Tony joined the University at the turn of the century. He is author of 10 books and numerous refereed journal articles. As his professorial title suggests, Tony has particular expertise in the sociology of leisure, but he has published on a variety of other topics, including sport and community studies, and is known internationally for his work on the sociology of Zygmunt Bauman. In recognition of the diversity of his expertise, Tony has been invited scholar at a number of universities across the world as well as at organisations outside the academy, such as L’Oréal (Paris).
‘This is not a professorial lecture’ – Wednesday 11 April, 6-8pm, Heart of the Campus, Collegiate Campus
The answer is of course given in the title. All the same I will ask the audience to think hard about what appears to be an outrageous proposition. The first part of the lecture will draw on a parallel reading from the world of art to make the argument that in order to uphold our responsibility to be critical we need to undermine the familiar by placing it (as Derrida would suggest) ‘under erasure’. Applying this inscriptive activity I will next challenge the necessity of certain conventions in leisure studies and sociology.
Drawing on examples from my own work I will next make the case for a particular ‘freedom of thought’ that sets out to create new relations and specify characteristics of language in social forms, cultures and subjects generally ignored in leisure studies and sociology. In this conception a liberated and liberating alternative emerges which elevates skholē by harmonizing with the experience of those who share an experience and submitting that experience to what Wittgenstein would give the name ‘aspect change’.