”The New University, Accompaniment, and the Exilic Community”- by Denis O’Hearn

Recent work by Denis O’Hearn and Andrej Grubacic proposes that “exilic spaces” are a hopeful model for progressive change and, ultimately, for social revolution. Exilic spaces can be defined as those areas of social and economic life in which people attempt to escape from capitalist relations and processes, whether territorially or by attempting to build structures and practices that are autonomous of capitalist accumulation and social control. In this talk, Denis O’Hearn presents a new model for a public university. He discusses how and whether accompaniment, or community engagement, can be the basis for building exilic spaces into the university’s curriculum and practices. He presents real examples from universities in the US and elsewhere.

 Denis O’Hearn is a sociologist and community activist who has published widely on the impacts of transnational corporate domination, particularly in Ireland, and also on social movements, prison life, and exilic communities. He has written numerous articles and books, including Inside the Celtic Tiger, The Atlantic Economy, Bobby Sands: Nothing but An Unfinished Song, and Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid. He has won numerous awards, including two Distinguished Book Awards from the American Sociological Association; the Alessandro Tassoni Award, Modena, Italy; and the International Award ‘Citta ‘di Cassino Letterature dal Fronte’. He is now Dean of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso