Friday 20th February, 2009: Paolo Do

Special reading group held to coincide with London Freeschool weekender with about 25 people packed into rampART library. We continued our discussion of contemporary education with a reading of Paolo Do's 'No Future: The Productive Centrality of the University in the Age of Cognitive Capitalism'. We began our discussion by exploring the meaning of 'immaterial labour', finding that Do seemed to be working with quite a limited definition. As we understood it, 'immaterial' and 'cognitive' labour are not commensurate but refer to different dimensions of post-Fordist labour where 'immaterial' refers to skills that cannot be reduced to mere 'knowledge' in the way that he seems to be using the term. (eg., Hochschild's 'emotional' labour and the transfer of skills previously associated with the private realm). We did, however, agree that instrumental knowledge is privileged in the training of students as a transferrable workforce across the EU as designated by the Bologna Process but that 'emotional' labour was stressed in the kinds of jobs that students take on to support their studies (eg., call centre work). We reflected that, whatever was actually being studied, Do was correct suggesting that these jobs are the real training for post-Fordist labour, particularly in light of the fact that vocational degree courses are often worthless in the labour market. Related to this, and considering Do's analysis of the heirarchy produced within the university, we identified another split, eg., between those students who are becoming increasingly radicalised (as marked by the fact that there are currently between 23 and 29 student occupations in the UK) and those who are uninterested because their subject of study is oriented towards managerial positions in the post-Fordist economy (eg., MBAs). We considered the fact that Gramsci might have been correct in his analysis of the 'trained gorilla' having time to reflect on his/her alienation and that call centres may be the spaces which produce radicalisation (rather than the universities). This led us to consider contemporary forms of subjectivisation with one member of the group pointing out that he hates his job but can't help but produce to the best of his ability with many others agreeing that the Protestant work ethic was not only still informing orientation towards work but that the psychic structures demanded by post-Fordism produces subjects whose object of labour is themselves. This led immediately to a discussion of celebrity careers and, in particular, the consumption of cosmetic surgery as defining the project of neo-liberal selfhood, particularly for women. We closed by, once again, bemoaning the lack of a truly radical feminism for the post-Fordist era and agreed that, for the April reading group, we would make sure to read a contemporary feminist text (if we can find one!). The reading for March was chosen at the last non-freeschool meeting.

We had to finish the meeting to accommodate other Freeschool activities but we failed to discuss Paolo Do's recommendations for self education. Any comments on this on the blog would, therefore, be welcome.