View source for Anarchy 31/The spontaneous university

<div style="text-align:justify;">{{header
 | title      = [[../|ANARCHY 31 (Vol 3 No 9) SEPTEMBER 1963]]<br>The spontaneous university
 | author     = Alexander Trocchi
 | section    =
 | previous   = [[../Anarchism and practicability|Anarchism and practicability]]
 | next       = '''[[Anarchy 32]]'''
 | notes      = ''ALEX&shy;ANDER TROCCHI gradu&shy;ated in philo&shy;sophy at {{w|Glas&shy;gow Univer&shy;sity|University_of_Glasgow|University of Glasgow}} and has since lived in {{w|Paris|Paris}} and {{w|Amer&shy;ica|United_States|United States}}. He is the au&shy;thor of ''{{w|Young Adam|Young_Adam}}'' and ''{{w|Cain{{s}} Book|Cain's_Book}}.'' These frag&shy;ments are from his {{qq|{{l|In&shy;vis&shy;ible In&shy;sur&shy;rec&shy;tion of a Million Minds|http://www.notbored.org/invisible.html|Full text at NOT BORED!}}}}, and readers will notice their rel&shy;ev&shy;ance to the ideas can&shy;vassed in ''[[Anarchy 24|{{sc|Anarchy}} 24]] (''The Com&shy;mun&shy;ity of Schol&shy;ars'')'' and ''[[Anarchy 30|{{sc|Anarchy}} 30]] (''The Com&shy;mun&shy;ity Workshop'').
}}


<div style="max-width:500px; margin:auto;">{{p|293}}

<font size="5">'''The spon&shy;tan&shy;eous uni&shy;vers&shy;ity'''</font>

<font size="4">'''[[Author:Alexander Trocchi|ALEXANDER TROCCHI]]'''</font>


{{sc|In a recent essay {{w|Arnold Wesker|Arnold_Wesker}}}}, con&shy;cerned pre&shy;cisely with the gulf be&shy;tween art and pup&shy;ular cul&shy;ture and with the pos&shy;si&shy;bil&shy;ity of re&shy;inte&shy;gra&shy;tion refers to the threat&shy;ened strike of 1919 and to a speech of {{w|Lloyd George|David_Lloyd_George|David Lloyd George}}. The strike could have brought down the gov&shy;ern&shy;ment. The Prime Min&shy;is&shy;ter said:

<blockquote><font size="2">{{tab}}{{e}} you will defeat us. But if you do so have you weighed the conse&shy;quen&shy;ces? The strike will be in defi&shy;ance of the gov&shy;ern&shy;ment of the country and by its very suc&shy;cess will pre&shy;cip&shy;it&shy;ate a con&shy;stitu&shy;tional crisis of the first im&shy;port&shy;ance. For, if a force arises in the state which is stronger than the state itself, then it must be ready to take on the func&shy;tions of the state. Gentle&shy;men have you con&shy;sidered, and if you have, are you ready?</font></blockquote>

The strikers, as we know, were not ready. Mr. Wesker com&shy;ments:

<blockquote><font size="2">{{tab}}The crust has shifted a bit, a num&shy;ber of people have made for&shy;tunes out of the pro&shy;test and some&shy;where a host of Lloyd Georges are grin&shy;ning con&shy;ten&shy;tedly at the situa&shy;tion {{e}} All pro&shy;test is al&shy;lowed and smiled upon be&shy;cause it is known that the force—eco&shy;nomic&shy;ally and cul&shy;tur&shy;ally—lies in the same dark and secure quar&shy;ters, and this secret know&shy;ledge is the real des&shy;pair of both artist and intel&shy;lec&shy;tual. We are para&shy;lysed by this know&shy;ledge, we pro&shy;test every so often but really the whole cul&shy;tural scene—par&shy;ticu&shy;larly on the left—{{q|is one of awe and in&shy;ef&shy;fec&shy;tual&shy;ity}}. I am certain that this was the secret know&shy;ledge that largely ac&shy;coun&shy;ted for the de&shy;cline of the cul&shy;tural activ&shy;ities in the Thir&shy;ties—no one really knew what to do with the phil&shy;istines. They were om&shy;nipo&shy;tent, friendly, and se&shy;duct&shy;ive. The germ was carried and passed on by the most un&shy;sus&shy;pected; and this same germ will cause, is begin&shy;ning to cause, the de&shy;cline of our new cul&shy;tural up&shy;surge unless {{e}} unless a new sys&shy;tem is con&shy;ceived where&shy;by we who are con&shy;cerned can take away, one by one, the secret reins.</font></blockquote>

