Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Con-Demmed to the Bleakest of Futures


A hastily penned response to the UK government's cuts to culture and education, for e-flux journal #22 - a special issue reporting on the rise of the right in Europe, guest edited by Paul Chan and Sven Lütticken.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Claire,

I read your article and it clearly defines the issues around neoliberalism's attack on the social fabric of community life and most things human and authentic. So in response to your article I wrote a personal blog post on Furtherfield called 'How a Library Saved My Life' http://www.furtherfield.org/blog/marc-garrett/how-library-saved-my-life

Thank you & wishing you well.

marc garrett

Trailer Star said...

Whilst agreeing with the article in spirit I think it a little soft on the many abuses that were happening under the previous administration's largesse. The ACE internal audit found nepotism and corruption on a large scale and my personal experience of quasi- quangos like Creative Partnerships was they nice if one allowed in to the inner ring of funding spenders but achieved little of real worth apart from paying a lot of middle-class mortgages.

In most cases of the over £6 billion spent in the Labour years there is little of long-term worth to show for it apart from a string of contemporary galleries trying to shore up a failed regeneration mantra. If some of that £6 million had been spent on Student Fees returning to their 1980's level we wouldn't have paved the way for the present disaster.


If more accountability had been shown then we would not be so weak now in oposing the Con Dem hammer.

Also as a 'magic carpeter' (Seabrook) you have been fortunate to be extracted by your talents from your background and are one of the lucky ones as now able to work in the land of Academic capitalism par excellence.

Ironically then Willets is instigating a model you are being renumerated by already surely?

Meanwhile we poor less able miners at the coalface here in Academia UK PLC are watching the pit props collapse around us:-(

The neoliberal capatalist agenda has not varied nor shirked in its implementation since 1979...and many so-called left-wingers are as guilty in its propagation as those on the far right.