This paper addresses the intersection of problems of labour, capitalism and the body, and situates it in the context of contemporary academia. We will attempt to bring together the “old” (Marxist) and new traditions of materialism in order to re-think the material of the cognitive work. We pose the following questions: What happens to bodies in an increasingly neoliberal academia, which produces precarious, nomadic and, oftentimes, sick bodies (depressed, burned-out, anxious)? What are the ways in which control is being exercised over these bodies? Inspired by the idea of “situated knowledges” we claim that to produce academic discourses on how bodies and lives are kept under control, it is vital to recognize one’s own position (in this case it is a positionlocated within the context of the academia) as a space which is not free from the relations of control, power and violence. We argue that in this particular work environment (i.e. the university) the control over “cognitive labourers” is exercised throughdistribution of anxiety which forces subjects to be productive. We argue that dismantling the productive/unproductive dichotomy could lead to new forms of resistance, solidarity and/or collective action.