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April 15, 2007
In his review of Christopher Fynsk's The Claim of Language: A Case for the Humanities in Rhizomes Jonathan Glover asks a good question:
In a university system based on “excellence,” a mere codeword for corporate utility, how can the humanities (with their troubling moral, ethical, political, and philosophical questions—questions that never bode well for the ethics of rabid business expansion and capital accumulation) exist in anything other than a position of unpopular antagonism? Consequently, in this atmosphere of compulsory “excellence,” devaluing and disempowering the humanities becomes nothing more than good business practice.
Fynsk's text, which argues for the importance of humanities research in an era of globalization and technical reason, returns to Bill Readings argument in The University in Ruins that the ‘idea of culture’ on which the modern research university was founded has given way to a notion of ‘excellence’ that lacks any referent beyond technocratic standards of productivity and market performance”. Hence the the precarious position of the humanities under a neo-liberal mode of governance.
In response to the university in postmodern liberal society being shaped by the technical imperatives of capital Fynsk calls for a revitalization of the humanities. Fair enough. How so? In what way? Isn't the erosion of financial and administrative support for the humanities an effect of the academy’s technocratization?
The general story of the humanities’ decline:is that it is caused by globalization, the advent of so-called ‘late’ capitalism and the readjustment of the labour market; the advance of technics and technical instrumentality on a worldwide scale; the intensifying commercialization of higher learning and the rise of institutional discourses, programs and practices tied to the notion of ‘excellence’; the changing meanings and values of nationhood, culture and the subject, and so forth.
Surprisingly, Fynsk's case for the humanities places the failure of the humanities to emerge legitimized and ready to do the good work of sociocultural reflection on the doorstep of critical theory. Glover says that:
what Fynsk really seems to take issue with is the misuse or abuse of theory, what might be considered “bad theory” or “poor reading.” In light of his argument for the humanities as a powerful tool for ethico-political reflection, the implication of Fynsk’s argument appears to be that bad theory—those overly abstract theoretical approaches he alludes to — endanger the humanistic enterprise by politicizing theory and forsaking research in the humanities to ideological — liberal, libertarian, multicultural— imperatives. Fynsk may refrain from citing specific theoretical abuses in an attempt to spare legitimate theory-driven political activism from undue censure, but ultimately his argument pays the price for this discretion.
Not again. Not another anti-theory text given the “end of philosophy”. Glover says that
Fynsk will... finely elucidate the power of the humanities to challenge and undercut the eclipse of “excellence.” It is at this point, perhaps, that the Granel material would be most useful as further evidence of how the humanities can help stall the downward plunge of the university into a multinational trade school/manufacturing complex.
That's a start I guess. But it doesn't take us much beyond Bill Readings or Derrida's argument in ‘The University Without Condition’, that the humanities are a way to think the question of the university’s future in a neo-liberal world.
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the glover quote is excellent. The system of rationalized global capital has encouraged the definition of both "excellence" and of "sanity" in terms that conform to corporate work. One sees, often, appeals to authority which are founded on an appeal to corporate usefulness (this pyschological test is used by real corporations to get a better idea of their personel....etc). The computer model of intelligence goes along with this, too. Ego Psychology certainly has made adaptation into the defining virtue. So, something in the humanities is seen both as pointless, and a little mad.