Althouse: "How can we cultivate a practice of stealing from the university? Do marooned and resistant communities exist on campus?"

May 7, 2015

"How can we cultivate a practice of stealing from the university? Do marooned and resistant communities exist on campus?"

"What do Moten and Harney mean when they recommend theft as our proper relationship to the university? What would this look like in our institutions and disciplines? Where do the undercommons exist or where can it be created? What skills do we need to develop to become thieves? Where would we use stolen and reappropriated resources?"

Things happening around here.

73 comments:

rhhardin said...: All the freshmen learned to pick locks in the first week when I was in college.; 5/7/15, 10:57 AM
Leora said...: Hope they are attending the university on scholarship or loans that won't be paid back.; 5/7/15, 11:02 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I suspect that this is teasing language for some ideas that would be boringly banal if stated more straightforwardly. Don't be baited.

I haven't read the underlying essay, but I can see thinking students ought to perceive how universities are using them and should figure out how to get more than they give (or at least get as much as they give).; 5/7/15, 11:05 AM
mikee said...: As a former student of Texas A&M University, I had to read your post's first sentence several times and reorient my contextual mental map to get the correct meaning.

At A&M, Aggies do indeed exist as marooned and resistant communities, but it is the color maroon, not the marooned of isolation. And being resistant to most everything, but mostly learning, is an Aggie tradition.

As Bugs Bunny would call me, "What a maroon!"; 5/7/15, 11:05 AM
J Melcher said...: How? Study the athletics department for precedent and example. Ideas to look for:

Get assigned to a "job" and draw a paycheck for "chores" such as turning on the field's sprinkler system. (Which is actuated by a timer/sensor.)

Take classes in a "discipline" that requires no classroom attendance or participation, no tests, encourages collaborative work (letting one smart student do the work for a dozen dumb or lazy partners) and will never be needed in career work.

Demand plush/posh accomodations, meal services, and physical recreation resources like pools, saunas, and nature trails.

Blame any failures on the head (coach or otherwise) rather than the talents, training, or work of the participants.

Think inside this box, emulate the jock example closely, and find a lot of students willing to join and organize in your movement.; 5/7/15, 11:07 AM
mikee said...: Jeez, then I go to the article and get under come-on-ing out of the headline.

I should have stayed in bed.; 5/7/15, 11:07 AM
David said...: Just become an administrator and it all comes to you.; 5/7/15, 11:09 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: ...students ought to... figure out how to get more than they give (or at least get as much as they give).

Here are some radical ideas:

Go to class. Do your homework. Study. Major in something that will provide you skills that someone else thinks are worth paying you for.; 5/7/15, 11:11 AM
David said...: Ann Althouse said...

I haven't read the underlying essay . . .

Just like us commenters.; 5/7/15, 11:11 AM
Seeing Red said...: Ohh, the profs gonna give up their pay?

U want to steal? MOOC is the way to go.; 5/7/15, 11:14 AM
Tom B said...: According to their schedule they're having a workshop on June 4. I am seriously considering attending the "Radical/Counter Cartographies" seminar, as there are some hegemonic spatial representations I am rather keen to destabilize.; 5/7/15, 11:14 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I'm not going to read an essay just because somebody thought of a good teaser. That is life on the internet, AKA death by internet. Don't click on the teasers!; 5/7/15, 11:14 AM
kcom said...: "All the freshmen learned to pick locks in the first week when I was in college."

For us, it was two paperclips.; 5/7/15, 11:16 AM
Ann Althouse said...: By the way, I haven't seen an internet teaser telling me that something was going to "break [my] heart" in a long time. I guess the internet got immune to that. Also "you won't believe what happened next." Never see that anymore.; 5/7/15, 11:17 AM
TosaGuy said...: From the session schedule:
"1:30 PM Lunch Break (provided for registered attendees)"

As part of a practical exercise on stealing from the university, feel free to stop by for a free lunch.; 5/7/15, 11:17 AM
rhhardin said...: Ignore this teaser.; 5/7/15, 11:22 AM
traditionalguy said...: Think of The Clinton Foundation and there you have the University's business model. Stealing from such a "charitable" institution without having to give Bill a blow job now or later is the trick.; 5/7/15, 11:24 AM
Unknown said...: Relating this to black studies seems a little racist to me somehow.; 5/7/15, 11:26 AM
Etienne said...: The thing about socialism, is that it is so insidious.

