Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Response by Professor Susie Orbach
I have got a lot of emotion which is not surprising. This is a sumptuous and
delicious honour. I am more than delighted to be associated with Essex and
extremely moved by Professor Samuel’s words.
Essex, for me, Essex University, has been a place in the mind. It was born as
a University as I was going to University and represented a daring, radical and
innovative educational practice and philosophy. This was the kind of University
I wished I were going to. The seminars were so inspiring, the staff brainy and
energetic, the approach to subject so refreshing and challenging that education,
at Essex itself, became democratically reconstituted. Students’ strengths and
contributions were seen as central, an intellectual curiosity welcomed and
encouraged. The University creating a home and a base for some of the most
innovative thinkers and activists of the last 39 years.
I, myself, never found formal education that easy. But then, I never found
Essex. I did, however, find the world of people, relationships, social
organisation, political practice and our emotional life fascinating and
compelling. And the questions thrown up by the Civil Rights Movement, the
Women’s Movement and the New Left, which arose at the same time as Essex, were
my spur to try to understand more deeply how to bring about wished-for change,
and how to understand the entrenched psychological, political and social forces
which make up who we are, how we can act and who we can be both personally and
collectively.
I have been very lucky and privileged to have come of age as part of the
generation who questioned everything, and the generation who opened up the
demarcations between academic disciplines in the interests of increasing
knowledge without any diminishing of excellence.
Linking the politics of everyday life and the events on the world stage with
a socially conscious, dare I say sociological psychoanalytic way of thinking,
has proved of enduring interest and of social value.
It is extremely gratifying to have this approach recognised by the
University, by the Vice-Chancellor, Ivor Crewe, by the Sociology Department, by
Professor Andrew Samuels. Thank you so very very much.
Thank you Essex University and congratulations to my fellow graduands who I
hope will go out into the world, make trouble, be innovative, break all the
rules, be thoughtful, be brave and really go out on a limb.
Thank you very, very much.
Susie Orbach
15 July 2004