The Peter Pan Hotel

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The Peter Pan Hotel by Jesper Victor Henriksson Archictural Associatoin 2013

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The Peter Pan Hotel Jesper Victor Henriksson

In the painting “ Not to be reproduced” by Magritte’s, a man sees himself

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in a mirror, but his reflection is that of himself from the point of view of a

Introducing the

third observer: us. In this particular case, us should not be understood as a singular you and me, but as the embodiment of society. As he never see his

entreprenurial student

face, he sees himself but through the eyes of others. Left with an appearance where his abilities are confined to the limits and expectations that the mirror might project. Several associations surface when contemplating this motif: The man, who in this essay represents the contemporary student, finds himself paradoxically living in a contradictive co-existence of material scarcity and consumerist excess. Through political and economic restructuring, higher education has transgressed from a civic obligation to into a personal investment, in which the student has become an investor, an entrepreneur of his own human capital. His potential to produce is what gives him value, and the invention of demand is as integral to this value as his services. Where 1. Lazzarato, Maurizio. The Making of the indebted Man. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012

every act, every social interaction can be read as an investment in human capital the student might appear to be free in his actions, but his behaviour is unavoidably confined by the limits of the debt he has entered into1 and entrepreneurialism, disguised as a process of endless possibilities, has become a strategy of survival. The reason for opening the dossier of student housing today, is because the student as a subject has radically changed along with this transformation of education. We are now very far from the ancient image of the student as a white male in the age eighteen to twentyfive. The demographic definition of the contemporary student has in recent history exploded to engulf all ethnic backgrounds in nearly all age groups which makes it impossible to pigeon-hole who exactly the contemporary student is. In times of a limping Europe of uncertain economic and politic future; England and in particular the city of London has seen an increase The Peter Pan Hotel

1 (opposite page) René Magritte, Not To be reproduced, 1937

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1.1 Menno Aden Apartment Portrait, 2012

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in student enrolment while education has turned from a public service into a serious commodity. However; the expansion of the student population is not paralleled by a provision of student housing; in fact, the ambition of the university to provide accommodation was abandoned a long time ago as well as the concept of the university campus as a complete community.

Instead the students are expected to parasite on the infrastructure of the city which has resulted in the lack of purpose built student housing and the heavy imbalance between supply and demand. It has conceived a market boom for private developers and student housing is now considered as one of leading alternative investments in real estate2. Today in London, these types of dwellings only accommodate some fifteen percent and are only directed towards a narrow segment of the vaguely defined student population, while the remaining are forced into alternative forms of accommodation. An increasing number of student remain within their family home while the rest of the students have no choice but to compete on the free market, moving into identical conditions as to those of the precarious worker. The university 2. In times of a crippled and uncertain economy. student enrolment has increased making the student housing into a market capable of moving in opposite direction, remaining decoupled from overall macroeconomic factors. A failure of the state to provide student housing has lead to a condition where the Universities are only capable of accommodating some 15% of the 300 000 full-time students of London. It has created a constant imbalance of supply and demand, where the demand conditions heavily outweigh the supply. It has conceived a promising market of a steady income and rental growth above the inflation rate transforming the Student housing from a small niche market into one of the leading types of alternative investment today. In 2012 it saw nearly 2 billion pounds of transactions in the UK alone.

It has gone from a domestic to a global market with investors from around the world.

Langlasalle, Jones. Student Housing A New Global Asset Class. (London: Jones Langlasalle IP inc, 2012)

once severed as a break between child and adulthood, a radical moment of de-territorialisation, exposure and condensation of ideas is dissolved in the neoliberal restructuring of education.