I think the USA system of socialism has pretty much run its course. There is no need to expand it.

As President, I would lead the country forward in a system that did not include an IRS. To start, I would direct that we reduce the tax rate, by 15%, and create a VAT tax of 15% (excepting food, medicine, and water).

This will allow time to wean the citizens off the Roosevelt/Johnson tits.

Congress will make laws for a 15% consumption tax, instead of an income tax. This won't solve all the problems, but defeats off-shoring and hiding money in foreign banks. When the citizen goes to use the riches, they expose themselves.

Buying a Ford from Mexico, would cost more than a Ford from Detroit.

I will direct, that the Congress, or the states change the tax laws, or create a Constitutional Amendment to redirect this country to a Capitalist incentive regime.

Social programs will do better when they are fully funded. The current system of printing money to finance old age, and the underclass, has fully run its course.

We should not enrich China and Germany, to continue American Socialism.

Film at 11...; 5/7/15, 11:32 AM
damikesc said...: 1) Reading their page, they robbed me of 5 minutes.

2) Why is the university even humoring this nonsense?

3) Do minority students really want to be part of a movement that says it wants to steal stuff? Are they trying to "reclaim" hoodlum now.

4) Anything that uses the word "hetero-normative" is bullshit.

5) Creating political "dialogues" when FOIA documents are not given or do not exist does not make one think that they will be all that beholden to the whole "not lying through your teeth" mentality. Apparently, honesty is white oppression.

6) Could a Klansman of the 30's think less of minorities than Progressives of today do?

7) When they ask questions, I'm betting they aren't looking for answers.; 5/7/15, 11:33 AM
damikesc said...: If I were President, I'd simply zero out federal loans through Dept of Education and freeze all research grants.

Make the college useful or extinct. Either would be cool.; 5/7/15, 11:34 AM
bwebster said...: From the introduction to the underlying book:

“This is a powerful book, made of words and sounds, crisscrossed by subversion and love, written and studied ‘with and for,’ as Stefano Harney and Fred Moten put it. The roar of the battle is never distant while reading The Undercommons. The London riots and occupy, practices of refusal, marronage and flight, slave revolts and anti-colonial uprisings frame a challenging rethinking of concepts such as policy and planning, debt and credit, governance and logistics. The Undercommons is a homage to the black radical tradition, to its generative and constituent power before the task of imagining ‘dispossessed feelings in common’ as the basis of a renewed communism.” – Sandro Mezzadra

Doesn't sound like 'teasing language' to me.; 5/7/15, 11:38 AM
damikesc said...: debt and credit,

They want their debt ignored.

Note how quickly and succinctly I summed up their argument?

Brevity, kids. No need to bore us in a thousand words when you can bore us just as much in 100.; 5/7/15, 11:40 AM
Sebastian said...: "I haven't read the underlying essay, but I can see thinking students ought to perceive how universities are using them and should figure out how to get more than they give"

Sorry. Not relevant. Here's what it's about, as if we couldn't guess:

"...reveal and challenge the North American university as a site working at the junction of settler-colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, hetero-patriarchy, white supremacy and other systems of domination and exploitation. We also diagnose the university as a key institution of power that works in concert with police, prisons, the financial system, the ‘lower’ education system, punitive state bureaucracies, culture industries and other means of oppression....catalyze intersectional solidarity between and beyond laborers of the university, including: precarious academic workers; clerical, technical, food service, maintenance, and other support workers; subcontracted workers; exploited student laborers; international learners’ and those ejected from or refused by the university....valorize the labor of the “undercommons”, promoting the autonomy of these forms of bottom-up refusal, collaboration, solidarity and mass intellectuality that the university at once subjugates and requires for its survival"; 5/7/15, 11:45 AM
Rocketeer said...: Who was that guy a couple months back that attended classes at a few of the Ivies, unenrolled?; 5/7/15, 11:47 AM
Rusty said...: ""How can we cultivate a practice of stealing from the university? Do marooned and resistant communities exist on campus?""