Al&shy;though I found Mr. Wesker{{s}} essay in the end dis&shy;ap&shy;point&shy;ing, it did con&shy;firm for me that in {{w|England|England}} as else&shy;where there are groups of people who are act&shy;ively con&shy;cerned with the prob&shy;lem. As we have seen, the polit&shy;ical-eco&shy;nomic struc&shy;ture of west&shy;ern so&shy;ci&shy;ety is such that the gears of creat&shy;ive intel&shy;li&shy;gence mesh with the gears of power in such a way that, not only is the former pro&shy;hibited from ever ini&shy;tiat&shy;ing<!-- 'imitiating' in original --> any&shy;thing, it can only come into play at the be&shy;hest of forces (vested inter&shy;ests) that are often in prin&shy;ciple anti&shy;path&shy;etic towards it. Mr. Wesker{{s}} {{q|{{popup|Centre 42|a theatre founded by Arnold Wesker}}}} is a prac&shy;tical at&shy;tempt to alter his rela&shy;tion&shy;ship.

{{tab}}I should like to say at once that I have no funda&shy;mental quar&shy;rel with Mr. Wesker. My main criti&shy;cism of his pro&shy;ject (and I admit my know&shy;ledge of it is very hazy indeed) is that it is lim&shy;ited in char&shy;ac&shy;ter and that this is re&shy;flec&shy;ted in his ana&shy;lysis of the histor&shy;ical back&shy;ground. {{p|294}}He takes the 1956 pro&shy;duc&shy;tion of {{w|Osborne|John_Osborne|John Osborne}}{{s}} ''{{w|Look Back in Anger|Look_Back_in_Anger}}'', for ex&shy;ample, to be the first land&shy;mark in {{q|our new cul&shy;tural up&shy;surge}}. A seri&shy;ous lack of histor&shy;ical per&shy;spect&shy;ive, the in&shy;sul&shy;arity of his view {{e}} these feat&shy;ures are, I am afraid, in&shy;dic&shy;at&shy;ive of a kind of church-bazaar philo&shy;sophy which seems to under&shy;lie the whole pro&shy;ject. Like handi&shy;crafts, art should not be ex&shy;pec&shy;ted to pay. Mr. Wesker calls for a tradi&shy;tion {{q|that will not have to rely on finan&shy;cial suc&shy;cess in order to con&shy;tinue}}. And so he was led to seek the patron&shy;age of trade unions and has begun to organ&shy;ise a series of cul&shy;tural fest&shy;ivals under their aus&shy;pices. While I have noth&shy;ing against such fest&shy;ivals, the ur&shy;gency of Mr. Wesker{{s}} ori&shy;ginal diag&shy;nosis led me to ex&shy;pect re&shy;com&shy;menda&shy;tions for ac&shy;tion at a far more funda&shy;mental level. Cert&shy;ainly, such a pro&shy;gramme will not carry us very far towards seiz&shy;ing what he so hap&shy;pily refers to as {{q|the secret reins}}. I do not think I am being over&shy;cau&shy;tious in as&shy;sert&shy;ing that some&shy;thing far less ped&shy;estrian than an ap&shy;peal to the public-spirited&shy;ness of this or that group will be the im&shy;per&shy;ative of the vast change we have in mind.

{{tab}}Never&shy;the&shy;less, at one point in what re&shy;mains an in&shy;ter&shy;esting essay, Mr. Wesker quotes Mr. {{w|Raymond Williams|Raymond_Williams}}. Who Mr. Williams is and from what work the quota&shy;tion is taken I am un&shy;fortun&shy;ately ignor&shy;ant. I only wonder how Mr. Wesker can quote the fol&shy;low&shy;ing and then go out and look for patron&shy;age.

