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 Antiuniversity of London
— An Introduction to Deinstitutionalisation
By Jakob Jakobsen

The Antiuniversity of London appears

in many ways as a massive failure when
‘We have to step out of Structure A to be able to see it. But one can’t step out
looked at superficially. But whether it was if there is nowhere to step to.’ (Joseph Berke, The Guardian, 15.2.1968)
a terminal failure or actually an experi-
ment that did not succeed at its specific
point in history depends on how you
approach this historic anti-institution. ‘Women, Hippies, youth groups, students and school children all question the
The Antiuniversity raised an enormous
amount of questions. In many ways that
institutions that have formed them, and try to erect their obverse: a collective
could be viewed as sufficient in itself, if commune to replace the bourgeois family; “free communications” and counter-
the experimental nature of this project
is well-understood. Experiments are by media; anti-universities – all attack major ideological institutions of this society.
their nature open-minded trials based on The assaults are specified, localised and relevant. They bring the contradic-
hopes and assumptions. And the key is
that there is no certainty about the out- tions out into the open.’ (Juliet Mitchell, Woman’s Estate, Penguin, 1971, p.32)
come.

Institutions are by definition conservative. well aware of the Strasbourg text. Here ‘To develop the concepts and form of open meeting on setting up an antiuni-
That is in some respect implied in the the perspective is on the university’s im- experience necessary to comprehend versity in London in November 1967. It
word ‘institution’, which stems from the pact on the students, turning them into the events of this century and the mean- consisted of David Cooper, Leon Redler,
Latin word institutio meaning to set up, to depoliticised and pacified subjects: ing of one’s life within it, to examine Juliet Mitchell, Asa Benveniste, Stuart
establish. By 1400, ‘institution’ in French ‘Modern capitalism and its spectacle al- artistic expression beyond the scope of Montgomery, Russ Stetler, Morton Schatz-
had assumed the meaning of something lot everyone a specific role in a general the usual academy and to promote a man, Allen Krebs and Joseph Berke. Most
established, a system of government, a passivity. The student is no exception position of social integrity and commit- of this group were either psychiatrists or
religious order. The term institution was to the rule. He has a provisional part to ment from which scholars now stand psychoanalysts.
gaining foothold with the secularisation play, a rehearsal for his final role as an aloof.’
of society in the early Renaissance, in element in market society as conserva- Another flash point was the fee and pay-
parallel to the establishment of the first tive as the rest. Being a student is a form As stated on the promotional material ment structure of the Antiuniversity,
network of European universities. Institu- of initiation. An initiation which echoes from the Antiuniversity no formal quali- which was based on a membership struc-
tions are not just bricks and mortar; they the rites of more primitive societies with fication was needed to get involved and ture with a fee per quarter of £8 and 10
are part of ‘collective phantasy systems’, bizarre precision. It goes on outside of no degrees would be awarded. These shillings (50 pence) for every course. The
as the existentialist psychiatrist R.D. Laing history, cut off from social reality. The details bring the educational aims of the course leaders/teachers were offered pay-
puts it. Laing was himself involved in the student leads a double life, poised be- Antiuniversity into a different realm than ment for their effort in running a course.
Antiuniversity. tween his present status and his future the traditional university which aims to This was based on the model of the Free
role. The two are absolutely separate place the student into her future role in University of New York after it opened on
For the people around the Antiuniversity and the journey from one to the other the market, as the Situationists pointed East 14th Street in the summer of 1965.
it was very much the conservatism and is a mechanical event “in the future”. out. At the Antiuniversity the focus was Already on the first day of the life of the
reactionary structures of the established Meanwhile, he basks in a schizophrenic experiential and experimental. This was Antiuniversity, this structure caused vari-
universities that made them move towards consciousness, withdrawing into his ini- not only in relation to society but also in ous debates around pay and fees, as well
setting it up. As written in the first cata- tiation group to hide from the future. relation to the institution itself, or anti- as the traditional teacher and students
logue of the Antiuniversity in February Protected from history, the present is a institution to be precise. structure that the Antiuniversity seemed
1968: mystic trance.’ (‘Strasbourg: Ten Days to replicate.
‘The Antiuniversity of London has been That Shook the University’, in Joseph As stated in the Strasbourg text in a
founded in response to the intellectual Berke, ed., Counter Culture, Peter Owen somehow enigmatic way, ‘the abolition of The catalogue of the first quarter offered
bankruptcy and spiritual emptiness of Limited, 1969) alienation is only reached by the straight over 30 different courses with a very di-
the educational establishment in both and narrow path of alienation itself’. This verse field of topics as well as teachers. A
Britain and rest of the world.’ The aim of the Antiuniversity was to open could mirror Joseph Berke’s statement group of teachers involved with the New
up education to a wider social reality, about the Antiuniversity: ‘In the process of Left Review was running various courses in
As one of its main movers, the American which was contrary to the inward-looking making an institution we deinstitutional- political theory and revolutionary move-
psychiatrist Dr Joseph Berke writes in traditional university, an institution main- ised ourselves’. This somehow underlines ments. Avant-garde artists such as John
April 1968 in a introductory text about ly occupied with its own survival as an in- that the social relation inside the institu- Latham and Cornelius Cardew were run-
the Antiuniversity: stitution within the given society. The cri- tion was going to be key in the experimen- ning courses consisting of collective and
‘The schools and universities are dead. tique of the university and the students it tal and demystifying process that was going practical experimentation with making
They must be destroyed and rebuilt in produces have to be seen within a context to become the Antiuniversity of London. artistic work. A group of poets and writers
our own terms. These sentiments re- where especially the American universities such as John Keys and Lee Harwood of-
flect the growing belief of students and were tightly linked to commercial inter- Already at the opening of the Antiuniver- fered (anti-)courses in poetry. The group
teachers all over Europe and the United ests and corporations that were underpin- sity on February 12, 1968 discussions and of existential psychiatrists such as R.D.
States as they strip aside the academic ning nuclear armament and the ongoing antagonism between students, teachers Laing, David Cooper, Leon Redler and
pretensions from their “institutions of war in Vietnam. Also to be considered was and the Ad-Hoc Coordination Committee Joseph Berke were running courses cover-
higher learning” and see them for what the general political atmosphere charac- flared up, according to Harold Norse’s ing aspects of psychiatry and psychology
they are – rigid training schools for the terised by an institutionalised fear and report in the International Times. The viewed from a critical social perspective.
operation and expansion of reactionary repression of the Left and the civil rights problem was that the coordination com- Also covered were Black Power, experi-
government, business, and military bu- movements. This political climate led to mittee had made arrangements with the mental drugs, printmaking and under-
reaucracies.’ the Free University of New York, the fore- BBC about coverage of the Antiuniversity. ground media. Alexander Trocchi offered
runner of the Antiuniversity, becoming There were questions about whether a a course with the title Invisible Insurrec-
In many ways, such a position can be the object of a congressional hearing in media organisation of the Establishment tion, referring to his key text of 1962 on
linked to the Situationists and their cri- the preparation of ‘bills to make punish- should be trusted as a way to promote the the founding of a spontaneous university,
tique of the university in Strasbourg in able assistance to enemies of the US in ideas around the project or whether this which was one of the inspirations to the
the text ‘Ten Days That Shook the Uni- time of undeclared war’ in 1966. was a sell-out of the revolutionary aspira- Antiuniversity. And the poet Ed Dorn
versity’ which they issued in 1966. As one tions to which the project was committed. just declared in his course blurb that he
of the main forces behind the founding As a response to this ‘collective phantasy The Ad-Hoc Coordination Committee would ‘be ready to talk to anyone who
9 of the Antiuniversity Dr Joseph Berke was system’ the Antiuniversity sought was the group who had called for the first wants to talk to me’.
10
 The Antiuniversity opened its doors at 49 Berke and Krebs brought the experiences the room due to illness and the group of the US and the New Experimental Col-
Rivington Street in Shoreditch, East Lon- and revolutionary ideas of Free University students taking over the meeting. Togeth- lege in Denmark. According to Roberta
don in a building owned by the Bertrand of New York and Kingsley Hall with them er with the students, John Latham turned Elzey who wrote about the Antiuniversity
Russell Peace Foundation. Russ Stetler, into the Antiuniversity. the classroom into a big book sculpture in Berke’s Counter Culture book, this first
one of the directors of the foundation, and Cornelius Cardew refused to play for commune improved the atmosphere and
was himself on the Ad-Hoc Coordination The first catalogue was beautifully block the students because he believed that they the care of the space. It helped to deinsti-
Committee and this paved the way for rea- printed on high quality paper made by should produce their own music. This tutionalise the university and establish new
sonable rent and conditions. The Antiuni- the poet, publisher and printmaker Asa anticipated the work that he later did and closer connections with the material
versity was sponsored by a loan from the Benveniste. In the introduction it was with the Scratch Orchestra. Other courses everyday life of the learning environment.
Institute of Phenomenological Studies, stated that: were more traditional lectures on politi- This new development catalysed a week-
which in many respects was also one of ‘We must destroy the bastardised mean- cal science and revolutionary theory. And end workshop about the practicalities and
the main forces in setting up the project. ing of ‘student’, ‘teacher’ and ‘course’ some of the courses presented in the cata- ideals of organising a commune. Most of
The Institute of Phenomenological Stud- in order to regain the original meaning logue never happened. the communes around London came to
ies had the previous year organised the of teacher – one who passes on the tra- the Antiuniversity at the end of April 1968
Dialectics of Liberation Congress where dition; student – one who learns how to The year at the Antiuniversity was divided and shared experiences and political ideas
the idea of setting up the Antiuniversity learn; and course – the meeting where into four quarters lasting eight weeks around communal living and the possible
of London had first emerged. In the this takes place.’ each. In the second catalogue a new structuring of the ‘antifamily’.
minutes of a meeting of the Ad-Hoc Co- course was introduced called the Counter
ordination Committee of January 8, 1968 Even though the traditional hierarchies University that was to focus on the devel- The second term started May 6 and a new
the building and the needed changes are were to be challenged in the Antiuniver- opment and operation of the Antiuniver- catalogue was published. This time the pa-
described as follows: sity, many of the structures of the official sity itself. As a natural consequence of the
‘Building – […] Structure – basement university cast their shadow over the new experiential and experimental nature of
– one large room to take up to 40 peo- anti-institution both in terms of economic the anti-institution the first meeting of
ple. Ground floor – reception area for relations and in terms of the Antiuniver- this Counter University group was called
secretary and one large room to be sity knowledge/power relations. This can for at the beginning of May 1968 as an
used as loge – small snack facilities to be linked to one of the fathers of the Free assembly for everybody involved with the
be installed. First floor – three small University movement, Paul Goodman, who Antiuniversity. The flyer had the heading
rooms to be converted to one small and in his 1962 book The Community of Scholars ‘You and the Anti-U’ and continued the
one large room by removing a partition. excavated the initial ideas and aspirations debate around the organisational ques-
Remaining partition to be altered so as behind the development of medieval uni- tions already debated the first days at the
to soundproof the two rooms. Second versities. Here he maintains that teaching Antiuniversity. It stated:
floor – two moderately large rooms – is a profession based on experience within ‘These past four months have proved
take 20-25 people. Furniture – building a certain field of knowledge. Difference that an antiuniversity can survive – it per and printing quality were less delicate.
comes with 13 desks, 37 small chairs, 2 of experience were thus reflected in the can even grow. The question is in what The first catalogue offered 37 courses,
bench chairs, once sofa. A minimum of initial structure of the Antiuniversity. At directions? We feel it is necessary to while in the second the courses offered
25 folding chairs to be purchased.’ the Dialectics of Liberation Congress at depass our birth and commit ourselves increased to 60. New teachers joined the
the Roundhouse in Camden in 1967, Paul to a new community development. Any faculty, for example the exiled German
It was emphasised that the Antiuniversity Goodman specifically criticised the break- organisation which wishes to be mean- visual artist Gustav Metzger and Afro-
should be self-sustaining economically, down of differences between teacher and ingful, not only to the world outside Caribbean historian and writer C.L.R.
hence the fee structure that was put in student within the Free University move- but more importantly, to its self, must James. Parallel to this increased range of
place from the outset. This organisational ment that he found was undermining the re-examine itself at each step. To do courses, the Counter University group
structure became a source of lengthy de- profession of scholars. His main criticism otherwise is a symptom of death.’ started meeting more frequently and
bates and the Antiuniversity’s relation to of the established university system was pushed forward the aim of getting beyond
the economic realm where it was situated that it was being taken over by adminis- The three main questions on the agenda the organisational structure of student,
was later to become crucial in relation to trators having economic and managerial were the student/teacher relationship, teacher and administrator. In this process
the project’s limited financial success. It interests that went counter to the interests decision making powers within the organ- the Ad-Hoc Coordination Committee
was underlined in one of the organisa- of the ‘community of scholars’. Although isation, and the level of communication once more came under attack as a re-
tional papers that no-one should be ex- one of the main aims of the Antiuniversity and exchange between courses. The flyer actionary force within the institutional
cluded due to difficulties in covering the was to open up the institution of the uni- eventually calls for an end to the distinc- framework of the Antiuniversity. In an
fees and a system of scholarships would be versity to a wider social reality, the political tions between ‘students’, ‘teachers’ and article in the International Times Martin
established. focus of the place very much came to rest ‘administrators’. The Ad-Hoc Coordina- Segal describes the conflict in this way:
on the micro-politics of the institutional tion Committee was still functioning as ‘The rebels were told, in effect, to go
The political scientist Allen Krebs and Jo- structure itself. But as an experiential and the formal decision making body and it out and start a family of their own if
seph Berke were involved with setting up experimental project it was impossible to had employed Allen Krebs and later Bob they wanted “participatory democracy”
the Free University of New York in 1965. differentiate this from the wider reality Cobbing as coordinator and Susan Stetler and the like. The family had its setup
Berke moved to London that same year that was conditioning the project socially, as secretary. There were voices challeng- and was not interested in the acting out
to take part in the therapeutic community historically and economically. ing the authority and power of the admin- of personalities put together by rubber
and antihospital Kingsley Hall established istration. This was a part of the struggles bands and clips. It was not interested in
in Bow in East London. Kingsley Hall was Due to the publicity as well as the need around the development of the Antiuni- boring meetings as the vehicle of deci-
becoming the nexus of the radical move- for a meeting place of the counter-cultur- versity, aiming at a move towards a more sion making. It was not interested and
ment of psychiatrists who challenged the al scene in London more than 200 people democratic structure. But there was also a that was final.’
hegemony of the institutional rationale in signed up as members of the Antiuniver- movement from a formal to an increasing-
society that were confining and isolating sity for the first quarter. The courses were ly informal structure. At the margin of the The committee was criticised for lack of
so-called mentally ill patients in mental either weekly or bi-weekly and most of You and the Anti-U flyer small statements transparency and for organising meetings
hospitals. The Scottish psychiatrist R.D. them took place in the evenings to make were written-in by hand: ‘IS your teacher in secret. Segal describes the committee
Laing was one of the initiators of Kingsley it possible for both students and teachers really necessary?’, ‘What about an anti- as ‘them’, the founding fathers trying to
Hall and it was run together with David to attend after work. Attempts to recruit antiuniversity-university?’, ‘Who’s going to get the rebellious children to behave. The
Cooper, Leon Redler, Berke and others. locally among workers were less successful do the dirty work?’, and ‘Pay the students, comparison of the institution of the fam-
According to them this institutional sepa- and the relationship with the local com- charge the teachers!’ ily to the institution of the university was a
ration was in its own right a part of the munity was tense. Due to the focus on thoughtful and forceful blow to the group
production of mental illness in society Black Power, the attempt to involve com- In April, Peter Upwood, the caretaker of of mainly psychiatrists who had set up the
and they saw the source of the mental munities of black people was more pros- the snack bar in the lounge, had moved Antiuniversity. They could well accept the
ill-health in the relation between the in- perous as many of the courses touched on into the Antiuniversity, joined by a group repressive and violent nature of the fam-
dividual and the community surrounding civil rights and black culture. of friends. This meant that the institution ily as a cohesive institution within society
and shaping it, be this the family or other Some of the courses, especially David was turning into a commune. This was not and the parallels to the structuring and
societal institutions. Some call this move- Cooper’s and R.D. Laing’s, were very explicitly decided or approved by anybody functioning of the institution of the offi-
ment the anti-psychiatry movement and popular and quickly became fully booked. but it was welcomed as a part of the devel- cial university. In this process Allen Krebs
the setting up of Kingsley Hall as a thera- Other courses turned into more or less opment. It also echoed education projects stepped down as administrator and the
peutic community was an experiment in practical experiments in relation to the where living as a community was an inte- position was taken over by the poet Bob
renegotiating and at times erasing the topic. Joseph Berke’s course on the Anti- gral part of the educational perspective, Cobbing who hadn’t been a part of the
11 difference between patient and therapist. institution ended up with Berke leaving for example Black Mountain College in coordination committee until then. This
also meant a more fundamental breaking July consisting mainly of people travelling physical space of the Antiuniversity and In May 1968 the students at the Hornsey
down of the committee’s managing role through London just looking for a place at the beginning of August the otherwise Art School occupied their school protest-
at the Antiuniversity and Martin Segal to crash. This worsened the already tense benevolent landlord of the building at ing against the structural changes that
ends his text announcing these structural atmosphere at the Rivington Street venue. 49 Rivington started to write formal let- management wanted to implement. This
changes by stating that in the future ‘the As Sheila Rowbotham described it: ters asking the arrears for rent, electricity occupation lasted more than a month and
Antiuniversity is YOURS’: ‘Modelled on the American Free School and telephone to be covered. Joe Berke mobilised and politicised the students with-
‘Instead of acting as satellites to the and echoing the Dialectics of Libera- negotiated an accord with the Bertrand in the institution that they wanted to de-
stars in our social universe, phase II of tion conference, the Antiuniversity had Russell Peace Foundation and paid most fend. Yet the Antiuniversity, as well as King-
the Anti-U is donating event space for been set up by a curious alliance of anti- of the arrears. After this the Antiuniversity sley Hall, as autonomous organisations,
everybody to act as stars.’ psychiatrists and members of the New had to leave the building and continue as questioned and set out to challenge the
Left Review. It aimed to “[...] do away with a dispersed anti-institution using people’s ideological nature of ‘the institution’. This
For a while the old and the new structure artificial splits and divisions between flats and pubs as settings for the educa- issue was given less attention in the more
would run parallel, with a new catalogue disciplines and art forms and between tional activities. As the course structure as pragmatic and at times reformist struggles
being produced featuring a course ar- theory and action”. Though these ideas, well as the quarter structure was abolished within official educational establishments.
rangement as seen in the previous two cat- in a diluted form, were to percolate with ‘courses starting all the time’ accord- But the struggles unfolding through the
alogues while at the same time the old no- through the educational system over the ing to needs and desires the deinstitution- autonomous anti-institutions and the strug-
tion of the catalogue was ‘being exploded’. next few years, in this radical enclave, in alisation of the anti-institution had ful- gles located within official schools and
The course structure should not be based 1968, the dream was to be doomed. Life filled its own logic. A number of courses universities, were probably feeding into
on the ‘names’ of the course leader and in folded into learning too literally, turning and meetings carried on around London each other more than diverting energies
the future attending a course was going to the Antiuniversity into a dosshouse. The with Bill Mason’s flat in Soho as the and disrupting each other. Through their
mean ‘considering oneself as one of the hope of a counter-institution was already hub and postal address. Advertisements specific situations they created different
givers of the course’. One of the keys to sinking, [...] and the atmosphere was were placed in the International Times experiences and communities.
break down the old structure was the pro- bleak and besieged.’ every week with a phone number stating
cess of shaping the range of courses that so that people can call for information on A wide array of experiences of deinsti-
far had been organised by the coordinator The breaking open of the institutional courses, seminars and meetings. The lat- tutionalising the Antiuniversity fed into
backed up by the coordinating committee. structure of the Antiuniversity and the est one I found was from the autumn of other discourses of the counterculture
advent of unrestricted experimentation 1971. In light of the deinstitutionalised and the New Left. For example, in terms
This development led to the call for the with the organisational relations pushed anti-institution, it can be said that the ac- of the Women’s Liberation Movement the
‘Anti-U Course Creation Rally’ at Hyde out one of the last traces of the old struc- tivities of the Antiuniversity were still go- Antiuniversity was less wary of replicating
Park Corner on 21 July, 1968. A ‘kip-in’ ture as the sovereignty struggle at the ing on when people met in self-organised the patriarchal structures of the surround-
weekend for organising the Rally was Antiuniversity entered a new phase. The ways and shared experiences, affects and ing society. Juliet Mitchell was part of the
planned for the previous weekend where newly instated coordinator Bob Cobbing knowledge. But the institution of the an- Ad-Hoc Coordination Committee until
faculty and Antiuniversity members were decided to step down from his post at the tiuniversity was slowly being erased. it was abolished and she ran courses ‘on
invited to meet and organise future beginning of July 1968 due to organisa- the position of women’. She went on to
courses. A provisional course catalogue tional problems within the Antiuniversity. The deinstitutionalising of the Antiu- publish Woman’s Estate in 1971 with a col-
was produced but the flyer for the Rally He wrote an open letter to Joe Berke with niversity was a process characterised by lection of essays on women’s liberation
announced that ‘All decisions on the allo- struggle and antagonism and at times too written in the late 1960s. Here she writes
cation of Anti-U space time will be made many egos, as both Leon Redler and Joe her reflections on the contradictory pro-
at this meeting.’ Berke have told me. The Antiuniversity cess of the Antiuniversity:
was revolutionary but its character of an ‘The new politics of all the youth move-
This ‘explosion’ of the course structure experiment embedded in an alien envi- ments extolled and rediscovered sub-
was accompanied by an ‘explosion’ of ronment of capitalism made it impossible jectivity, the relevance of emotionality
the fee and pay structure. Teachers and to shield the anti-institution from the so- and the need for personal freedom and
course leaders were no longer going to be cial relations of the surrounding society, a respect for that of others. Subjectivity,
paid for running a course and the faculty condition of which Krebs and Berke were emotionality, a “caring” for others had
was called to contribute as the students aware from the outset. This was pointed previously tended to be designated “fem-
has done so far. Due to the ongoing out at a workshop at University College inine” qualities. Ironically the counter-
structural struggles, formal and informal, London late in 1967 where one of the culture expressed itself by giving promi-
within the Antiuniversity many members a list of reasons for his withdrawal. At the questions raised by them was: ‘the scope nence to values hitherto downgraded
had in fact stopped paying the fee after top of the list was the precarious state of or limitations of a “Free University”, with – “womanly” ones, “Make love not war”
the first quarter which meant that the the Antiuniversity finances, not to men- particular reference to a critique of the – the personal takes precedence – as it
Antiuniversity was already unable to pay tion the loss of a wage for the coordinating New York Free U, both in content and always had to do for women. “Together-
teachers in the second quarter. So the duties undertaken by Cobbing. Secondly, organisation, set within an unchanged ness” and “do your own thing” – fates
subsequent democratisation of the Antiu- the new structure that originated with capitalist/bourgeois society.’ to which women had long been con-
niversity also led to a less viable economic the Anti-U Course Creation Rally at Hyde demned in the suffocation of the family
structure, but this should also be viewed Park Corner was unworkable from the The Antiuniversity of London was a part of and the isolation of the home – were
in light of the resistance to the teacher- point of view of coordination. And finally a broader movement of student protests in now given a different meaning. That
student structure that the contestation of Cobbing’s feeling of responsibility to the the late 1960s, not only in the UK but all these female values were appropriated
the fee payment represented. people offering courses in the preliminary over the world. The May rebellion in Paris by male radicals initially gave women
catalogue made him express his concerns was unfolding parallel to the development hope within these movements. But when
The £8 a term fee was abolished and a in this way: ‘If the catalogue is now largely of the Antiuniversity and in London there they found even here, where their op-
more voluntary pay structure was put in to be ignored, I must resign in protest’. So had already been student protests and oc- pressed characteristics seemed to be the
place. It was calculated that £5 a year was Cobbing made sure that the third and last cupations of campuses, most notably of order of the day, they played a secondary
needed to cover rent and running costs, catalogue was printed and distributed and the London School of Economics (LSE) (to be generous) role, righteous resent-
but it was also clear that ‘some people eventually stepped down as coordinator in 1967. The students confronted the he- ment was rampant.’(Mitchell, Woman’s
can pay, some people can’t’. But this less before the start of the third quarter on 15 gemonies and ideologies of the university, Estate, 1971, p.175)
secure economic outlook already meant July, 1968. This meant in practice that the which they considered to reflect those of
that a more decentralised Antiuniversity future Antiuniversity was going to be co- society as a whole. According to the more The experimental and experiential way of
was needed. It began to utilise private ordinated and maintained by the students syndicalist parts of the student movement consciousness raising that the deinstitu-
flats for meeting places as an alternative since there were no attempts made to this was the main site of contest – and the tionalisation of the Antiuniversity catalysed
to the cost-heavy setting in the building at employ a new coordinator. There was no self-organised Free Universities were at through the difficult process that was initi-
49 Rivington Street. money and, for sure, no desire among the best not harmful, but were not engaging ated on February 12, 1968, was not a fail-
students at the Antiuniversity to maintain in the social struggle in its right location: ure. But it was not unambiguous either.
The first commune at the Antiuniversity the hierarchical administrative structure within the official universities and schools.
came to an end in May and a new group that such a position implied. Nevertheless, many people around the New
of people moved in. A group that, ac- Left Review who had taken part in the LSE Jakob Jakobsen is a visual artist and organiser
cording to Roberta Elzey, cared less about The lack of funds somehow went hand protests did go on to offer courses at the based in London and Copenhagen
the Antiuniversity and this created some in hand with the process of deinstitu- Antiuniversity, teaching political theory
tension between the interests of com- tionalisation of the Antiuniversity. There and revolutionary practice, courses that Images of the Antiuniversity of London from
mune and the university. This group was had already been suggestions to have a most probably couldn’t be found at official the BBC news spot about the place broadcasted
eventually replaced by a new group in less centralised structure in terms of the universities. in February, 1968 (Found on Youtube.com) 12
13
‘The Dialectics Confer- the war in Vietnam, against grading, and
against the established universities which
ence was an attempt to they saw as lacking intellectual and social

