Undercommons

UndercommonsOK

#fictionalessay, #academicfiction, #study, #university, #abolition

Bart[1] is smiling and leading the way through all these white corridors. I arrived at the university building a few minutes late. It is early for me as I was working till 2 A.M last night. Bart is tall, blonde, and handsome in his white uniform. ‘Here we are!’ He says after a few minutes of walking me through the unending corridors. As we enter the basement of the building there is no natural light anymore, and it stops looking like the university anymore. I ask Bart about it, with a silent chuckle he confirms that the university building and the hospital are inter-connected: ‘it’s easier for medical students to travel from one to another, as it is for us now going there!’ A university full of bodies. A hospital full of students.

I found Bart, a Ph.D. researcher at Maastricht University, through a medical test advertisement about the effects of the potato protein on muscle growth, on a Facebook page for student jobs. After a few emails and a phone call, we agreed to meet today for what he called ‘the preliminary investigation’.

On the advertisement poster, it was stated that the participants will be reimbursed 175 Euro. Reimburse (riːɪm ˈbɜːs) means to pay someone back an amount of money that they have spent doing their work, or to pay them money because you have caused them to have a problem. So, participating in this experiment might be considered work (wɜːk): An activity, such as a job, that a person uses physical or mental effort to do, usually for money. But, because of the passivity of the participant in almost the whole process, they are not doing much work, and not using physical or mental effort. The work is being done to them, therefore the participant is not working as much. What remains is the second interpretation of the reimbursement, the damage that is going to be caused by this experiment, either during the experiment or because of its unknown side effects.

After taking a blood sample, Bart is reading through the activities of the test day. I am supposed to get a drink containing potato protein now, perform an exercise at midday, and then a small piece of muscle tissue will be removed from both of my legs on 3 occasions in the afternoon; as Bart puts it ‘as painful as a bee sting’. Later I would find out that it actually meant going through a painful muscle biopsy of my thighs 6 times, but he did not use the word ‘six’ on purpose. For Bart had a professional manner.

Now, I am lying on the big white hospital bed, whilst Bart and his assistant are holding my legs. A tall and bald doctor entered the room a few minutes ago, and is performing the biopsy now. He is talking to me, laughing, and telling some stories that I don’t care much to hear. But he is truly enjoying his work, whilst pushing the giant needle deeper and deeper into my body. His science is penetrating me, looking for its share from my flesh. The university is paying for it, and I am just trying not to look, not to hear and not to remember what I did for a petty amount of money.

My eyes are full of tears, but not of the physical pain (which was not at all comparable to bee stings!) but because of the decision that I had made. I regretted that I turned my body into a product, for science and education, for the hospital and the univer-

sity, the institutions, and for the state. But isn’t every job/activity in a way turning your body (or mind) into a part of a system that is feeding the capital?

An Encounter In the evening, I left the hospital/university building to go to work at McDonald’s. At first, I doubted whether I could work with six fresh wounds and bandages, but at that time it was not as painful. I thought it was not a big deal and that I could manage, but after a while, my pain came back to me in the kitchen. Amongst all the noise and the meat, and the lettuce and the cooking grills, my flesh started to hurt, more and more, to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore. After seeing tears in my eyes the manager agreed to let me go. The moment when I arrived at the lobby to leave McDonald’s, I encountered the doctor, the same bald and tall doctor who performed the biopsy earlier. He was waiting for his food, a hamburger which I probably made a few minutes ago. A hamburger made from the flesh of another creature, prepared by a human who lost some flesh earlier by another one who has been taught to save lives. The doctor was still smiley, happy about his career and life, waiting for his fast-food production. He didn’t even recognize me. I rushed out.

An Analysis A doctor at a hospital performed an activity during a medical test to pay for his hamburger, the test was done and sponsored by a state hospital/university. A small part of the cost of the doctor’s life was covered by this money, which was paid from the government to McDonald’s. A payment with the activity of a body. A student at an art academy went through a medical test to pay for his education, the test was done and sponsored by a state hospital/university. A small part of the cost of the student’s study was covered by this money, which was paid from the government to the government. A grant in return for six removed tiny muscle tissues. A payment made with body parts.

The doctor helped science and humanity during the day, and spent his salary at night at McDonald’s. The state money was poured into the devil’s mouth through the doctor’s body. A payment made with a body. The doctor’s body keeps the capital alive.

The student helped science and humanity during the day, and earned some money at night at McDonald’s. The capitalistic monster’s money was poured into the government’s mouth later (the education cost) through the student’s body. A payment made with a torn body. The student’s body parts keep the capital alive.

To the eyes of the capital, they are both bodies; two individual bodies owned by the state, in different ways.

The doctor is unaware of the damage he does to the climate, society, and himself.

The student is aware of the damage he does to the climate, society, and himself.

The doctor is educated at the university, but he is not an intellectual.

