My over-arching argument in this article is that both academics and students in universities have been afflicted by a set of relations that Lauren Berlant refers to as ‘cruel optimism’ (2011). Cruel optimism according to Berlant, constitutes the holding out… Read More ›
audit culture
The Neoliberal University and the Common Good, Raphael Sassower
The intense “audit culture” and digitally enhanced monitoring of faculty’s production resembles the “pre-neoliberal” or “feudal university” as much as the neoliberal university (Cruickshank 2019). Is higher education no different from other institutions plagued by the neoliberal regime of economizing… Read More ›
Call for Dialogue: Neoliberalism, Technocracy and Higher Education
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective invites a dialogue on issues in higher education involving the audit culture, authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and technocracy. These issues are addressed in a special issue of Social Epistemology (33 (4): 2019), “Neoliberalism, Technocracy and… Read More ›
The Feudal University in the Age of Gaming the System, Justin Cruickshank
One wonders if Paul Riceour is turning in his grave as the hermeneutics of suspicion leaves Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud to become a statist project. Out goes ideology, resentment, and the workings of id, which function as the suspicious origins… Read More ›