Dialectics of
integrity.
gain a meta-perspective
about war and violence Joe Berke’s involvement with radical
education began at medical school in late
using, in particular, the 1962 or 1963, at the same time as he was

Liberation
writing poetry and hanging around with
tools and insights of psy- libertarian mad caps like Tuli Kupferberg
choanlysis. The organ- and Allen Ginsberg. Like many students
in those days, radicalised by injustice
izers hoped that their and poverty (not their own), he found

Congress and
ideas would engage and his teachers (though not all of them)
arrogant and authoritarian, and their
interrelate with the views teachings (though not all of them) either
wrongheaded or just plain irrelevant.
of the invited scholars,

Radical
activists and participants His own speciality, psychiatry, was,
he claims, taught as if it was a type of
at the Conference, and natural science, like chemistry or phys-
ics, with a labelling system, and with little
in an informal and non-

Education
attention paid to the ‘totality’ of patients’
academic format. To experiences. Not surprisingly, therefore,
he became particularly attracted to ideas
some extent this hap- coming from outside the higher educa-
pened. But many of the tional mainstream, which seemed to offer
meaningful alternatives.
discussions followed old
Two major influences upon him at this
patterns and cliches. time were the anarchist writers Paul
Our goals were too high. Goodman and Alexander Trocchi,
By Martin Levy
though there must have been many others
We did not effect sig- besides, not least young people them-
selves who were becoming increasingly
nificant social change. radical. In 1962, Goodman published
But many micro social a small book which was very influential his Situationist International past, was
indeed entitled The Community of Scholars. nothing less than an attempt to revolu-
experiments, especially At the heart of Goodman’s book was the tionise contemporary existence. Like
in psychiatry, have con- idea that the spread of an ‘administrative
mentality’ amongst teachers and students
Berke, Trocchi was a friend of Laing,
enrolling him and David Cooper and nu-
tinued 50 years after the was destroying American higher educa- merous other supporters in an ‘invisible
tion, enforcing a ‘false harmony’ which insurrection of a million minds’, with the
Dialectics took place.’ fragmented and paralysed criticism. object of seizing the ‘grids of expression’,
– Joseph Berke which is to say, the media and the other
This was Berke’s experience too. Good- forms of mental production.
man’s solution was for scholars and stu-
dents to simply pack their bags and start ‘Invisible Insurrection of a Million
their own universities. They had done this Minds’ was the title of his Sigma Portfo- is ripe,’ he wrote. ‘The world is awfully
The congress on the Dialectics of Libera- very successfully before, he noted, most lio, No.2, of 1964. We know that Berke near the brink of disaster. [...] We should
tion begins and ends with two words: particularly at Black Mountain College, in read that work for soon enough he set have no difficulty in recognising the
radical education. Most commentators North Carolina, in 1933. And they could himself up as one of Trocchi’s New spontaneous university as the possible
assume that it was inspired solely by do it again. ‘[That] school lasted nearly York representatives, and the two cor- detonator of the invisible insurrection.’
anti-psychiatry. But, in fact, without Joe twenty-five years and then, like a little responded and met together in Trocchi’s
Berke’s interest in radical education magazine, folded. Its spirit survives.’ native Glasgow. At the heart of Trocchi’s One of the first post-1950s free universi-
there probably wouldn’t have been a manifesto was the call for a ‘spontaneous ties was the Free University of New York
congress in the first place, and without As for Trocchi, he influenced Berke via university’. ‘The cultural possibilities of (FUNY), and Berke was involved with
the congress there would not have been a his Project Sigma, which consistent with this movement are immense and the time that too as an organiser and a teacher.
London Antiuniversity There is a letter from him to Laing, writ-
ten during the spring of 1965, in which
The purpose of this brief article is to he says ‘Am starting university in NY
look at what the phrase ‘radical educa- this summer’; as simple as that, with no
tion’ meant in the 1960s, and then to supplementary explanation, but by which
relate that concept to the congress. he undoubtedly refers to the founding of
FUNY.
The phrase ‘radical education’ was not
often defined critically during the 1960s, There is no questioning FUNY’s educa-
though its meaning was pretty clear to tional radicalism. In a manifesto, also of
those in favour of it. Briefly, it denoted 1965, the authors write of the ‘intellectual
a cluster of attitudes, positive as well as bankruptcy and spiritual emptiness of the
negative. American educational establishment’ and
of its ‘dispassionate and studied dullness’.
Radical educators were for anarchism
or Marxism, for freedom of choice, for ‘The Free University of New York is
young people, for civil rights, for the necessary because in our conception,
Cuban Revolution, for avant-garde art, American universities have been reduced
for the free expression of sexuality and to institutions of intellectual servitude.
for creativity and spontaneity. They were Students have been systematically
against capitalism, against bureaucracy, dehumanised, deemed incompetent to
against authority, against an over-reliance regulate their own lives, sexually, politi-
on technology, against the Bomb, against cally and academically. They are treated 14
 like raw material to be processed for the defensive colleagues in the Philadel- involvement in Vietnam, and they brought of late 1950s and early 1960s universities.
university’s clients – business, govern- phia Foundation [sic].’ This was a hit at to the congress a fundamentalist and ex- Students were treated with contempt by
ment, and military bureaucracies. Teach- Cooper and Laing and the other mem- tremely aggressive anti-Americanism. an ignorant and conservative techno-
ers, underpaid and constantly subject bers of the Philadelphia Association, cratic ‘elite’, who viewed them as ‘raw
to investigation and purge, have been who refused at that time to go along with This was particularly evident in the pres- material to be processed for the uni-
relegated to the position of servant- Berke’s plan to use Kingsley Hall for his entations given by the anthropologist Ju- versity’s clients – business, government,
intellectuals, required for regular pro- weekend lectures. les Henry and the political scientist John and military bureaucracies’. The very
motion, to propagate points of view in Gerassi (himself a teacher at FUNY), but word ‘education’ was banalised. Universi-
harmony with the military and industrial Nonetheless, a spark was lit, and when in fact it pervaded almost all of the con- ties were drained of their ‘intellectual
leadership of our society.’ a year or so later, Berke came up with gress, usually unmasked, but sometimes vigour’; ‘exuberance and excitement’
another, similar idea, Cooper and Laing in the occluded form of ‘anti-modernity’. were destroyed. What remained was a
FUNY opened in a loft building close to jumped at the plan, seeing it as a further ‘dispassionate and studied dullness, a
the Lower East Side in early July, offer- development of their anti-psychiatric
ing twenty-five courses, and enrolling interests. Berke began planning for the
two hundred and ten students. As Berke congress during the late spring or early
summer of 1966, at about the same time
as he moved out of Kingsley Hall and into
his own flat facing Primrose Hill, a part
of London which would thereafter have
radical educational and anti-psychiatric
associations. One of the first times we
hear of it, is in a letter to Allen Ginsberg,
in which he mentions the recent founda-
tion of the Institute of Phenomenological
Studies (IPS).

This was a curious body. Laing’s son,

wrote in an article for Britain’s Peace Adrian, who knew Cooper very well, de-
News, during October 1965, ‘Preference scribes it in the life of his father as a ‘sort
was given to those courses or people who of trading name’ for the four founding
could not appear at an “establishment” ‘organisers’ of the congress (and when,
university. Attention had to be paid to on a recent occasion, I mentioned it to
[FUNY’s] radical, educational and politi- Berke, he laughed). It therefore seems
cal position.’ not to have had much in the way of a
tangible existence.
When he moved to the UK during
September 1965 to live at Kingsley Hall, Nonetheless, it was and would remain As the flyer for the congress, a joint effort facade of scholarly activity concealing an
Berke moved quickly to set up a Lon- the public face of the congress. When, by Berke, Cooper and Redler, puts it in internal emptiness and cynicism, a dusty-
don version, Free University of London for instance, Berke’s American colleague a direct nod to Henry: ‘In total context, dry search for permissible truth’ which
(FUL), positing it too as a ‘lever of Leon Redler wrote to Stokely Carmichael, culture is against us, education enslaves pleased ‘none but the administrator and
change’ which, combined with FUNY and the, increasingly radical, chairman of the us, technology kills us. We must confront the ambitious’.
other free universities, would counteract Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com- this. We must destroy our vested illusions
the West’s ‘corrupt, decadent, immoral, mittee (SNCC), in a letter of October as to who, what, where we are. We must Today, higher education is even more
unstable and insane’ civilisation. ‘On 1966, inviting him to attend the congress, combat our pretended ignorance as to bureaucratised. Students are over-
another level, one can see the formation he mentioned it as representing an ‘exten- what goes on and our consequent non- regulated and over-assessed. They are
of a brotherhood, in the sense of the sion’ of the foursome’s work in ‘seeking to reaction to what we refuse to know[...] offered degrees, not the benefits of
Jesuits or of Castalia, Herman Hesse’s demystify communication in families of We shall meet in London on the basis of wisdom. Once again, they are to be fitted
“Magister Ludi”, or Alex Trocchi’s Project schizophrenics, and in so doing to seek to a wide range of expert knowledge. The for an ever-more inhospitable workplace.
Sigma’, he added in the same Peace News liberate those imprisoned in such nexes’. dialectics of liberation begin with the The question therefore arises: Does radi-
article, thus continuing to draw on Troc- clarification of our present condition.’ cal education have anything to say to stu-
chi’s incantatory idea of a ‘spontaneous Berke carried forward FUNY’s educa- dents today? If it has, it would not be the
university’. tional imperatives into the congress by Violence and liberation from violence first time that recent history has thrown
marshalling a similar mixture of ‘politicos’ were the main topics at the congress, but up a radical and exciting possibility.
FUL did not succeed, however. In Jeff and ‘culture wizards’, the former ‘SUPER- these too were given a radical educa-
Nuttal’s words, it fell victim to the ‘yawn- LEFT with a vengeance’. Many of the tional spin, as speaker after speaker,
ing gaps existing between the English politicos were veterans of the May 2 Move- both from the platform and from the
Underground, the English left-wing ment, which had been formed to spear- floor, drew their audiences around to the
liberals, and [Berke’s] “professionally” head students’ fight against United States radical educationalists’ New Left agenda.
The discussion around Black Power was
particularly contentious.

On the more positive side, like FUNY the

congress too spilled out into houses and
pubs, privileging spontaneity over regi-
mentation, making education relevant
and fun, and breaking down costly and
unnecessary barriers between teach- Images of the Dialectics of Liberation from
ers and students. As Berke wrote of the Peter Davis’ film material of the congress
event, some months after its completion:
‘The [Roundhouse] was occupied 24+ Martin Levy is a writer and researcher cur-
hours a day for sixteen days by hordes of rently writing a book about Joe Berke and the
people meeting, talking, fucking, fight- Dialectics of Liberation Congress. He is based
ing, flipping, eating and doing nothing, in the north of England.
but all trying to find some way to “make
it” with each other and together seek
ways out of what they saw to be a common
predicament – the horrors of contempo-
rary existence.’

Radical education began as a revolt

15 against bureaucracy and the conformity
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
 John Latham: There
JJ: But this whole discussion about knowledge
you are engaging in now... you are using books
in a very physical way; your work is ruining

should never have

books, by pouring sulphuric acid on them and
burning them and chewing them. In what
perspective is that to be understood? Do you
think of this as a way of criticising the use of

been an Antiunversity books and the use of knowledge?

JL: I was really only concerned with the
process. I had checked out how paper
reduces to alcohol and sulphuric acid
Flat Time House, would muddle the students’. So he was business of measuring up the house, and was the way that the lignum in the paper
Peckham, June 2, 2003. turning me down on that occasion. And the bits and pieces that go into the house would reduce to sugar, and the sugar
I thought, well that’s very unprofessional and for going down the street, and getting would then convert to alcohol. The only
Jakob Jakobsen: John, I would like to ask you of the Head of Department because time round the world. Otherwise it is not reason the acid came into it was that I
about a very specific thing in your career as an and timing is of the greatest importance what’s going on. It doesn’t show us what is should be able to get the alcohol from the
artist. I saw your name in a prospectus from to any artist, and if they don’t understand going on. And that was the meat of what sugar which resulted from it. It stimulated
the Antiuniversity of London. the subtleties and the way that time I wanted to put into the School. But it the students – the story – and I hadn’t
John Latham: The which? carries dynamics, they will be just like also again happened when I invited, Barry contrived the story. It happened, as stories
JJ: The Anti – everybody else. and I invited, a number of the members do happen, by chance. Things happen
JL: Oh yes! The Antiuniversity. When was JJ: You had the event with the chewing of the of the College to my place to a party, that are unexpected, and they are a lot
this? book at St... and the party was called Still and Chew. of fun if they are not very annoying...
JJ: The late sixties,1968-69 JL: Yes, at St Martins. I knew what was going to happen. And But there were certain people who were
JL: I just remember it. I went there once JJ: At St Martins and... they were presented with a book out of outraged by the attitude of a person
and I took a piece there which was quite JL: Yes, it was when I was turned down the library by Clement Greenberg called who didn’t treat a book with the greatest
an interesting piece. I left it there and twice with the time. I presented just a Art and Culture, I had picked it as one of respect. And when I first had the idea
didn’t go back, and I have lost it. But the piece of paper, like this [waves a small piece the relevant titles to have them chew up. to do it, I had the same sensation. I was
piece itself was a school demonstration of paper], and the Principal, who I gave it And they were asked to tear a page off, looking for a flat, manageable, surface;
model of life forms under a glass, and to, took one look at it and said ‘well um’ – and chew it and put the residue in a little the painting period that I had been
I had taken it to them – as it was an and he opened a drawer near the ceiling retort, not a retort, a flask. And the party through had come to an end and was
antiuniversity – so they would understand, of a very high room – and slipped it in came to an end. It was a cheerful enough exhausted. I had a piece of wavy material
that if one of the life forms was a little there. I said ‘Freddy, you are not going to occasion. And I had signed for this book and I wanted to make that flat, as the first
trunk of a book, which was burnt, that even read it’. ‘No’, he said ‘it’s lunch time in the library’s register, and it took them thing to do formally. And the book, sitting
could also be part of the biological anyway’. And it made me so mad that they six months to tell me that they wanted it on the table, was a mysterious apparition
domain. Well, people may have seen it should be so uninterested in so vital an back. And it was only then that I was able to me. It was the right size and it had
and they may not have, but that’s how it idea as I had in my mind, and I thought to get the distillation going, and took it black marks in lines, and that was the
came to be in the place where you found that this is the vital idea of time and it is back and presented it in a little phial – I key thing that made me say ‘it’s got to be
it. But it’s very marginal to me. very very difficult to get across, but to be had to even squirt the liquid in there. done’, because the other kind of black
JJ: I read in the prospectus that you were meant thrown out and told to be a carpenter... Anyway I said ‘this is the book’ and the marks were done by constellatory means
to dissolvee a book in sulphuric acid there? ‘If you were a carpenter we could use librarian, of course, said ‘well, if it turns from the spray painter, and here is a white
JL: I didn’t do it there, but I was in St you, but no you confuse everybody’. So up’. And I said ‘it won’t turn up, this is the sheet which has become a volume and
Martins as a part time teacher. I had I had then to organise this – a little jeu composition it has now in this phial’, and has time in count time. Count time is not
got there by dint of having seen the d’esprit, it’s been called – this was to take not being too baffled she just said, ‘Oh
Department and being refused. I found a book out of the library... Barry Flanagan well, I don’t know why you students do
an opportunity to talk to the Head of was a student there, and Barry was the such daft things, people want to read this
the Painting Department at St Martins, one student who did understand what I book’. And I said, ‘Yes, I was aware that
and he was so pleased to be talked to was talking about. He would meet me in was what they wanted to do, but it won’t
I suppose, that when I said the real the Pub at lunch time and we would talk do them any good’, and left the room.
problem is that I need a job. ‘Oh, you over a beer at lunch, and wouldn’t see And she was left with the phial. And by
can have a job’, he said. So that got over each other in the School because I was the post in a couple of – the second post
the problem of not being able to teach. employed in the painting department and after I had done that, I got a little postcard
And I went into St Martins and I taught he was a budding student in the sculpture saying ‘I am sorry, I can’t invite you to do
for about a year, and then I said ‘Freddy, department, and it wasn’t the thing for any more teaching’, signed the Head of
the key to all the new art is that the the two departments to have anything the School. Well, I lost the job! That was
students should understand time, and I to say to each other. And I was trying to the outcome. the same as musical, rhythmic and sound
have an understanding of it and I would say look, the dimensional framework is JJ: When did this take place? time, and the idea of time as event was
like to introduce it to St Martins’. And simply misunderstood. Three dimensions JL: The party took place, I think, in gaining a lot of excitement in my nervous
he said ‘Oh, it is too complicated, you of space is inert and it is purely for the 1966. And I took it back in 1967 and system, if only because it was sensible in
got the dismissal in 1967. When all art.
communication between myself and the JJ: In the way you were using books, the time
Head of the – the senior staff had broken in a book, in a text ... Is that the time you are
down – it wasn’t that we weren’t friends, erasing when you are burning or chewing?
he just wouldn’t listen to what I had JL: Well, I never… I won’t say never,
to say. And I had to do something that but there were occasions when I nearly
would be interesting, and not damaging used a new book. But very, very rarely.
anything. I’ve never damaged anything, Mostly, they are junk books thrown away
but people say that I burn books and am for people just to pick out and put what
liable to set fire to places. And I have set would be a few pence towards. They’d
fire to little monumental towers of books. throw them in the bin and they would
The arts authorities have taken a very be – the ones they thought were better
dim view of what I was doing, and have – like 20p, and the others were only 5p.
not said honestly to me, ‘look, you should That was a source of my material. What I
not do this thing’; they have conspired was looking at was one book fitting into
to make sure that I don’t get anywhere another, indicating a world in which
where I would need to go. So I have no information of great complexity hits
employment. another, and the intersection between two
JJ: But there must be... worlds. Was as simple as that, it was the
JL: I have gone through all kinds of ways relationship in space. The metaphysical
of getting work made, by getting into new space between a book which has been
situations which are stimulating enough simply put face down and put into plaster,
23 to be able to make something. so nobody would ever find it, but it had
 was to introduce a highly cerebral idea What are the stars? Of course they know
which had no gesture about it at all. So there are planets moving. And that was
time theory is on the diagram. The Basic where the mystery was for the ancients.
T-Diagram behind me was made in 1992, My black marks are very interesting to
it’s a much later development. But it the astronomer. Because it’s not about
came off the fact that a painting, when his stellar universe, it’s about a universe
rolled on the canvas, shows you two sides that goes on inside his head. Or it goes
of the canvas and I had already made a on independently of the head. We don’t
two sided canvas, because pressing paint know. Memory may be nowhere near
through the warp and weft of the texture the head. It is picked up by the head
of the canvas made a very interesting and processed, but the information is
comparison, and I went on with it and the everywhere. Our business as artists is to
piece was preserved and it has been in an roll this thing through a very very badly
exhibition in Stuttgart, and in the Tate I diseased organism with enormous power
think. to deal with – I am talking about the
JJ: There is only this one? Bush-type power. George W. Bush knew
JL: Just the one. This is a development that he could drop a bomb on that flask if
from it. Now, I hope I can get this to necessary. If the thing is programmed he
go... [turns on the Flat Time Roller] And could come as close as that to obliterate
you see if we look at what is going on… it. And technology is doing that now. The
in the roller you will see things start to satellites that we have are giving us too
change… and on the sides there are much power. And if we get too bumptious
things going on… and the letters at the and too arrogant altogether outside of…
the form of an organic development car and left. And I only heard what they top are about the same as the letters here beyond the pale, that’s what will happen.
which had taken many many thousand had found. They preserved the work for a [points at Basic T-Diagram], and I find that And people are like that anyway.
of millions of years to arrive at perhaps. long long time but they said they couldn’t each one is standing for a range of time JJ: So in a way you are criticising knowledge.
And the thought of the atemporal aspect maintain it as a work after about 10 years frequencies. Well, the boundary between JL: Yes definitely, it’s not knowledge you
of a book, not there to read, as an object, – it had 10 years there before they took it one and the next was something like 14 see. Knowledge isn’t – what is served as
was very interesting compared to the down. to 15 times what it had been before, and knowledge; it is not adequately presented.
act of reading it, and compared to the JJ: And that was your involvement with so that with 36 bands I had a very very It needs to be converted into Event
appearance of a constellatory black Sigma? big expanse of time, which would do Structure and what I am calling Flat Time.
mark, in relation to a linear black mark JL: That was my contribution to the for that range, which has got 10 to the That is flat – that is a flat thing. [points at
which had hieroglyphics going across it. way that Alex Trocchi was trying to get minus 23 seconds as the time base of a Basic T-Diagram] And flat time is all there,
Wonderful. It was simply a fascinating – it together with the Philadelphia Trust quantum of action, as I thought of it at everything that you need to talk about is
like Duchamp’s objet trouvé… It was just and the psychoanalytic initiative. It was the time. Well, it is really the time it takes mappable, not flat. I know the computer
like – there for me to do, without having a Ronnie Laing initiative and an Alex light to cross the diameter of a classical would be able to do it. When it gets into
bothered to have any skill about it at all, Trocchi initiative, which had again got the electron, and an electron doesn’t have computing one will be able to decide
it fell together. All these things rolled intent to get a language together. And, I that kind of a diameter. Nevertheless they what time boundaries we are going to be
into there, one thing after another, after don’t know, I just had the thought during knew that it occupied the space, and you able to – we want to look at, and perhaps
another. And this is where we are at the the night that what I would do, would be couldn’t tell where its components were. pick up one from way out and bring that
moment, with that piece of construction to make my gesture, you would never get It’s an amazing discovery. Electricity. I in. Computers are so phenomenal in
going through the window, or apparently these worlds together, they are completely don’t understand it myself, but I can say what they can do. They are being more
going through the window. separate worlds which are talking at each that it establishes a position relative to powerful every day.
JJ: I have been interested in this Anti­university, other, and it’s a nonsense. light, and that was the important starting JJ: Just to finish and return to the
where you didn’t do much obviously, but I JJ: Ronnie Laing and Alexander Trocchi made point of having that kind of spectrum Antiuniversity. Do you remember the place 49
see it linking to the kind of relationship you Rivington Street?
had with St Martins, and the way you exited JL: I barely remember it at all. I
there. And at the same time your engagement remember – somebody I did know who
with books. This group of psychiatrists or anti- went to it and came to my – my lecture,
psychiatrists– there was only one. I am sure I didn’t
JL: There was a writer called Alex Trocchi. give more than one, and I produced this
Alex Trocchi came to my place, invited demonstration piece for schools and it
by a friend, and it wasn’t a very fruitful was... because it had a book in it, that
meeting at all. I wasn’t interested in what would introduce them to something
he was interested in. But he had written a which was teaching in the orthodox way
kind of paper called ‘The Insurrection of that here was the non-orthodox, which
a Million Minds’, and that he wanted me was a book which had been burnt. I was
to join. trying to get people to understand. What
JJ: But you worked with Alexander Trocchi on had happened was that we were talking
the Sigma project. and reflecting, and being intuitive and
JL: Sigma and Jeff Nuttall and myself did how we didn’t understand intuition. All
join up with the Philadelphia Trust and those things were developing in my mind
Ronnie Laing – the far out writer Ronnie and I wanted to – I thought that if people
Laing, with his Philadelphia Organisation, want to go to an antiuniversity I don’t
was it psychotherapy activity?... Alex mind going in there and seeing whether
Trocchi wanted to try and get us together they are listening, whether there is any
and he had us all turn up in a house that use. But I came to the conclusion that I
you could hire in the Oxford region – you was wasting time as well. Like I kind of
could hire it for the weekend, so that got my own act together sufficiently to
overnight you could have talks, and be courses at the Antiuniversity later on. line, where a very very short event had be able to convey to them what had to be
relaxed enough to understand where the JL: Maybe they did. Maybe they did... not applied to an enormously long event, conveyed. And that was perhaps as much
one type of activity would overlap with JJ: But you don’t remember it as very and we were right in the middle of it and my fault as anybody else’s. But it was too
another. But it never happened. And what significant, the Antiuniversity...? couldn’t understand why. We never could difficult a project. They should never had
I did there, if I may tell you, what I did do JL: I am sure it was all connected. Yes. work out what we were doing here, and had an Antiuniversity.
there... you see it had to be a gesture, of That was the little group of people who we are still asking the same questions as
the kind which would be arresting. I had I knew and had remote sort of contact we did from the very start of the idea of
a spray gun there, I had a book, and I had with. They mainly came – because I did asking questions about anything. The Images of John Latham working in his studio
plaster. And in the early morning I made, think it was my books that appeared language had it built into it apart from from the BBC news spot on the Antiuniversity
on the wall of their room, a very large to them as anarchic and as probably a the… there were two functions for the of London, broadcast in February, 1968
black mark, a black spray mark, with this gesture of anti-something, and I had a language; one was to do business with (found on Youtube.com)
book in the middle of it, and got in my very clear idea of what I had done, which – What are we in? What are the stellar? 24
25
26
 Alexander Trocchi
By Howard Slater
& Project Sigma
It runs contrary to Alexander Trocchi’s Elsewhere in this manuscript Trocchi, al- It would be counterproductive to at- of Sigma’s intended ‘coup de monde’
notions to connect Project Sigma to him most writing to himself, says that it would tempt to sum up in few words the activity becoming caught up as it would in a more
alone, as if it were his personal creation. lack integrity to respond to such smears and plans of Project Sigma as piloted traditional ‘coup d’état’. Political revolt
This contagious attitude is prevalent in with ‘pitiless public exposure’. More sad- by Trocchi. Difficulties arise in actually also suggests a number of anachronisms.
our society which grants the ‘cultural dening that this wrangling is the misfor- ascertaining the extent to which some of Not least the view, in many ‘Marxist’ cir-
worker’ the mantle of ‘privileged produc- tune of having to talk of Project Sigma the minor projects were developed; such cles, that revolt must seize certain key po-
er’ who provides a cynical societal system in terms of Trocchi the individual rather knowledge lies in the hands of those who sitions under the illusion that ‘power’ is
with some form of conscience, whilst re- than as the invisible ‘metacategorical’ re- participated and they would be quick to located centrally therein. Trocchi...
inforcing an ‘acquisitive nature’ by being volt of history that Trocchi related it to. point out that Sigma remained a blue-
in ‘possession’ of his/her own output’. print. Unfulfilled as it was, Sigma can be
Trocchi and Sigma were not so naive as To date the only documentation on seen as the ‘underground’ movement that
to overlook this parasitic process; the Sig- Project Sigma comes in the form of Jeff showed greater potential than most that
matic revolt was to adhere to principles of Nuttall’s Bomb Culture; a book that deals were operative in Britain in the 1960s.
anonymity and hence subversion. Sigma largely in terms of personalities whilst This potential can be partially located in
itself was to avoid ‘clear definition’. This avoiding coming to terms with more ap- the fact that Trocchi was acquainted with
problem of definition has given rise to a plicable tactics that would lead to a thor- a variety of countercultural movements as
misrepresentation of the Sigma stance, at ough negation of society. Nuttall reports well as with individuals working in a simi-
the expense of a clear understanding of Trocchi as saying, lar direction. Sigma’s more popularist,
the opening sentences of Trocchi’s initial non‑selective attitude served to increase
essay. ‘What this [Sigma] is all about is a com‑ this potential by means of encouraging a
plete rejection of everything outside that wider breadth of engagement.
‘We are sure of our own power as
‘As soon as it [revolt] is defined it has door.’ (Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture, Paladin,
something which is to be realised, not
provoked the measures forits confine‑ 1970, p.210) This scope shown by Project Sigma is
seized... in ourselves... now...’ (‘General
ment.’ (‘A Revolutionary Proposal’, City related to its identification of definition
Informations Service’, Sigma Portfolio, No.
Lights Journal, No. 2, 1964, p.14) Throughout his book Project Sigma is as limiting and can be contrasted with
5, 1964, p.8)
distinctly linked to Trocchi the personal- some politically motivated groupings who,
ity. Its demise is the fault of Trocchi the designating themselves as the ‘elect’ give
Trocchi rejects the confrontationist tac-
junkie. This mood is sketched by Nut- rise to a disciple‑like membership. From
tics of ‘classical’ theory in favour of more
tall when he chronicles the meeting at the outset Project Sigma was to recognise
realistic methods in tune with contempo-
Braziers Park (25 July, 1964), where an itself as an exponent of ‘cultural revolt’,
rary developments that see a relocation
expectant panel of sympathisers awaited an area where self‑criticism and ‘free’‑
of the ‘terrain of struggle’ away from the
Trocchi’s inaugural address only to be thought are given greater room.
dominant ‘workerist’ base into society as
kept waiting by Trocchi who had miscal-
a whole. The Sigmatic revolt was to be a
culated the quantity of heroin he had ‘So the cultural revolt must seize the
ubiquitous ‘outflanking’ that would make
taken the previous night. This to Nuttall grids of expression and the powerhouses
wo/men themselves conscious of their
signifies the beginning of the end. De- of the mind. Intelligence must become
conditions, eventually undermining the
spite Tom McGrath’s attempts to ‘fill‑ in’ more self‑conscious, realise its own pow‑
effectiveness of the institutions that have
Trocchi illustrates here an issue that has there seems to be little understanding of er, and, on a global scale, transcending
ossified around them. ‘Men make their
engrossed revolutionary groups: the ques- the phrase ‘invisible insurrection’, and no functions that are no longer appropri‑
history themselves’, quotes Trocchi, but he
tion of organisation and the difficulty in identification with it as a non‑hierarchical ate, dare to exercise it. History will not
bypasses Marx and Engels whose adher-
popularising core theses. Arising from statement.1 In its place was substituted, overthrow national governments; it will
ents have since shown their intention to
this, the Sigma writings also highlight once more, the philosophy of ‘leaders’. outflank them. The cultural revolt is the
preserve ‘inherited’ structures. Trocchi:
problems pertaining to the role of intel- In a lucid passage from his essay, an apt necessary underpinning, the passionate
lectuals and artists in any movement for epithet to this meeting, Trocchi identifies substructure of a new order of things.’
concrete change: the abstract procrasti-
‘If you want to change things, to alter
himself as an egotist, extending this iden- (‘A Revolutionary Proposal’, City Lights
nation of intellectuals and the danger of
radically the relationship between wo/
tification to all wo/men: Journal, No. 2, 1964, p.15)
elitism in an artistic affirmation of individ-
man and wo/man, between wo/men
and society, you go a very strange way
uality. Nevertheless it is clearly important ‘What is to be feared is not wo/man’s I am in danger here of separating cultural
about it if you proceed in such a way
to associate Trocchi with ideas and tactics egotism but the common failure to from political revolt, when for our times
that, directly or indirectly, you reaffirm
fundamentally more far-reaching than the recognize and accept it. For it must be the development of a global and psycho-
the validity for now of institutions which
British literary ‘underground’ scene of accepted before it can, at least, in its logically repressive capital has meant that
are of the effective substructure of the
the 1960s was capable of coping with. In more vulgar manifestations, be tran‑ combinatory endeavours are crucial. The
status quo.’ (‘General Informations Ser-
an unpublished essay on the ‘history’ of scended.’ (Sigma History, p.9) cultural revolt that Sigma adjoins itself
vice’, Sigma Portfolio, No. 5, p.2)
Sigma, reluctantly written, Trocchi says: to can be identified as being based in a
This lack of awareness leads not only to broader criticism of society, one that takes
‘various individuals... have judged it to a misunderstanding of Project Sigma but into account subjective tendencies and An attitude such as this is not concerned
their advantage to break with Sigma and can be applied to revolutionary groups ‘conditions of living’, finding primary with preparing for power, instead Troc-
to exploit Sigmatic techniques for im‑ and those who identify with revolution- orientation in a ‘critique of everyday‑life’ chi’s invisible insurrection aimed towards
mediate personal gain... Almost inevita‑ ary theory: hypocrisy can flourish where and the drive towards autonomy and activating a collective involvement that
bly, they felt bound to justify their lack unrealised egotism and competitiveness self‑responsibility. would dissolve the circuitry of power,
of integrity, their obvious tactics were to lie. Trocchi: superceding present alienation by encour-
identify Sigma with myself personally, For Trocchi and Project Sigma the dan- aging wo/men to ‘become responsible for
plug the desperate dope‑fiend with his ‘The readiness with which competitive ger of a purely political revolt lies in their own biographies’. Trocchi saw such
head full of bats with vampire proclivi‑ impulses shatter solidarity and render ac‑ the restrictive coming to grips ‘with the a task as incompatible with the outmoded
ties and Bob’s yr uncle.’ (Sigma History, tion fragmentary and ineffectual is most prevailing level of the political process’, practices of the ‘left’ political parties and
27 undated manuscript, p.5) discouraging.’(Sigma History, p.10) an occurrence that hinders the pursuit splinter groups whose awareness of differ-
ing levels of oppression was/is slight, their In order to generate enthusiasm and Trocchi makes this tactic malleable by ‘...artistic creation finds itself at war
non‑dogmatic interpretations rare. outline basic themes an ongoing series of connecting it to a foreseen rise in auto- with the existing culture, while simul‑
written works was issued under the title mation. This technological ‘innovation’ taneously announcing a future culture.
In Trocchi’s day this was not as apparent as Sigma Portfolio (S.P.). Trocchi’s initial es- if correctly harnessed could, Trocchi With this dual aspect, art has a revolu‑
it is now, thus Sigma must be recognised says, ‘The Invisible Insurrection...’ and believed, emancipate people from the tionary role in society.’ 3
as belonging to that current of contesta- ‘Tactical Blueprint’, appeared as S.P.2 and necessity of production, heralding a re-
tion whose critique can be placed on the S.P.3 respectively and have often been definition of work and the release of what Trocchi’s ‘cultural revolt’ does not cor-
‘vanguard’. Trocchi’s acknowledgement printed together, identifiable as they are he calls ‘Play Value’. respond to a creativity that is stultified by
of the idea that the creative impulse has as ‘the most comprehensive expression of ‘a civilisation that draws the line between
placed people in direct conflict to the pre- the basic attitude underlying the whole ‘Thus freed of all economic responsi‑ life and art’, but to a revitalised, direct
vailing mode of organisation links up with Sigma experiment’. bilities, wo/man will have at his/her and collective art that informs life. Thus
the revolutionary drive towards concerted disposal a new plus value, incalculable Trocchi adds:
action as represented by ‘wage‑workers.’ Trocchi’s other contributions to the Port- in monetary terms, a plus value not
The ‘avant-garde’ concern over the divi- folio include S.P.5: ‘General Informations computable according to the amount of ‘Alongside the art of the individual,
sion between ‘art’ and ‘life’, ‘culture’ and Service’, a further outlining of situation salaried work... PLAY VALUE. What is sigmatic culture wouldinspire the art of
‘politics’ leads it to adopt the same aims: and tactics; S.P.4: ‘Potlatch’, an attempt to becoming is “Homo‑Ludens” in a life dialogue, the art of interaction.’ (‘Mani-
the overcoming of social separation. set up a non‑elitist inter‑personal log that liberally constructed.’(‘Manifesto Situa- festo Situationiste’, S.P.18, p.4)
would collect ‘an international under- tioniste’, Sigma Portfolio, No. 18, 1964, p.2)
ground body of opinion beyond conven- This revitalisation of art implies a move
tional limits’. (‘Potlatch’, S.P.4, 1964, p.1) For Trocchi the construction of situa- into realms previously foreshadowed by
tions is tantamount to a ‘serious game’ ‘Marxist’ reliance on the ‘political’ and
The Lettrist International, of which Troc- that would ‘raise the whole tenor of the pursuit of ‘power’; now the urban, the
chi was a member, issued an information daily‑living beyond the level of stock re- environmental, the biological, the sexual
bulletin of the same name from 1954‑-57. sponses’ (‘Manifesto Situationiste’, p.3), spheres all react to broaden the goals
The Sigma ‘Potlatch’ can perhaps be taken with situation-making as a context from and illustrate the depth of understanding
together with S.P.1: ‘The Moving Times’, a which to gain an awareness of our social needed to effect any successful change.
broadsheet/poster featuring the writing of and psychic conditions. This ties in with The American poet Michael McClure con-
William Burroughs and issued in Tangiers. Project Sigma being a promoter of ‘play’, tributed an essay entitled ‘Revolt’ to the
‘The Moving Times’ was to have been urging others to be alive to the dangers Portfolio S.P.21, arguing here that revolt
Sigma as part of the ‘vanguard’, at least displayed in underground stations but of a ‘leisure‑time’ that is as coerced as is a biological necessity:
by virtue of its theory, was uncompromis- rejected as it was by London Transport, it ‘work‑time’. It is the idea of play being
ing in its rejection of ‘alien society’ and was mainly flyposted in galleries and cafes. able to create a tension between what is ‘Revolt happens when the mind and
astute in its recognition of official opposi- Both ‘Potlatch’ and ‘The Moving Times’ and what is possible that attracts Trocchi body and almost voiceless tiny cries of
tion as subsumed. For Sigma there can be can be seen as lending practical weight and Sigma, play and experimentation be- the tissues rebel against the overlay of
no limits to the processes of change and to Trocchi’s polemic against publishing, ing a viable means from which to work on unnaturalities frozen into the nervous
development as long as there remains which he sees as soliciting only condi- ‘solutions’ to manifold oppression inde- system.’ (McClure, ‘Revolt’, Sigma Portfo-
outlets for a variety of criticisms and in tioned responses as opposed to the ‘vital pendent of the ‘conventional economic lio, No. 21, 1964, p.3)
this respect Sigma echoes the desire for a flow of informations’ predicted for both
truly human activity to be made possible ‘The Moving Times’ and ‘Potlatch’ whose Here revolt is not primarily linked to
beyond the boundaries of a reified reality ingredients would encourage greater economic conditions and this divergence
intent on maintaining a repressive status engagement with their content as well as makes it clear that the predominance of
quo. For Sigma, history is a perpetual being free of the censorship of publishers. any single issue over others acts to muti-
state of incompletion. Sigma was to acquire its own printing‑ late the attempts to alter the structures of
press to increase the issuing of Portfolio society. In turn Trocchi draws our atten-
‘Sigma is a word referring to something and the ‘poster‑perversions’ of ‘The Mov- tion to urbanism, criticising architecture
which is quite independent of myself ing Times’ and, linked to this, Trocchi as a purely functional ‘art‑form’ geared to-
or of any other individual, and if we stressed the need for a ‘supply of impor- wards reinforcing conventional attitudes
are correct in our historical analysis, we tant informations previously withheld from and behavior. The SI, the Lettrist Inter-
must regard it as having begun a long the public’. national, COBRA and the International
time ago.’ (‘General Informations Ser- framework’. A society that knew how to Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus all
vice’, Sigma Portfolio, No. 5, 1964, p.1) Trocchi’s other contribution to the Port- play would give rise to an idea of life as worked at one time or another with archi-
folio is ‘Manifesto Situationiste’, S.P.18, a journey of discovery, with individuals tectural ideas; the SI calling for the build-
The choice of the word ‘sigma,’ a math- his own development of a tract issued by being able to take control over their own ing of a city that would attract dissidents
ematical symbol denoting ‘all’ or ‘the sum the Situationist International (1957‑72)2. lives. of all countries. Trocchi’s links with the
of’ emphasises the Sigma attitude: the Trocchi was a member of this group until continent would most likely be the inspi-
word’s ambivalence and intriguing quali- he withdrew in the early 1960s. In 1958 The Situationists, one of a number of ration for Sigma’s plans to work in a simi-
ties make it unidentifiable with staid re- they issued the following statement on the post‑war ‘experimental’ groupings, car- lar direction; the Portfolio contains an
sponses, complimentarily binding it to an Construction of Situations: ried out their activities from a similar foot- outline of a collaboration between Joan
anonymous movement that was to hope- ing believing that life should be lived and Littlewood and Cedric Price for a ‘con-
fully ‘snowball’ and progress through ‘The situation is thus made to be lived ‘frozen thought’ suppressed. Their rele- sciously constructed environment’, S.P.11,
participation. by its constructors. The role played by vance to Trocchi and Sigma lies in mutual as well as details of Cedric Price’s Fun City
a passive or bit-part playing “public” recognition of desired ‘ends’ with many Project, featuring as S.P.31. Elsewhere
The most immediate tactic employed by must constantly diminish, while that instances of overlapping ‘means’, not least Trocchi sees his Sigma Centre as provid-
Project Sigma was the creation of an ‘In- played by those who cannot be called of which being the ‘meta‑categorical’ ap- ing space for spontaneous architecture.
ternational Index’ – later referred to as actors, but rather, in a new sense of the proach. (We cannot discuss the theories
‘pool cosmonaut’, a phrase resulting from term “livers” must constantly increase.’ of the Situationist International here as As can perhaps be gathered it was Trocchi
Trocchi’s description of himself as a ‘cos- (‘Preliminary Problems in Constructing a this would entail the introduction of a and Project Sigma’s intention to realise a
monaut of inner‑space.’ The International Situation’, Situationist International Anthol- variety of individuals who, like Trocchi, whole range of projects that could have
Index was to serve as a tool to ‘unite mind ogy, Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981, p.43) were at one time connected to it. Simply made a dramatic effect upon the political
with mind’, a means of channeling the ‘defined’ the SI could be seen as the con- and cultural life of western nations. This
dispersed energy of individuals into a res- vergence of ‘avant‑garde’ practice with grandiose claim can be substantiated if
ervoir of ‘talent’ and cognitive power that the post‑war re-analysis of Marxist theory). we consider the prevailing mood of 1960s
would fuel the insurrection that Sigma In Trocchi’s Manifesto Situationniste he agitation as one of ‘positive utopia.’ The
was attempting to instigate and nurture. recognises the need for a revolutionary character of the May events in Paris testi-
solution to ‘our infinitely complex age of fies to this. Here the movement towards
‘It is the fact of the existence of this crises’, taking up the ‘avant‑garde’s citing collective learning, ‘self-management’
international pool of talent and its evi‑ of the need for a collective concrete crea- and overt participation demonstrate
dent availability here and now that is tivity involving the realisation of poetry in again Sigma’s position within a far more
the ground of our cautious optimism.’ a poetry of acts. Dutch painter Constant, combative current. It shares with the Paris
(Sigma History, undated manuscript, p.3) involved with the COBRA group and the insurgents a pressing need for change;
SI, states in the magazine Reflex: Trocchi repeatedly refers to ‘getting 28
29
started before it’s tragically too late’, no longer in operation.’ (‘Tactical Blue- sponds to the denial of experience, which ‘Our university must become a com‑
and his own urgency is communicated print’, p.33) is institutionalised in all sectors of society. munity of mind whose vital function is
by his many plans for Sigma, plans that Creeley includes the following from fel- to discover and articulate the functions
appear to develop from one another in Contrary to many endeavours of this kind low poet Charles Olsen: of tomorrow, an association of free
rapid succession. One such plan, that Trocchi and Sigma did not underestimate wo/men creating a fertile ambiance for
unfortunately did not reach fruition in a the influence of social‑relations upon ‘We are still in the business of finding new knowledge and understanding...
Sigma guise, was the formation of a Sigma would-be participants, viewing it as im- out how all action and thought have to the university must become a living
Centre or Spontaneous University, ‘a non- perative that these relations be combated be refounded.’ 4 model for society at large.’ (‘Tactical
specialised experimental school and crea- before any future developments could Blueprint’, p.34)
tive workshop’. The Sigma Centre was to take place: The fossilisation of meaning and relation-
be characteristically multi‑focal: ship reacted against here find similar The last phrase is important in relation
‘Within our hypothetical context many expression throughout the Portfolio. A to Sigma’s aims and tactics, themselves,
‘A place, then, in London, to be found traditional historical problems will be further reason for Trocchi’s ‘tentative showing greater oppositional insights
in the immediate future. From the recognised as artificial and contingent; optimism’ stems from just this incidence than both Wesker’s and Calder’s group-
beginning we shall regard it as our liv‑ simultaneously we shall realise our abil‑ of cultural groupings having an ‘instinct ings. Here we see an example of Trocchi’s
ing‑gallery-auditorium‑happening ity to outflank them by a new approach.’ with the same principles’. We have already subversive technique whereby Sigma
situation where conferences and (‘Tactical Blueprint’, p.34) mentioned the Lettrist and Situation- would use society’s own mechanisms
encounters can be undertaken, contact ist Internationals, others mentioned by against itself: the system’s worship of
with the city made, and where some of Following on from this Sigma was to en- Trocchi include Bertolt Brecht’s theatre ‘individual genius’ and ‘innovatory tal-
our techniques, found objects, futiques courage people to ‘discover what they experiments and the Semantic City at ent’ would be deflected in such a way
and publications can be exhibited, it themselves are about’, an acknowledge- Canissy in France. Still following the same as to attract society’s attention to these
will be our window on the metropolis, a ment of widespread ignorance existing theme it is interesting to note that Sigma individuals who would not be working
kind of general operations base for the beneath a sheen of technical sophistica- Portfolio number 28, was a printed circular for themselves, but autonomously as part
whole project.’ (‘General Informations tion. Trocchi: from the Castalia Foundation, a group in- of Sigma’s ‘community of mind’. The
Service’, Sigma Portfolio, No. 5, 1964, p.4) volving Timothy Leary. In an unpublished involvement of respected intellectuals
‘We must do anything to attack the en‑ diagram that outlines possible outlets for would be one way of lending legitimacy
The Sigma Centre was to be an instru- emy at his base, within ourselves.’ (‘Pot- Project Sigma, Trocchi makes reference to the work of Sigma and it was hoped
mental component of the ‘cultural re- latch’, Sigma Portfolio, No. 4, 1964, p.4) to several British-based groupings that that the Sigma Centre (re: Sigma) could
volt’. Others were foreseen to take root in could feed into ‘Pool Cosmonaut’. One attain a form of ‘cultural monopoly’ aris-
other countries close to capital cities so as It is individuals, conditioned to respond of these was instigated by Joan Littlewood ing from an increasing number of artists,
to exert a stronger influence by becoming and think in certain unquestioning ways (see above) whose ‘Leisuredome’, as writers and intellectuals defecting to
focal‑points of contestation. In his ‘Invisi- that Sigma must reach. This is not to sug- Trocchi calls it, relates to Sigma’s attach- Sigma. This itself would force society to
ble Insurrection...’ Trocchi sees the Sigma gest that those working for Sigma were ing importance to ambiance and environ- respond to a Sigma of such concentrated
Centre as developing more in relation to paragons radiating true consciousness; mental possibilities: intellectual power, eventually leading to
medieval universities where intellectual the meeting in Braziers Park illustrates a position where the platform advocated
ebullience and innovation were encour- an egotism in nucleus members surely ‘We can take care that the structural fea‑ by Sigma would provide startling contrasts
aged, rather than to the universities of the generated by competitive impulses. R.D. tures of our Sigma Centre are geared to conventional ‘autistic’ society. Sigma’s
day where a narrow view of learning is in Laing in his Sigma Portfolio contribution, toward and inspiring of the future as we influence would be felt as a result of its at-
operation. Trocchi: ‘The Present Situation’, S.P.6, draws at- imagine it.’ (‘Tactical Blueprint’, p.33) tempt to ‘discover and articulate the func-
tention to his domination of social rela- tions of tomorrow’, for example, Trocchi’s
‘The universities have become factories tions over the activities of wo/man citing The aforementioned Therapeutic Univer- insistence on the arrival of ‘leisure‑society’
for the production of degreed techni‑ Heidegger’s phrase ‘the worst has already sity was another such scheme that would as an area that the Project would be most
cians.’ (‘Tactical Blueprint’, City Lights happened’ to illustrate the alienation provide ‘talent and goodwill’ to the Sigma suited to deal with.
Journal, No. 2, 1964, p.31) and separation within society and the psy- Project. Trocchi was particularly keen to
choanalytic tendency to exacerbate this give an outlet to the views of anti-psychiatry [...]
It is worthwhile to note one or two of condition through objectification of the within the project, partly for reasons of
Trocchi’s criticisms here: today’s universi- ‘human subject’. Laing’s work with the their approach to society: an angle with
ties are inextricably linked to the social- Philadelphia Association and his attempts roots firmly latched onto beliefs in the ‘in- First published in Variant No.7, 1989.
political system that finances them. This to establish a Therapeutic University for teriorisation’ of capitalist social relations. Abridged by Jakob Jakobsen, May 2012.
system’s view of itself as complete removes schizophrenics was greeted with enthusi- Trocchi’s further intention to campaign
any trace of critical process from learn- asm from Trocchi, who also proffers the for a liberalising of the drug‑laws and to Howard Slater is a writer and volunteer play
ing. This lack of critical process reinforces notion of individuals as being prevented take steps towards redressing the hysteria therapist based in London. His book Anomie/
the dominant social relations. One such from an understanding of themselves by that surrounds their use found support Bonhomie has recently been published by
characteristic invested in by these social‑ the very networks they are dependent in anti‑psychiatric circles with qualified Mute Books.
relations is the ‘competitive impulse’ and upon. doctors prepared to lend their discoveries
Trocchi sees this as encouraging students to such a campaign. A letter, ‘HM Govern- Images of the Sigma meeting at Braziers Park
to be ‘clever tacticians’ and hence perpet- The Sigma Centre, then, was to have been ment and the Psychedelic Situation’ was 1964 courtesy of Flat Time House.
uating the domination of appearances. as much an experiment in community to be sent to Jennie Lee MP, and a book,
and personal interaction as an antiuni- Drugs and the Creative Process, involving
In retaliation the Sigma Centres were versity. Michael de Freitas (Michael X), William Burroughs, R.D. Laing and Troc- 1.  See Tom McGrath’s ‘Remembering
to initiate a ‘community-as-art-of-living’, himself involved in Sigma, mentions in chi was to have been published by Heine- Alex Trocchi’; Edinburgh Review, No. 70,
rejecting any academic encumbrances his autobiography the intention for Sigma mann. 1985.
such as increases in staff and buildings in ‘members’ to live in the Sigma Centre 2.  For a more thorough account of the
favour of the revitalisation of learning as a with their families. The Black Mountain This diagram also includes John Wesker’s Situationist and Lettrist Internationals
continual process of interaction between College experiment (1933‑52), acknowl- Centre 42 and John Calder’s Writers see Stewart Home, The Assault on Culture:
individuals. A fixed curriculum would be edged by Trocchi as an antecedent, was Nights as other possibilities for reciproci- Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War,
replaced by a loose ‘form’ arising out of founded upon similar lines. A valuable ty, despite the criticism meted out to them Aporia Press/ Unpopular Books, 1988.
the ‘spontaneous generation of the group connection between the two was provided within the Sigma Portfolio: Centre 42 3.  Cited by Stewart Home, op.cit., p.9.
situation’, where the sense of community by the poet Robert Creeley, himself a for its parochial qualities and the Writers 4.  Cited by Robert Creeley, ‘An Ameri-
