Shakespeare Reading Groups: Education Without the "Academy"?

Abstract

This paper grows from a contention the authors developed independently of each other, but that they shared (and which is shared and informed by others); namely that the neo-liberal marketization of education, including higher education, is a disaster for students, scholars, and the communities they are part of and serve. In a world of crisis capitalism where we are told ‘there is no alternative’, we seek to critically evaluate whether one of the alternatives we were trying to build – Shakespeare reading groups beyond the academy – really was or could be alternative, or whether our efforts simply reproduced the corrosive contradictions of current hegemonic models. So this paper considers the ways our reading groups focussed on Shakespeare might or might not offer a way to find common ground, and break down distinctions, between always contingent, problematic and provisional categorisations of ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’, ‘educator’ and ‘educated’, ‘client’ and ‘provider’. In so doing, we hope our practice, and how we theorize it here, can present a way to reflect on a context of which higher education is, or should be, an integral part.