I do want to offer an alt reading of the Hall ovation. There’s certainly an element of hagiography, but I believe that it was really to do with the knowledge that Hall is unlikley to attend any/many conferences again in the UK due to his deteriorating health. I can’t say that definitively, but it was what I felt, and he’s been writing until recently, but has now stopped. I wish I could discipline myself not to star-worship, but I find it hard to avoid this particular nostalgia trip. Hall does represent a collaborative mode of cs, linked to a critical pedagogy, and which had a much greater ability, IMO, to respond to socio-cultural issues on terms defined by the scholars involved, rather than their potential evaluators/sponsors. All that is harder now in the game-playing environment of the RAE, thus raising the nostalgia stakes even further for many present!

What are you Aussies making of the RQF?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21855132-12332,00.html

Wy ref to ‘polite bourgie response’ was a nod in the direction of the academy’s preference for such a mode of discussion. Which rules at the vast majority conferences, workshops, seminars, etc – such as the one under discussion.

This hegemonic voice alienates a LOT of people – where’s the ‘hospitality’ in that?

Consider the policing of voices that ensues from the version of ‘hospitality’ uncritically tied to the hegemonic voice.

Which I have encountered repeatedly in academia, and which is evident at the conference under discussion.

Consider how rewarding it is to work through OTHER affective experiences [I am not prvilegeing anger here, it's an example] with each other. This is not inhospitable.

Consider how emotions and affects tie bodies together – its an embodied hospitality, and involves – in plain speak – letting your guard down. That’s very hospitable I would have thought.

Consider how often community is built through shared feelings that spill all over each other. As ugly or messy or intense as that can get.

Regarding ‘your’ context and speaking position, since you bring it up, it wasn’t about you.

I wonder too why any expressed aversion to being confronted with anger is so quickly dismissed as a ‘polite bourgeois’ response without proper consideration or knowledge of the context or speaking positions of the individuals involved?

And finally I wonder where academic hospitality fits into all of this? Not so off topic after all.

There is actually plenty to be agitating – and anger does this – about in CS – ECRs casualised to the enth degree and tenured CS academics needing to do more about it, more diversity and dissemination and support of non-western regions in CS publishing and project initiatives, a critique of the liberal hegemony in CS politics, and an increase in community engagement and initiatives in certain circles/regions.

The anger I expressed in my comment is borne of the pessimism and frustration at the above, and the fact that there was a lack of intellectual honesty and urgency about these issues at the conference Mel unpacks.

Also influencing the comment was a beer or two, and a sense of playfulness that was lost in the medium.

As a ‘heart on the sleeve’, ‘knee-jerk’, affective/emotional response I know it may alienate those who prefer polite bourgeois rational academic etiquette.

I like that though, but I am a shit-stirrer.

The urgent and intense political debates and issues in the neighborhoods I have been working in don’t take a form of discourse that doesn’t ‘alienate’ anyone. So I forget myself I guess.

It is actually the hegemonic academic mode of address that actually alienates these people.

I prefer people to be honest – like Mel was in her post – to wear their heart on their sleeve, and to get fired up if they need to – I love them for it. It’s a humanness and warmth that CS can use. It not always ‘nice’ though.

Self-congratulatory theoretical back patting and a conference that lacked political impetus and agitation will hardly get any difficult political projects moving, and political boats rocking.

It’s ironic that while there is so much writing ‘about’ affect in CS I hope for more expression ‘through’ affect on CS blogs, conferences, writing, and debates.

In fact, I think it is urgently needed.

I thought I expressed a wider range of feelings than your reading implies, but maybe the subsequent comments have a way of inflecting those particular meanings. You could be right about my blog being a pessimistic space, but that is as much to do with what motivates me to write and why rather than a theoretical or political position about cultural studies (which is far from my only interest).

As a present day cultural studies scholar myself, I can’t identify with your anger or that of your commenters, indeed I often find it quite alienating, and I’m not sure if that’s a matter of simply just not agreeing with what seems a totalising pessimism, a complete failure on my part to comprehend the politics of what your expressing, or, or… I don’t know. Maybe you can help me out.

No-one needs ‘authentic’ theoretical ‘keys’ and a version of self-congratulatory CS. Nor an egotistical pedigree being shoved down their throat by some sort of CS cartel.

An alternative is just go back to basics and work on political and theoretical initiatives of CS from the ground up with communities – where’s that Hoggart fella when ya need him.

And look to those who don’t buy into such rubbish for inspiration – like Kuan-Hsing Chen – and innumerable community-based activists and educators.

Rage Against the Machine: “we don’t need the key we’ll fucking break in”.