WGS Research Seminar – Avery F. Gordon (Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara)

Collective intelligence and preparation: a story of running away

An old story of running away is retold and the question of what happens if really there isn’t any new information to report, the runaways ate their fake papers resolving to Own nothing! and the first-person accounts are still missing? Will this old story that cannot be verified be of any use to those looking for escape routes today?  In this talk, I will present some items from the Hawthorn Archive that focus on the story of Eliza Winston and make a couple of general remarks about running away.

Avery F. Gordon is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Visiting Professor in the Birkbeck Department of Law|University of London (2015-2018). She is the author of The Workhouse: The Breitenau Room (with Ines Schaber); Keeping Good Time: Reflections on Knowledge, Power and People; Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination among other books and articles. Her work focuses on radical thought and practice and over the last several years, she has been writing about imprisonment, war and other forms of dispossession and how to eliminate them. She serves on the Editorial Committee of Race & Class, is the co-host of No Alibis, a weekly public affairs radio program on KCSB FM Santa Barbara, and is the keeper of the Hawthorn Archives.