that arises is as much a part of any intend- teacher/practitioner at Black Mountain, Nights for, in the words of Marcus Field, can Sense’, Sigma Portfolio, No. 26,1964,
ed educative aim. It was hoped that the whose essay ‘An American Sense’ was their promotion of ‘meaningless word p.3.
dissolution of hierarchy by communalism number 26 in the Portfolio. This piece games in the name of culture’. The Sigma
would encourage a critical intelligence is largely concerned with the American Centre, indeed the whole project, was to
rather than an intelligence that oper- poetry scene of the late 1950s, but draws tread a fine line between such legitimacy
ates with ‘ulterior motives’ in mind. This wider conclusions than its subject sug- and a more uncompromising position. In
implies that the university established by gests. Within his essay Creeley rallies his ‘Invisible Insurrection...’ Trocchi uses
Sigma would take on a ‘laboratory’ func- against the insistence with which critics Centre 42 as a springboard into outlin-
tion where: attach predominant importance to form, ing a more fundamental approach than
subjugating content to fixed patterns in that shown by the ‘insularity’ of Wesker’s
‘conventional assumptions about reality a manner suggestive of a fear of possibil- views. Trocchi:
and the constraints which they imply are ity. This mode of literary criticism corre- 30
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 Joseph Berke:
thinking without
practice is not useful
– It’s destructive
Highgate, North London great artist, who’s still a great performing for quite a while.   JB: You know, all those things are... you
February 27 – May 5, 2012 artist. And lots of poets and writers. My  JJ: Where did you meet, or, this group, how know, you have a place, you meet, you
buddy in New York was also Calvin Hern- was it brought together? Was it people from the have coffee, you go out afterwards, then
  Jakob Jakobsen: I would like to ask a little ton. Calvin was a sociologist and a poet, political scene, or the cultural scene, or...? you go to a poetry reading, or go to a
bit about your life in New York in the early six- a great poet. He wrote a book called Sex   JB: It was a mixture. I mean, the politi- bar. The whole place, you know, it wasn’t
ties. I read somewhere that you were a psychia- and Racism in America. He originally came cal and the cultural scene mixed together. just one place, it was like the whole scene
trist and a poet in New York in 1964. Maybe from southern America, Nashville, TN, I As I said, at that time, we were all Marx- around there. So it was a whole general-
you could introduce who Joseph Berke was in think. We would hang out in the Metro ists, and wanted to change the system, and ised area that was taken over by discus-
1964. Cafe or bars around Avenue A, Avenue B. we were also scared about nuclear war. So sions, and a lot of creative people.
  Joseph Berke: I was trying to find out Tompkins Square Park is where there was that added an element to the whole thing.   You could consider the Metro Cafe as
who Joseph Berke was. I’m still trying to a lot happening.  JJ: But how did the University work? an extension of the Free University. The
find out who he is. I’m coming closer.  JJ: And could you tell a little about what   JB: Well, we advertised locally. We put Metro Cafe had two readings every week.
But then, I was trained as a doctor, and I made you interested in education, and eventu- around leaflets everywhere, and we had One on Monday, I think, and one on
lived on the Lower East Side of New York, ally made you involved in setting up the Free courses in black culture, in racism, in Thursday, or Wednesday, I forgot. Anyone
Manhattan. It was a very exciting time University of New York? sex in America, in America as a kind of who wanted to read poetry could read any
to be there, with a lot of writers and art-   JB: Well, I’m very well-educated. capitalist bastion, on American milita- poem that he wanted. Some were invited
ists and people, on the Lower East Side [laughs] I went to university, I went to Co- rism, and so forth. And then we would to read their poetry specifically, like Susan
of New York. So, for example, I was the lumbia College, from Columbia College I advertise, put posters up everywhere, and Sherman and Diane Markowski, Allen
neighbour of Allen Ginsberg, and we’d went to medical school. And I found that, people would come. And we had a loft, Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Calvin Hern-
read poetry together in the Metro Cafe technically, the education was brilliant, and then we had rooms, so it lasted for a ton, all the people there. These were very
on 10th Street and 2nd Avenue. I was also but they really bypassed social issues, and while. The main inspiration was Allen and important poets, and still are. Not just
for a while a doctor-in-residence at the things which I wanted to learn about the Sharon Krebs. And they were passionately run-of-the-mill people spouting out their
Metro Cafe. So when anybody was sick, world. So it was because of that that I against the war in Vietnam, and passion- words, these were very well-known peo-
or had an infection, or was worried about teamed up with other people, or other ately against the capitalist system. And pas- ple too. So that was great. And my great
something, they’d consult me in the back people teamed up with me, and we first sionately against oppression and racism. wish was to be able to be invited to read
room of the cafe. And I remember help- started the Free University of New York. That was part of the founding ethos of it. poetry there, though I never quite made
ing one person who had some illness, or I think it was in a loft on 14th Street. So,  JJ: I’m also thinking of the implications it. There were several journals published.
giving them some penicillin. I got paid various issues about sexuality, racism, of setting up an institution like a university One was called The Metro Cafe and the oth-
for this with two bags of grass, marijuana. politics, economics, philosophy, seemed in New York at that time. Was it quite a sig- er was called Fuck You: a Journal of the Arts.
So the time of smoking dope, taking acid, relevant. Also, the context of this was the nificant step, in a way, to make a counter-   That was a very important magazine
and so forth, like that. Vietnam War. I was a conscientious objec- institution like that? I’m just thinking, was it for several years. Published by Tuli Kup-
 JJ: Where were you educated as a doctor? tor in the Vietnam War. And by the time I in terms of Black Mountain College, or Paul ferberg who lived across the street from
  JB: I was educated at the Albert Ein- came here I had to do alternative service. Goodman? What kind of inspirations fed into me. A storefront. I always wanted to get
stein College of Medicine in the Bronx I was drafted. So I did alternative service your taking part in forming this institution? published in Fuck You. A lot of libraries
in New York. So I eventually moved down at Kingsley Hall in London, which is the   JB: I wasn’t too aware of Black Moun- wouldn’t carry it because at the time it was
from the Bronx, which is upper New York, community which Laing established. That tain College at the time. There was a considered too scurrilous, or too outra-
into Lower Manhattan. First I had a small was accepted. I was at Kingsley Hall for place called Bard College, and other geous a title to even have catalogued. So
apartment on 27th Street. It was horrible. two years. Well, more than that, but after places which were more... more well- we were trying to be outrageous and dif-
I had to walk up five flights of stairs, and two years, I finished my conscientious ob- organised, really, than we were. I think we ferent. This is the tail-end of the sixties,
there were cockroaches everywhere, you jector’s service, and I applied for veterans’ lasted – FUNY lasted – several years. And but you know, what came before it was
know? I would come in, and it was three benefits, and they told me to piss off. then it probably collapsed once Allen and an extremely oppressive atmosphere in
rooms: a bedroom, a living room and   JJ: [laughs] Sharon came to Europe. They were the America. That is what we were trying to
a kitchen, and the bathtub was in the   JB: And I was angry about that, since people who held it together. Some of the confront, and overcome.
kitchen, and cockroaches were all over Kingsley Hall was like a battleground any- leading poets were there, and artists. It  JJ: After you left, do you know how long the
the kitchen. way, at least as hard as being in Vietnam. was also a place where people could meet, Free University kept running?
 JJ: But how come you, as a doctor, got in  JJ: Just to return to the Free University of and exchange ideas, and hang out. The   JB: I think it sort of broke apart when
touch with the more cultural scene, the Beat- New York – Allen and Sharon Krebs, Jim Mel- universities, the regular universities, were Allen and Sharon came to England. That
niks and so forth? I guess you as a doctor were len, James Weinstein, Staughton Lynd, Gerald kind of very constricted and constrict- happened after the Chicago Convention,
meant to work within science... Long, and you were in the committee. Can you ing. And here we were just trying to open 1968. Beatniks were early sixties, hippies
  JB: I was always interested in social is- describe this founding committee, or the people, things up, opening a place to have a dis- were late sixties. And that was when Jerry
sues. So I organised a General Strike for if you remember them? cussion about what was relevant to us. Rubin and Abby Hoffman and others
Peace in New York in 1963. Marched from   JB: I remember Allen and Sharon very  JJ: What kind of values were embedded in the were doing their thing at the Chicago
the upper Bronx to Lincoln Center, which well, and they were deeply committed Free University? Convention. And there was also the
is the centre in Manhattan. I think it’s people politically. Very left-wing, very   JB: Open enquiry, radical thinking, be- Berkeley Free U. So all these things coa-
about 10 miles. I walked all the way, in my angry over the Establishment. Sharon ing able to experiment with ideas – stuff lesced around the same time, and then
white robes, my stethoscope, everything had a moment of fame during the 1968 like that. split apart.
like that. I was interested in social issues, Presidential convention in Chicago, when  JJ: The kind of community... I read some-  JJ: Then you went on to London, as you de-
and that’s how you get to meet people she entered into the convention hall na- where, that more than 200 people signed up scribed, and you went to Kingsley Hall. What
who are also interested in social issues. ked, carrying the head of a pig on a plate. in the beginning. How was a day at the Free did you know of Kingsley Hall, what had you
This was organised with Julian Beck, That stirred up things no end. She was University? Could you describe the kind of dy- heard about Kingsley Hall from when you were
from the Living Theater. So I got to meet very pretty too. Eventually Allen came to namic, social dynamic, as far as you remember, in the States?
41 people, like Carolee Schneeman, who’s a Kingsley Hall and lived in Kingsley Hall of course.
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  JB: Oh, Kingsley Hall had just started. had had a good group in medical school. through psychological means why a lot of Some who were into Laing, and other
Kingsley Hall had started as a community Discussing social issues also. So this was these destructive forces were taking place. people who were more familiar with
in June, July 1965. So I arrived, I was there like a forerunner of the Free University, We wanted to share with people, all these Bateson’s work and Cooper’s work and
with Calvin. We came over on a boat called and the Antiuniversity, it was our dis- opinions. others’ work. And then we had political
The Happy Castle. Eleven days coming cussion group. Kingsley Hall was like a  JJ: But also 1967 was the Summer of Love, people like Stokely Carmichael. One of
from New York to Southampton. It was university in itself, like an antiuniversity. and I think it’s quite significant that you made the people was Allen Krebs, who founded
Calvin Hernton, his girlfriend Cathy, and Because we had all sorts of courses there a congress on the nature of violence. the Free University of New York. He was
John Keys. John Keys was also a very great going on. Courses were run every fort-   JB: Because eventually love, love which there. So it continued in that vein. People
poet who was part of the scene. And John night, every two weeks, by New Left Review was unrequited, love which is unex- who had some expertise.
Keys’ girlfriend came over before him. magazine, you had all the people from pressed, love which is stifled, turns into  JJ: How did you break down the specialisa-
  Calvin wrote a novel about the trip New Left Review there... violence. And also love, of course, is the tion between you? Or did you break it down?
called Scarecrow. In the novel, I was ‘Dr.  JJ: What kind of courses were they? antidote to many destructive forces. De-   JB: We didn’t break it down that much.
Yaz’ giving acid to everybody. He probably   JB: Discussions about politics and eco- structive forces – I’m talking about envy, It was mostly people who had some exper-
exaggerated a teeny bit about that. nomics and so forth. greed, and jealousy. And I would add nar- tise in the main topic, and it wasn’t bro-
  We came to Kingsley Hall with all this  JJ: I found a letter where I guess you were cissism. Envy, greed and jealousy is what ken down into political expertise, or this
New York energy pulsing through us. And inviting to a meeting in 1965 about setting the Christians called seven deadly sins. kind of expertise. Just a general familiar-
we blew the whole social structure apart, up the Free University of London at Kingsley Now certainly the seven deadly sins are ity with it. And the seminar groups were
because the people who had started it Hall. But I read, I think, somewhere, that your also balanced by seven benevolent graces. groups of about twenty.
resented us very much. Particularly a man British colleagues didn’t want a Free University The seven graces. But when the balance  JJ: The quality of these discussions, could
called Clancy Sigal, who was a novelist, within this kind of psychiatric environment. Do gets out of whack, not only do we get out you describe it a little bit? What was the dy-
who eventually wrote a novel about Kings- you recall that? of whack personally, but the whole culture namic of the groups, or what ideals did you
ley Hall and Laing and so forth.   JB: I think that Kingsley Hall was a free gets out of whack. So you have too much have for this kind of group-work?
  And then we got to Kingsley Hall, and university. And there’s all sorts of meet- envy, but not enough love. We have envy   JB: I think it was mostly to help peo-
there was a crisis, a near-crisis, about Mary ings and discussions going on, especially balanced by gratitude. So someone who’s ple to digest. Digest what was said in the
Barnes. Mary Barnes was a 45-year old about organizing the Dialectics of Libera- ungrateful, that’s another way of express- main meeting, go over it again and again.
woman nurse, who decided the only way tion conference. ing hatred. We have greed balanced So if someone didn’t understand some-
that she could un-twist herself was to go  JJ: Education has been a thread through by generosity, or jealousy balanced by thing, they would bring it up and then it
back and become a fetus, then grow up your whole life and career. How would you ex- compassion. We have jealousy go up, or would be batted around, ‘what did this
again. There was a big crisis, ‘What would plain your concept of education? compassion go down. Or greed go up, or mean?’ When Bateson talked about issues
happen with Mary?’ She had moved in   JB: Basically, wanting to know what’s generosity go down. Like that. So this is like the ‘double bind’, what is a double
right from the beginning. At first she real. What’s real? What makes the world what I’m trying to work out. Beginning at bind? How can we illustrate it? How can
lived in a box in the basement. A box by tick? What makes the world go? What that time at Kingsley Hall, then through we apply it in terms of family dynamics,
an English artist named John Latham. makes us go in the world? There’s a world Dialectics, and afterwards. for example. So eventually the hope was
And she wouldn’t go out of the box. She out there, and a world inside of me. So...  JJ: At the Dialectics of Liberation, the kind that people would have some better idea
was peeing and shitting in the box and I’m a micro-educationalist. Psychotherapy of discussion there – of course it was primarily of what was involved. When Carmichael
everything. Horrible smells. is a micro education. There’s a macro well-known people making presentations, people talked about Black Power, well, what is
  So people had to decide what to do with education about what goes on out there. like Stokely Carmichael, and Marcuse, a whole Black Power? Did you have to be Black to
her. And Laing thought that maybe she How to bring them together. That’s like series of cultural and political personalities. have Black Power? Can you have White
should be fed with a tube in there. And what Marcuse was talking about. That’s But I’ve always thought about it as a Congress Power, or Yellow Power?
Aaron Esterson who was also a psychiatrist what I tried to do with my book The Tyr- where the most important things going on were  JJ: But in relation to Black Power, there was
there said ‘no, you can’t do that, it’s too anny of Malice, or, malice through the the seminars and all the discussions... a lot of friction and debate...
dangerous’. So there was a lot of conflict looking-glass. Bringing together personal   JB: That’s right.   JB: That’s right, yeah. And a lot of
about Mary. Eventually Laing asked Mary and social forces. That’s how they become  JJ: Could you maybe tell a little bit about the people who contested the idea of Black
if it would be okay if she was fed with a macro social forces. nature of the event in terms of the socialising, Power. Is it true, or should they have
baby bottle. And Mary reluctantly acqui-  JJ: Coming from Kingsley Hall, what was the micro-relations? Black Power, or are they just racists in
esced to this. And then he said, ‘Well, the reason you wanted to make the Dialectics of   JB: Yes, I mean the Antiuniversity of reverse, stuff like that. The whole issue of
who’s going to feed her?’ And I said, ‘I’ll Liberation Congress, if you had already a dis- London essentially began with the Dialec- racism and institutionalised racism. Such
do it’. And that’s how I got started. cussion going at Kingsley Hall? tics of Liberation conference. That was as we see, and it was just beginning to be
 JJ: You were living together in Kingsley Hall.   JB: Well, we had a discussion going at the first event of the Antiuniversity, and discussed then, such as we saw in the po-
There was a community. Kingsley Hall but it was a mini-discussion. the Antiuniversity was the second event lice forces in England at the time. There
  JB: Yeah, the community was around We wanted a macro-discussion. We wanted of the Dialectics. So in the morning there was beginning to be a discussion about it.
Laing. There were several communities. a kind of World Congress. With all the were lectures by the main speakers, then Now there’s a big discussion about it.
The community around Laing when La- great intellectuals from all over the world there was lunch and discussions contin-  JJ: You yourself were hosting what was called
ing was there – and when Laing wasn’t coming to discuss violence, destructiv- ued over in Primrose Hill and around the Anti-Institution seminar.
there. Several of my friends from medical ism, what we can do to change things. We the area and the pubs, the cafes. I think   JB: That’s right. I was talking about the
school joined me there, eventually came thought that we were very – how would I mentioned last time that, amazingly, in creation of the Free Universities, differ-
over. Leon, and Morty, and Jerome, they you say – we were chuffed with ourselves, London for two weeks it didn’t rain. It was ent kinds of... I don’t know, I don’t like
were all buddies from medical school. We full of ourselves. We thought, we knew sunny for two weeks. That helped a lot. the word ‘anti-’ so much, but... alterna-
  Afterwards we broke into smaller tive televisions, alternative radio stations,
groups, which were led by group lead- alternative places where people could be
ers who were familiar with the topics. helped if they had a breakdown instead of
Maybe eight, ten groups. All over the mental health facilities. Alternative pub-
Roundhouse, different parts, discussing lishing within the so-called underground
what was going on. We were divided into press. All these things I was trying to bring
Alphas, Betas and Gammas. Alphas were together.
the main speakers, Betas the group lead-  JJ: Like the Antiuniversity...
ers, and Gammas were the participants.   JB: Yes, the Antiuniversity. The An-
And then the evenings, again, there were tiuniversity theoretically came from the
more informal discussions, where people Dialectics of Liberation. It was really an
were hanging around. People lived in the attempt to continue discussions that got
Roundhouse. A good friend of mine – I started there. Discussions on all levels.
remember this very well – she lived in the Psychologically, sociologically, and every
Roundhouse for two weeks. Stayed there which way. And that lasted for about three
all the time. years. We had a lot of the best intellectu-
  And then the next day, there was anoth- als in London speaking there. So people
er speaker and the whole thing continued came out of curiosity, out of fame. By
again. then Laing was very famous, and became
 JJ: Who became the seminar leaders? more famous. But it was, for a while, it was
  JB: People like myself, also Leon Redler a good opportunity to broaden the discus-
and Morton Schatzman, other psycholo- sion that had started at the Dialectics. You
gists and psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. have to go to the grandchild generation 44
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now. I’m a grandparent now, and I’m ing is done by yourself at home. Just like pub. Some black people came, if they New York – we left New York when the
looking at all my grandchildren. They’re we were talking about in the Antiuniversi- were interested in Stokely... But people communes were there, in large apart-
going to open up the whole discussion ty, well, we should have lots of Antiuniver- intermingling in discussions about racism ments. They were destroyed by ampheta-
again. sities all over the country. Antiuniversities and this and that, together, I don’t think mines. Terrible. But grass is all right.
 JJ: How come you wanted to make an insti- in a truck, things like that. took off. Alcohol is difficult. Too much booze is no
tution like that, in a context where you were  JJ: So you saw an institution as a rigid  JJ: What about Juliet Mitchell on the com- good either. Soft, mellow drugs. Ecstasy.
critical of institutions? structure... mittee?  JJ: Could you talk a little about the group of
  JB: We were all anarchists. And we... in   JB: Authority structure. But this is also...   JB: She covered feminism. I think there teachers – I got the first catalogue, or a photo-
