Democracy Ateneo Announcement 10-10-15

Compañer@s,

We will convene the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo, Saturday, October 10, from 2 - 5 p.m. at Casa de Vicky <http://www.casavicky.com/> (792 E. Julian St., San Jose) to resume our regularly scheduled reflection and action space and to explore some of the questions and struggles mentioned below.

The intersection of the current emphasis on the politics of knowledge production and an investment in fostering the political capacities of autonomous communities underscore the challenges of celebrating and facilitating the production of locally generated, or situated, knowledges. As more and more projects recognize the link between colonialism (as well as internal colonialism) and "epistemicide" they have begun to reconsider the restrictive role of elite education and question an incomplete and unfulfilled politics of inclusion. The recent resurgence of the global south's resistance to neoliberal austerity programs and extractivist projects has not only renewed interest in participatory democratic practices and autonomous strategies that reclaim commons and regenerate locally-rooted culture but has also revived a critical interest in grassroots knowledge production in opposition to the epistemicide integral to earlier and current phases of colonialism. The political energy generated by rebellious communities intent in representing their own struggles follows closely on the heels of the dissatisfaction with the "identity politics" that have dominated political discussions from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. In the growing opposition to boutique, corporate, and administrative multiculturalism more and more visibly in service to neoliberal structural adjustment in the neoliberal corporatized university, fewer and fewer accept the promise of cultural citizenship through academic achievement. The disenchantment with the academy emerges alongside recent strategies of political mobilization that refuse "traditional" leftist routes of attaining political power through hierarchical organizations and rigid ideological discipline for purposes of commandeering dominant institutions. As the politics of representation shift from accepting low intensity diversity and the related discourses of the colorblind, communities are once again investing a wide variety of strategies of self-representation and self-determination with an emphasis on local knowledge production.
It is in this context that it seems worthwhile to engage Gigi Roggero's book, The Production of Living Knowledge. Roggero introduces three key areas of reflection that we might consider as useful points of departure. Roggero insists that we interrogate the neoliberal corporatized university from the perspective of a now permanent capitalist crisis in relation to "the transformations of labor and production" such that "conflicts within the production of living knowledge are a central battlefield of class struggle, power relations, and productive relationships." (p. 3) In addition, Roggero asks us to consider the political potential of "institutions of the common" --"the autonomous organization of living knowledge, the reappropriation of social wealth, and the liberation of the powerful forces frozen in the threadbare dialectic between public and private: black studies since the 1960s and the contemporary experiences of autonomous education, or self-education." (p.9) Finally, Roggero suggests that an effort that takes class struggle seriously should be a collective one in the form of "co-research" in which "the production of knowledge is immediately the production of subjectivity and the construction of organization." 
Using these three areas of reflection as points of reference, we might ask how we actually co-generate a theory of the university and that theory in relation to how we are reading capital in the current conjuncture. In other words, we have to cover the same ground Roggero does. But, does Roggero go far enough in his interrogation of the neoliberal corporatized university and processes of knowledge production?
How do we, for example, actually create an "institution of the commons" within the mainstream university structure as such. Are we being to glib or to quick to claim Black Studies and other similar projects as institutions of the commons? In the case of Chican@ Studies, we witness a total co-optation. Chican@s and Latin@s in the academy claim a department, research center, and student-activist center on most major campuses. We also celebrate representation through professional associations, (e.g. NACCS, MALCS). Our students benefit from an elaborate apparatus for remedial instruction. Despite all of this infrastructure dedicated to our inclusion in the academy, we remain stigmatized by a debilitating achievement gap. Uncritically celebrating inclusion of historically marginalized groups risks marginalizing other kinds of efforts that are militantly autonomous, such as midnight schools across the South that do not worry about their university affiliation. 
While we appear to be in agreement with the gesture that co-research makes, as proponents of militant research and co-research have we gone far enough elaborating how we insure that reclaimed moments of knowledge production are also very visibly insurgencies that disrupt capitalist social relations, co-generate radical democratic spaces, and regenerate institutions of the common. Similarly, if we agree that the battle over the production of living knowledge is a site of subjectivity, what subject is being forged in any given moment of struggle? How do we engage a collective subjectivity in specific contexts? What risks do we run if there is a lack of specificity as to how we can manage these questions in relation to how we are reading capital? Should we be more deliberate when we distinguish between different kinds of knowledges and not be too quick to celebrate every moment of opposition as a minor or subversive knowledge. Relatedly, we may also need to establish a taxonomy of learning accepting that not all moments of inquiry or discovery are the same. Learning can take place in a number of contexts and not necessarily disrupt the social relation but rather reinforce it. 
South Bay and North Bay Crew

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