How to Produce a Critique of ‘Open’ in 3 Easy Steps

The Automatic Academic Article and Book Generator™

 

No. 16. How to Produce a Critique of ‘Open’ in 3 Easy Steps 

Step 1)  Set up something you are calling ‘open’ as a straw man by projecting a narrow and weak understanding of openness onto it.

Step 2) Attack this understanding of ‘open’.*

  

Step 3) Present your own version of ‘open’ as an alternative. This allows you to be the hero of your own narrative by in effect saving ‘open’ from itself.  

 

No need to worry about your version of open having already been explored in a more nuanced and rigorous fashion within the movements for open access, open education, open knowledge and so forth. The beauty of this simple, easy to replicate 3-step process is that, by setting up open as a straw man and defining it in a way that serves your own interests, you avoid having to pay attention to any of this.  

References available on request. 

* Important: if your critique involves making a careful reading of thinkers from the history of openness, you absolutely must, must, must remember not to show the same kind of ethical responsibility and hospitality toward contemporary thinkers of what you are calling ‘open’. 

The Crossick Report and the Strange Case of the Missing Monograph Crisis

What are we to make of the somewhat eccentric understanding of the monograph crisis that is conveyed in Geoffrey Crossick's report, Monographs and Open Access, for HEFCE in the UK?

 

According to this report - and contrary to what had often previously been thought - the monograph crisis isn't so much about a decline in the number of monographs that are being acquired by libraries because said libraries can no longer afford them due to the high and rising costs of journal subscriptions. Nor is it about the impact this state of affairs has on the kind of monographs that are being published - more short academic/trade books, textbooks, introductions and reference works selected for commercial reasons; and fewer original, specialised research monographs chosen on the basis of their academic quality and value. Nor is it about the consequences of all this for the academy, and for early career academics especially. No, the monograph crisis is said to be more about the number of monographs that are being published. And since the latter is apparently growing in the UK (although it's worth noting that the term monograph is often used quite broadly in Monographs and Open Access to take in edited collections, critical editions and other longer outputs such as scholarly exhibition catalogues), then one of the report's conclusions is that it's not appropriate to talk about a monograph crisis. 

How has this (mis)understanding of the monograph crisis occurred? Is it a simple mistake? (Given the membership of the Expert Reference Group and the list of international experts consulted for Monographs and Open Access, it would be surprising, indeed shocking, if it had gone unnoticed.) Or does it have something to do with the fact that redefining the monograph crisis in this way has the effect of shifting the focus away from the policies and practices of those publishing companies that are responsible for the rising costs of journal subscriptions: i.e. precisely the state of affairs that is regarded by many as being one of the major causes of the monograph crisis, and therefore as something that needs to be taken fully into account if the issue is ever to be adequately addressed?  Is this the light in which the conclusion of the report's summary, which emphasizes the importance of 'working with the grain', and of ensuring that any future policies for open-access monographs 'sustain and enhance' how people currently produce and communicate research in the arts, humanities and social sciences, is to be read?

 

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For a more detailed analysis of Geoffrey Crossick's report for HEFCE, see Janneke Adema, 'The Monograph Crisis Revisited', on her Open Reflections blog. Geoffrey Crossick has replied at length to 'The Monograph Crisis Revisited' and provided a response to some of my questions in the comment section of Open Reflections.

Piracy In Theory and Practice

PIRACY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Coventry University, UK, 9 - 10 April 2015

http://besidesthescreen.com/?p=366

We are looking for ongoing research projects to participate in a workshop associated with the AHRC funded Besides the Screen symposium PIRACY IN THEORY & PRACTICE, to be held at Coventry University, UK. The workshop will be on Thursday 9th April, during the first day of the main event. Departing from the relation of movie piracy with the economy and politics of content distribution, the symposium means to discuss the dynamics of authority embedded in contemporary systems of communication and explore how informal media practices might intervene with the development of new technologies, frame film curating, foster or inhibit particular scholarships, and even raise questions about the ontology of the moving image.