<blockquote><font size="2">{{tab}}The ques&shy;tion is not who will patron&shy;ise the arts, but what forms are pos&shy;sible in which art&shy;ists will have con&shy;trol of their own means of ex&shy;pres&shy;sion, in such ways that they will have rela&shy;tion in a com&shy;mun&shy;ity rather than to a market or a patron.</font></blockquote>

Of course it would be dan&shy;ger&shy;ous to pre&shy;tend to under&shy;stand Mr. Williams on the basis of such a brief state&shy;ment. I shall say simply that for myself and for my as&shy;soci&shy;ates in Europe and Amer&shy;ica the key phrase in the above sen&shy;tence is: ''{{q|art&shy;ists will have con&shy;trol of their own means of ex&shy;pres&shy;sion}}.'' When they achieve that con&shy;trol, their {{q|rela&shy;tion to a com&shy;mun&shy;ity}} will be&shy;come a mean&shy;ing&shy;ful prob&shy;lem, that is, a prob&shy;lem amen&shy;able to formu&shy;la&shy;tion and solu&shy;tion at a creat&shy;ive and in&shy;tel&shy;ligent level. This we must con&shy;cern our&shy;selves forth&shy;with with the ques&shy;tion of how to seize and within the so&shy;cial fabric exer&shy;cise that con&shy;trol. Our first move must be ''to elimin&shy;ate the brokers.''

{{tab}}How to begin? At a chosen mo&shy;ment in a va&shy;cant coun&shy;try house (mill, abbey, church, or castle), we shall foment a kind of cul&shy;tural {{q|jam session}}: out of this will evolve the proto&shy;type of our ''spon&shy;tan&shy;eous uni&shy;ver&shy;sity.''

{{tab}}The {{w|Jewish settle&shy;ments|Kibbutz|Kibbutz}} in {{w|Israel|Israel}} turned a desert into a garden and astoun&shy;ded all the world. In a flower&shy;ing garden al&shy;ready wholly sus&shy;tained by auto&shy;ma&shy;tion, a frac&shy;tion of such pur&shy;pos&shy;ive&shy;ness ap&shy;plied to the cultiv&shy;ation of men would bring what re&shy;sults?

{{tab}}Then there was the {{w|ex&shy;peri&shy;mental col&shy;lege|Black_Mountain_College|Black Mountain College}} at {{w|Black Mountain|Black_Mountain,_North_Carolina|Black Mountain, North Carolina}}, {{w|North Caro&shy;lina|North_Carolina}}. This is of im&shy;medi&shy;ate inter&shy;est to us for two reas&shy;ons. In the first place, the whole con&shy;cept is almost identical to our own in its edu&shy;ca&shy;tional aspect; in the second, some in&shy;divid&shy;ual mem&shy;bers of {{p|295}}the staff of Black Moun&shy;tain, cert&shy;ain key mem&shy;bers of wide ex&shy;peri&shy;ence, are actu&shy;ally as&shy;soci&shy;ated with us in the present ven&shy;ture. Their col&shy;labora&shy;tion is in&shy;valu&shy;able.

{{tab}}Black Moun&shy;tain Col&shy;lege was widely known through&shy;out the {{w|United States|United_States}}. In spite of the fact that no de&shy;grees were awarded gradu&shy;ates and non-gradu&shy;ates from all over Amer&shy;ica thought it worth&shy;while to take up resid&shy;ence. As it turns out, an amaz&shy;ing num&shy;ber of the best art&shy;ists and writers of Amer&shy;ica seem to have been there at one time or another, to teach and learn, and their cumul&shy;at&shy;ive influ&shy;ence on Amer&shy;ican art in the last fif&shy;teen years has been im&shy;mense. One has only to men&shy;tion {{w|Franz Kline|Franz_Kline}} in refer&shy;ence to paint&shy;ing and {{w|Robert Creeley|Robert_Creeley}} in refer&shy;ence to poetry to give an idea of Black Moun&shy;tain{{s}} sig&shy;nific&shy;ance. They are key figures in the Amer&shy;ican van&shy;guard, their influ&shy;ence every&shy;where. Black Moun&shy;tain could be de&shy;scribed as an {{q|ac&shy;tion uni&shy;ver&shy;sity}} in the sense in which the term is ap&shy;plied to the paint&shy;ings of Kline ''{{popup|et alii|and others}}.'' There were no ex&shy;amin&shy;ations. There was no learn&shy;ing from ult&shy;er&shy;ior motives. Stu&shy;dents and teach&shy;ers par&shy;ticip&shy;ated in&shy;form&shy;ally in the creat&shy;ive arts; every teacher was him&shy;self a prac&shy;ti&shy;tioner—poetry, music, paint&shy;ing, sculp&shy;ture, dance, pure math&shy;em&shy;at&shy;ics, pure phys&shy;ics, etc.,—of a very high order. In short, it was a situa&shy;tion con&shy;struc&shy;ted to in&shy;spire the free play of creat&shy;iv&shy;ity in the in&shy;divid&shy;ual and the group.

