[Air-L] Liquid Book - The Post-Corporate University

[Gary Hall]

(Apologies for cross-posting)

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 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+Reader

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

-- 
Gary Hall
Professor of Media and Performing Arts
School of Art and Design, Coventry University
Co-editor of Culture Machine 
http://www.culturemachine.net
Co-founder of the Open Humanities Press
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org
My website http://www.garyhall.info

Latest book: Digitize This Book!: The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now 
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/H/hall_digitize.html