Print

Print


The Post-Corporate University

We would like to bring to your attention an online experiment that is currently 
taking place titled The Post-Corporate University. Edited and curated by Davin 
Heckman, it is the second volume in Culture Machine’s Liquid Books series. The 
volume is available now online and is open for discussion, contributions and 
open collaboration. Please visit http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/The+Post-
Corporate+University

The Post-Corporate University starts from an assumption that the University is 
in crisis and that this crisis has been caused by the social and economic 
characteristics of  neoliberalism.  Asking the question, Is Another University 
Possible?, it provides space for multiple answers and interventions.

Please visit the site, read Davin Heckman’s chapter, 'Neoliberal Arts and the 
21st Century University', and contribute to the discussions, the bibliography 
and the book.

About the Liquid Books Series

Culture Machine’s online ‘liquid books’ – to which everyone is invited to 
contribute – are written and developed in an open, cooperative, decentralised, 
multi-user-generated fashion: not just by their 
initial ‘authors’, ‘editors’, ‘creators’ or ‘curators’, but by a multiplicity of 
collaborators distributed around the world. 

They are freely available for anyone, anywhere, to read, reproduce and 
distribute. Once they have requested access, users are also able to rewrite, 
add to, edit, annotate, tag, remix, reformat, reinvent and reuse them, or even 
produce alternative parallel versions of them. In fact, they are expressly 
invited and encouraged to do so, as the project relies on such an intervention. 

It is hoped that the Liquid Books project will raise a number of important 
questions for ideas of academic authorship, attribution, publication, citation, 
accreditation, fair use, quality control, peer review, copyright, intellectual 
property, content creation and cultural studies. For instance, with its open 
editing and free content, the project decentres the author and editor 
functions, making everyone potential authors/editors. It also addresses an 
issue raised recently by Geert Lovink: why are wikis not utilised more to 
create, develop and change theory and theoretical concepts, instead of 
theory continuing to be considered as the ‘terrain of the sole author who 
contemplates the world, preferably offline, surrounded by a pile of books, a 
fountain pen, and a notebook’? 

At the same time, in ‘What Is an Author?’, Michel Foucault warns that any 
attempt to avoid using the concept of the author to close and fix the meaning 
of the text risks having a limit and a unity imposed on it in a different way: by 
means of the concept of the ‘work’.  To what extent does users’ ability to 
rewrite, remix, reversion and reinvent this liquid ‘book’ then render untenable 
any attempt to impose a limit and a unity on it as a ‘work’? And what are the 
political, ethical and social consequences of such ‘liquidity’ for ideas that 
depend on the concept of the ‘work’ for their effectivity: those concerning 
attribution, citation, copyright, intellectual property, academic success, 
promotion, tenure, and so on?

To find out more, please go to the first Liquid Book, New Cultural Studies: The 
Liquid Theory Reader:

http://liquidbooks.pbwiki.com/New+Cultural+Studies:+The+Liquid+Theory+Read
er

For a quick and easy-to-read guide on how to collaborate on the writing, 
editing and curating of a Liquid Book, please visit:

http://liquidbooks.pbwiki.com/How-to-Contribute-to-a-Liquid-Book

Clare Birchall and Gary Hall