The dissolving of boundaries is typical to the Post Fordist city in that it has moved away from the centrality of Fordist production, to the fragmented form immaterial production. The realm of production, which previously was confined to the boundaries of the factory have now been torn down to engulf the entire city, where every space is a space of production. This city and can offer life to entities impossible to exist elsewhere and its vastness seems to have no end to its possibilities. Yet, in the same sense as a great ocean can appear claustrophobic, the vastness of diversity the city offers can also act as an oppressive force. This is because in order to cope with the intensity and magnitude of emotional exposure forced upon the citizen on a daily basis, he must enter a state of emotional abstraction. In the song “Big City Life� the band Mattafix explain how the blanket of indifference is wrapped around each and every citizen, suppressing his emotions and replacing them with rational reasoning. Its implications on the student should be taken into account when considering concept of the entrepreneur, to whom each social interaction is viewed through the framework of capital investment, where

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relationships and social interactions can only be truly validated through quantitative measures.

The problem to address here is how an increasingly fragmented and class divided student body has come to lack the necessary infrastructure to express and develop together, but most importantly to execute the power of the common. Walter Benjamin said that in order for a revolution to be authentic it must not be made on behalf of the future but of the past and encapsulate all the ghosts of previous revolutions. Out of all modern revolutions, there is but one that has proven superior to all others, one that has swept away previous illusions that have justified religious and political exploitation of man. That is the capitalist revolution and the reason for its success has to do with the fact that it is always a counter-revolution. In fact it relies on instabilities because that is what makes it move forward. Capitalism has to remain in a constant flux; if it stops it collapses. This is why it always appears to be in a state of crises.3

3. The perverts guide to ideology. Directed by Sophie Fiennes.

Performed by Slavoj Zizek.

2012.

To address student housing today and in order to speculate on a step forward, we must therefor trace down its tracks of revolutions and counter-revolutions and draw the path up to the point on which we are pivoting today.

The origin of student housing traces back 1380 Oxford, where New College (Fig. 2) is arguably one of the first examples of what has come to be known as the Anglican College model and the norm of college architecture in the England. The university consist of series of broken down colleges that are spread around the town where each college consists II. The birth of Student Housing in England

of an enclosed quadrangle comprising all required element for the life of a community within. Serving as a territorial divisions between the public and the private, the buildings act as walls closing of the outside world.

Prior to the establishment of the Anglican model nearly all students lived not within colleges but scattered around Oxford in academic halls or ‘Inns’4. This introverted and protective model emerged out of frictions between the local citizens and the students of the university. The vast influx of students proved overwhelming to the town’s limited resources and caused an imbalance in supply and demand resulting in inflated rents.5 The students who felt exploited by the town, took to the streets and what Jesper Victor Henriksson

4. If the reader is interested and would would visit one example of such an inn, The Tackley’s Inn in Oxford is one of the few existing examples.

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is known as the “towns and gowns riots� broke out. They would only to come to an end after King Henry III, in fear of a medieval brain drain, enforced the establishment of the first halls of residence and laying the foundation of the Anglican model. The plan of New College shows how the most important buildings, the chapel and the hall, are located to the north of the site, protected by the city wall and its ditch. The south wall, constituted by the chamber hall; is, unlike the vast stained glass windows of the north only pierced by the narrow study windows of the students dormitories. The main entrance leading to the antechapel is located on the west flank and the east wall bridging the garden entrance is the library.

Detached from the quadrangle are the longhouse, kitchen, cloister and the barn, separated to not interfere the students and fellows in their work within of the college. The plan (Fig. 2.1) shows how the college is meant to 5. Gillard, Derek, Towards a state system of education Education in England: a brief history (educationengland.org.uk/history/chapter01), 2011

exist as a complete community, it contains not only time spent studying but entire existence of the students. The enclosing buildings of the quadrangle are a territorial demarcation between life inside and outside of the walls.

Monasteries would erect walls as a symbolic territorial divide of sacred and civilian space, with the wall being the line of separation. On one hand the defensive and enclosing character of the quadrangle acts as a form of protection and perhaps even a form of liberation of the individual from the forces of the city. On the other, the walls are equally oppressive in its de-territorialisation and isolation of the individual. The walls also act as a form of imprisonment, which imposes a certain rhythm on the individual, defining a limit to his movements and independence within the community.

