<editorial board> Contribution to the discussion

[Jon Solomon Su Zhe-an]

Dear Friends, 

 

I am impressed with the ideas that have been put forth so far. Before these
discussions began, I sent a message to the organizational steering committee
about some issues that were of concern to me. They are certainly too
general, yet I would like to share them with the larger group of the
editorial board: 

 

The idea of dividing the journal into three sections speaks for itself and
certainly responds to a necessity seen in the edu-factory discussions.
However, I would like to suggest a further elaboration, since the current
section divisions suggest a kind of conventional divide between theory and
praxis that sounds a little old fashioned. Instead, I suggest the divisions
be conceived around the theme of translation as a form of institutional
practice. Hence there are two types of translation, one endogenous, the
other exogenous, that correspond to different modes of address, and
different types of translation across the edu-factory.

 

The endogenous part of the journal focuses on the epistemological and
intellectual aspects of neoliberal restructuring and the possibilities for a
radical reorganization of the disciplines so that they can finally leave
behind their colonial, anthropological, capitalist, gendered, etc...legacy.
This mode of address is addressed to the specialist involved in the
production of knowledge within the existing university structure. In other
words, this part of the journal takes thought as a specific mode of
sociality--one that is open, like all other modes of sociality, to
cooperation and contestation, to social movements. Within this part of the
journal, it will be permitted and even necessary to engage the use of jargon
and specialized terminology that may be inaccessible to the layman outside
the University as well as the many non-specialist workers within the
University. Yet the allowance for jargon does not obviate the need for
translation on many different levels. In the endogenous project, such
translation occurs principally between disciplines and/or national/regional
contexts. The necessity of these translations calls upon us to ask how can
we use the University to transform the relation between language, value and
regions?

 

The exogenous part of the project engages various exciting alternatives
outside the University, on its edges, or on its various underpaid
"invisible" labor. It shows how the promise of the University as a social
commons has been betrayed by the historical forms of enclosure and the new
forms being consolidated by new hegemonies; it proposes actually existing
subjects of struggle or emergent social forms as an alternative. Within this
part of the journal, the principal mode of address should be in a format
that is highly accessible to a wide variety of non-specialists. Here, the
principal mode of translation occurs between different forms of
subjectivation and creative attempts at resistance. 

 

The common link between the two types of address/translation is to be found
in the idea of translation as a mode of subjective technology rather than a
synthetic step towards objective knowledge--displacing "the body of
knowledge" in favor of the "knowledgeable body" involved in a process of
social transformation. 

 

An explicit division of sections according to different modes of translation
(rather than theory versus praxis) would have the additional benefit of
implicitly opening up the journal's use of global English as a lingua
franca-really, an implicit model of translation-to the
socially-transformative possibilities discussed in the edu-factory. I think
it is extremely important that the journal adopt an aggressively self-aware
approach to the possibilities and limitations inherent in the use of English
as a model of translation, or else risk being trapped in the contradictions
contained therein. Unless these contradictions are addressed from the outset
as an integral part of the journal's self-understanding and
self-organization, it is likely that the journal will succumb to implacably
opposed understandings of globalization and Imperialism seen between the
North and South (or East and West). 

 

I think the name of the global autonomous university project should be
changed to global common university. 

 

I hope the above suggestions are helpful. My admiration goes to all those
who have organized this project. 

Warm thoughts,

Jon Solomon

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