Counterinfo for the Ungovernable Generation
About a year and a half ago, a small crew of truants got connected and released a bold statement, inaugurating an exciting new experiment. The result of over a year of finding each other and building relations, these campus radicals sought something to connect them with similar crews and projects that organized within and against the University and its world. Thus, Cutting Class was launched. Over the course of a few months, this project created some cool playlists, shared some subversive submissions, and even made inspiring roundups and creative interventions into the moments of student insurgency.
Now, almost a year since our last post…almost nothing is as expected. Our own local projects and commitments have drastically changed, or sometimes just fallen apart. We are tired, burnt out, and and more cynical. Some of us have graduated, or become even more disaffected with the world of campus & student life. We realized that, in many ways, our visions for this project had exceeded our own capacities and failed to keep up with our own investments.
With all that in mind, we are re-approaching this project. Despite our various, more intensely complicated relationships to the University–particularly, our desires to escape it–we remain interested in carving out a platform connected to this terrain of struggle. There are many questions we have yet to think through–ranging from the nature of truancy to the potentials for campus struggle in our present moment. We have yet to process many of our own experiences, whether successes, failures, or somewhere in the middle, and hope to find space to communicate our own reflections to those who find themselves entering the University. Moreover, we see new crews and organizations popping up in Universities across the country, continuing the seemingly endless cycle of student groups making the same mistakes and going through the same shit, asking the same questions. The question is, can we intervene in this cycle to shape those going through it, or are we cursed to merely watch it consume new generations? Can we build connections between those who have left the University or have always fought beyond it to those fighting from within its terrain?
With all these trajectories in mind, we are changing up the kind of content and activity this project will produce. Trying to act as a general news source and aggregate student/campus activities is not within our capacities, nor is it something we totally desire to do. Furthermore, we’re going to shift more explicitly to cover refusals, revolts, and projects which exceed and contest the University and the logics of traditional “student activism” (including the “radical” or “Leftist” variety). Instead, the new cutting class will feature:
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- Regular questionnaires & interviews with active projects and groups which we find interesting
- Highlighting zines, books, and articles from across the years displaying truant tendencies
- Compiling zines, flyers, and tips for budding radicals
- Building communications and networks between campus insurgents across the territories, as well as building networks between campus insurgents and insurgents beyond the University
- Making interventions into particular moments, issues, and sets of questions particular to campus life
- Archiving histories of truancy and insurgency against the University
As we do this, we’re interested in building better connections with different crews and people who share visions and interests. Slowly, we hope to build this project out more and see more directions and possibilities in the future.
This site will slowly become more active over the course of the next few weeks. Until our next post, feel free to hit us up if you wanna contribute or submit something, or recommendations for things you’d like to see on the site!
