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Abstract
This is part two of the essay exploring the activities of strikers at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL over a 14 day-period in the early spring of 2018. These days were part of the 2018 University and College Union (UCU) Pension Strike, one of the largest strikes of university academics in recent times, which occurred over a four-week period, with strike days increasing from two days in the first week, to five by the final week. This was a strike to protect the pensions of university workers as a defined benefit scheme rather than a defined contribution one. This essay is structured as a two-stranded diary, weaving together textual materials taken from the Strike chronicle and website produced at the time, with critical reflections written in the present, concerning the current state of the neo-liberal university, discussing issues relating to pensions – namely institutional critique, ethics and equity, labor and work, precarity and care.
Notes
Notes
2. See for example, Unis Resist Border Controls, “The Hostile Environment: Racism, and the Value of Migrants in UK Universities,” #USSbriefs38 (August 8, 2018). See https://ussbriefs.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/ussbriefs38_08082018_0801.pdf. See also The International and Broke Campaign, “The “Hostile Environment” in British Universities,” (20 June 2018) #USSbriefs24. See https://ussbriefs.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/ussbriefs24_200618_1200.pdf
7. Clive Barnett, “The Financialisation of Higher Education and the USS Dispute,” #USSbriefs16, (10 April 2018). See https://ussbriefs.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/ussbriefs16_100418_1600.pdf.
8. Barnett, “The Financialisation of Higher Education and the USS Dispute.”
10. See Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Duke University Press, 2017), and Rosalind Gill, “Breaking the Silence: The Hidden Injuries of the Neoliberal University,” in Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections, ed. Rosalind Gill and Róisín Ryan-Flood (London: Routledge, 2010), 228–244.
11. Jane Rendell, “Critical Spatial Practice as Parrhesia,” special issue of MaHKUscript, Journal of Fine Art Research (2016). http://www.mahkuscript.com/articles/10.5334/mjfar.13/. See Michel Foucault’s lectures on Parrhesia (1983) edited by Joseph Pearson as Fearless Speech (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001).
12. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001), 97.
13. Gail Davies, “Goodwill hunting after the USS Strike,” #USSbriefs66, (10 January 2019). See https://medium.com/ussbriefs/goodwill-hunting-after-the-uss-strike-3b2e302d0dc7
14. Jenny Andersson, “Solidarity or Competition? Creating the European Knowledge Society,” in European Solidarities: Tensions and Contentions of a Concept, ed. Lars Magnusson and Bo Strath (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2007), 295.
15. Gerald Raunig, “Instituent Practices: Fleeing, Instituting, Transforming,” in Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, ed. Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray, trans. Aileen Derieg (London: MayFlyBooks, 2009), 3–13, 10–11.
17. Henry A. Giroux’s On Critical Pedagogy, (London: Bloomsbury, 2011).
19. My original copy, edited by Barbara Penner for the Strike Chronicle, issue 11. See https://www.s-t-r-i-k-e.org/chronicles/2018/3/14/strike-chronicles-issue-eleven
21. Anna Minton’s Big Capital: Who is London for? (London: Penguin, 2017).
22. Barnett, “The Financialisation of Higher Education and the USS Dispute.”
23. John Holmwood and Gurminder K Bhambra, “The Pensions Dispute and the Marketisation of Higher Education,” #USSbriefs3, (3 April 2018). See https://ussbriefs.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/ussbriefs3_030418_10001.pdf
24. https://www.s-t-r-i-k-e.org/chronicles/2018/3/15/strike-chronicles-issue-twelve. See also my original copy for the Strike Chronicle, issue 13. See https://www.s-t-r-i-k-e.org/chronicles/2018/3/16/strike-chronicles-issue-thirteen
26. There are many versions of possible new kinds of university, such as a co-operative, as recommended to me by David Cross, see for example, Mike Neary and Joss Winn’s, “The Abolition of the University: Beyond Public and Private: A Framework for Co-operative Higher Education,” Open Library of Humanities 3, no. 2 (2017) 2, see https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.195/ or The Silent University, recommended to me by Thandi Loewenson, see http://thesilentuniversity.org
27. See for example, Grace Kraus’s blog, http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/rsrc/2018/03/12/sadness-and-solidarity-the-strike-as-utopia/, also recommended to me by Thandi Loewenson.
28. Jane Rendell, “Giving an Account of Oneself, Architecturally,” Special Issue of the Journal of Visual Culture (2016).
29. See USS Briefs for a range of articles on the current situation, one of the most helpful summaries is Nick Hardy, “USS pensions dispute: The state of play,” #USSbriefs65, (19 December 2018).
30. Davies, “Goodwill hunting After the USS Strike.”
31. https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/10715/Our-four-fights/pdf/ucu_four-fights-explainer.pdf. For an excellent discussion of the distinction between financialization, commodification and marketization see for example, Ewald Engelen, Rodriguez Hernandez, and Reijer Hendrikse, “How Finance Penetrates its Other: A Cautionary Tale on the Financialisation of a Dutch University,” Antipode 46, no. 4, (2014): 1072–1091.
32. See UCU, Counting the Costs of Casualisation in Higher Education: Key Findings of a Survey Conducted by the University and College Union (June 2019). https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/10336/Counting-the-costs-of-casualisation-in-higher-education-Jun-19/pdf/ucu_casualisation_in_HE_survey_report_Jun19.pdf (accessed July 16, 2020) and UCU, Second Class Academic Citizens: The Dehumanising Effects of Casualisation in Higher Education (January 2020). This report is based on research conducted by Nick Megoran and Olivia Mason of Newcastle University, endorsed by UCU, with a foreword by Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle Central, and launched on Martin Luther King Day 20 January 2020. https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/10681/second_class_academic_citizens/pdf/secondclassacademiccitizens (accessed 16 July 2020).
33. UCU, Second Class Academic Citizens.
34. “An Open Letter to the Trade Union Movement from Labour Transformed,” see http://links.org.au/britain-coronavirus-social-crisis-open-letter-trade-union-movement-labour-transformed (accessed June 25, 2020).
35. See Warren Pearce, Reputation Over Responsibility: UK HE and the Covid-19 Crisis,” #USSbriefs92, (12 March 2020).
36. See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-lockdown-coronavirus-death-toll-neil-ferguson-a9559051.html (accessed June 25, 2020).
37. https://www.cnet.com/news/covid-19-lockdowns-caused-an-extreme-reduction-in-carbon-emissions/ (accessed July 10, 2020).
38. Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 7 and 35.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jane Rendell
Jane Rendell (BSc, DipArch, MSc, PhD) is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she co-initiated the MA Situated Practice and supervises MA and PhD projects. Jane has introduced concepts of ‘critical spatial practice’ and ‘site-writing’ through her authored books: The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), Site-Writing (2010), Art and Architecture (2006), and The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002). Her co-edited collections include Reactivating the Social Condenser (2017), Critical Architecture (2007), Spatial Imagination (2005), The Unknown City (2001), Intersections (2000), Gender, Space, Architecture (1999) and Strangely Familiar (1995). Working with Dr David Roberts, Bartlett Ethics Fellow, she leads the Bartlett’s Ethics Commission; and, with Research Associate, Dr Yael Padan, she leads work on ‘The Ethics of Research Practice’ for KNOW (The ESRC funded project, Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality: PI Prof Caren Levy). In 2018, she received the RIBA Research Award for History and Theory, for May Mo(u)rn, her research on housing and psychoanalysis, and a UCL Provost's Education Award for her work on ethics.