Immaterial Labor in Late Stage Higher Education

In his 1996 essay, “Immaterial Labor,” Maurizio Lazzarato defined a new form of labor which merged intellectual labor with affective labor: immaterial labor. His theorizations create a paradox: the most valuable aspect of immaterial labor (creativity, subjectivity, collective meaning-making) resists quantification, but capitalism must attempt to quantify it in order to extract value.

Higher education has, historically, followed the capitalist instinct to quantify the labor needed to create, to build, to produce. Debt-to-potential income ratio became a buzz phrase in higher education to forecast employment. Yet, if the small percentage of artists, designers, and cultural producers who make a living off their immaterial labor is taken into account, the debt passed on to students in art schools and universities far outweighs their potential for income in excess of their debt.

Within this existential crisis, many institutions that serve artists have closed, including the San Francisco Art Institute (2022). From its ashes, a new educational nonprofit, California Academy of Studio Arts (CASA) is being planned, funded by Laurene Powell Jobs. Its intent is to build “on the legacy and the bold spirit of Black Mountain College, supporting artists through connection, experimentation, and care.” A few paradoxes emerge: is late stage capitalism emerging as a takeover of education by the wealthy elite, and away from the very practitioners of immaterial, creative labor that shape these institutions? And, by reframing SFAI’s successor as an Academy, is this not a betrayal of the ethos of BMC, which was intentionally manifest outside of the academy?