Open Access Week (and stuff about me)
Michael at Complete Lies reminded me about the Open Access Week (next week 19th – 23rd october. Yes, it is 5 days and not seven, don’t ask). For info about celebrations see the Open Humanities Press website. More generally, just spread the word, since everything OA must be celebrated.
As for me, I’ve been a bit absent lately, but the first weeks of term made me much busier than I expected, and many of my mental energies are focused on some intra-departmental issue at my university. As a matter of fact, I am currently sort of ‘leading’ a student protest in my department.
You see, my home university is a lovely place to be, and a wonderfully varied university, but we do not have a department of philosophy. This of course is quite a big dissatisfaction for me, and I often feel somewhat like a stranger here.I have to confess, it is hard for me, especially because I firmly believe that it would be a wonderful place for such a department to thrive.
As a matter of fact, students in my department (SoR) deeply enjoy some of the more theory-oriented courses (courtesy of a small number of philosophically equipped lecturers…and my modest contribution as a TA), and they prepared a petition asking for more. I am just helping them out in terms of organization, signatures gathering and contact with the higher administrative spheres. Moreover, I am planning to start a comparative philosophy reading group, to start sometime in January. I cant give details yet because it is still in embryonic stage, but I am pretty sure I’ll put in some SR-related readings. Definitely Meillassoux, probably Harman on causation. If the few conversations with UG and PG students I’ve had recently are indicative at all, I think it might be quite a crowded one.
Yes, my long term dream would be the establishment of a brand new Philosophy department, ready to open its doors to me as soon as I’m finished with my PhD… Unfortunately, the well known economic situation does not help my dream at all, since severe budget cuts have hit almost all of the departments in my university, and I suspect in many more in the UK and abroad. I was once talking about this with some non-academic friends of mine (i.e. people with real lives), and one of them asked me, ‘Really? You guys are affected too? What do philosophers do in a period of economic recession? Think 30% less? I actually wish it was that simple.
Well enough personal whining. I have a draft of another, more ‘serious’, post, which I’ll try to shape up and publish on the blog as soon as possible.
Fabio Cunctator
Keep up the good fight. I can’t imagine how annoying your situation must be. I’m a little shocked that there is no phil. dept.!
Quite annoying indeed.
There are precise ‘historical’ reasons why we do not have one. I guess I should break out of my anonymity shell (I’m quite a shy person) and clarify where I am. I’m at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), in London. When founded, the instutution was a stronghold of colonial (as in educating colonial officers), and I guess that the ‘orientals’ were not considered smart enough to produce philosophy.
If in the last 50 years the institution has struggled a lot to wash away the somewhat inglorious past, trying to become the ‘School of Non-Orientalistic Asian and Politically Correct African Studies’ (and I am being benevolent in my mockery, I do think it is quite a great place fot these kind of stuff), not much has been done to build up a philosophy department. Yet, as I said in my post, I think that a good department, with people skilled in current trends in continental (me! me! pick me!), analytic (we are in the UK after all) AND non-european philosophy would be a great place to have, which could enrich the philosophy scene of the UK as a whole. The only other place in the world who does this kind of ‘comparative’ (even if i dont like the term too much) work is the Univeristy of Hawaii. But you know, it is a bit out of the loop…
As a matter of fact (and here I put all my cards on the table) it is my plan to bring SR and some asian philosophers in dialogue in my thesis, but its too early to say how.
Anyway, thanks for the support Paul
Good luck, Fabio! I love SOAS, too, but it can be puzzling. For example, the staff of the Department of Anthropology & Sociology includes lots of anthropologists but no sociologists. I suppose it’s another legacy of colonial days, when sociology was about studying “us” and anthropology was about studying “them”. My department is called “Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East”, and I still can’t figure out what the difference is between the Near East and the Middle East.
Maybe if they create a philosophy department and hire you to teach in it, you could teach a course on categorisation in academia. 
That would be great. Could you create departments with names like Department of Hypertiling, Department of Speculative Heresy, Department of Larval Subjects, Department of Complete Lies, etc.?
Ahahaha! They actually sound great! I wonder how to categorize them for the next RAE scores though
Hey don’t forgot anotherheideggerdepartment
No worries. You are already the planned HoD for that one