3030007693 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-20T06:47:59+00:00

6 Universities: The Neoliberal Agenda

133

that we must subordinate ourselves entirely to that market; and why

the whole Enlightenment project has to be rejected. Neoliberalism, one

might say, would have had to invent postmodern scepticism if the Left

had not done so on its behalf. Of course, if that scepticism turned out

to be false, then Hayek’s central argument for the epistemic supremacy

of what neoliberalism is pleased to call “the free market” disappears.

And quite obviously, it is false—otherwise neither Hayek nor any other

true believers could be in a position to make the claim they do about

the market. For to do so would be to perform an obvious contradiction.

The simple point, here as elsewhere, is that if relativism is true, then it

cannot be true that relativism is true. That so much of the Western Left

of the late twentieth century should have been stupid enough to regard

postmodern relativism as an emancipatory tool will hopefully turn out

to be one of the odder twists of the history of ideas and of movements.

Nonetheless, contradictory though it is, postmodern scepticism about

knowledge remains a powerful position. And neoliberals—like others—

feed on it.

The Neoliberal Agenda for Universities

It is clear from the above that neoliberalism’s rejection of the very

idea of knowledge is central to its agenda for our universities. If that

rejection were justified, then that would perforce constitute a power-

ful argument simply to abolish universities as they are (still) currently

understood altogether. After all, if the job of universities is to produce

knowledge, and if that job is impossible, then universities have no use-

ful function. That is why the heart of the neoliberal agenda is, quite

simply, to get rid of universities as producers of knowledge—limiting

them to processors and distributors of information. Real universities

constitute a standing affront to Hayek’s rejection of the claim that ‘if at

any one time the best knowledge which some possess were made avail-

able to all, the result would be a much better society’ (Mirowski 2013,

p. 78, quoting Hayek 1960, p. 378).

This claim should not be confused with a sensible realism about

education’s in my view traditionally serving two quite contrary needs:

134

B. Brecher

continuity and renewal. At the most general level, any society that

goes beyond its satisfying its basic reproductive and subsistence needs

requires some sort of internal continuity in order to constitute a soci-

ety at all. At the same time, however, it requires possibilities of change

and development if it is not to stagnate. The proverbial trick is how to

balance these needs. Now, provided the numbers are small, that need

not be a great problem. The majority of the small minority of edu-

cated people will perform the continuity role; and only an even smaller

minority of that small minority will concern themselves with renewal.

And anyway, we can always deal with a few troublemakers from among

the latter, such as Socrates or Spinoza, who threaten the certainties on

which continuity depends. But a late capitalist culture needs to engage

the vast majority for its project—as consumers, if not as producers. And

as it becomes more technologically complex, so it needs more and more

skills and more and more knowledge. Nor is that all. With the increas-

ing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.