Camp out in the library and read everything you can get your hands on. And then start asking questions of everybody.; 5/7/15, 11:52 AM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: When someone has to invent an entirely new vocabulary to express their ideas, it is time for the rest of us to watch out.; 5/7/15, 11:55 AM
Etienne said...: As Hitler found, even gassing a million people creates a logistics nightmare, and takes way too much energy.

What we need is a system, where the drags on society simply jump off a cliff onto the jagged rocks below.

The thing about this, is that these bodies will then form into a goo, that when drilled for a million years from now, will power family vehicles through their carburetors.; 5/7/15, 11:57 AM
MacMacConnell said...: It's ACORN for students or maybe SEIU. I guess we know what Obama meant when he said he would be "active" after leaving office.; 5/7/15, 12:02 PM
rhhardin said...: Kliban had a cat being parachuted to a marooned man on an island.; 5/7/15, 12:22 PM
pdug said...: " in a way, the undercommons is a kind of break, between locating ourselves and dislocating ourselves. What’s so enduring for us about the undercommons concept is that’s what it continues to do when it is encountered in new circumstances. People always say, ‘well, where the fuck is that.’ Even if you do that clever Marxist thing like, ‘oh it’s not a place, it’s a relation,’ people are like, ‘yeah, but where’s the relation.’ It has a continuing effect as a dislocation, and it always makes people feel a little uncomfortable about common. For me it was like the first freight that we hopped."; 5/7/15, 12:23 PM
pdug said...: So they're hobos; 5/7/15, 12:24 PM
pdug said...: NASA found 4 people trapped in Nepal with radar that heard their heartbeats.

And these guys want to be university hobos.; 5/7/15, 12:27 PM
Michael said...: Love it. Especially their desire (demand?) to eliminate "hierarchies of knowledge".

This piece is well done. Very well done. An elaborate feast of bullshit having every morsel of correct "thinking" down to colonialism. Hegemony. The whole tasty buffet.; 5/7/15, 12:28 PM
Mary Beth said...: The "radical organizers" provide a lunch break for "registered attendees". Could I come as an unregistered attendee and just steal lunch?; 5/7/15, 12:35 PM
kcom said...: "I suspect that this is teasing language for some ideas that would be boringly banal if stated more straightforwardly. Don't be baited."

Teasing language from the most humorless people on earth? You really suspect that? Pol Pot excelled at teasing humor, too, from what I've been told.; 5/7/15, 12:37 PM
Sigivald said...: "Sessions on critical research to be used within and against the university—from the archival to the financial—will be facilitated by graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars from across the U.S. and Canada who have been involved in this type of research at their home universities. "

Does this mean anything at all?

(Re. "I can see thinking students ought to perceive how universities are using them and should figure out how to get more than they give (or at least get as much as they give).", that's sort of sensible, on its face.

I mean, for students immersed in blinkered Marxism, which is the normal assumption of economic thought outside of an economics department on any campus.

The rest of us view trade [and this is trade] as mutually beneficial; if you don't think you're "getting enough" from your college tuition why are you paying? And why aren't you changing your class allocation to get value?); 5/7/15, 12:57 PM
Mountain Maven said...: By the time they finish the seminar they'll be so confused by the incoherence, they all go back to their state funded dorm rooms and get stoned.

A real institution would send a plant to figure out if these dopes are capable of planning a criminal act and then expel them.

If some one at Berkeley had had the guts to do than in 1963 maybe we would have a more civilized society.; 5/7/15, 1:01 PM
chuck said...: I've often stated that the revival of Britain will begin when Oxford is looted and burned and the faculty driven into exile. A similar approach to the University of Wisconsin-Madison would probably do much to reinvigorate the US.; 5/7/15, 1:03 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Sigivald wrote:
Does this mean anything at all?
Of course it means something. It means that they do not want to learn anything and do not want to pay for not learning anything. The university's only legitimate purpose is to foster revolution.; 5/7/15, 1:06 PM
robother said...: Finally an open acknowledgement that salaried positions in ethnic and feminist studies are literally stealing from the University. As the outline puts it:
"What writing and research practices can we use to escape the university’s demands to be productive for it?"; 5/7/15, 1:08 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Sorry. Not relevant. Here's what it's about, as if we couldn't guess..."

Really? I think my paraphrase is damned good (other than that I only mentioned students and not university employees).; 5/7/15, 1:09 PM
Julie C said...: Pay off your student loans using this one weird tip ...; 5/7/15, 1:17 PM
gadfly said...: @mikee said...

