The Evolution of Intellectual Freedom

I’m presenting “The Evolution of Merlyna’s a Critical Monkey’s Intellectual Freedom” (bottom) πŸ˜†.

It was part of my last public lecture which basically attempted to provide an alternative imagination of possible career/life pathways. It’s my take vis-a-vis a (valid) critic of the state of intellectual freedom in academia by a brilliant Jorge Cham/PhD comic in 2011 (top). I think Cham’s is on point, but luckily his comic doesn’t apply to me.

~ eh, ini beneran lho dari slide kuliah umumku πŸ˜† ~

I believe in (trying my best in) being curious, having fun, and staying critical. Also “naughty” — and becoming naughtier as I get older πŸ™ˆπŸ˜‹. And never stop to be really bothered by injustice–hey, a critical monkey can be really angry, too πŸ™Š. No, never follow the “money” or the “safest” pathway. No, it’s not easy or smooth; sometimes you fail and/or people/institutions failed you, but speaking for myself and myself alone, I never and will never regret this choice. FYI, I am one of the lucky ones who survived academia and became a tenured professor several years ago by fully exercising my own freedom, doing research that I believed in. I hope to swing up-side-down while holding a banana when I am an emerita professor (if I ever become one someday) and grin satisfactorily when I RIP 😝😎.

~ aku katanya kelakuan mirip monyet, tapi ngga suka pisang sih πŸ˜† ~

I made an initial drawing, then my talented artist-friend Rivi Rian 😍πŸ₯°πŸ˜ decorated it with beautiful viney leaves.

p.s. some grad students who took my class probably had seen this critical monkey appeared in their assignments 😁.

[Publication] Algorithmic Enclaves

“Algorithmic enclaves”. I introduced this term in my 2017 article “Freedom to Hate” — which was instantaneously coined during the Q&A after my talk in Stockholm earlier that year (thank you folks for asking me hard questions!)– but didn’t detail the concept yet. Having read that article, some supportive colleagues suggested me to write an essay solely about the concept, so I did. Here it is:

Lim, M. (2020). Algorithmic enclaves: Affective politics and algorithms in the neoliberal social media landscape.published in: M. Boler & E. Davis (eds.), Affective Politics of Digital Media: Propaganda by Other Means.

You can download a copy-proof version through the link below — which is a 100% copy of the final version. For some unexpected reasons, it was impossible for me to copyedit and copy proof this one; I hope it still reads well 😎.

https://bit.ly/32SpZ4j