Solitude ON-line – Live Online Event

Break and open floor for questions and discussion

Horizontal Reading Group with guest speaker Mandy Harris Williams:
»On Representing and/or Being the Intellectual: From Hashtag to Praxis«
Moderated by Gabriella Torres-Ferrer and Aouefa Amoussouvi

The Horizontal Reading Group is part of the Ecosystems of Knowledge platform, which was created in 2020 by Akademie Schloss Solitude as a new format for collective engagement. Initiated by current fellow Gabriella Torres-Ferrer as part of her residency at the Akademie, the Horizontal Reading Group meets online during these lockdown times to discuss a series of texts and ideas around a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The goal is to create knowledge from different perspectives, along an underlying exploration of non-hierarchical ways of existence; a safe and inclusive space for everybody.

For this specific session, we have the great pleasure to present input by Mandy Harris Williams, who is a critical theorist, writer, multimedia conceptual artist, performer, Brown Up Your Feed Radio Hour host on NTS radio, educator, and internet/community academic. She will speak about the book Representations of the Intellectual by the Palestinian literary theorist Edward Said. She is especially curious about the role of the intellectual today, critical in that so many people are beginning to consider the materiality between hashtag and praxis. Or, more specifically, what is »doing the work« versus representation of »doing the work?« How does social media work to shift and change our behavior so that intellectualism is more or less desirable or important? She is looking forward to discussing this work in the context of the current technological era, among fellow intellectual-leaning individuals who are also considering participation within these platforms. What is the nature of the intellectual community on social media? And how does the nature of the platforms in and of themselves contribute to or detract from intellectualism?