Through the detachment of supplying functions of the quadrangle, the

6. Barthes, Roland. How to live together. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. 101-107)

college is able to exercise a form of management to the life rhythm of each individual. Looking at the kitchen; through its detachment from the quadrangle the college is able to manage the provision of food both in terms of time and in spatial interaction. Going beyond the pure ingestion as a reproductive ritual, eating can act as significant factor in the construction of social relationships. Eating provides an opportunity for social gathering and an important tool in the shaping of a community.6 Another managerial intervention of the early Anglican colleges is found in the spatial configuration of the chamber halls. Between the early 14th up to the mid 18th century the common form of accommodation would house two to three students and a fellow who’d act as a teacher. The chamber contains a The Peter Pan Hotel

2 New College ca 1380 Oxford, England

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screened off anteroom in each corner; private study rooms and the places of production isolated from the common space and dedicated for studying

2.1 New College ca 1380, Oxford, England

and to the worshipping of God. The plan shows that each individual had his own private work space with one being significantly more spacious since this would be the space where the fellow would conduct his lessons. The common central space was used for living, eating and sleeping where each one would have a truckle bed that’d be pulled out at night.7 It shows how reproductive rituals in medieval priority belonged to the common space while work was anticipated as a private activity. With reproductive acts taking place in the company of a fellow, an agent of the college, the entire existence of the student is under supervision of the collage. Through the 7. Holbrook, Margot. Where do you Keep?/(Cambridge: Cappella Archive, 2006)

enclosure of the quadrangle the College is capable of controlling all rituals

2.2 Chamber Hall, Magdelene College, 14th century, Cambridge

of life and as we will see is that efficiency of production happens only by the virtue of reproduction.

“Machina est continens materia coniunctio “Machina est continens materia coniunctio maximas ad onerum motus

habens virtutes”

maximas ad onerum motus habens virtutes” The machine is a coherent connection of

The machine is a coherent material and has the materialconnection componentsofand has thecomponents greatest greatest virtues in movingvirtues heavyinthings. moving heavy things.

-Vitrivius

The defining struggle of the working class is often explained as a

struggle for emancipation of industrial slavery. In it’s early stages, exploitation of labour and industrial work was confined to the limits of the human body but through the mechanisation in manufacturing and introduction of the machine capital’s exploitation would transgress to the subjective knowledge of the worker. Despite the big ideological shift the Reformation had brought which established the institution and the secularised schools, Oxford and Cambridge would remain the only universities in England until the establishment of the civic or Red Brick universities built in the 19th century. The new industry’s need for a more knowledgeable working force would the defining reason for the establishment of mass education. The new universities would initially base their structure

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III Industrialisation of Education

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3 Alfred Waterhouse, Owens College, University of Manchester originally named Victoria University, 1851

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on the Anglican model but with a closer link to the industry both pedagogically and geographically. Building in an industrial cities at the time as in the case of University of Manchester had its implications. Heavy pollution and high land value forced an agglomeration of buildings that had to pay more attention to space efficiency, light, ventilation than as the their predecessors, and as the plan show, the were incapable of achieving the formal unity of the Anglican quadrangle. Originally they universities were intended mainly for home based students, but due to its success they attracted students from other areas for whom halls of residence were built. Though the Redbrick universities were never colligate nor residential colleges and never strived the form of autonomy that we had seen before. Its shortcomings in its architectural representation compared to Oxford and Cambridge was not of much of concern as they instead thrived on their differences while proclaiming the roll as the modern university. Rather than to strive for the features of their ancestors they studied the structures of industrial plants in Germany and America as performance became increasingly anticipated.8 Jesper Victor Henriksson

8. Gillard, Derek, Towards a state system of education: Education in England: a brief history (educationengland.org. uk/history/chapter02), 2011

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Their attentiveness to technology, ability and will to brake from the traditional form would serve influential in a radical proposal for the new Campus of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was put forward by the American engineer John R Freeman in 1912 who was greatly influenced by Fredrick Taylor’s “Principles of functionalist management”, the new 9. Freeman, saw the architect as a mere atavism who, in his eyes, were to preoccupied with aesthetics rather than function and efficiency to which the American university campus had suffered.

