not the motorcycle diaries

“Is the university politically important? Yes. At the same time, we don’t want to become so concerned with university conditions, the conditions of our own work and the nature of our own environment, that these come to stand for the political world. (…) it seems to me that universities and colleges over the last thousand years have always been awful and wonderful places. Academic conditions through most of pre- and early modernity were hardly fecund for either creative thinking or politically uncensored work. (…).  The history of the university has never been one of radical freedom or egalitarianism, non-exploitation, non-hierarchy, or anything like that. Au contraire. Remembering this might allow us to seize the possibilities we do have, as teachers who can still say pretty much what we want in the classroom, teach pretty much the texts that we think ought to be taught, write pretty much the books that we think ought to be written. it’s worth remembering this at the same time as we do critical political work on the deadening, politically exploitative, and increasingly managerial characteristics of the university.”

- Wendy Brown, ‘Learning to Love Again’, Contretemps 6, January 2006, pp.39-40.