the process of making an institution, we I had in mind the critique of Jules Henry, weren’t enough women involved, look- copy of the first catalogue, that you produced.
deinstitutionalised ourselves. I think that who wrote the book Culture Against Man: ing back at it. Certainly weren’t enough What kind of teachers, I guess, or what were
maybe we shouldn’t have had a building, Schools keep children stupid; Hospitals women involved. We were all kind of male they called, ‘course leaders’, or...?
we should have had talks, going around kill off people, make them sick, and so chauvinist pigs, you know. [laughs]   JB: Well, the teachers and course lead-
all of London. Anyway, buildings are ex- forth. So that’s why we talk about ‘anti’.  JJ: So, could you describe, what is an Antiu- ers... I mean, a lot of the teachers were
pensive. Trying to get to a place where if you niversity, as a matter of principle? people who either spoke at the Dialectics
 JJ: If you should define what an institution couldn’t do any good, you didn’t do any   JB: The Antiuniversity has several or had seminars at the Dialectics. Or
is, how would you do that? harm. elements to it. One element is that it’s friends of friends. At the Antiuniversity,
  JB: Again, we’re looking at words like  JJ: But also in the negativity of the ‘anti-’, concerned with wisdom, not just knowl- for example, Laing and Cooper gave sev-
‘institution’. One of the reasons that I there is a certain openness. You don’t want to edge. The second element is what kind eral classes. That was very well-attended
don’t like the word is because I think define a new structure, it’s more experimental, of knowledge it does involve. And the because, also, you know, it’s not just what
individual intentions get muddled and you could say. If you negate the existing power third element is that we were more like they said, but their personalities came
confused and hidden in an institution. La- structures without setting up a new... a community. So I got new experimental through. A lot of the people attending
ing called this ‘process’. While in a tribal   JB: Yeah. And we found out that that’s colleges, I got community. The Free Uni- saw it as a chance to meet those people.
gathering, maybe, or in a commune some- impossible. As soon as you have group versity of New York was like a community.   Otherwise, the people at the Antiuni-
times, individual actions and intentions relations with people, you have a power Much of the difference between institu- versity were like Juliet Mitchell, or like
are more clear. Laing called this ‘praxis’. structure. You have egos. You have people tions and anti-institutions was the commu- Calvin Hernton or others, who were
So any social structure where there’s more who are more dominant than others, and nal aspect of it. Institutions are run by a course leaders at the Dialectics. Calvin was
praxis rather than process, when people more outspoken than others. So as soon power/authority structure – hierarchy of very intellectual and a poet himself. He
know who’s doing what to whom, is a as you have that, then you have a power power. An attempt to negate this through wrote the best poem about Kingsley Hall
breeding ground for wisdom. I was think- structure. Or people do more, people more communal activities, more commu- and Laing, which was wonderful.
ing of the story of Mozart and Salieri. who are willing to attend more meetings. nal decision-making. This creates its own  JJ: For example, Cornelius Cardew, the com-
Salieri (who is also a fine composer, but And then you have people who attack problems. Nonetheless, that’s another poser-musician, he made a course. What did,
not quite up to Mozart’s standards) slowly this, and say ‘why should you be the secre- aspect of it. The communitarian aspect for example, music mean in the Antiuniversity?
poisoned Mozart to death. It was done in tary, why should you be in charge, making of it. And also, the fourth aspect was, the Do you remember it?
such a way that Mozart never knew who the decisions?’ So if you want to spread ability to discuss subjects which are not   JB: Well, it was an attempt to do some-
was getting at him. If you really want to the decision-making process, you have open to intensive discussion elsewhere. thing original and unique and different.
hurt someone, you do it through a social to have more meetings, and things take Like Allen Krebs was talking about in New There was also a course in printmaking,
system where you start over here, and the time. Eventually people get tired of this. York. Where do you have a discussion, by Asa Benveniste. He was great. Trigram
knife is put in by someone over there, and  JJ: But that was maybe also the conclusion talk about, teach Marxism? Maoism? The Press, I think he had. He was a brilliant
you never knew where it came from. of the anti-institution, in a way, that new work of various Black Power leaders? And typographer and poet. He had some sense
 JJ: I’m of course also interested in the term structures will somehow appear that might be so forth. Eventually this changed. Ameri- of beautiful print on paper, and how you
‘anti-institution’ – we could call it ‘alternative’ informal... can universities changed. But at the time, do that.
but ‘anti’ is quite a powerful term.   JB: That’s right, and people had to I think there were no courses in Marxism-  JJ: So there was a more practical...
  JB: Yeah, what is the ‘anti-’ against? think about, well, how do you anti-anti- Leninism. Most of the people involved in   JB: Yeah, yeah. Mixture of the practical
‘Anti-’ meant anti-dehumanisation of the university, and so forth. How do you ne- the Free University were very left-wing. and the experiential together. I mean, you
people who were involved in the activity. gate the negation. Same thing in London, but less so. could have practical courses like ‘How
By dehumanisation I mean people who  JJ: Just to return to the formation of the   One other aspect of it is extended dis- to Make an Atomic Bomb’. We didn’t do
were in the power structure, the authority Antiuniversity,you established a committee to cussions. Extended discussions, like, in that. [laughs] ‘How to Make a Hand Gre-
structure, like in the schools here. There prepare the Antiuniversity with Leon Redler, Ju- the Free University we’d called it Saturday nade’. That wasn’t included either.
was a teacher, and there were students, liet Mitchell, Allen Krebs and others. Could you Night Invitations... Forums, that’s what  JJ: I’m of course interested in this school
and the students just had to take in what describe this committee? Because you were imme- they called it. In the New Experimental where there were artists – like Cornelius
the teacher said without questioning diately coming out of the Congress, I think, the College, they called it ‘recreations’. Or Cardew, John Latham, Edward Dorn; a group
them. In our seminars, everything was Antiuniversity was only started eight months ‘tings’. A ‘ting’ was more a communal get- of psychiatrists – you, Laing, Cooper, Redler
open to question. Initially, in the Antiuni- later or something like that. So, what kind of together, wasn’t it? and others; and then there were more political
versity we had the question of how do you discussions did you have in this committee?  JJ: A communal assembly people. I’m just curious about the interaction,
define a student, and how do you define a   JB: Whom we would invite, how would   JB: Yeah, and maybe that was missing, because you’re bringing different languages,
teacher? Some courses were very popular, we finance it, where it would be, what we in the end, from the university in Lon- different perspectives, into the same anti-
so most participants were teachers in oth- would talk about, who would be teaching, don, there wasn’t enough of this. When institution.
er courses. The teachers became students, how do we publicize it -- much easier now we’d established Kingsley Hall and then   JB: That’s right, and the hope was that
and the students became teachers. than then, I mean, nowadays, it’s easier the Arbours Association, the Arbours we would kind of teach each other and
  How do you pass on wisdom? In a normal through the internet and through Twitter, Crisis Centre, we always tried to have bi- meet. Sometimes we did, most of the time
institution or university, one of the func- Facebook, things like that. monthly meetings where someone spoke we didn’t. Many of us knew each other. I
tions is to pass on knowledge. But what we  JJ: But what did you do, then, somehow to and a topic was discussed in depth and think that it also brought out big egos in
were trying to do was find a way to pass on publicize it? something like that. this place. So Laing was a big ego. John
wisdom. And that’s much harder, that’s   JB: Word of mouth, and then making  JJ: I guess the Antiuniversity also became a Latham was a big ego.
much more elusive. That depends on re- posters and putting them around. So it social space where people were hanging out.  JJ: Also, you made a rather traditional struc-
lationships, that depends on the style of a takes time to do that. Nowadays, you can   JB: That’s right, yeah. And there were ture, with courses every week or every second
person, the experience of a person. pretty much start an Antiuniversity in a a lot of crazies there. When I mean ‘cra- week in the afternoon, late afternoon, or in the
  So, in technological courses, how do week. Then, it took months. zies’, I mean affectionately, and hostilely. evening...
you make a radio? It’s knowledge, how  JJ: The building at Rivington Street, that The hostile crazies were those who argued   JB: Yeah, most people worked, that’s
to make a radio: you put this and this was rented to you from the Bertrand Russell about everything, that would attend the why. And most people didn’t get paid. So
together, you’ve got a radio. So you have Foundation. meetings, talk just because they wanted to some people who needed money more
ten lectures on how to make a radio. But   JB: Yeah. It was just through the good hear themselves, and so forth. They were got paid more, got paid something. But
then how do you determine what should graces of Ralph Steadman, I mean, that disruptive. Affectionately, because some there wasn’t a lot of money around. And
be broadcast? What should be broadcast we got it. people just came to talk and hang out; for a long time it was a labour of love. But
and what shouldn’t be broadcast? That’s  JJ: Did you get a cheap rent? they were weird, but seemed to contribute after a year or two, the labour of love wore
wisdom. So one of the discussions had to   JB: As I remember, yes. We very much to the general atmosphere of the place. thin. People wanted to get paid, people
do with, really, wisdom. Also, a lot of the hoped to reach out to working people, to  JJ: How much drug-taking was taking place couldn’t live on that. So that’s how things
ideals of the Antiuniversity, had to do with working-class people. And black people, at the Antiuniversity? begin to break down. You had to have a
making it easier for people to have access immigrant people. And, as I remember,   JB: A lot. Well, those were the sixties. certain number of students to pay, to get
to knowledge. We have the Open Univer- working-class people weren’t interested  JJ: What kind of drug-taking? money in, to pay the rent and that. And
sity here, which is fine, most of the learn- in it at all. They just wanted to stay at the   JB: A lot of grass. And acid. I know in other people didn’t pay anything at all. 48
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  JJ: In the Antiuniversity course catalogue tion. I don’t remember much the specific grace of god. Other people would say you needed was organisational structure.
introduction, it is written ‘We must destroy the content of the discussions. I mean, after it depends on good luck. Other people A latticework, a container, that could
bastardised meaning of student, teacher and all, it was only 40 years ago. would say it depends on the balance of keep it. When I founded the Arbours,
course in order to regain the original meaning  JJ: But what about your role as a teacher in good people you have in the tent, so to within two or three years we started a
of a “teacher”: one who passes on a tradition; this situation? speak, in the tribal tent. If you have too training program. At first it was done very
the “student”: one who learns how to learn;   JB: My role as a teacher was to be many disruptive and destructive people, informally: lectures, seminars in people’s
and “course”: the meeting where all this is tak- there, and to inspire, to communicate, nothing’s going to happen. homes. Eventually, this coalesced into a
ing place.’ In a way you went into the project to inform. To hold things together. That  JJ: You talked about therapy as being ‘micro- place, a building, where we continued.
still with teachers, courses... was part of my role as an organizer of the social’ and society being ‘macro-social’. If you A more formal structure. The problem
  JB: There was a lot of discussion about place. That was also my role in Kingsley should compare therapy with education, teach- is when a formal structure becomes an
that, and afterwards people thought that Hall, and being involved with Kingsley ing, how would you do that? institution, and gets over-solidified, over-
they couldn’t really eliminate the word Hall. I had to choose which one I wanted   JB: ‘Therapy’ is an over-used word. reified.
‘student’, because students are there to to focus on. Eventually I chose Kingsley I think it refers to a different kind of   I always like to live with a certain
learn, and teachers are there to teach. But Hall. And I think when I chose that a cou- engagement, where one’s trying to heal amount of chaos in my life. I’m comfort-
trying to deconstruct the terms, by the fact ple of years after the Antiuniversity had another person’s soul or relationships. able with chaos. Other people fight chaos
that some teachers became students in started, things began to close down. The Now, healing can take place educational- tooth and nail, and they don’t like it. I
other courses, and some students became same thing with Laing. When he left King- wise too, but usually isn’t thought of that like a bit of chaos, otherwise it becomes
teachers of other courses. And also what sley Hall, it fell apart. way. When I think healing does take place too solid, too entrenched.
bothered us was the method of teaching.  JJ: One thing that I have read about in dif- is when the teacher is enabled to convey  JJ: So, I guess that of course egos are also
Sometimes this didn’t work due to the per- ferent places is that the Antiuniversity became wisdom. conditioned by a society that is alienating
sonality of the people involved. Some peo- a commune, or, people moved in and started to  JJ: How would you define wisdom? people. So it’s hard to make an institution like
ple are just ego freaks. [laughs] Or they’re live in the building at Rivington Street.   JB: Being able to gain a meta-perspec- that, embedded in a society that is destructive.
basically dominating personalities. But at   JB: Well, it works both ways, because tive on events. A kind of teaching which You can’t just get rid of the surrounding society.
the best of times, when people were open Kingsley Hall was like an anti-university. allows you to see that your own lone   JB: You can’t. The surroundings is our
and willing to listen and discuss, well, that We had lectures there, and talks, and indescribable suffering is not alone. Not context, even if you live in a beautiful
was fine. And how do you know when peo- seminars. That goes back to the original the only thing happening. Know when to building in the country. You can kind of
ple are ego freaks? You don’t. function of Kingsley Hall as a settlement fight, know when to smile. keep it at bay and keep it on a distance
 JJ: But I guess that’s also why you don’t like house and a place of meeting, as a meet-  JJ: And something that can be learned? for a while, but there are always interfaces
the role of the ‘teacher’ and the ‘student’, it’s ing house. Think that’s how the Antiu-   JB: I think so. Or it can be conveyed. going on. I think Laing at one point tried
manifesting a certain power relation. niversity began in its sixties incarnation, You might not act on the knowledge, but to establish a commune in the country-
  JB: That’s right, yeah. Real power pre-Dialectics of Liberation, at Kingsley it can be conveyed. I mean, I’m a good side. He had a benefactor, a man who was
shouldn’t be based on a hierarchy of ex- Hall. And Kingsley Hall was like a com- fighter as well. [laughs] But I have to wealthy, and bought a house in the coun-
perience. For people in psychiatry, some mune. So I don’t remember if Rivington know when to curb myself and when to try. [laughs] But eventually the intrigues
of the best teachers are actually mental Street became a commune, but you could smile. And when to shut up. So that wis- and the conflicts and the difficulties came
patients. And some of the worst students say the commune became the Antiuniver- dom also comes with silence. Sometimes there too. Even though the house was
are psychiatrists. sity. [laughs] you talk too much – one talks too much. nice, the man imported a chef, from a
 JJ: I have had the possibility to look into the  JJ: But I also understood it was not a prob- It just muddles things. Silence is also very Tiki Tonga restaurant. [laughs] It would
papers of the Antiuniversity, and I could also lem, and I guess it’s not against the idea of the powerful. have been better if we’d actually cooked
see that after the first quarter, there was a call university that people are living there.  JJ: I also wanted to ask you regarding com- together. Actually one of the most impor-
for a meeting where there was a critique of the   JB: No, not at all. munity, and formal and informal power struc- tant things you can do in a commune is to
fee structure and a critique of the payment to  JJ: But what did it mean, also at Kingsley tures inside a community. How does this relate make bread. You have to take the dough
the teachers. Do you recollect that, or discus- Hall, and what could it have meant at Anti­ to what you just said about praxis and process? and you go ‘whack! whack! whack!’ And
sions about the structure coming from inside university, that you lived there, and stayed and How would you describe the power inside a that’s really great for getting out aggres-
the Antiuniversity? slept, and had an everyday inside the institu- small group? sion, and for exercise. I’d recommend
  JB: Well, there was a lot of talk about tion?   JB: It all depends on the people and the making bread.
‘should we pay teachers?’ We also had dis-   JB: I think the word ‘antiuniversity’ is a egos involved. Whether people want to  JJ: It might also be what you call the ‘micro-
cussions about ‘should we pay students to bit dated now. It’s not that we’re ‘antiuni- subordinate their egos to a general good. social’ relations, having practical thimgs...
learn?’ Nowadays it’s become common. In versity’, the question is what are we for? I It also depends on how many charismatic   JB: The practical things are very impor-
impoverished areas you pay students, you think we’re for wisdom. And how do you people you have in the group. Like Laing tant. In the Antiuniversity, one thing that
pay kids to learn. In New York they have gain wisdom? One way is to live in a com- was very charismatic. went wrong: too many intellectuals, too
that now. Wasn’t so common then. mune – and to understand the difficulty   I’ve learned not to say too much. The much thinking. Thinking without practice
  Of course, who gets paid for what is part of relationships with people. Because it space between words is very important. is not useful. It’s destructive.
of an authority or power structure. But for- is difficult to be in a space which you’re The space between letters. And I didn’t
tunately, or unfortunately, we didn’t have sharing with other people, especially with know that at the time. There was a clash
to worry about that so much – we didn’t people like myself, who’s an only child. of egos. Everybody thought they were the
have enough money to pay for anything.  JJ: So, in a way you understand that what most important person in the world. And
 JJ: I’m interested in the whole experimental you can learn, the wisdom, is also coming out what they were thinking, and what they Joseph Berke is an individual and family
nature of the Antiuniversity and the anti- of antagonism. were doing, was great and everybody else psychotherapist who lives and works in North
institution in the way you were opening up a   JB: That’s right, yeah. Coming out of was subordinate, stupid. London. He is the author of many articles and
discussion of everything. antagonism, coming out of love, coming   So that was part of the problems of the books.
  JB: The whole experimental nature is out of sharing. Antiuniversity, and part of the problems
based on a discussion about relationships.  JJ: If you bring your whole existence within of the people involved there. As a leader, Image of Berke at the Dialectics of Liberation
I mean, it has to do with the communi- a framework like this, what does it do to your one has to have a light touch, usually. Congress by Peter Davis, 1967.
tarian nature of the experiment. And personality and psychology, living inside an A light touch, rather than being heavy-
what we struggled with, it was not differ- institution? handed. So I think I contributed that too,
ent from what various communes are   JB: Again, I don’t like the word ‘institu- the heavy-handed stuff. Contributed to
struggling with, and what other groups tion’, I prefer the words ‘social gathering the fact that the Antiuniversity didn’t last
struggle with in their own way. Which is, place’ or ‘tribal gathering place’ or ‘tent’! too long. Two or three years.
people trying to look at relationships, and ‘Institution’ reminds me of IBM. Or a  JJ: Didn’t you have the hope that a positive
learn from them. And not try to create a kind of bureaucracy in government. I process of self-organisation would evolve within
social structure based on individual hier- think two things can happen. It can make the Antiuniversity?
archy. It’s quite difficult, as we discovered. you more mellow, and more laid-back,   JB: I did have a hope. The hope was not
We anti-anti’ed ourselves to death, you more tolerant. Or the other way, you can realised. More happened in the group
know. [laughs] get very hostile, angry, and poisonous. which I subsequently started, the Arbours
 JJ: But what I was also thinking, in terms Both things happen. Depends on who’s Crisis Centre, which went on for close to
of the concrete. At Rivington Street you met there, and your mood, and... it depends forty years.
every second week, with your ‘Anti-Institution’ really on the degree of envy and jealousy  JJ: After you moved out from Rivington
seminar. How many people were there? Do you and narcissism you carry with you. Street... I found some newsletters describing
remember anything, like images, situations?  JJ: And what decides in what direction a how the courses carried on in private homes
  JB: I think about fifteen. We had lively community like that will go? and pubs. How did that work?
51 discussions about ... That’s a generalisa-   JB: Well, some people would say the   JB: I think it worked well informally. All
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 The university anno 2012
ment-wide and individual teaching loads,
administrative duties for instructors. Also,
it’s used to institute... for example, at
Queen Mary, there’s a complaints proce-

