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Abstract
Students are 'universally' subjected to debt and financialisation; a subjectivation which has most recently defined the University of Auckland student movement. This movement currently consists of two intersecting groups: Reclaim UoA and Petty and Vindictive. The logics of finance construct students as investors and enclose the commons of the university, necessitating the creation of an 'Undercommons'. The theory of the Undercommons (Harney & Moten, 2004) suggests we must look beyond the university for progressive alternatives. The student movement must find a 'universal' response to financialisation which does not subsume the 'particular' struggles of those who make up that movement.
Introduction: Students' progressive alternatives
In May 2012, students flooded the streets of central Auckland to protest a budget which undermined public access to the university (McMahon, 2012). This rupture was preceded by the work of student movements, which continue today. Students demand more than a university which constructs them as investors who generate debt-financed revenue in exchange for education services. Lazzarato (2012) argues that the debtor-creditor power relation is 'universal' under 'neoliberal' capitalism. However, a specific subject, the indebted student, emerges from this 'universal' power relation. The indebted student is expected to take a risk and invest in their human capital.1 This 'risk-taking' and 'investment' is performed within the logics of finance. If the university ever existed as a commons of knowledge and pedagogy, the logics of finance have enclosed them. Consequently, we look to the 'Undercommons', where subversive texts can be read and emancipatory politics can be enacted. It is from this space that we can rethink the university as an institution of power. Out of the Undercommons, the Petty and Vindictive collective has taken form. Recognising the need to refuse a 'universal' subjectivation to debt, this collective also exists as a distinctly queer space, a 'particular' within that 'universal'. The student movement must deal with the tension between the 'universal' indebted subject and those 'particularities' within. Only when this has been achieved can the movement foster the creation of an Undercommons where solidarity can be forged between groups inside and outside the university.
The 'world' of finance
At the starting point of any theory of financialisation, finance must be recognised as an integral part of production. In the United States, financial sector...