Strike, occupy, transform! Students, subjectivity and struggle

Abstract

This article uses student activism to explore the way in which activists are challenging the student as consumer model through a series of experiments that blend pedagogy and protest. Specifically, I suggest that Higher Education is increasingly becoming an arena of the postpolitical, and I argue that one of the ways this student-consumer subjectivity is being (re)produced is through a series of 'depoliticisation machines' operating within the university. This article goes on to claim that in order to counter this, some of those resisting the neoliberalisation of higher education have been creating politicalpedagogical experiments that act as 'repoliticisation machines', and that these experiments countered student-consumer subjectification through the creation of new radical forms of subjectivity. This paper provides an example of this activity through the work of a group called the Really Open University and its experiments at blending, protest, pedagogy and propaganda. 'student-consumer': viewing students as largely cut off and disinterested in the 'project' of the university (Neary & Hagyard, 2010; Provisional University, 2010). A little over six months before the invasion and occupation of Milbank Tower by student protestors, on the 10th March 2010, I had been sitting in a meeting room close to the University of Leeds campus, discussing student criticisms of the proposed increase in fees, corporatisation of higher education and issues effecting academia more broadly. I had coorganised the meeting, as part of a group called the Really Open University (ROU), in order to discuss: 'what a really open university would look like'. This was part of a two stage 'visioning' process into establishing participants' criticisms of the existing education system, and the multitude of positive changes they would make. This event formed part of my PhD research which utilised a form of 'militant ethnography' (see Juris, 2008; Russell 2015 & Halvorsen 2015). I have critically reflected on my experiences attempting to utilise militant ethnography within an academic context extensively elsewhere (see Pusey, 2016a) but I will briefly explain what this meant in practice. I was a co-founder and co-producer of the ROU for the two years it existed (2010-2012) and I was engaged in a diverse range of activities, some more akin to activism than academia, and others more traditionally associated with academia than activism. These activities included everything from painting banners and taking part in demonstrations, through to organising discussion and reading groups, book launches and seminars. Meetings occurred on a regular weekly or twice weekly basis, and I was present at nearly all of them. I discussed proposals, strategies and ideas relating to the activities of the group. I facilitated meetings, or took minutes, and I was part of the collective production of the group's activities and ideas. This article argues that the event described above was one of several interventions organised by the ROU aimed at resisting the student-consu...

A cartography of the possible: Reflections on militant ethnography in and against the edu‐factory

“…Like others engaging in a militant research 'orientation' (Russell, 2015), and influenced by feminist scholarship (Harraway, 1988), I maintain a position where I have no interest in claims of objectivity or maintaining a remote distance from my research (Juris, 2007). Instead, I searched for alliances and formed connectivities with others struggling in order to challenge systems of domination and engage in creativeresistive practices that might contribute towards the production of new subjectivities (Pusey, 2016).…”