– The student consumer and the Help Desk dure which is being used to restructure
the part of the Business school which is
obviously inimical to the larger goals that
The Common Room, Senate House, its students to undergo what they will in new hue that their careers in higher edu- the current administration has for the
University College London, May 3, 2012 any case have to undergo – if they don’t cation would acquire, should they be so Business school.
want to become merely waste product af- lucky as to get careers in higher education,   So the various kinds of administrative
  Jakob Jakobsen: I hope this is just going to ter they graduate. which of course, statistically, most of them devices and procedures which are as-
be an informal conversation. But of course it   I did enrol for the ten-week training are very unlikely to get. sociated with this consumer revolution
would be good if we could reflect on this kind course three months ago. Students, in   Most students took the line that the situ- as it’s been implemented in the British
of basic concept of the university under present order to pass it, needed only to demon- ation has changed, the structure has been university system in the last year or two
conditions and also the role of the student, the strate their attendance over the ten-week reformed, this was out of their hands, are being fully wielded by management as
role of the teacher or the scholar within the uni- course. It feels slightly cloddish to have how could they in any case have hoped to disciplinary devices over instructors, over
versity structure. Maybe you could start with to admit that, having signed up for the prevent it, given that they are individuals students, over administrative staff. As part,
introducing yourselves and your place in the course, I managed to attend only one of and that since their careers are individual I guess, of the intensification of the audit-
system, in the machinery. the sessions and then only three-quarters careers, and not collective careers after all, ing culture which is now located on the
  Marina Vishmidt: I’m Marina, I’m a of it. But the session itself, or the con- since who thinks about ‘collective careers’, side of student satisfaction rather than,
PhD student at the School of Business tent of it, gives some kind of aperture on their task was just to ‘get on with it’. And for example, the REF – the Research Ex-
and Management at Queen Mary, Univer- the current status of ‘training’, that is to so, having an exhausting and extended cellence Framework, which has replaced
sity of London. I don’t teach. I’m finish- say, the inculcation of the skills that are ethical debate about the positive and the Research Assessment Exercise. So the
ing my PhD this autumn. My contact with required of people who wish to teach in negative features of the reforms seemed to point I was just making, in this very dila-
the university has been somewhat mini- British higher education. them to be redundant, superogatory, to be tory way, was how these kinds of surveys of
mal in these four years, particularly the   The class was led, on the one occasion a waste of their time, in short, when what student satisfaction are disciplinary instru-
last two, three years. I did attend, by the head of the PhD Stud- they ought to be speaking about is how ments both for students and, maybe more
  Danny Hayward: I’m Danny, I am a PhD ies at the College, who very apologeti- they might best inculcate in themselves clearly, for teaching staff. Because it’s also
student at Birkbeck College, in my second cally prefaced his discussion – and his and internalize the attitudes which are used to allocate funding, the Student Sur-
year. I too do not teach. I could perhaps of- preface extended well into the session required of them. There was a great pas- vey, isn’t it?
fer a narrative why that is the case, since in – with an account of what has happened sion for conformity in the room.   Overall, these developments seem in-
principle I could; in fact, I am encouraged in UK higher education in the last three   JB-R: It’s probably worth reflecting dicative of the dictum putting students at
to. That is probably enough biography. years, which was of course an advance to briefly on the White Paper that came out. the heart of the system, which is the main
  Jacob Bard-Rosenberg: I’m Jacob, I’m everyone there. But what needed to be Sorry, not the White Paper, the Browne talking point incessantly quoted from the
also a PhD at Birkbeck College, the de- explained to the students and aspirant Report. That was a large report on Brit- Browne Report by government officials in-
partment of English and Humanities, in teachers was that the restructuring of ish higher education, and one of the de- volved with the restructuring of the univer-
my first year. I also don’t teach. fee regimes in higher education, pushed mands made within this document was for sities and people in university governance.
 JJ: The reason I’m sitting here is because I through Parliament in the end of 2010, a sort of highly-structured national system The dictum is about re-sitting a highly
am doing research into an alternative univer- and due to be implemented at the be- of continuing professional development centralised, opaque, micro-managerial and
sity called the Antiuniversity of London. It was ginning of the next academic year, had for people working as teachers within the intractable culture of governance onto
an experimental university in the late sixties. also changed the role of the teacher. So sector. This is now a year and a half, two the person of the imaginary student who
This institution was set up by different play- that students who were now training to years later, being echoed by a demand by is looking to get the best quality product
ers. But mainly people coming out of the anti- become teachers at Birkbeck had a differ- the National Union of Students. An article for a justifiably increased fee. So just like
psychiatry movement, coming out from Kingsley ent position to students who underwent that went round in The Guardian three the £9k fees are about displacing educa-
Hall, and this whole movement that was criti- the same process even two or three years weeks ago, in which the National Union of tion subsidy from a direct to an indirect
cal of the function of institutions in society, ago. And of course the bottom line here Students are now demanding of all teach- structure – hugely more expensive for the
especially in relation to mental illness. Then was that students who now undergo train- ers within universities that they become state in the short and long-run, unless the
they moved on to make the Antiuniversity. Of ing will need to be much more alertly part of a continuing professional develop- loans are sold off, which there is every
course they looked at the institution, the institu- sensitised to consumer demand than ment structure. The union of lecturers is chance they will be – student demand is an
tion of the university, and tried to re-negotiate they would previously have needed to very much against this. But as the union imaginary displacement of responsibility
that in relation to seeing the institution as a be. ‘Student demand’, in this case, is de- of lecturers and the National Union of from management or the state, ultimately
shaping machinery, in a way. So I think it fined as student preferences as they are Students are both ultimately controlled (or its funding bodies and quangos) to the
would be interesting if you would like to, or expressed in various national surveys like by the Labour Party, this is not an argu- student as the consumer of last (and first)
could speculate, on how the university works the Student Satisfaction Survey, which is ment which will get anywhere, ever. This is resort. Which displacement is enforced
today, or propose what can it be, what kind of conducted by the Student Union. more concerning than just initial training by management and the state of course,
structure is built into this present university   It was difficult to sit through this for programs, but there is a very serious de- in the best interests if the student. The
that you work within. two hours, I found. Literally difficult, in mand that structured employment within student herself will be too busy negotiat-
  DH: It might serve to begin, then, by the sense of physically uncomfortable, institutions is not improved by systems of ing her escalating levels of indebtedness to
expanding on why I’m not teaching. and painful even, so that I couldn’t help continuing professional development but, find her place at the system’s heart.
Currently, at Birkbeck, PhD students are but fidget and bite my tongue. Mostly rather, monitored and controlled by them.   JB-R: And there’s a whole business of
encouraged to teach. In the sector as a because the apologetic administrator who  JJ: What does that mean, this professional league tables, which is not straightforward
whole, PhD students, in fact, are required was nominally taking the class was much development? because these league tables are not pub-
to teach if they wish to secure paid em- more anxious about this than most of his   JB-R: It means that you as an academic lished by the government. They’re pub-
ployment once they graduate. Until quite students seemed to be. So that his whole will, or your institution will, continually lished by privately-owned third parties, The
recently, students at Birkbeck were paid demeanour, the disposition of his presen- pay for you to go on centrally-run courses. Guardian, The Times... But yes,
to take a ten-week training course, which tation, was designed as if in expectation And it may have impacts on, for example, more and more, the National Student Sur-
they needed to take if they were to be- of great furore, uproar, among students inspections of teaching, on national stand- vey is related to funding. British university
come Associate Tutors: adjunct staff with- who would not submit to this egregious ards in teaching. Which ultimately won’t funding is complicated as it stands anyway.
in the faculty. However, recently Birkbeck demand that, as teachers, they think in be to do with standards, they’ll be to do  JJ: But what kind of interest, if you should
brought its pay scale into line with most the first instance about consumer de- with controlling anyone who doesn’t want characterise it, what kind of interest is govern-
other English institutions by reducing the mand rather than about anything else, to do what the government decides is in ing the university? You could say, on a general
payment to PhD students who take the whether it be their relationship to the the customer interest of students. level, these kinds of changes that you are pre-
course from £400 to nothing. Birkbeck is students as people or about the discipline   MV: It’s very much framed in terms senting here. What interest is that?
able to do that, of course, because it has to which they’ve committed and its mate- of student demand, framed in terms of   JB-R: So this is something that’s
finally come to acknowledge what was rial requirements. This disposition, then, emancipating the student to fulfil their changed significantly in the last two years,
manifest all along, or certainly for the last proved to be oddly out-of-kilter with the potential as a student by being a con- and it differs between institutions. So
ten or fifteen years, which is that anyone atmosphere of the class, which was much sumer. But it’s also very much a disciplin- you take, for example, Oxford and Cam-
who wishes to gain paid employment in more inordinately permissive. So, the ing tool, a central disciplining tool, the bridge, they don’t really care. They’ve
the sector once they’ve graduated, must majority of the students seemed almost National Student Survey. Obviously, well, got lots of money, they don’t have any
teach. Given that is the case, there’s not surprised that anyone should need to maybe not ‘obviously’, but it’s used by ad- problem attracting students. With the un-
59 much incentive for the institution to pay apologize to them in advance about this ministration to re-structure both depart- dergraduate education, the main change
which has happened is not in terms of position. And they’re not in a position to beautiful freedom of their unfilled time  JJ: It’s a quite nice metaphor, but it’s in a
how the institution’s run. From the stand- say ‘well, I’m not paying my fees’. This is in their enclosed offices. But that model way individualised completely – you ring or
point of the institution, it’s not about not an option for them. Even the most will become increasingly scarce as more call as an individual to the Help Desk.
how much the fees are, it’s to do with the antagonistic student, to be a student, is and more institutions are deprived of ac-   JB-R: No, no, you don’t ring or call, you
fact that core budget has been cut, core forced to introduce market demand. cess to research funding. queue for about two hours. [laughs]
funding from the government, so the  JJ: ‘Market demand’ is like the labour mar-   So, as research funding is reduced in   DH: You can ring or phone but if you
only way they can guarantee the continu- ket, like, future job possibilities, or... its absolute amounts, and then is increas- do so, you are inviting immediate eviction
ance of their departments is by attracting   JB-R: Or buying commodities, which is ingly canalised to larger, more prestigious by the security forces, who also increas-
students. Which, for the vast majority of close to what happens in universities now. institutions which are better able to com- ingly are generalised.
universities, or departments, becomes  JJ: But I guess it’s qualifying you to have a pete for that funding in free competition,   To answer the question about general
more difficult. Their concern is ‘can we certain kind of profession. other institutions, which previously have education, or generalised education, sim-
get bums on seats this year, and how many   MV: Well, education is the commod- sought to promote research and which ply, that model is so incontrovertibly toxic
jobs will it cost if we don’t?’ ity that develops you as a commodity in may have in the last few years attempted from the perspective of the new system
  This is a slightly older problem. I the labour market. So it’s the commod- to specialize their research profile, will of funding allocation based on consumer
remember, I’ve worked as an adminis- ity which enhances the value of you as a increasingly conduct no research at all. demand as a screen for employer demand
trator in the universities and going for future labour commodity. Or a present They will merely become institutions that that it is no longer much mentioned in
job interviews. I was told ‘if you’re the labour commodity in most cases now, es- employ, at the cheapest possible rate, aca- the documentation which is produced by
administrator on this course, your job is pecially now. demics who are willing – again, because the defenders of the new funding regime.
not to administrate the course but rather  JJ: So a student is not only a consumer but of the structure of the market in which One of the reasons why they do not need
to guarantee the conversion rate of first- also a commodity within this system. they operate – to do nothing but offer to mention it is perhaps their most promi-
contact applicants acceptance onto this   MV: Yes, especially when the funding teaching services to students paying less nent antagonists, the vociferous defenders
course. Otherwise this course disappears, comes from the students. for their degrees, which, in consequence, of the old system, were not exactly advo-
and you won’t have a job any more’.   DH: There’s an ontology attached to take less time, be more intensive, and be cates for that idea either. It’s difficult to see
  DH: That statistical figure is a condi- this. The student becomes the bearer of better integrated into the programmes of when, in the modern history of the British
tion of access to further funding. But his or her degree, which is what entitles commercial vocationalisation. Which are university, which I suppose might be dated
the question about wider interests can him or her to compete for particular jobs. right now being promoted very vigorously to the foundation of UCL – the end of the
be answered in connection to the issue Of course, entitlement to compete is not by companies via their representatives like 1820s – and the reorganisation of the syl-
of discipline. So students, who have now an entitlement to get... the Confederation of British Industry. labi at Oxford and Cambridge in the 1860s
been transfigured into sovereign consum-   JB-R: [laughs]   JB-R: I’m thinking about the endpoint or 1870s – there has ever been a serious
ers, might appear to be exempted from,   DH: Even meaningful entry into com- of this model, at least speculatively, which attention to this question of the necessity
even the beneficiaries of, the process of petition requires significant initial outlay is what happens with music composers. If of a general education.
discipline applied to university teachers. on the behalf of the student who wishes to you’re a music composer, writing mainly   MV: It didn’t have a liberal arts revolu-
But still, plainly, that isn’t the case insofar enter that domain. for orchestras, the way you make a liv- tion, in other words.
as the transfer of the fee burden to them   MV: US$ 50,000 at my old university. ing now is you write your piece of music   DH: No.
means that they have to become endlessly   DH: That vocabulary then mushrooms and you enter it into competitions. And  JJ: But I also wanted, in terms of that, to then
more sensitive to their employment pros- outwards so that students are bearers of if you’re lucky enough, your piece of see the struggle more in terms of trying to fight
pects after graduation. That sensitivity to degrees, but also, students with scholar- music wins a prize, and you might get a within the given university, or could there be a
employment prospects means that what ships – insofar as they still exist, and their performance out of it. This seems to be way out of this system. Studying for many years
gets presented as... numbers are dwindling and will continue the endpoint of this restructuring of re- of your life. I’m just wondering where the strug-
  MV: Discipline gets mediated through to dwindle – are students attached to re- search, which is not that you get money gle is located, where’s the site of contestation.
the students. They become a channel search grants. This idea of the modularity then you do your research, but you do   JB-R: One of the things about the struc-
for the discipline from government and of the total package of qualifications, so your research and then subsequently you tures, to make it more concrete, we might
financial institutions. So they experience that the student becomes something like can enter it into competitions which you talk about the structure of the seminar. It
discipline and they displace it. an empty subject who has qualifications might get reimbursed from. That would seems very clear that the marketisation of
  DH: Sure. But the point is that students plugged into her, is perhaps derived from seem to be the endpoint of where this education has had a hugely pacifying ef-
are controlled perfectly well by market the increasing modularity of course struc- model might go in the future, miserably. fect on the possibility of a seminar taking
demands, and it’s not necessary to create tures themselves, but they might just be  JJ: Also, now like at UCL, at the Centre place in university now. Where once there
a thousand institutions to regulate their coincident. Court, you have this kind of architectonic spec- might have been discussion, students
behaviour in addition to the market.   JB-R: But also from the standpoint of tacle, in a way, between Art, and Law, and have become totally submissive and pas-
  MV: But it is. Those institutions will government, this is not a modularity of Medicine, or Science, Law and Art facing each sive with regard to authority or teachers
proliferate. the empty student, but the modularity of other in the architecture of the main court. And in that setting. A seminar is no longer a
  DH: Of course. But maybe they are the student’s bank account. So the reason these kind of humanistic ideals within univer- place for debate and discussion, but rath-
more markedly present at the moment in the government increases fees is that it sity education, how are they doing? er a place where you can be given a bit of
the university sector in their function as believes it can increase returns based on   JB-R: So I think there’s another piece knowledge and go away. So the seminar
means of disciplining teachers, academics. the structure of employment. They don’t of architecture which is probably worth has degenerated into a lecture almost
  MV: Yeah, it’s an axiom of New Public need to ‘plug in’ degrees to students, they dwelling on, which is the Help Desk. always. This is the concrete experience of
Management that the more market disci- need to ‘plug in’ qualifications that allow Which is something which has been pio- people across the arts and humanities, I
pline you introduce, the more oversight for higher earnings into the student’s neered by Birkbeck College, and these don’t know about elsewhere, over the last
agencies you need to monitor quality. bank account. The student is written out structures... decade or so.
  DH: But the list of scheduled mediations of this equation very early on: at the point   DH: The last vestige of the universal.   That doesn’t mean that demanding a
will be something like market demand of application, aged seventeen.   JB-R: Well, absolutely. You now h ave a seminar might be a site of struggle, unfor-
determines student demand; student  JJ: What does it mean, that there’s two parts single help desk where any student can tunately.
demand is monitored, analysed and meas- of university – there’s the teaching, bringing on go to ask for any help with any problem.  JJ: Is there a process of people setting up their
ured, and then is converted into norms a certain tradition of knowledge, a certain pro- Probably not academic help. own seminars?
which regulate the behaviour of tutors, ac- fession, but there’s also the research...   I got an email this morning from a   JB-R: I guess the sites of struggle are
ademics, course administrators. All of the   JB-R: Less and less. friend who’s working at Middlesex, and most apparent are struggles over space,
people who have a pedagogical or infor-  JJ: ...you are, I guess, as PhDs, also doing they’ve just got an email from their over space within universities. Common
mational role in the reproduction of the research as part of your education. How would management talking about the centrali- rooms have disappeared. Staff rooms have
university as a system in which people can you differentiate those two activities? sation of administration. And they too disappeared. Any communal space that
learn. Market demand as a straightforward   DH: So I suppose that first it would be are having a new Help Desk. But their might have existed for the type of produc-
means of coercion is pretty well obfuscated appropriate to note that research, as an administrative Help Desk is also going to tive academic work that exists outside the
by means of that chain of apparently only activity, will become increasingly a spe- answer all queries about the library and possibility of regulation have disappeared.
bureaucratic measuring institutions. cialist preserve. That’s always been the all academic resources that the university Where they haven’t disappeared, they’ve
  JB-R: It’s also worth dwelling on the intention of the university reforms. That, holds. So, you have this sort of transfor- become chain coffee shops in the uni-
fact that ultimately there’s no way that currently, every academic institution at mation from what might have been the versity. But there is a struggle over space
a student can behave to withdraw them- least wishes to present itself as a research universal, interdisciplinary character of there, in the university.
selves from becoming this space where institution, where academics are engaged the university to the Customer Help Desk   DH: Colonised by the booking system.
market demand enters the university. As a in not only drilling their catechisms into that can help with any of your problems   JB-R: Yes.
student, regardless of what they do, when the little jars that are assigned to them, but not really help academically. But it’s   DH: There’s lots of space of course, all
they are a student, basically through their but also live the life of the mind, and per- somewhere to go if you have a problem, the time. But you don’t have access to the
bank accounts they’re forced into this form their autonomous research in the at least. [laughs] booking system. 60
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Antiuniversity of London – Antihistory Tabloid
All material compiled and edited by Jakob Jakobsen, researcher and associate at MayDay Rooms  |  The Antihistory blog, where data-mining around the Anti-
university and related initiatives is ongoing, can be found at antihistory.org  |  This tabloid is produced in collaboration with MayDay Rooms (maydayrooms.org)
and the PETT Archive and Study Centre(pettarchive.org), which hosts papers from the Institute of Phenomenological Studies and the Antiuniversity of London.
Additional material has been retrieved from various archives and personal collections  |  Thanks to Joseph Berke for allowing us to copy the London Anti-
university papers. Thanks to Flat Time House for allowing use of images from the Sigma meeting organised by Alexander Trocchi in 1964. Thanks to Peter Davis
for allowing use of images from the Dialectics of Liberation Congress of 1967  |  The Antihistory Tabloid will be available for free at MayDay Rooms, London, the
PETT Archive and Study Centre, Gloustershire, the And And And Platform/Documenta 13, Kassel, and other spaces interested in the histories of struggle  | 
Copy-edited by Howard Slater, Marina Vishmidt, and María Berríos  |  Designed by Jakob Jakobsen, assisted by Åge Eg Jørgensen  |  Published by MayDay Rooms,
London, 2012  |  Thanks to Ayreen Anastas, Jacob Bard-Rosenberg, María Berríos, Robin Blackburn, Gillian Boal, Iain Boal, John Cunningham, Anthony Davies,
Peter Davis, Stephen Dwoskin, Craig Fees, Nour Fog, Leigh French, René Gabri, John Haynes, Danny Hayward, Emma Hedditch, Henriette Heise, Michael Horovitz,
Jacki Imviry, Åge Eg Jørgensen, Mai Kjærsig, Martin Levy, Roy Lisker, Rob Lucas, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Leon Redler, Morton Schatzman, Howard Slater,
Fabian Tompsett, Claire Louise Staunton, Barbara Steveni, Marina Vishmidt  |  The Antihistory Tabloid is financially supported by the Danish Arts Agency  | 
ISBN 978-1-906496-85-2  |  Second print run in collaboration with Flat Time House, 2013