The Redundancy. Playing Production in Academic Capitalism

Chapter shows how existing theatre plays from the past acquire new uses and meanings in contemporary contexts. Heiner Müller’s international reception up to the present is a case in point. The essay presents the artistic research project “The Redundancy” , which confronted working conditions of UK universities with Müller´s socialist production play Der Lohndrücker (The Scab, 1957). Focusing on concepts of labour, production and class consciousness, the project invited colleagues at Bangor University to engage in diverse performative settings and explore the neoliberal University and the part they play in it. Facing extensive restructuring efforts in the context of the increasingly competitive marketisation of the HE sector since 2017, all staff at UK universities experience traumatic shifts within their working environment. The project aimed to generate a heterotopian space beyond the mobilisation by the labour unions, and to critically reflect about experiences and effects on academic work, class, affect and identities. Through the multimedial, site-specific performance emerging from this project, academics at Bangor University obtained a better understanding of shifting class categories today and their place therein.