Towards the Undercommons: Reimagining the Role of the Intellectual

A discussion guide to undermine the university and a primer for Post-PhD’s inaugural fireside chat in January

In this post: A brief annotated bibliography featuring my receipts for the January 2022 essay "What is the Subversive Intellectual," recommendations, and further reading.
Next week: I pose a discourse about the adjunct crisis, and the larger systemic educational crisis we are currently in, and ponder on the differences our generation of thinkers can make for the next.
Last week: An introduction to Post-PhD's new resources and community dialog and how to engage with our discourse.

Why the only possible relationship to the university is criminal

Dear co-conspirators,

Welcome to Post-PhD community members’ first discussion guide. As we iron out the kinks, expect the format to be updated and refined.

When I really thought about what activism in 2021 looks like, and what (if any) difference my generation of educators, writers, and thinkers can make for the hope of a better future, the first thing that seemed obvious to do would be to generate and help grow a discourse on higher education, the adjunct crisis, and the far larger systemic educational crisis we are currently in, even if we (as individuals) are not always aware.

So, here is my humble attempt to create a discourse. Next month, this discussion guide will be followed up with a live fireside chat (via Zoom) with me and a handful of academics, activists, and alt-acs to discuss January's topic: stealing from the university and building something better.

But for now, here're some thoughts to chew on in the meantime (perhaps as you avoid your family over the holidays).

Pro tip: Bookmark Post-PhD's Community Home Page for updates on events and collaboration opportunities.

Note: If you would like to be a part of this pilot-program discourse generated via discussion guide, simply reply to this email and offer a few words to the wise.

Post-PhD Community Members’ Exclusive: 

Discussion Guide* for Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s essay “The University and the Undercommons.”

Is the university really about furthering study, or is it just about amassing credentials? Was it always meant to be about professionalization? Is there a place beyond the university where study can really flourish? Moten and Harney weave a complex tapestry of philosophy, history, politics, and poetry in this seminal essay on the Undercommons. We hope this guide gives you some food for thought as you read this profoundly important work. Maybe you’ll find a way to work these ideas into your teaching, your writing, your work, your life. In January, this discussion guide will also serve as a template for a live fireside chat in Zoom, moderated by Allison Harbin & invited Post-PhD Community.

We want to hear your stories. Feel free to send us a video or audio recording, or simply reply to this email with your thoughts. Soon we’ll have this more built out and user-friendly, but first we need you to be our beta testers so we can all thrive in this Post-PhD community space. 

We seek academic fugitives, people who are in academia, who are adjacent to it but have never been in it, people who have left academia, people who have one foot in and one foot out, those of us worried about the university, and those whom, as Moten and Harney write of the subversive intellectual, the university needs but cannot bear. 

Moten and Harney make more profound points in their seminal essay than cocktails and bad decisions I have made in my life. We’re smart witches, and when we’re all in a (virtual) room together, we’ll tackle all of that and share cocktail recipes to boot. But to keep us more or less on track, Allison and Becky, your coven leaders, have identified three main themes for our convo that dovetail with the mission of Post-PhD.

• What is the subversive intellectual?

• What is their ethical responsibility to the university?

• How does Black thought lead our understanding of the undercommons of the university?

Moten and Harney on the subversive intellectual:

“Worry about the university. This is the injunction today in the United States, one with a long history. Call for its restoration like Harold Bloom or Stanley Fish or Gerald Graff. Call for its reform like Derek Bok or Bill Readings or Cary Nelson. Call out to it as it calls to you. But for the subversive intellectual, all of this goes on upstairs, in polite company, among the rational men. After all, the subversive intellectual came under false pretenses, with bad documents, out of love. Her labor is as necessary as it is unwelcome.

The university needs what she bears but cannot bear what she brings. And on top of all that, she disappears. She disappears into the underground, the downlow lowdown maroon community* of the university, into the Undercommons of Enlightenment, where the work gets done, where the work gets subverted, where the revolution is still black, still strong.” (26)

*Maroon community here refers to the colony of escaped slaves in Jamaica, forming a fierce boundary with the colonizers, and defamed by the white gaze, this criminal community offers much to the subversive intellectual today-- and is but one instance where Black thought on self-emancipation from hegemonic structures offers much to the contemporary subversive intellectual in regards to their relationship with the university (the colonizers of the mind).

Talking Point 1: Spite the Mission of the University.

“‘To the university I’ll steal, and there I’ll steal,’ to borrow from Pistol at the end of Henry V, as he would surely borrow from us. This is the only possible relationship to the American university today. This may be true of universities everywhere. It may have to be true of the university in general. But certainly, this much is true in the United States: it cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment. In the face of these conditions one can only sneak into the university and steal what one can. To abuse its hospitality, to spite its mission, to join its refugee colony, its gypsy encampment, to be in but not of--this is the path of the subversive intellectual in the modern university.” (26)

• Moton and Harney advocate stealing from the university, taking the good and leaving the rest. How as educators can we do this? How have you done this?

Talking Point 2: Fugitive Studies and Exploitative Labor in the Modern University

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• The concept of fugitivity is central to Moton and Harney’s work. How can we engage in a fugitive relationship with the university? Have you done this? What kind of learning happens in fugitivity that does not happen in professionalization?

• Study and professionalization are not the same thing for Moton and Harney. (I suspect students may initially find this statement surprising and then begin to see its validity.) What can academia do to further study? Is it even possible to study in academia anymore?

• Issues of labor and capital are crucial to Moton and Harney. How does this culture of professionalization in the university connect to the exploitation of labor? Is there a model in which the university doesn’t exploit labor, or is exploitation how the university was meant to function?

Talking Point 3: Fraudulent Democracies

• Moton and Harney discuss public administration degree programs at length in particular, and this analysis dovetails with their arguments about politics made earlier in the book. For instance, they claim,

“And  even when  the  election  that  was  won  turns  out  to have  been  lost,  and  the bomb  detonates  and/or  fails  to  detonate,  the  common  perseveres  as if  a  kind  of  elsewhere,  here,  around,  on  the  ground,  surrounding  hallucinogenic  facts.  Meanwhile,  politics  soldiers  on,  claiming  to  defend what  it  has  not  enclosed,  enclosing  what  it  cannot  defend  but  only endanger.” (25)

This text was originally published in 2013 but resonates eerily today, in an era of “alternate facts” and the whitewashing of a violent insurgency against our democratic institutions. What are the greater implications of a professionalized academia on public discourse and politics? What can we, as public intellectuals, do in this climate? Are universities complicit in creating the current (anti)intellectual climate?

• “The Universitas is always a state/State strategy.” (32) Moten and Harney discuss the university and its relationship to the state and to politics. Have you experienced the university functioning as a state strategy?

**We hope to have a forum, like Slack or maybe just the comments on these posts to cultivate dialogue and further discussion, but for now, you may either comment on this post, or hit reply to this email with your thoughts! We look forward to hearing your thoughts about how to make Moten and Harney’s transformative essay a series of actionable (and pragmatic!) steps for the subversive intellectual to follow! (But more on that next month!)