{{tab}}Un&shy;fortun&shy;ately, it no longer ex&shy;ists. It closed in the early Fifties for eco&shy;nomic reas&shy;ons. It was a corpor&shy;ation (actually owned by the staff) which de&shy;pended en&shy;tirely on fees and char&shy;it&shy;able dona&shy;tions. In the highly com&shy;pet&shy;it&shy;ive back&shy;ground of the United States of Amer&shy;ica such a gratu&shy;it&shy;ous and flag&shy;rantly non-util&shy;it&shy;arian in&shy;stitu&shy;tion<!-- 'institutions' in original --> was only kept alive for so long as it was by the sus&shy;tained ef&shy;fort of the staff. In the end it proved too ill-adapted to its habit&shy;at<!-- 'habitate' in original --> to sur&shy;vive.

{{tab}}In con&shy;sider&shy;ing ways and means to estab&shy;lish our pilot pro&shy;ject we have never lost sight of the fact that in a cap&shy;ital&shy;ist so&shy;ci&shy;ety any suc&shy;cess&shy;ful or&shy;gan&shy;iza&shy;tion must be able to sus&shy;tain itself in cap&shy;ital&shy;ist terms. The venture must pay. Thus we have con&shy;ceived the idea of set&shy;ting up a general agency to handle, as far as pos&shy;sible, all the work of the in&shy;divid&shy;uals as&shy;soci&shy;ated with the uni&shy;ver&shy;sity. Art, the pro&shy;ducts of all the ex&shy;pres&shy;sive media of civil&shy;isa&shy;tion, its ap&shy;pli&shy;ca&shy;tions in indus&shy;trial and com&shy;mer&shy;cial design, all this is fan&shy;tastic&shy;ally pro&shy;fit&shy;able (con&shy;sider the {{w|Musical Cor&shy;por&shy;ation of Amer&shy;ica|MCA_Inc.|MCA Inc.}}). But, as in the world of sci&shy;ence, it is not the cre&shy;at&shy;ors them&shy;selves who reap most of the bene&shy;fit. An agency founded by the cre&shy;at&shy;ors them&shy;selves and opera&shy;ted by highly-paid pro&shy;fes&shy;sionals would be in an im&shy;preg&shy;nable pos&shy;ition. Such an agency, guided by the crit&shy;ical acu&shy;men of the art&shy;ists them&shy;selves, could pro&shy;fit&shy;ably har&shy;vest new cul&shy;tural talent long before the purely pro&shy;fes&shy;sional agen&shy;cies were aware it ex&shy;isted. Our own ex&shy;peri&shy;ence in the re&shy;cogni&shy;tion of con&shy;tem&shy;por&shy;ary talent during the past fif&shy;teen years has pro&shy;vided us with evidence that is de&shy;cisive. The first years would be the hardest. In time, grant&shy;ing that the agency func&shy;tioned ef&shy;fi&shy;ciently from the point of view of the in&shy;divid&shy;ual art&shy;ists re&shy;pre&shy;sented by it, it would have first option on all new talent. This would hap&shy;pen not only be&shy;cause it would be likely to re&shy;cog&shy;nize that talent before its com&shy;petit&shy;ors, but be&shy;cause of {{p|296}}the fact and fame of the uni&shy;ver&shy;sity. It would be as though some ordin&shy;ary agency were to spend 100 per cent. of its profits on ad&shy;vert&shy;ising itself. Other things being equal, why should a young writer, for ex&shy;ample, not pre&shy;fer to be handled by an agency con&shy;trolled by his (better-known) peers, an agency which will apply what&shy;ever profit it makes out of him as an as&shy;soci&shy;ate towards the ex&shy;ten&shy;sion of his in&shy;flu&shy;ence and audi&shy;ence, an agency, fin&shy;ally, which at once of&shy;fers him mem&shy;ber&shy;ship in the ex&shy;peri&shy;mental uni&shy;ver&shy;sity (which gov&shy;erns it) and all that that im&shy;plies? And, before elabor&shy;at&shy;ing fur&shy;ther on the eco&shy;nom&shy;ics of our pro&shy;ject, it is per&shy;haps time to de&shy;scribe briefly just what that mem&shy;ber&shy;ship does imply.

