’ of the protests. In fact I agree that were I actually to have been making a case for public subsidy, it would have been worse than ridiculous (borderline offensive!)
It’s not like there were many undecided members of the public visiting the UCL occupation who would have been swayed by those references and puns. Students aren’t that ridiculous. And I’m not ridiculous enough to believe that listing these bizarre displays is at all a convincing argument for the students’ cause (give me some credit!). Yes, I’m a student myself, but the article wasn’t making a straight up pro-protestors political argument, if you think about it, even if it did appear in the Guardian. If there was any aim at all other than the reporting of some scenes I found interesting, it was to remind people that not all students throw fire extinguishers and concrete. Even if the surrealist displays themselves ‘don’t address economics or the root of the problems’, I hope they go some way in ‘offset[ting] the violence and dishonesty we’ve seen’ (incidentally, that’s exactly how many students feel about the government and the police but that’s by the by!). You’re naturally welcome to remain unconvinced.
And I wouldn’t even say there was much of a link between what I’d described and taxpayers’ money. None of it was very lavish at all, and I’m sure the relevant funding councils didn’t cough up for a stormtrooper suit or a mobile soundsystem. So I wonder if it’s a bit of an exaggeration to claim that what I wrote about is or will be what taxpayers are paying for, or in any sort of correlation to public subsidy itself. It’s a protest, after all.
Adam,
“The object of the surrealism isn’t to make the public see how valuable or clever [art] students are… but just to have a bit of light-hearted, potentially subversive fun.”
Well, I disagree; whatever else may be in play, there’s an assumption of entitlement to subsidy. A self-righteousness, if you like. And people who imagine they’re being “subversive” are very often self-absorbed and arrogant. (See the archives for dozens of relevant examples from artists and academics.) It’s worth bearing in mind that some people – perhaps quite a lot of people – will see the displays of “subversion” and “surrealism” as objectionable self-indulgence based on presumed entitlement. Not an ideal way to elicit sympathy in those being told to fork over their cash. (And mentioning, for instance, Derrida, an incorrigible charlatan, isn’t the best way to convince the wider public that one’s cause is noble or deserving.)
“If there was any aim at all other than the reporting of some scenes I found interesting, it was to remind people that not all students throw fire extinguishers and concrete.”
I don’t know anyone who believes that “all students” are bent on violence, intimidation and attempted manslaughter. I’m not sure I’d care to meet anyone who does, assuming they exist. And I think it’s pretty obvious that your piece is more than mere reporting. Hence the ribbing.
Well no, it’s not a news piece of course. Just ‘scenes I found interesting’.
Anyway, thanks again for heightening the tone. Merry Christmas!
Likewise.
The two student protests near where I live just left tons of litter for someone else to clean up. Kind of symbolic. The university ‘occupation’ backfired too. What’s the message they’re sending? “Fuck everyone else, this is MINE. I’ll just TAKE it”.
“Kind of symbolic.”
What’s interesting to me is the number of protestors and ‘activists’ who aren’t quite grasping what it is their actions are conveying beyond their immediate circle. To date, the more vehement (or “subversive”) those actions have been, the less they seem to have achieved the intended effect. (Unless one counts the threat of violence and mass disruption as acceptable leverage in such disputes.) I suppose it mirrors the idiot Marxists who dominated one local protest and who believed that waving symbols of Soviet totalitarianism and mass murder was a way to signal the worthiness of their cause and their personal righteousness.
Strange, really.
What’s interesting to me is the number of protestors and ‘activists’ who aren’t quite grasping what it is their actions are conveying beyond their immediate circle.
The history of the 1970s in a nutshell. Militancy, campus radicalism and industrial disruption on an unprecedented scale. In 1979 Mrs Thatcher was delivered to power.
Go figure, students.
David,
Harry’s Place jumps the shark. “Laurie Penny: Voice for a Generation”
http://hurryupharry.org/2010/12/21/laurie-penny-voice-for-a-generation/
“Laurie Penny: Voice for a Generation.”
Oh wow. I glanced at it earlier and assumed it was a spoof. Apparently not.
I suppose this takes us back to the alleged “misrepresentation.” I can certainly understand students who don’t wish their feelings to be associated with the violence and thuggery enacted in their name. But the images of violence aren’t the only problem. The protestors’ more prominent spokespeople include Aaron Porter, Simon Hardy and Clare Solomon, none of whom are exactly credible or persuasive figures, not least because of their wilful unrealism and repeated dishonesty. Nor are David Graeber and Priyamvada Gopal, both lecturers, and both reliably absurd. How credible are the Goldsmiths lecturers who described government buildings as “legitimate targets,” who defended arson and vandalism, and who redefined “violence” so as to exclude punching, kicking and attempted murder? What about Terry Eagleton, an embittered Marxist who described suicide bombers – who murder and dismember people arbitrarily – as “tragic heroes” and akin to avant garde theatre?
Now Michael Ezra asks, “Who is there to speak up on behalf of the students?” Bizarrely, he suggests Laurie Penny, a narcissist confabulator who equated a modest cap on housing benefit with the Nazis’ Final Solution.
Incidentally, I understand that Nelson Mandela’s statue was amongst those vandalised during the ‘protests’.