Confirmed speakers at the symposium include Adnan Hadzi (Coventry/UK), Gary Hall (Coventry/UK), Ramon Lobato (Swinburne/Australia), HD Mabuse (CESAR/Brazil), Gabriel Menotti (UFES/Brazil), Paul McDonald (University of Nottingham/UK), Pedro Mizukami (FGV/Brazil), and Jonas Andersson Schwarz (Sodertorn University/Sweden). We welcome proposals from a wide range of topics within this universe, and encourage the participation of PhD candidates and early career researchers. Participation in the workshop is free of charge (as is attendance at the symposium), but all participants must cover their own transportation and accommodation costs. All participating works will be considered for publication in a special edition of an international, blind peer-reviewed journal.

To submit a proposal, send a text file (doc, docx, rtf) containing a short abstract about your research (~250 words) and bio (~150 words) to the email besidesthescreen@gmail.com with the subject PROPOSAL – PIRACY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. The deadline is 2nd Feb 2015. Selected participants will be notified by 9th Feb 2015.

* * *

Besides the Screen is an international research network active since 2010, involving participants from the UK, Mexico and Brazil. It means to investigate the continuing development of audiovisual practices from a materialistic perspective, deploying artistic and unorthodox methodologies in the context of cinema studies. Its ever-expanding constellation of topics revolves around techniques of projection, the centrality of marginal processes, and the manifold systems of movie storage and transmission. Information about previous events can be found at http://besidesthescreen.com

Videos from Open Education: Condition Critical event

To coincide with the publication of Open Education: A Study in Disruption (London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2014), which was co-authored by Coventry University’s Open Media Group and Mute Publishing, the Centre for Disruptive Media at Coventry organised a panel discussion last October called Open Education: Condition Critical. The video recording of this panel is now online, and you can find it on our YouTube channel or embedded below.

The video includes presentations by Sean Dockray (The Public School and aaaaarg.org), Richard Hall (University of Leicester), Shaun Hides (Coventry University/Disruptive Media Learning Lab), Sharon Irish (University of Illinois/FemTechNet), Pauline van Mourik Broekman (Mute). For more information on the panel, please see here.

Open Education: A Study in Disruption is available for free, open access, here: http://bit.ly/1tI3XEV. It is also available to purchase as either a paperback or hardback from Rowman and Littlefield International: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/books/open-education.

(To buy Open Education: A Study in Disruption in North America, go here: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781783482085) 

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Open Education: A Study in Disruption

Summary
What for decades could only be dreamt of is now almost within reach: the widespread provision of free online education, regardless of a student’s geographic location, financial status, or ability to access conventional institutions of learning. But for all the hype-cycle that has been entered into over MOOCs, many experiments with Open Education do not appear to be designed to challenge the becoming business of the university or alter Higher Education in any fundamental way. If anything, they are more likely to lead to a two-tier system, in which those who can’t afford to pay (so much) to attend a traditional university, will have to make do with a poor, online, second-rate alternative education provided by a global corporation.

Open Education thus engages critically with the creative disruption of the university through free online education. It puts into political context not just the 2012 batch of extremely publicity-savvy MOOCS (Edx, Udacity, FutureLearn etc.), but also TED Talks and Wikiversity along with self-organised ‘pirate’ libraries such as libgen.org and aaaaarg.org, and ‘free universities’ associated with the anti-austerity and student protests and global Occupy movement. Questioning many of the ideas open education projects take for granted, including Creative Commons, it proposes a radically different model for the university and education in the twenty-first century.

Table of Contents
Preface
1 The University in the 21st Century
2 A Radically Different Model of Education and the University
3 The Educational Context
4 Open Education
5 Open Education Typologies
6 Towards a Philosophy of Open Education
Conclusion: Diverse ‘disruption’ (including Media and Cultural Studies PLC)
Bibliography
Index

Endorsements

An exceptionally lucid study of actually existing practices of ‘open education’, this book is also a passionate call for proactive experimentation with emergent media technologies and forms of collaboration that might yet generate a radically different idea of the university. Sober, critical and energizing in equal measure, Open Education: A Study in Disruption is an indispensable guide to those forces of creative destruction that are currently transforming the academy. It should be read by anyone working or studying in contemporary higher education.
David Cunningham, Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster and member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective

