mind reader click to return to cornelius-bell.com

An attendee at a presentation I gave once said to me “it seems you just truly wish to belong in the academy”. This remains one of the most problematic and troubling interpretations of my work to date, something, at the time, I found deeply hurtful, and which has since sat with me as a space which demands further clarity in my thinking and articulation of positionality. Just a few days ago I met with a colleague who is doing research in an area of interest — student participation in direct democracy, and we discussed the dual notion of participation and rebellion; the way the counter-hegemony asserts different relations, challenges norms, and fights for transformation all while being exploited, stolen from, and dispossessed of knowledge, praxis, and possibility. Let’s do some theory, first, before I further disambiguate myself. If we understand that hegemony, in contemporary globalised colonial capitalism this can truly...