ABSTRACT
We preface this introduction with a critical reflection on the material conditions under which we produce as academic labourers. We hope this helps illustrate the contradictory nature of the neoliberal ideology of the ‘free contract’. This is both a necessary reflection all academics should undertake at the present conjuncture, and a solipsistic evaluation of ourselves as labourers; after all, we enter into these so-called intellectual property contracts with far more freedom and far less consequence than many of our brethren, as in the case of those locked in burning, collapsing factories in Bangladesh or those exposed to toxic Chinese pollution both in and outside the workplace, or even closer to home, those facing unknown diseases as a result of loosely regulated hydrofracking all over the USA. However, if there is any doubt about the neo-liberal state’s willingness to coercively enforce the copyright contracts we describe here, one need not look beyond the recent Department of Justice’s handling of Aaron Swartz’s case, which involved the unauthorized, bulk downloading of academic content. Just as we, as intellectual labourers, are implicated in the repressive apparatuses that bring us affordable clothes, computers and electricity, we are also meant to experience them directly; we must publish or perish and whatever we create through our intellectual labour will be appropriated by others and will not remain our own.
