more contributions
I am jumping into the discussion a little late, so maybe I am misreading the nuances of the discussion… apologises if my comments sound off.
I just want to make two contributions
Firstly, some thoughts on the notion of the university as factory, or as occupying the similar position in postFordism that the factory occupied in Fordism. If I am correct the argument runs that the factory was both the apex for the accumulation of surplus-value and for proletarian resistance, and the paradigm for the general organisation of society. Even before people might have talked about the social factory it was possible to think of society in generally as being like a factory.
However did not the revolts of the 1960s work to show how this apex only functioned because it rested on a far more complex arrangement of labour? The uprisings in the kitchens, ghettoes, bedrooms, colonies, campuses and asylums – all which generated new and strange languages and patterns of insubordination – worked with the rebellions in the factories, which were often those attempting to flee the factory, to jam the entire arrangement of accumulation.
Thus if we were to carry the metaphor forward to say the university is the factory, this would imply that there is also a much greater mesh or networks of labour, that perhaps appear submerged, which are necessary for the university to function.
This would have an effect on what is considered precarity at the university. If it is simply a question of the rate of academic employment compared to the number of the qualified, then you only have to turn to the unions. In Australia the NTEU is running a campaign trying to establish Training and Development Placements and Secure Employment Placements. I am sure their researcher would have the stats. (See www.unicasual.com.au). It is a scurrilously social democratic campaign which would probably improve the conditions of my life immeasurably.
Precarity ( I am probably preaching to the choir here) could be thought of as a far more complex phenomena: the very condition of life in postFordism. As Bifo argues it is the subjectivity associated with the exploitation of the general intellect.
My imagining of this precarity ‘map’ (is it a map…can we still map? If we have moved into the society of control can it be represented visually?) would be a whole series of connections. Perhaps all the links of labour that are necessary for the university to function (the money from parents back home, the illegal jobs, the emotional support of partners etc) and all that flows out (the direct products, the graduates , the general enrichment of the general intellect, especially how so much of this happens outside of the class room, in the way that being student means immersion in a ‘life-world’ that then creates general human capabilities, desires and tastes that are sources of value for capital, therefore how much of academic work is the labour of creating a condition of being, corporate events, scientific research etc…)
I think this would all necessitate innovative processes of survey and conversation as our tools of research…
As for a timetable….
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