10. Freeman, John Ripley.

Study No. 7. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1912).

university, designed based on ideals of industrial efficiency, was explained as “Glorified Factory”. Endorsing the same theories that had also been embraced by Henry Ford and would become the dogma of American industry. Freeman rejected the architects for the “suffering” they had caused the university 9. The Jeffersonian Campus, which had become the standard in American model, were “insufficient organisation that involved a waste that could hardly be tolerated in commercial life”10 He also rejected the Anglican Colleges to instead praise the Red Brick universities for their resemblance to the factory. In his proposal he argued for a plan of a singular building, agglomerating the faculties of the university into a unified body.

Key to Taylorist organisation is the compartmentalisation of functions, to isolate the components in of the machinery. His theories rejected the decentralisation that had prevailed previous modes of production and argued for scientific organisation by a centralised administrative body. In Freeman’s plan the centralised faculty building contained most of the universities production, with some smaller faculties located around it, the dormitories were however located in large buildings at the back of the site. Previously dormitories had not been present at the campus, but were now incorporated

3.1 Albert Kahn, Highland Park, 1908-1910

in the campus, making re-production of the student into subject of scientific management. Freeman had studied Albert Kahn’s Factories in close detail and integrated many of the factories discoveries in structural and performativity efficiency. In adopting the reinforced concrete frame and open column grid, as seen in Highland Park, he departed from the standard use of masonry which was unprecedented in university buildings at the time.

Advocating for a “first an efficient interior; then a beautiful exterior” approach (an early version of form follows function) Freeman argued for curtain walls to create the flexible interior spaces needed to adopt to the changing needs of the technical university. Yet he’s ideas were to early for the his time and Freeman was never given the commission of MIT. Instead the commission was given to William Bosworth but he’s work would unmistakably be incorporated within the final design. The wide corridors The Peter Pan Hotel

3.2 Adopted Columngrid from Ford Factory, John Freeman, MIT Faculty building, 1912

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3.3 William Bosworth, MIT Campus, Cambridge Massachsetts,1913

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3.3,4 Concrete construction of MIT Campus, design by William Bosworth, unmistakably influenced by Freeman

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Jesper Victor Henriksson

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and high ceilings; the reinforced concrete and its open grid structure were all to be found in the construction of MIT. The dormitories and sporting facilities were moved to the eastern part of the site splitting the campus into two halves, one housing the university faculties and the other housing the 11. Jarzombek, Mark M. Designing MIT-Bosworrth’s New Tech. (BOSTON: Northeastern University Press, 2004).

students and extra curricular activities.11 What Foucault identified as the three types enclosures that defined the factory provides us with the framework through which we can examine how industrial production influenced the new universities: The distribution of space; The order of time; and the composing of assembly. Looking at MIT from a Taylorist perspective, the division of spaces of production from spaces of reproduction can be read as a compartmentalisation of the components of the university. Through its isolation of entities it allows for easy analysis as well as easy adjustment to improve efficiency and equally to the Anglican model the college enforces a form of deterritorialisation and inclusion even if the boundaries and its territorial demarcation is different. The threshold between public and private is no longer articulate through the solid wall, but instead through a much looser and open boundaries. The ambition of both the Red Brick universities and MIT had been to tie higher education closer to industrial production, which motivates the urban location of the industrial campuses.

Opposed to the introverted typology the enclosed quadrangle of closing out the city there is a typological inversion in the proposal for MIT. What is visible

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compartmentalisation and separation of functions. In the anglican model the distinction between productive and re-productive rituals was far more blurry than in the plan of MIT. At the same time as the of the Civic Universities were established in England, Marx was living in London while finishing “Grundrisse”, in which he described how the exploitation of the worker transgressed from the physical confinement of the body’s potential to his mind, the knowledge embodied in each individual, the knowledge of society.

Production of the “general intellect”, took place mostly outside of the factory which meant that saving in labour time and an increase of free time (time for production of the general intellect) would result in an increase of productivity 12. Read, Jason. “The production of Subjectivity, form transindividuality to the commons.” New Formations ( Lawrence and Wishart) 70, no.

