What on Earth is happening to British politics, culture and society? What is at the root of the present crisis of political representation and objective knowledge? Should we care about the crisis of liberal democracy? Is the internet a powerful new tool of democratic engagement, or is it just driving everyone crazy? What are the causes of Brexit and what are the causes of Boris Johnson?

These and other topics are discussed by Will Davies, author of The Limits of Neoliberalism and Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World and Jeremy Gilbert, author of Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism.

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With Debra Benita Shaw and Alberto Duman

Vitruvian Man, Leonardo’s perfectly proportioned human based on the recommendations of a Roman architect who thought that strong and stable (and beautiful) buildings would guarantee a strong and stable state, still provides the template for architectural design. What this suggests is not only that the built environment is designed to privilege able bodied white males but that architecture is, in itself, inherently political. This seminar will address the politics of space from the position of critical posthumanism in which Vitruvian Man stands for the exemplary human that no body can approximate. If we entertain the idea that we have never been human, then new possibilities emerge for thinking the politics of the social as it is constructed in urban space.

The powerpoints for these talks can be found at these links:TALKING GHOSTS;  Vitruvian Mantology

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With Kojo Koram, Mike Jay, Debra Benita Shaw and Jeremy Gilbert

It is now a matter of historical record that when Nixon and his aides officially launched their ‘war on drugs’ in the late 1960s, their express intention was to criminalise black radicalism and the counterculture. But the link between racism and the drug war goes back much further than that: the prohibition of recreational drug use has been founded on explicit racism since the early 20th century. In a longer historical context, the story gets even weirder. The ‘opium wars’ of the mid 19th century were fought by Britain to force China  to accept imports of opium from British-controlled India. At the same time, generations of white bohemians have embraced drugs as a technology of self-transformation at least since the days of Coleridge and Byron.

What are the implications of this history for understanding the politics of prohibition and drug use today? How does the fightback agains the ‘war on drugs’ intersect with the politics of Black Lives matter? What would a radical, rational and democratic approach to the use and regulation of drugs in the 21st century look like? We discuss these and other issues with Kojo Koram, editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line; Mike Jay, author of High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture & Mescaline: a Global History of the First Psychedelic; Jeremy Gilbert, author of Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism and Debra Benita Shaw, author of Posthuman Urbanism: Mapping Bodies in Contemporary City Space.

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With Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the world of work has been the central political  battleground. What work is, who has to do it, who gets to do it and who gets rewarded for it are the most fundamental issues not just for trade-unionists and economists: but for feminists, artists, parents, teachers and, everyone else.  The reduction of the working week, the reduction of the dependence of workers on their wages, has been a central objective of progressive reform and revolutionary struggle throughout that period. Today, in an age of dual-income families and blurring boundaries between workplace and home, the question of what work gets done in the home, by whom and when – and of how to reduce the load for everyone – has never been more urgent. 

We discuss the nature of work and social reproduction, and the possibilities of a future free from work, with Helen Hester, author of Xenofeminism, and Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism  and Inventing the Future. 

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With Natalie Fenton and Tom Mills

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With Sarah Banet-Weiser and Sara R. Farris

Once an insurgent movement against patriarchy, feminism now finds itself occupying a far more complex position in the world. Powerful institutions,  major corporations and almost all political parties – even the nationalist, xenophobic right – routinely pay lip-service to the goal of sexual equality. What are we to make of all this, and what remains to be done in the pursuit of women’s liberation? We’ll discuss these questions and more with Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny, and Sara Farris, author of In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism. 

https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/whose-empowerment.mp3

Sorry for the poor sound quality on the recording here – we’ve figured out the technical causes and should be back to normal next week!

You should be able to find a video you can watch at http://www.antiuniversity.org/Culture-Power-Politics-course-2019

As the world moves online, politics does too. Despite anxieties about the dangers and limitations of ‘clicktivism’,  online organising has become an indispensable tool for actors on every part of the political spectrum: from independent activists to major political parties. Hacking, open-source development, mobile telephony, piracy and cryptography are indispensable tools for activists all over the world, and for individuals and communities facing power-imbalances of any kind.  What are the implications for democracy and citizenship in the 21st century, and what should we be doing about it? 

We discuss  all this with Alex Worrad-Andrews, software-engineer and founder member of Common Knowledge (a workers cooperative dedicated to building digital infrastructure for grassroots non-representational politics), Paolo Gerbaudo, author of The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy and Amit S. Rai, author of Jugaad Time: Ecologies of Everyday Hacking in India.

https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/digital-politics.mp3

Sorry for the poor sound quality on the recording here. It’s listenable, but you can also find a video you can watch at http://www.antiuniversity.org/Culture-Power-Politics-course-2019

What do the members of today’s ruling elite think they are doing, and why? What stories do they tell themselves, and us, to justify their right to rule? Why has almost every senior politician since the 1980s promised to increase ‘social mobility’, and why have they failed? Aeron Davis, author of Reckless Opportunists: Elites at the End of the Establishment and Jo Littler , author of Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobilitydiscuss this and other issues in the class culture of modern Britain with Jeremy Gilbert and a great group of attendees at the latest Culture, Power, Politics seminar.

See https://culturepowerpolitics.org for details of the series.

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Keir Milburn discusses his new book Generation Left with Lynne Segal, Jeremy Gilbert, and many others.

For information about the culture, power, politics seminar series, go to: https://culturepowerpolitics.org.

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With Alex Williams