Category Mistake 101: The Idea of the Desocialising University and the Last Intellectual

A considerable and growing body of literature has engaged in a critical reading of the nature and substance of shifts in not only the business practices, but the conditions for the very <i>raison d’ėtre</i> or telic identifiability of universities under current strategic political arrang...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: John C. McDowell
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2023-04-01
Series:Religions
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/4/512
Description
Summary:A considerable and growing body of literature has engaged in a critical reading of the nature and substance of shifts in not only the business practices, but the conditions for the very <i>raison d’ėtre</i> or telic identifiability of universities under current strategic political arrangements. Moving beyond the practices of academic <i>economy</i> in the <i>business</i> of higher education that reduce the intellectual worker to academic labourer enduring multiple forms of alienation, the paper considers what kind of critical setting there may be for reimagining the university in non-nostalgic ways. While the paper takes its cues pre-eminently from the Australian Higher Education Provider sector, it draws on the overlapping political theorising particularly from the N. American critics Wendy Brown and Henry Giroux. From their critiques of neoliberalism, the paper argues that asking what universities are for does not fare well when higher education institutions are subjected to neoliberal rationality.
ISSN:2077-1444