Academic labor and its exploitation

This article sets out to engage critically with Marxist arguments, in order to develop an account of exploitation which can grasp some key features of academic labor in contemporary capitalism. The article considers the complex ways in which academic labor may contribute to capitalist valorization. Academic labor does this in terms of the intellectual products it generates, the affective dispositions it instils, and the skills it contributes towards producing. The article is also concerned with the differential ways in which academic labor may be exploited on the basis of forms of often pre-constituted class habitus.