Abstract
The Exploit was a collaborative project about labor in the academy, which was framed as both a “didactic joke” and as a “hack.” Instead of trying to create or model havens for less-alienated thinking, the project aligned creative production with the imperatives that drive the contemporary university: efficient productivity and return on investment. At different stages, it involved an adjunct faculty member, various editors and readers, and the students in Wagner’s graduate poetry workshop. The Exploit leveraged these human resources to increase their productivity. Labor performed for the project was integrated with labor already being performed in the fulfilment of professional duties and the pursuit of educational qualifications. The project overtly and intentionally reproduced existing hierarchies and inequities in order to draw attention to them. This chapter recounts and reflects theoretically on what The Exploit revealed about interlaced circuits of economic, cultural, educational and academic capital.
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Notes
- 1.
“Every day that you go into your classroom, you have a chance not to issue the call to order, and then to see what happens.” Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Wivenhoe, New York, and Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2013), 127, www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/undercommons-web.pdf.
- 2.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004), 108.
- 3.
Jennifer Cohen, Theresa Kulbaga, and Cathy Wagner, “Imperial Partitioning in the Neoliberal University,” World Social and Economic Review of Contemporary Policy Issues, no. 8 (April 2017), 60–77, wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/imperial-partitioning-in-the-neoliberal-university/.
- 4.
Katie J. Hogan and Michelle A. Massé, Over Ten Million Served: Gendered Service in Language and Literature Workplaces (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010), 10.
- 5.
Hogan and Massé, Over Ten Million, 11.
- 6.
Bennett Carpenter, Laura Goldblatt, Lenora Hanson, Anna Vitale, Karim Wissa, and Andrew Yale, “Feces on the Philosophy of History! A Manifesto of the MLA Subconference,” Pedagogy, no. 3 (10 October 2014), 386.
- 7.
Pierre-Michel Menger, “Artistic Labor Markets: Contingent Work, Excess Supply and Occupational Risk Management,” in Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, Volume 1, ed. Victor A. Ginsburgh and David Throsby (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006), 776.
- 8.
Sarah Brouillette, “Academic Labor, the Aesthetics of Management, and the Promise of Autonomous Work,” Nonsite, no. 9 (1 May 2013), nonsite.org/article/academic-labor-the-aesthetics-of-management-and-the-promise-of-autonomous-work.
- 9.
See Hackers Online Club, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_(computer_security), hackersonlineclub.com/exploits/; and Anonymous, “Hackers & Crackers,” Maximum Security, 4th ed. (Indianapolis: Que, 18 November 2002), www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=30048&seqNum=3.
- 10.
Amy Toland, email to author, 16 July 2014.
- 11.
rob mcclennan, email to author.
- 12.
Kenneth Goldsmith, “I Look to Theory Only When I Realize That Somebody Has Dedicated Their Entire Life to a Question I Have Only Fleetingly Considered: The Purposes of Repurposing,” Poetry Foundation, 1 April 2015, www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70209/i-look-to-theory-only-when-i-realize-that-somebody-has-dedicated-their-entire-life-to-a-question-i-have-only-fleetingly-considered.
- 13.
Robert Graves interviewed by Kenneth Allsop, in Kenneth Allsop, Scan (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965), 32.
- 14.
Liz Almond, “The Workshop Way,” in The Creative Writing Handbook: Techniques for New Writers, ed. John Singleton and Mary Luckhurst (London: Macmillan, 1999), 18, 19.
- 15.
A poem the students wrote collaboratively and performed as part of the AWP presentation is attached as an appendix.
- 16.
Because negative course evaluations can result in job loss, contingent faculty may be especially motivated to engineer a “safe,” low-stress classroom atmosphere—thus participating in an affective circuit that is a far cry from the “autonomous circuits of valorization” Michael Hardt has described as liberatory. Faculty with more security may be able to take more pedagogical risks. See “Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession,” American Association of University Professors (2014), 175.
- 17.
Kristian von Hornsleth’s “Homeless Tracker” project, for example: hornslethhomelesstracker.com/.
- 18.
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, translated by Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2010), 267; www.aaup.org/file/Contingent%20Appointment.pdf; and Michael Hardt, “Affective Labor,” boundary 2, vol. 26, no. 2 (Summer 1999), 100.
- 19.
Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 247.
- 20.
Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and the Feminist Struggle (Oakland: PM Press, 2012), 111.
Works Cited
Almond, Liz. “The Workshop Way.” In The Creative Writing Handbook: Techniques for New Writers, edited by John Singleton and Mary Luckhurst, 18–40. London: Macmillan, 1999.
American Association of University Professors. “Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession.” www.aaup.org/report/contingent-appointments-and-academic-profession. Accessed 27 May 2018.
Brouillette, Sarah. “Academic Labor, the Aesthetics of Management, and the Promise of Autonomous Work.” Nonsite, no. 9 (1 May 2013). nonsite.org/article/academic-labor-the-aesthetics-of-management-and-the-promise-of-autonomous-work.
Carpenter, Bennett, Laura Goldblatt, Lenora Hanson, Anna Vitale, Karim Wissa, and Andrew Yale. “Feces on the Philosophy of History! A Manifesto of the MLA Subconference.” Pedagogy, vol. 14, no. 3 (10 October 2014): 381–393.
Cohen, Jennifer, Theresa Kulbaga, and Cathy Wagner. “Imperial Partitioning in the Neoliberal University.” World Social and Economic Review of Contemporary Policy Issues, no. 8 (April 2017): 60–77. wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/imperial-partitioning-in-the-neoliberal-university/.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador, 2010.
Graves, Robert. Interviewed by Kenneth Allsop, in Kenneth Allsop, Scan. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965. 29–33.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. “I Look to Theory Only When I Realize That Somebody Has Dedicated Their Entire Life to a Question I Have Only Fleetingly Considered: The Purposes of Repurposing.” Poetry Foundation, 1 April 2015. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70209/i-look-to-theory-only-when-i-realize-that-somebody-has-dedicated-their-entire-life-to-a-question-i-have-only-fleetingly-considered.
Hardt, Michael. “Affective Labor.” boundary 2, vol. 26, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 89–100.
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Hogan, Katie J., and Michelle A. Massé. Over Ten Million Served: Gendered Service in Language and Literature Workplaces. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010.
Menger, Pierre-Michel. “Artistic Labor Markets: Contingent Work, Excess Supply and Occupational Risk Management.” In Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, Volume 1, edited by Victor A. Ginsburgh and David Throsby, 765–811. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006.
Moten, Fred, and Stefano Harney. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. Wivenhoe, New York, and Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2013. www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/undercommons-web.pdf.
Weeks, Kathi. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
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Wagner, C. et al. (2019). The Exploit: Affective Labor and Poetry at the University. In: Walton, J., Luker, E. (eds) Poetry and Work. Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26125-2_13
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