Winter (2011): 113-131.

within the factory. Capital’s exploitation would no longer would be restricted to the boundaries of the factory but expand to engulf the entire existence of the worker and all of his subjective potentials.12 Going back Vitruvius statement, the concept of the machine is to through a composition of The Peter Pan Hotel

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3.5 Denis Lasdun, University of East Anglia, 1962

Jesper Victor Henriksson 3

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components produce a movement/an effect that is greater than the sum its individual components. Through this definition, machine is applicable beyond its technical and physical description. In the same sense the drill consists of wires and bolts, the factory consists of components of workers and machines. Marx described this double-sided relationship where on one hand the machine was an element entering the world of the worker to ease his work and living conditions, on the other humans became means of the machines as their actions are limited to preserving the machine from disrupting, where human action was confined to its boundaries. Within the framework of capital both humans and machines are but mere components, 13. For a good analyses Marx’s Machine Fragments see the book of Rauning, Gerald. A thousand Machines. Vol. 5. LA: Semiotext, 2010: 18-34

and subjects to its confines, and our purpose is to prevent it from disrupting.13 What we see in the university is that not only does it begin resemble the factory in its architectural representation but as well in its operation which marked the beginning of the end of the industrial university.

14. Out of the post-war Britain grew the dream of an egalitarian society marking the birth of the Welfare State, anticipating a radical reform on nearly all aspects of life, that would elevate the common citizen to position of prosperity. It would take until the 1960’s until the university became the main object of reformation and became the poster child the egalitarian dream.

Since the war student population had grown from 55,000 to 130,000 and in 1963 came the Robbinson report which fueled the pro-university mood to unprecedented highs and “Money flowed in abundance” from the central Government and allowed for generous buildings standards and high architectural ambitions.

15. Norris, Trevor. “The Pedagogy in the consumer society.”

Indfed. 2004. http://goo.gl/ eqvQJF (accessed 12 2013).

The 1960’s marks and important decade in Britain’s history of higher education since this was the time of reformation under the welfare state.14 The grand ambitions of the new university can be found in Denis Lasdun’s plan for University of East Anglia outside of Norwich from 1962, which unlike most new universities established at the time, was completely new structure.

Based on two key principles, both academically and architecturally, this university in its prefabricated concrete components proclaimed flexibility and coherence. If the first chapter of capitalism dealt with the production of objects, the second has been to deal with the circulation of them. The challenges of modern capitalism came to face in the 20th was that is that its efficiency of production began to exceed the need of the consumer, in which its challenge was no longer only to manage production but also involves the management of consumption.15 The welfare universities were often polarised from the community, a freedom that easily might come to serve as a prison. The civic universities had showed the way of breaking from the rigidity of the anglican model. What the new universities sought to do was to form a highly centralised unified residential university. Lasdun’s plans shows a continuous urban landscape of spaces of production and reproduction paralleling each other in a streamlined concrete structure on the countryside, complete and isolated from society. Neither the civic nor the anglican colleges had been able to accommodate all of their student, The Peter Pan Hotel

3.6 Lasdun's UEA Became the posterchild for the welfare state university, here on the cover of the Architectural Review’s special issue on the new universities in April 1970

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manufacturing. What red brick represented in the 19th century, concrete did to Post War Britain. The dormitories were divided up into clusters of 12 individual ‘study-bedrooms’ sharing a breakfast-room, utility spaces, showers and lavatories. Rooms were planned around the breakfast room and demarcating the clusters were, similarly to the anglican model, the staircase 1 STUDY/BEDROOM

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There were fresh winds in the university, when the Lasdun presented his

3.8Ibid, Plan of Student Accomodations

scheme as break from the rigid formality of the traditional university life, relaxing and ‘shoulder rubbing’ on the elevated corridors exemplified the

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anticipation of informal discussions at the new democratic university.

