What in the hell …

My real name is Scott Eric Kaufman. I have a public blog that you may have read. You may ask yourself, why is the public blog so much better written than the pseudonymous blog? The answer is that I never intended this blog for public consumption. An email I received prompted some soul-searching, after which I feel it is unethical to continue this charade.

I am sick. (more…)

I want to take a moment and treat two famous quotes from figures in the history of the U.S. labor movement as sort of aphorisms. (more…)

To produce and maintain intra-class hierarchy. (more…)

I’ve written before about some of my sense of disconnect from and disagreement with the Edufactory project. I feel like I’m a negative voice on their email list, which is not a position I like to be in, and unfortunately this looks like it will continue. Today I had a thought that I might be able to make a more constructive contribution by writing up something on previous autonomous educational initiatives, predecessors that the Edufactory idea of an autonomous university might draw on. (I mean this here in a narrow sense. In a more expansive sense every mass organization and mass movement is an educational initiative.)

My short list off the top of my head is below. If I think of others I’ll add them here. If anyone has other examples please let me know.
- Work People’s College
- Socialist Sunday School
- Modern School movement
- Consciousness raising groups in the women’s liberation movement
- Highlander Institute, Midwest Academy, Gamaliel Foundation, etc

I got hit in another game of blog tag earlier, as I mentioned. I now hereby do my part as “it” in the game of blog tag, except that I don’t know if I know anyone who teaches literature who hasn’t already been tagged. Aw fuck it. I tag Mike, Negatron, and Tzuchien.

So anyway, why do I teach literature?
(more…)

Trick question. They’re all the best.

I loaned my Fugazi collection to a friend for a while, just recently got them all back. (more…)

I find certain utterances of appeals to anti-essentialism off-putting. More to the point, I find certain utterances of the charge of essentialism off-putting. (more…)