In a refreshing change from the simplified (and shallow) treatment in popular media, the authors unveil the layers of complexity needed to truly address the concepts of "Disruption" and "Open Education". While it may contain more questions than answers, this is a critical step in looking beyond strategies of solutionism. Grounded in a consideration of the societal, economic, and cultural influences on the future of higher education, combined with the practical experience of Coventry University, this book will be foundational for any institution that wants to have a hand in crafting their own future.
Alan Levine, Learning Technology Consultant and blogger at cogdogblog.com

Open Education aims at starting new conversations, encouraging a thoughtful engagement with its subjects. Open education emerges through this text as a space of possibility, and opportunity, but also a space which demands an ethical, critical approach.
Jesse Stommel, Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of Hybrid Pedagogy


Author biographies
Pauline van Mourik Broekman is co-founder, Mute, and Mute collective member.

Gary Hall is Professor and Director of the Centre for Disruptive Media at Coventry University, UK, and visiting professor at the Hybrid Publishing Lab – Leuphana Inkubator, Leuphana University, Germany. He is also co-founder (in 1999) of the open access journal Culture Machine, a pioneer of OA in the humanities, and co-founder (in 2006) of Open Humanities Press, which was the first open access publisher explicitly dedicated to critical and cultural theory. He is the author and editor of several books on digital culture and the idea of the university, the best known of which is Digitize This Book!: The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now (Minnesota University Press, 2008)

Ted Byfield is a New York–based independent researcher and writer. He served for over a decade on the design faculty of the New School University, and is a former visiting fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project. He co-founded the Open Syllabus Project research network, and since 1998 has co-moderated the <nettime> mailing list.

Shaun Hides is Head of Department of Media and Co-director of the Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry University, UK. He authored the Department’s Open Media strategy, led a JISC-funded OER project on open-connected teaching innovation and has spoken at numerous events on OER, Innovation and the impact of disruptive technologies on education. He is an advisor to the British Council.

Simon Worthington is a Research Associate at the Hybrid Publishing Consortium – Leuphana Inkubator, Leuphana University, Germany.

Capital at the Brink - new book from OHP

A new open access collection, Capital at the Brink: Overcoming the Destructive Legacies of Neoliberalism, is now available open access from Open Humanities Press, with essays by Paul A. Passavant, Noah De Lissovoy, Robert P. Marzec, Jennifer Wingard, Zahi Zalloua, Jodi Dean, Andrew Baerg, Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Christopher Breu and Uppinder Mehan.

Capital at the Brink reveals the pervasiveness, destructiveness, and dominance of neoliberalism within American society and culture. The contributors to this collection also offer points of resistance to an ideology wherein, to borrow Henry Giroux’s comment, “everything either is for sale or is plundered for profit.” The first step in fighting neoliberalism is to make it visible. By discussing various inroads that it has made into political, popular, and literary culture, Capital at the Brink is taking this first step and joining a global resistance that works against neoliberalism by revealing the variety of ways in which it dominates and destroys various dimensions of our social and cultural life.

Contents

Introduction: The Wrath of Capital — Jeffrey R. Di Leo and Uppinder Mehan

I. Race, Violence, and Politics

1. Neoliberalism and Violent Appearances — Paul A. Passavant

2. The Turn to Punishment: Racism, Domination, and the Neoliberal Era — Noah De Lissovoy

3. Neoliberalism, Environmentality, and the Specter of Sajinda Khan — Robert P. Marzec

4. Rhetorical Assemblages: Scales of Neoliberal Ideology — Jennifer Wingard

5. Neoliberalism, Autoimmunity and Democracy: Derrida and the Neoliberal Ethos — Zahi Zalloua

II. Literature, Culture, and the Self

6. Complexity as Capture: Neoliberalism and the Loop of Drive — Jodi Dean

7. Neoliberalism, Risk, and Uncertainty in the Video Game — Andrew Baerg

8. Neoliberalism in Publishing: A Prolegomenon — Jeffrey R. Di Leo

9. The Post-Political Turn: Theory in the Neoliberal Academy — Christopher Breu

10. Neoliberalism, Post-Scarcity, and the Entrepreneurial Self — Uppinder Mehan