Why are universities going on strike?

Reposting this blog about the imminent demise of Boris Johnson and the politics of campaign group Led By Donkeys because I see that LBD’s video about the ‘Tufton Street group’ of lobbyists is trending. I don’t disagree with anything in it, but I argue that ultimately its effect is to reduce politics to questions of competency and ethics, and to legitimate anyone who can present themselves as competent and command the confidence of the bond markets (which is what Jeremy Hunt is attempting to do at the moment by legislating for what looks like a devastating programme of renewed austerity). Whether the donkey is a bloviating Johnson or a sleep-walking Truss, in other words, opposing them on these terms won’t save us.

Thinking about violence, colonialism and the production of subjects with Seke Chimutengwende’s ‘It Begins In Darkness’.

I spent yesterday at a symposium I organised for the London Arts and Humanities Partnership and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama’s Research department. ‘Pushing Culture into Politics’ brought together researchers in the arts, humanities and social sciences from the UK, India, Scandinavia, and South Africa to discuss the politics of culture.

This excerpt from an editorial for the academic journal Studies in Theatre and Performance argues that the current crisis in the arts and humanities must be grasped as a deliberate objective of government. This requires active resistance, beginning with critical analysis of our own role within the system by which it is being delivered.

This paper analyses relationships between racialization and proletarianization in the British theatre of the long nineties.

This paper argues for a conjunctural approach to theatre historiography, which it exemplifies by reading some relationships between the work of Joan Littlewood and Paulette Randall and the hegemonic politics of their respective conjunctures, with particular emphasis on race.

This paper develops an affective atmospheric analysis of institutional racism in the UK cultural sector.

This is a keynote from a 2019 conference on actor training that uses material principally from my book Theatre Studios to develop an argument for a radical political approach to actor training.