States of Indebtedness: Care Work in the Struggle against Educational Privatization

Composed in the aftermath of the 2009–10 protests at California universities, “States of Indebtedness” provides a critical appraisal and recounting of these events, stressing their disruptive effects in relation to the increasingly damaging social and spatial relations that structure university life. Focusing in particular on the reclamation of Wheeler Hall on November 20, 2009, the essay draws out the relatively mundane acts of care that both enabled the occupation of Wheeler Hall and that extended, in various ways, the duration and oppositional force of this event. The essay invites us to consider how movements against educational privatization might be remolded to the extent that we adequately value—rather than disavow—the work of care that sustains our opposition to the spaces and times of neoliberalism.