The student needs the doctor in order to be educated at the university, but he studies somewhere else. He learns at McDonald’s kitchen, he learns by being in a squat, he

learns by not having enough to spend, he learns by being, living, and existing.[2]

One had the freedom to choose, the other was forced.[3]

But, they both paid with their bodies. That’s what keeps the system going, and that’s what they are both guilty of; guilty of resting in the capital arms.

Something needs to be done to save Prometheus Where’s Heracles?

The Undercommons ‘Think about the way the American doctor or lawyer (here read as Dutch) regard themselves as educated, enclosed in the circle of the state’s encyclopedia, though they may know nothing of philosophy or history’ (Moten and Harney 34). The doctor is what Moten and Harney call a professional; someone who holds a great position in society, belongs to an elite class of people, and serves the state that owns the hospital, and the university where the ‘official’ knowledge is produced. In Moten and Harney’s view, the American university today[5] cannot be accepted as a place of enlightenment, rather a place of learning skills. And, being at the university is not a necessary part of learning, the university is structured (and funded) to serve the ends of capital and the ends of the state.

‘Certainly, critical academic professionals tend to be regarded today as harmless intellectuals, malleable, perhaps capable of some modest intervention in the so-called public sphere.’(Moten and Harney) They are taught in the most pragmatic ways, towards the market preferences and the development of capitalism, instead of becoming intellectuals. A professional is someone whose professionalism comes from the privatization of the social individual through negligence because of his high income, or maybe his prestige and privileges. Negligence in denying the thought of the internal outside, denying the possibility of a thought of an ‘outside non-place’, which Moten and Harney call ‘The Undercommons’. According to them, there is no point in trying to hold the university against its professionalization. ‘This rolls out into ethics and efficiency, responsibility and science, and numerous other choices, all built upon the theft, the conquest, the negligence of the outcast, the mass intellectuality of the undercommons’ (Moten and Harney 33).

The undercommons can be seen as a conceptual space composed of people who are denied resources, and have been excluded from the commons, and its entailed rights and privileges. ‘Maroon communities of composition teachers, mentorless graduate students, adjunct Marxist historians, out or queer management professors, state college ethnic studies departments, closeddown film programs, visa-expired Yemeni student newspaper editors, historically black college sociologists, and feminist engineers. And what will the university say of them? It will say they are unprofessional.’ (Moten and Harney 30) The undercommons is a description of a real community of those who are ‘not part of an existing one.’ The excluded individuals who engage with each other in social activities, practices, and an orientation towards power described as study.

‘Study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice… The point of calling it “study” is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present.’ (Moten and Harney 110) The use of the word ‘study’ radically democratizes the idea of learning; it is a challenge to perceptions of curricular education as a monopoly of knowledge. According to Bruce Wilshire, we can also look at the production of information and knowledge through the lens of Marx and think about who is controlling the means of knowledge production, as

Close to the concept of study according to Moten and Harney which will be discussed further. To make it clear, the same doctor was seen several times after the encounter at the same branch of McDonald’s, so there’s no doubt that he is a loyal customer and his appearance there that night was not an incidental one.

[3] Fred, Moten. Stefano, Harney. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, Minor Compositions, 2013. P.34. I don’t think that is so much different in other parts of the world either. Ibid. P.33.

[6] Ibid. P.30. Ibid. P.110. W. Wilshire, Bruce. The moral collapse of the university: Professionalism, Purity, and Alienation. State University of New York Press, 1990. P.54. Fred, Moten. Stefano, Harney. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, Minor Compositions, 2013. P.113.

[10] Ibid. P.9. Ibid. P.42. it will lead to a great extent to the formation of human identity itself. (Wilshire 54) With regards to this, Moten and Harney’s concept of study becomes more important; ‘studying is not limited to the university. It’s not held or contained within the university. The study has a relation to the university, but only insofar as the university is not necessarily excluded from the undercommons that it tries so hard to exclude.’ (Moten and Harney 113)

But what is it that the undercommons need to achieve? Reading between the lines, Moten and Harney don’t believe in a revolution in the traditional sense, not even rebelling against the constitution, rather what they prescribe for the future is to focus on the study and try to find each other. ‘The undercommons want to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places we know lie beyond its walls…. so in the end, it is not a realm where we rebel and create critique; it is not a place where we “take arms against a sea of troubles/and by opposing end them. The undercommons is a space and time which is always here . . . our goal . . . is not to end the troubles but to end the world that created those particular troubles like the ones that must be opposed.]”’ (Moten and Harney 9)

A bit optimistically, they argue that change will come when we won’t expect it, although they consider a prophetic role for the undercommons, not only in knowing about the future, but also as having the capacity to see the brutality of the already-existing, to point this out and tell that truth, but also to see the other way, to see what it could be. That is what the undercommons is all about, the possibility of seeing an alternative form of being. ‘The goal is not so much the abolition of prisons but the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society.’ (Moten and Harney, 42)