At A&M, Aggies do indeed exist as marooned and resistant communities, but it is the color maroon, not the marooned of isolation. And being resistant to most everything, but mostly learning, is an Aggie tradition.

Nobody told yell leader Rick Perry about the learning tradition from the looks of his grade transcript.; 5/7/15, 1:17 PM
Fernandinande said...: It's only fair to steal some pencils if you paid a lot of money for a degree in Victim Studies and didn't learn anything.; 5/7/15, 1:23 PM
Roughcoat said...: I hate academic jargon.; 5/7/15, 1:31 PM
gadfly said...: pduggie said...
" in a way, the undercommons is a kind of break, between locating ourselves and dislocating ourselves. What’s so enduring for us about the undercommons concept is that’s what it continues to do when it is encountered in new circumstances. People always say, ‘well, where the fuck is that.’ Even if you do that clever Marxist thing like, ‘oh it’s not a place, it’s a relation,’ people are like, ‘yeah, but where’s the relation.’ It has a continuing effect as a dislocation, and it always makes people feel a little uncomfortable about common. For me it was like the first freight that we hopped."

Just like the Boll Weevil and his relations ...

"De next time I seen de boll weevil,
He had all of his family dere.
Jus' a lookin' foh a home,
Jus' a-lookia' foh a home."; 5/7/15, 1:40 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: Well, they could have said a university is worse than a below minimum wage job and even a free internship.

Instead of getting paid, or working for free, someone actually has to pay to do a job which supposedly will qualify them later for a paying job.

Universities are situations where people work for a negative wage, and are, possibly, paid in "credits".

There's a lot of waste in this system.; 5/7/15, 1:53 PM
gadfly said...: @rhhardin said...
All the freshmen learned to pick locks in the first week when I was in college.

And in my time on the campi, all the star athletes learned where to pick-up Alumni-stuffed envelopes and dollar-a-year car leases.; 5/7/15, 1:55 PM
Left Bank of the Charles said...: "What writing and research practices can we use to escape the university’s demands to be productive for it?"

Blogging?; 5/7/15, 1:58 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: What are you fucking around for? Kill them! PUT THEM UP AGAINST THE WALL AND SHOOT THEM! Hurry!; 5/7/15, 2:03 PM
Sebastian said...: ""Sorry. Not relevant. Here's what it's about, as if we couldn't guess..."

Really? I think my paraphrase is damned good (other than that I only mentioned students and not university employees)."

OK, you're right. If students [and employees] "perceive how universities are using them and . . . figure out how to get more than they give," the undercommoners would no doubt call the whole thing off.

Accuracy of paraphrasing aside: just let everybody "figure out how to get more than they give," universalize the appropriation of surplus value, and all will be well.; 5/7/15, 2:03 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Fernandinande said...
It's only fair to steal some pencils if you paid a lot of money for a degree in Victim Studies and didn't learn anything.

I don't think that they are talking about that kind of stealing, Fernandinande. I think that they are talking about using their positions at the university, as intellectuals and social leaders and activists, to drive social change without performing their part of the bargain in return.; 5/7/15, 2:13 PM
who-knew said...: So, assuming this mess is being put on by tenured academics and paid for with some form of University money, I'd say they already figured out how to steal from the university (and the tax payers). The decadence before the fall is all that's here to be seen.; 5/7/15, 2:16 PM
Wilbur said...: I hope it's a scam, like when the police send wanted fugitives fake letters telling them they've won some big prize and have to show up at a certain place and time to collect. Most of the morons show up and - surprise! - get hauled off to jail.

Just get their fingerprints, retinal and voice patterns, and DNA and send them away. It will be useful some later day.

OK, give'em their free lunch. Bologna on white bread. Get 'em used to jail cuisine.; 5/7/15, 2:25 PM
Tim Wright said...: There's a lunch break, but it's only for registered attendees... They don't want anyone stealing from them. Tim; 5/7/15, 2:26 PM
Paco Wové said...: "No need to bore us in a thousand words when you can bore us just as much in 100."

You'll never cut it in academia with that kind of attitude.; 5/7/15, 2:28 PM
Jaq said...: Zach’s dissertation research involves looking at private university archives to document anti-union strategies as well as under-researched spaces.