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the welfare state followed a social contract. The paternalism and top down governance of the university was what gave room for the analogy of the university as a factory in which the students were but mere components within the large factory of society. What began at the University of Nanterre in Paris by the end of the 1960’s was the rise of a generation against a central government and its mode of governance. The campus had been laid out in the middle of suburban shantytowns behind La defence in an attempt to ease the rapidly increasing student population. The result of the economic profits of France’s economic and industrial modernisation after world war II. Its growth had proved overwhelming to its out-dated educational system inadequate to meet the new demands of as well the economy as of the students. The central government’s response was to initiate reforms trying to tie higher education closer to the industry by establishing campuses like Jesper Victor Henriksson

16. To get an undestanding of the attitutde towards this project, I highly recomend the viwer to see the Lasudun’s presentation at the press conference: Universities of Britain: The University of East Anglia.Directed by East Anglican Film Archive. Performed

by Denis Lasdun. 1974.(http:// www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/483)

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3.7 University of Nanterre, 1964

Fig. 3.7 17. Corkran, Christine M. Defining Politcal Action:Poster And Graffiti from Paris 1968.

Thesis, the History Department Franklin and Marshall College, (Lancaster, 2005.)

Nanterre. Constructed on old fashioned ideals, breathing the functionalist rationalism of the factory by compartmentalising each function, separating work and leisure, private from public; male and female17. It created conditions that Lefebvre called “lived contradictions” “Functionalized by initial design, culture was transposed to a ghetto of

18. Lefevbre, Henry. The Explosion: Marxism and the French Upheaval. Monthly Review Press, 1968

students and teachers, situated in midst of other ghettos filled with the ‘abandoned’, subject to the compulsion of production and driven into an extra-urban existence”.18 Polarised from the community, Nanterre provided little else for students to do but to study, the campus conceived and increasing unrest. Fed up with the top down paternalism of the central government, feeling merely as servants of the larger financial machinery, the lack of possibilities for individual emancipation, May 68 protests was the attack of a centralised authority The Peter Pan Hotel

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19. Stanek, Lukasz. Lessons from Nanterre. LOG no 13/14 (Anyone Corporation ), 2008: 59-67.

IV The establishment of the Homo Econmicus.

and a rejection of the social contract of the Welfare State. Students wanted individuality, mobility and diversity. A university that would respond to rapidly changing society.19 capitals ‘counter revolution’ as we will see would prove Marx hypotheses right to level beyond what he could have imagined.

Before we begin to examine the contemporary student, the subject

matter of this essay, it is important not to fail remembering the historical trajectory that have given rise to this condition. Only then can we avoid the naïve romanizations of a old times. The university, as we have seen, has always acted in response to the political and economical conditions within society. What we are seeing is the very evolution of capital that Marx spoke of over a century and half ago. Production has come to engulf the entire existence of the worker, who’s no body is no longer the subject 4 Student Protest,Sussex, 2013

of exploitation but his mind. In the knowledge economy the student has replaced the roll of worker and the factory, which once confined capital’s reach of exploitation, has vanished for it to engulf the entire city. The

Jesper Victor Henriksson

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transformations of the university campus from the previous examples to todays complete dissolution confirms the previous statements. From the universities constructed during years of industrial production up to today’s immaterial production, the radical shift becomes very clear. From the physical enclosure, isolation and deterritorialisation; to fragmentation and dissolution. The contemporary student’s form of accommodation has no longer any relation to the university as student housing as a project has been abandoned by the university. In the previous examples the university sought to captivate and compartmentalize all aspect of the students life through the erection of walls, what we see in the present condition is the complete opposite. Inside of the students home the boundary between space The Peter Pan Hotel

4.1 Student Room in Shared Victorian House, Hackney, 2013

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Jesper Victor Henriksson

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of production and reproduction has dissolved. Exemplified in his desk is how the same surface constitutes his workspace, dining table and his living room. The next significant deviance from previous models is the house’s lack of any form of common space any designated space for the social interaction. To understand the reason for this dissolution and reclusion it requires to be read in the context of its history. First off, what have been seen so far is that public education in fact doesn’t have a history of its own but its history is in fact the history of capital. Its not only governed by it, but its mere existence relies upon it. Through industrialisation and Fordist society 20. “Space in its entirety enters the modernized capitalist mode of production, there to be used for the generation of surplus value. The earth, underground resources, the air and light above the ground — all are part of the forces of production and part of the products of those forces. The urban fabric, with its multiple networks of communication and exchange, is likewise part of the means of production.

