Digital Undercommons (cancelled)
Description
The ‘Digital Undercommons’ is a project developing an online study platform for students to meet and discuss issues relating to race, decoloniality and globalisation outside of the formal requirements of their university courses. The project is informed by ideas conceptualised by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten in The Undercommons: Black Study & Fugitive Planning, London: Minor Compositions, 2013.
I am a founding editor of darkmatter (http://www.darkmatter101.org/) - an open access e-journal committed to anti-racist and postcolonial critique. I have been awarded some funding from LCC Research to repurpose the darkmatter e-journal site for the Digital Undercommons. (The relationship of the study platform with the e-journal aims to also 'hybridise' informal study, students, research and e-publishing). In this session I wish to explore the potential of the Digital Undercommons as an informal hybrid site for decolonial study in the context of increasing digital exploitation and the neoliberal university.
I taught Media and Cultural Studies for over 25 years at the University of East London to a diverse student body, introducing challenging theoretical ideas and writings by experimenting with a range of pedagogical approaches and methods. I have recently joined LCC/UAL as a course leader for a new BA Film and Screen Studies, which is being developing in relation to an international student body and a decolonial curriculum. I am examining how blended learning can inform a decolonial, anti-racist course. I recently joined the newly established ‘Experimental Pedagogies Research Group’ at LCC.
My area of expertise in terms of teaching, research and writing is race, postcolonialism and audio-visual culture. I am completing a book on race, diaspora and visual culture. I am also one of the facilitators of the Black Study Group (London), and have established and been involved in a number of off and online reading and study groups.
Interaction
How do we understand the ‘Undercommons’, ‘Black Study’ and ‘Fugitive Planning’?
In what ways does the digital change or rework the idea of the 'Undercommons'?
Is it possible to have a decolonial digital project which is ‘hybrid' – ‘in but not of' `- the neoliberal (digital) university?
Outcomes
The sharing of ideas at the session will feed into developing the digital study platform, and the undergraduate course that I am leading at LCC.
The session would also inform planning of the e-journal darkmatter as a site for student study, research and e-publishing.
The session may highlight areas to examine in the Experimental Pedagogies Research Group and applications for funding.