Dispossessing academics: The shift to ‘appropriation’ in the governing of academic life

Abstract

This article offers a critical theoretical exploration of the transformation of academic life that is currently taking place under the sign of ‘neoliberalization’. The main aim is to differentiate appropriation from exploitation as strategies of surplus labour dispossession, to identify the growth of appropriative techniques in academic life, and to situate the proliferation of such techniques in the broader transformations of global political economy. Alloyed with poststructuralist social theory, the historical materialist thrust of the article demonstrates how, in the technologically articulate ‘social factory’ of advanced capitalism, the spatial operations of these techniques of dispossession have a particularly ‘aesthetic’ character that is immanent to their appropriative operation, and which renders their workings both more discreet and effective. The article aims: (1) to problematize the neoliberal concepts of efficiency, transparency, and autonomy, in terms of practical outcomes; (2) to stimulate reflexive consideration of the ‘positioning’ of academics themselves in the reproduction of these techniques; and (3) to ask how these techniques might generate new ‘historical subjects’ of struggle and organization in academic life.

Tolling academics: Rent-seeking and gatekeeping in the university space

“…One has little choice today but to apply to university programmes through online processes, for which one must pay an ‘administration fee’. However, through this reform, administrations have actually divested most of that labour from themselves onto the individual applicant, who must now take on the bulk of the labour themselves and who pays a fee mostly for the privilege of applying to the institution in question (see Welsh 2019a). Although this reform is undertaken in the name of a total social efficiency gain, the practical effect is nothing of the sort.…”

“…Another important distinction, this time within the category of labour, concerns the difference between productive and unproductive labour, and the relationship of abstract labour to value in Marxian political economy (Allmer 2017: 5). The distinction is important because it entails different kinds of critique and different modalities of class struggle (Harvie 2005: 144, 147–148; Welsh 2019a). Although some have been opposed to the distinction (Mandel 1992; Poulantzas 1978a), and others have emphasised its significance (Gough 1972; Meiksins 1981; Mohun 1996; Moraitis & Copley 2017; Shaikh & Tonak 1994), it is nevertheless an important set of coordinates through which to navigate so as to position rent-seeking behaviours in the production and distribution of value and surplus value.…”

“…This labour is co-productive of value, for it is neither reproductive labour nor productive labour as defined above. It takes place within value-relations but without value-form (see Welsh 2019a, 2020). Likewise, teaching could be considered productive labour, if undertaken directly for salary or fees, but reproductive when undertaken outside the terms of contract.…”

“…In this political economy, the commons of the university have become one of the ‘frontiers to capital’ (Kamola & Meyerhoff 2009: 9; see also Harvie 2000, 2006; Szadkowski 2019b), placing the academic space front and centre as a strategic site of accumulation and labour subsumption (Hall 2018; Szadkowski 2016b). When it comes to contemporary transformations in the governing of academic life, it is acutely apparent that a shift to ‘appropriation’ has taken place (see Reitz 2017; Schulze-Cleven et al 2017; Welsh 2019a, 2020). This has stark political implications, not merely for critical analysis of the political economy of that regime more generally but for the kind of academic politics in particular that seem now necessary, if we inhabitants of that space wish to promote emancipatory practices and concerted action within the ‘apparatuses’ that govern academic life and labour.…”

“…We might do better to demonstrate how such reforms do not even come close to establishing markets or properly competitive situations (Szadkowski 2016b). Academic rankings are illustrative, for though many denounce them as marketisations, they are in fact not only highly ineffective at establishing markets (Brankovic et al 2018; Locke 2014; Newfield 2016: 26–27) but are likely not even intended to (Welsh 2019a, 2020).…”