Edu-factory: the Undercommons and Value from Below

Edu-factory: the Undercommons and Value from Below

Attention to a commons as a resource for collective life born of the struggle between capital and labour has gained new life as that struggle appears to take place increasingly in the immaterial realm. But when attention itself is not outside this struggle, and this struggle produces immaterial effects that sever the materiality of the international division of labour and its uneven development, no simple access to this commons seems possible. But before one identifies the new subjectivities that prevent access, the audited, measured, accounted, secured, affected, and risked bodies of the contemporary scene, one might be reminded of the ‘civil war’ and the ‘dark side’ of what is said to be denied access. The history of the denied is long and central, denied measurement, stolen body and soul, and the fugitive organisation of the denied faces both today the industrialisation of culture and the primitive accumulation of ways of life whose social accomplishments are precisely occasions for crude appropriation. In this struggle, as much as that usually identified in the name of the immaterial, one might look for value hidden in the undercommons.

We intend to present short talks to open the discussion in this workshop and invite all to join who might be interested in the question of the commons.