*an We Unlearn Liberal Individualism Like We Can Unlearn Racism and
Sexism? *
Join us for this ‘In-conversation’, where Gary Hall and Carolina Rito
address this question while discussing Hall's latest book,/A Stubborn
Fury: How Writing Works in Elitist Britain/ *
*
*Thurs 25 March 2021, 7.00pm (GMT), free online event, via Zoom*
****
Go here to register:
https://www.eventsforce.net/cugroup/177/register
Other questions that will be addressed during the event include:
·How come so much writing in England is realist, humanist and
anti-intellectual?
·Is all great literature pirated?
·Why are Oxbridge-educated journalists obsessed with protecting
‘ordinary’ people from difficult language?
·What do we need most – another theory of revolution or a revolution of
theory?
·Is everyone writing their memoirs today or does it just seem like it?
·And why is Gary so mean to Tom McCarthy?
**
*Biographies*
***Gary Hall - Author *
Gary Hall is a critical theorist and media philosopher working in the
areas of digital culture, politics and technology. He is Professor of
Media in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Coventry University, UK,
where he directs the Centre for Postdigital Cultures. He is the author
of a number of books, including /Pirate Philosophy/ (MIT Press, 2016)
and /The Uberfication of the University/ (University of Minnesota Press,
2016).
***Carolina Rito*
Carolina Rito is Professor of Creative Practice Research, at the
Research Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities (CAMC), at Coventry
University; and leads on the centre’s Critical Practices research
strand. She is a researcher and curator whose work explores ‘the
curatorial’ as an investigative practice, expanding practice-based
research in the fields of curating, visual arts, visual cultures and
cultural studies. Rito is Executive Board Member of the Midlands Higher
Education & Culture Forum; Research Fellow at the Institute of
Contemporary History (IHC), Universidade NOVA de Lisboa; Founding Editor
of The Contemporary Journal; and Chair for the Collaborative Research
Working Group for the MHECF. Rito is the co-editor of Institution as
Praxis – New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research
(Sternberg, 2020), Architectures of Education (e-flux Architecture,
2020), and FABRICATING PUBLICS: the dissemination of culture in the
post-truth era (Open Humanities Press, forthcoming).
---
Details about the book:
Gary Hall, A Stubborn Fury: How Writing Works in Elitist Britain
London: Open Humanities Press, 2021
Series: Media : Art : Write : Now
E-version freely available on an open access, no copyright basis:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/a-stubborn-fury/
<http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/a-stubborn-fury/>
Also available in paperback
*Abstract*
*/A Stubborn Fury: How Writing Works in Elitist Britain/*
Two fifths of Britain’s leading people were educated privately: that’s
five times the amount as in the population as a whole, with almost a
quarter graduating from Oxford or Cambridge. Eight private schools send
more pupils to Oxbridge than the remaining 2894 state schools combined,
making modern Britain one of the most unequal places in Europe.
In /A Stubborn Fury/
<http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/a-stubborn-fury/>, Gary
Hall offers a powerful and provocative look at the consequences of this
inequality for English culture in particular. Focusing on the literary
novel and the memoir, he investigates, in terms that are as insightful
as they are irreverent, why so much writing in England is uncritically
realist, humanist and anti-intellectual. Hall does so by playfully
rewriting two of the most acclaimed contributions to these media genres
of recent times. One is that of England’s foremost avant-garde novelist
Tom McCarthy, and the importance he attaches to European modernism and
antihumanist theory. The other is that of the celebrated French
memoirists Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis, and their attempt to
reinvent the antihumanist philosophical tradition by producing a theory
that speaks about class and intersectionality, yet generates the
excitement of a Kendrick Lamar concert. Experimentally pirating
McCarthy, Eribon and Louis, /A Stubborn Fury/ addresses that most urgent
of questions: what can be done about English literary culture’s
addiction to the worldview of privileged, middle-class white men, very
much to the exclusion of more radically inventive writing, including
that of working-class, BAME and LGBTQIAP+ authors?
--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Director of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Faculty of Arts & Humanities,
Coventry University:
http://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/areas-of-research/postdigital-cultures
http://www.garyhall.info
Latest:
Book (open access): A Stubborn Fury: How Writing Works in Elitist Britain:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/a-stubborn-fury/
Chapter (open access): ‘Postdigital Politics’, in Cornelia Sollfrank, Shuhsa
Niederberger and Felix Stalder, eds, Aesthetics of the Commons:
https://www.diaphanes.com/titel/aesthetics-of-the-commons-6419
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