{{tab}}We en&shy;vis&shy;age an inter&shy;na&shy;tional or&shy;gan&shy;isa&shy;tion with branch uni&shy;ver&shy;sities near the capital cities of every coun&shy;try in the world. It will be au&shy;tono&shy;mous, un&shy;polit&shy;ical, eco&shy;nomic&shy;ally in&shy;de&shy;pend&shy;ent. Mem&shy;ber&shy;ship of one branch (as teacher or stu&shy;dent) will en&shy;title one to mem&shy;ber&shy;ship of all branches, and to travel to and resid&shy;ence in foreign branches will be ener&shy;get&shy;ic&shy;ally en&shy;cour&shy;aged. It will be the ob&shy;ject of each branch uni&shy;ver&shy;sity to par&shy;ticip&shy;ate in and {{q|super&shy;charge}} the cul&shy;tural life of the re&shy;spect&shy;ive capital city at the same time<!-- 'of the respective capital city at the same time' repeated in original --> as it pro&shy;motes cul&shy;tural ex&shy;change inter&shy;na&shy;tion&shy;ally and func&shy;tions in itself as a non-spe&shy;cial&shy;ised ex&shy;peri&shy;mental school and creat&shy;ive work&shy;shop. Resid&shy;ent pro&shy;fes&shy;sors will be them&shy;selves cre&shy;at&shy;ors. The staff at each uni&shy;ver&shy;sity will be pur&shy;pos&shy;ively inter&shy;na&shy;tional; as far as prac&shy;tic&shy;able, the students<!-- 'studnts' in original --> also. Each branch of the spon&shy;tan&shy;eous uni&shy;ver&shy;sity will be the nuc&shy;leus of an ex&shy;peri&shy;mental town to which all kinds of people will be at&shy;trac&shy;ted for shorter or longer peri&shy;ods and from which, if we are suc&shy;cess&shy;ful, they will derive a re&shy;newed and in&shy;fec&shy;tious sense of life. We en&shy;vis&shy;age an organ&shy;isa&shy;tion whose struc&shy;ture and mech&shy;an&shy;isms are in&shy;fin&shy;itely elastic; we see it as the grad&shy;ual crys&shy;tal&shy;lisa&shy;tion of a re&shy;gener&shy;at&shy;ive cul&shy;tural force, a per&shy;petual brain&shy;wave, creat&shy;ive in&shy;tel&shy;li&shy;gence every&shy;where re&shy;cog&shy;niz&shy;ing and af&shy;firm&shy;ing its own in&shy;volve&shy;ment.

{{tab}}It is im&shy;pos&shy;sible in the present con&shy;text to de&shy;scribe in pre&shy;cise de&shy;tail the day-to-day func&shy;tion&shy;ing of the uni&shy;ver&shy;sity. In the first place, it is not pos&shy;sible for one in&shy;divid&shy;ual writing a brief intro&shy;duct&shy;ory essay. The pilot pro&shy;ject does not exist in the phys&shy;ical sense, and from the very begin&shy;ning, like the Israeli {{w|kib&shy;butzes|Kibbutz|Kibbutz}}, it must be a com&shy;munal af&shy;fair, tac&shy;tics de&shy;cided ''{{popup|in situ|locally}},'' de&shy;pend&shy;ing upon just what is avail&shy;able when. My as&shy;so&shy;ciates and I during the past dec&shy;ade have been amazed at pos&shy;sibil&shy;ities aris&shy;ing out of the spon&shy;tan&shy;eous inter&shy;play of ideas within a group in con&shy;structed situa&shy;tions. It is on the basis of such ex&shy;peri&shy;ences that we have ima&shy;gined an inter&shy;na&shy;tional ex&shy;peri&shy;ment. Secondly, and con&shy;se&shy;quently, any de&shy;tailed pre&shy;con&shy;cep&shy;tions of my own would be so much ex&shy;cess bag&shy;gage in the spon&shy;tan&shy;eous gener&shy;ation of the group situa&shy;tion.

{{tab}}The cul&shy;tural pos&shy;sibil&shy;ities of this move&shy;ment are im&shy;mense and the time is ripe for it. Sci&shy;ent&shy;ists, art&shy;ists, teachers, creat&shy;ive men of good&shy;will every&shy;where are in sus&shy;pense. Waiting. Re&shy;mem&shy;ber&shy;ing that it is our kind even now who oper&shy;ate, if they don{{t}} con&shy;trol, the grids of ex&shy;pres&shy;sion, we should have no dif&shy;fi&shy;culty in re&shy;cog&shy;nis&shy;ing the spon&shy;tan&shy;eous uni&shy;ver&shy;sity as the pos&shy;sible det&shy;on&shy;ator of the in&shy;vis&shy;ible in&shy;sur&shy;rec&shy;tion.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spontaneous university}}
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