Why isn't stealing the work of union members OK? It's all about power. Every. Single. Time.

Yeah, I know, the period between words thing is over.; 5/7/15, 2:37 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: tim in vermont said...

Yeah, I know, the period between words thing is over.

It's. Not. Over. Until. We. Say. It's. Over.; 5/7/15, 2:46 PM
Fred Drinkwater said...: "No need to bore us in a thousand words when you can bore us just as much in 100."

Paco Wove added: "You'll never cut it in academia with that kind of attitude."

One of my father's greatest achievements was a Report from a Presidential Commission which was just 30 pages. He told me "Someone might actually read this one."
I think he just never really fit in there, but that's OK, it wasn't his day job anyway.; 5/7/15, 3:05 PM
Jaq said...: You could always buy Steal This Book through the Amazon portal at the top of the page!

What they are looking for is a way to enslave the guys over in the engineering and computer science side of the college by taxation.; 5/7/15, 3:09 PM
Greg Hlatky said...: No one made them go to a university. Hell, no one even asked them to come.; 5/7/15, 3:45 PM
the gold digger said...: Aggies do indeed exist as marooned and resistant communities, but it is the color maroon, not the marooned of isolation.

1. Nice to see another SW conference person on this page. Gig 'em.
2. I think of a line from a TV show, where Frau Somebody was not a native English speaker and was trying to describe the problem of being stranded: "We're all alone and deep red!"; 5/7/15, 3:53 PM
Meade said...: "We also diagnose the university as a key institution of power that works in concert with police, prisons, the financial system, the ‘lower’ education system, punitive state bureaucracies, culture industries and other means of oppression."

The Wisconsin Idea.

Who knew Scott Walker was a part of the movement?
to valorize the labor of the “undercommons”, promoting the autonomy of these forms of bottom-up refusal, collaboration, solidarity and mass intellectuality that the university at once subjugates and requires for its survival.; 5/7/15, 3:58 PM
rhhardin said...: When a leftist talks about power, ask if he means officium, potestas, imperium or auctoritas.

Nail those reification errors.; 5/7/15, 4:15 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: "Reallocating and sharing!"

Hahahahah.

Lefty lie-words. Like "resistance" (which means violence) and "passionate" (which means angry.); 5/7/15, 4:28 PM
Unknown said...: I wonder if the authors are aware of how much their jargon mimics business-to-business marketing hype. That first paragraph in their "About" section, if bleached of radical political content, reads like inane PR copy for some kind of consulting firm.

So, are they doing this with the intention of irony? Or is it more of a case of dramatic irony?; 5/7/15, 4:40 PM
traditionalguy said...: Speaking of a heart breaker, it sounds like Goldberg had a "widow maker" blood clot caused by atrial fibrilation. That kills quickly usually before a Cardiologist can get there.; 5/7/15, 5:12 PM
Peter said...: Did someone actually write this, or was it generated by software?; 5/7/15, 5:17 PM
wildswan said...: Instead of learning sociology's latest jargon, watch Beyond the Fringe on Youtube. It's about borders; it's been marginalized and excluded - people laugh themselves sick over it or ignore it. And Youtube is theft from the archives of the past.; 5/7/15, 8:25 PM
Meade said...: Oh well, potestas to the people, potestas to the people
Potestas to the people, potestas to the people, right on!; 5/8/15, 4:42 AM
Meade said...: "We also diagnose the university as a key institution of power that works in concert with police, prisons, the financial system, the ‘lower’ education system, punitive state bureaucracies, culture industries and other means of oppression."

LIVE, IN CONCERT, (and in consort)!: The Police, The Prisoners, Wall Street Crash, Bad Education, Red Tape, and Downtown Boys

(Advance tickets from Ticketron); 5/8/15, 5:13 AM
mikee said...: gadfly: I will go so far as to point out that in the late 60s A&M still operated as a military academy, with real hazing and cruel training. And Yell Leader was a competitive position. Grades weren't all that important, as long as you graduated. And Perry (or, as he is called on Austin radio, Pointy Boots) hasn't done all that badly for a kid with such poor grades, now has he.

Can you say the same of President Obama? What, no grade transcript?!!; 5/8/15, 3:19 PM