Mark Carrigan

Mark Carrigan

Digital Sociology of Higher Education


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    • Reflexive scholarship and digital academic culture
    • Personal morphogenesis and platform socialisation
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  • The pleasure of returning to novels

    I’ve spent the last month rereading most of Irvine Welsh’s novels. In the late summer I read Jonathan Franzen’s novels again, after his most recent book reminded me of my love for his work. I feel a vague sense of guilt when I read books again. In part it’s awareness that the constraints of the […]

    December 29, 2022
  • Why we need a post-digital approach to the platform university

    One of the virtues of a postdigital approach to technology within higher education is that it helps us unpick two seemingly contradictory stances: marginalisation and the shock of the new. There is a tendency to see technology as a contingent part of the research process which is peripheral to its core operations. For example the […]

    December 29, 2022
  • Choose life: some notes on Lacan’s death drive

    I found this lecture from the excellent Derek Hook extremely helpful for understanding how Lacan reconceived the classical Freudian sense of the death drive, which it should be noted was originally proposed by Sabina Spielrein. I’m interested in this topic for a number of reasons, not least of all the compulsive elements of digital agency […]

    December 28, 2022
  • Next year’s going to be better than this

    I’d like to take this opportunity and toast to me For being exactly who I’m supposed to be ‘Cause life is gonna do what life does I don’t wanna look back and regret who I was Let go of the expectations and then fire one Forget the tally sheet before all my time’s up And […]

    December 27, 2022
  • I miss my old house

    I’ve written recently about how much of a wrench it was to leave my old life in Cambridge. However as much as I valued that life I never felt entirely uncomfortable with where I was living, much as as my clear sense of what ‘home’ looked like created a problem in the 2010s in a […]

    December 22, 2022
  • The time a bus went boom outside a conference I was organising

    I was looking for something else in my e-mail archives and I just came across this blast from the past. During my time at the Warwick Business School’s Data Science Lab I led the organisation of an international conference with 50 speakers and 300 delegates. It was a deeply stressful few days which became much […]

    December 22, 2022
  • I’ve been taking some time to be distant

    Hi Ren… I’ve been taking some time to be distant I’ve been taking some time to be still I’ve been taking some time to be by myself and I’ve spent half my life ill But just as sure as the tide starts turning Just as sure as the night has dawn Just as sure as […]

    December 22, 2022
  • But then why do you write? Nietzsche on the necessity of getting rid of your thoughts

    I’ve been dipping back into The Gay Science today which alongside Ecce Homo was my gateway into Nietzsche in my mid-20s. Whenever I’ve returned to them I’ve found new passages which resonate, as with this account (pg 90) of why writing for Nietzsche was a necessity: But then why do you write? – A: I […]

    December 16, 2022
  • What I’ll be working on over the next five years

    This post is a professional/intellectual counterpart to this reflection. It’s been deeply therapeutic to write these after an exhausting year and it affirms why I’ve kept a personal blog over the last 12 years. Here’s an extract from chapter 7 of Platform and Agency: Becoming Who We Are In A Digital World which conveys the […]

    December 15, 2022
  • If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim

    If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being […]

    December 15, 2022
  • How will universities cope with ChatGPT?

    I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT over the last few days and the quality of the responses is really unsettling. I imagine there would be a certain set of skills needed to use this effectively to cheat on assignments, given the truncated character of the answers. But its capacity to offer coherent responses to relatively […]

    December 14, 2022
  • I’m going to make it through this year if it kills me

    December 14, 2022
  • Jouissance: Enjoying in the margins

    December 14, 2022
  • I’m a lifeless face that you’ll soon forget

    Well, I’ve lost it all, I’m just a silhouette I’m a lifeless face that you’ll soon forget My eyes are damp from the words you left Ringing in my head, when you broke my chest Ringing in my head, when you broke my chest And if you’re in love, then you are the lucky one […]

    December 13, 2022
  • The death drive as a will to create from zero, to begin again

    I found this incredibly thought provoking from Richard Seymour as a reflection on the possibility of hope in a time of crisis. It suggests we need to move through despair because there is no way around it, but that on the other side we can find a hope grounded in a coming to terms with […]

    December 13, 2022
  • Why has social media become so grim?

    December 13, 2022
  • The lights are out, the phones are dead

    The lights are out, the phones are dead And I’m the only thing that’s running in this city Except for the clouds and man, they’re coming down If I knew my way around, I wouldn’t feel so dizzy

    December 11, 2022
  • Who should we trust when the apocalypse comes? Some thoughts on post-horror

    I’m currently working on a project with Milan Stürmer exploring how post-horror films both pre-figured pandemic imaginaries (2016-2019) and responded to them (2020-2022). It emerged from conversations in pub beer gardens in Cambridge during the summer of 2021 at a point when some vestiges of normal life had returned but things nonetheless felt extremely strange. […]

    December 11, 2022
  • Hope is optimism with a broken heart

    I wrote when leaving Cambridge in August 2021 how “Prior to the pandemic I was rapidly getting institutionalised into the university, pottering around the city over the course of the day between my office, college canteens, green spaces, coffee shops, college gardens and cinemas”. It was the first time in my life I had experienced […]

    December 11, 2022
  • What would happen if every human suddenly disappeared?

    Building on this extremely interesting looking book: On a similar theme, though I haven’t watched it yet:

    December 9, 2022
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