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May 19, 2008
Timothy Luke in Telos says that under a neo-liberal mode of governance Husserl’s vision of intellectuals as “functionaries of humanity” becomes less and less viable under these conditions until even a pretense of any“humanitarian function” disappears in the fog of key competencies, general education goals or practical skills that rolls over universities with the technicization of thought and knowledge. Universities no longer seek truth, progress or freedom. are being remade as dedicated producers of 24/7 services for the “knowledge business,” and serious profits are the promised pay-off for their uninspired market-building and commercialization of research. He adds:
the “contemporary research university” can only be seen as another antiquated artifact in the current neoliberal era that no longer “imagines” its community in state-riven terms. Instead of standing for a political community’s vision of its self and society as the designated site for civic Bildung, as the traditional public university originally tried to afford, many top-tier research universities basically have forsaken that cultural mission in favor of franchising out their once almost transcendent authority over knowledge to private concerns by facilitating the business ventures of both big global corporations and small local start-ups. As a result, the research university puts “economic development” ahead of “education.”
Luke says that The “liberal arts” ideal, or cultivating critical bodies of knowledge to articulate and advance some viable vision of individual and collective freedom, comes under suspicion. .So we have the dismissal of arts and sciences, arts and letters or the liberal arts as antiquated frameworks for how knowledge should be organized.
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