The town and its multifarious establishments (its post offices and railway stations — as also its storehouses, transportation systems and varied services) are fixed capital. The division of labour affects the whole of space — not just the ‘space of work’, not just the factory floor. And the whole of space is an object of productive consumption, just like factory buildings and plant, machinery, raw materials, and labour power itself.”

Lefevbre, Henry Production of Space 21. Read, Jason. A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus. Foucault Studies 6 (2009): 25-36..

22. Fejes, A. Standardising Europe- The Bologna Process and new modes of governingy (Linköping University E-Press, 2008)

we have witnessed how higher education emerged to become instrumental in the management of production. What follows the time around -May 68 is beginning of the next reformation of higher education and paving the way for this neoliberal restructuring, as its called, was the financial crises of 1970’ that allowed for an abandonment of the egalitarian narratives of the welfare state. What was exemplified by the Thatcher government was that the way out was through finance, through privatization and commodification of all aspects of society. What happens during this time is that capitalist production moves away from the centrality of Fordist production into what is referred to as the Post Fordist society and immaterial production. Into the society in which every social interaction and every space is to be viewed as a potential space of production20. This is the moment where the university sees a transgression from a public service into market driven commodity.

From a civic duty to a personal investment, and when education becomes a commodity the student is no longer in service of the state but rather is to be understood as an investor in his own human capital and what Foucault refers as the “Homo Economicus”21, the entrepreneur of himself. Key in his establishment in Europe is the reformation of education thorough the Bologna Declaration that in the late 90’s initiated a project to unify and standardise the European educational body towards a global market. The recognition of higher education’s economic potential made it subject of capital’s streamlining. As educational institutions could not afford anymore to be governed by a slow legislative body they would instead be tied to the free market through the active choices of individuals, the entrepreneurs.22 Freedom, flexibility and mobility are recurrent themes of the declaration but what this type of freedom means also entails the shaping of a new form of neoliberal governmentality, where the main instruments of management The Peter Pan Hotel

4.2 (Opposite page) Student Room in Shared Victorian House, Hackney, 2013

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are no longer laws and regulations but competition and obligations

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Through this type of governance the reason behind the dissolving of the university campus begin to surface. Unlike before where governance was practiced through an external authority, now it becomes internalized through a form of individual debt. Through debt there is no longer any need for a physical boundary hence the university’s relinquishment from the providing student housing. Instead he is now encouraged to parasite upon the infrastructure of the city, forced to compete on the free market and finding himself in unfamiliar living conditions. So on one hand he might appear to be free but he is unavoidably confined to the limits of the debt that he has entered into.

Through debt the student has become an object of which he himself is the investor where every form of social enhancement is an investment in human capital. In “The Human Condition” Hannah Arendt wrote about the outcome of the rise of the social realm, of how individualisation and objectification would come to subsume life and lead towards a loss of the public realm, the space of political life23. What she recognised as action,the space of for a political life was the connection between people without the mediation of objects. In terms of the contemporary student this comes close to a pin-pointing the state of his fragmented condition, where his precarious economical and political position strips him of the possibilities of engaging in a political life. The introduction of the machine during the industrialisation relieved the worker from the slavery that had previously been imposed on his body but at the same time transformed him into a slave to its confines. In is the same way neoliberal economic policies, might have liberated the student from the social contract but has instead become turned him into a slave to his own debt.

Jesper Victor Henriksson

23. Fejes, A. European Citizens under Construction: The Bologna process analysed from a governmentality perspective.

(Linköping University E-Press, 2008) 24. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. (Chicage & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1958.) 173 For a good overview of the human condition look to Standford Encyklopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/arendt/)

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The Peter Pan Hotel