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 post-political, and I argue that one of the ways this student-consumer subjectivity is being (re)produced is through a series of ‘depoliticization machines’ operating within the university. This article goes on to claim that in order to counter this, some of those resisting the neoliberalization of higher education have been creating political-pedagogical experiments that act as ‘repoliticization 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Student protest
• activism
• social movements
• subjectivity

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank all those involved in the ROU for an inspirational two years, without which this article would not exist. I would also like to extend my thanks to the two anonymous reviewers and associate editor for their helpful comments and suggestions for improving this article, and to Leon Sealey-Huggins for reading an early draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See for example: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01760/studentriots-1_1760833c.jpg

2. For a fuller discussion of these tensions, see Pusey (2016).

3. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/strike-threat-as-job-cut-talks-break-down-at-leeds/410292.article?sectioncode=26&storycode=410292&c=2