Part of me stays in the room where we met
I remember the colors
In your mysterious eyes
Part of me stays
In the room where we met
What has a year of COVID-19 done to knowledge production?
In this new series of The Isolation Pod we’ll be discussing knowledge production after a year of COVID-19. We cover a range of topics in this opening episode from the affectivity of online teaching and the physical strains of digital scholarship through to the social infrastructure for scholarship and the opportunity to critically revaluate the ‘normal’ which many of us feel a yearning to return to. This exploratory conversation raised lots of issues we’ll explore in future such as the role of practice in responding to crisis, the likely shape of post-pandemic academic culture and whether we need to rebuild the social fabric of scholarship.
Heterosexuality is a Construct
Jesus Christ, I’m done with it, you narrow minded piece of shit, I’d sooner cut off my own dick than be like you. Did that make you uncomfortable, is your macho pride in trouble now, when you’ve beaten me up, then what will you do?
Never trust a Tory
“Never trust a tory, they’ll betray you when it matters / They will scramble to the top and then they’ll kick away the ladder, hinny / Never trust a tory, or a tory in disguise, You can see it when you look them in the eye”
What do we mean by ‘post-pandemic’?
What do we mean by ‘post-pandemic’? The term needs to be defined in parallel to established notions such as post-democracy, post-industrial and post-colonial.
The poetics of pandemics: why ‘living with covid’ gets squeezed out by ‘life after covid’
I’m particularly interested in what this means for how we conceive of the ending of pandemics. As Jeremy A. Greene & Dóra Vargha point out in their contribution to Boston Review’s excellent collection Thinking in a Pandemic: “The history of epidemic endings has taken many forms, and only a handful of them have resulted in the elimination of a disease”.
The latent utopia of Twitter
It’s deeply satisfying to take something inchoate within your mind, what C Wright Mills called ‘the feel of an idea’, giving it form as you throw it out into the world and see what others make of it
What have we lost in the accelerated academy?
A sense of loss pervades critical accounts of the contemporary academy. There’s little uniformity in what these accounts regard as having been lost, or explanations of how this was lost, but mourning nonetheless unites them in a critique of the university system we now work within.
What will hybrid offices look like?
There was a really interesting feature in yesterday’s Protocol Sourcecode newsletter about a ‘flattening’ taking place as home offices become more professionalised while conferences rooms are becoming more virtualised to facilitate hybrid meetings. It makes the important observation that firms like Zoom are starting to pivot into this space in […]
How will vaccine nationalism reshape globalisation?
Once we dispense with the idea that vaccine rollout will be a deus ex machina which will take us back to normality (end the story so we can begin at the beginning) we’re faced with the question of what the world will look once we move into a situation of […]
Save us, the human existence is failing
Save usThe human, existenceIs failing, resistanceEssential, the futureWritten off, the odds areAstronomically against usOnly moron and geniusWould fight a losing battleAgainst the super egoWhen giving in is so damn comfortingAnd so we go, on with our livesWe know the truth but prefer liesLies are simple, simple is blissWhy go against […]
Navigating research revolutions: big data, open research and post-truth
This is a session I’ve been running recently for doctoral researchers on ‘research revolutions’. It’s intended as an accessible overview to three major trends which are reshaping the research landscape. It went down well the first time I ran it but I’m trying to expand its implications for practice, as […]
They set me on fire and I did a lot of burning
And now the wind’s getting colder and the night’s getting cruel.But I don’t mind, I don’t mind if I’m with you.I paid for my sins til the blood filled the room.I don’t feel any better now.I don’t mind if I’m with you.Lend me your ear and throw me your rope.I […]
A quick guide to academic podcasting during a pandemic (part 1)
These are notes for Knowledge, Power, Politics students which I’m sharing in case they’re useful for other people The easiest starting point when planning a podcast is to identify podcasts which you’ve enjoyed. My favourite non-academic podcasts are QAnon Anonymous (a weird mix of citizen journalism, comedy and real time […]
The space for learning design during a pandemic
This is a great summary by Jonan Donaldson on pg 97 of Critical Digital Pedagogy of a trend we’ve all seen during the pandemic: With the rapid expansion of online learning over the last decade I have witnessed a tendency to translate classes into online modalities with designs closely resembling […]
Concepts for the new normal
Sociology On and Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis: An Online Symposium
The self under siege: the best introduction to modern continental philosophy I’ve encountered
I watched this series of lectures by Rick Roderick around a decade ago and it remains the best introduction to modern continental philosophy I’ve ever encountered. I’m sharing it here (and pinning it) as a reminder for myself to rewatch it but also to encourage other people to watch it […]
