Situation Critical

Abstract

This brief essay argues that fewer scholars and students in Communications and Cultural Studies seem to want to engage in the practice of critique, or to expose themselves to the risks that can come with it. It examines some of the ways in which we might read this scarcity of critique through the lens of recent administrative and structural changes that have been taking place within and across university systems in the West.

Keywords:

• critique
• risk
• the university, Communications
• Cultural Studies

She would like to acknowledge the contribution of Bob Hanke to this work.

Notes

[1] Barbara Godard, “The Risk of Critique: Voices across Generations,” in Academic Callings: The university we have had, now have and could have, ed. Janice Newson and Claire Polster (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2010), 26–34.

[2] Michel Foucault, “What is Critique?” in The Politics of Truth: Michel Foucault, ed. Sylvère Lotringer (Los Angeles: Semiotexte, 1997) 42.

[3] Judith Butler, “What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue,” transversal, May 2001 http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en (accessed 12 May 2013).

[4] Judith Butler, “What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue,” transversal, May 2001 http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en (accessed 12 May 2013).

[5] Foucault, “What is Critique?” 59.

[6] See esp. Marc Bousquet, How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (New York: NYU Press, 2008); James Cote and Anton Allahar, Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For? (London: Penguin, 2011); Edu-factory Collective, Toward a Global Autonomous University (New York: Autonomedia, 2009); Cary Nelson, Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Christopher Newfield, Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State and Education (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). The majority of these authors are located in the fields of Sociology and English. While scholars in Communications and Cultural Studies may not have been as vocal as one might like, there have been several special journal issues on the topic over the past decade, including Social Text (Vol 22:2, 2004), New Formations (Issue 53: 2004), International Journal of Communication (Vol 5: 2011), and TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (Issue 58: December 2012). Jeffrey Williams recently has noted the emergence of a new “field” of “critical university studies.” See Jeffrey J. Williams, “Deconstructing Academe: The Birth of Critical University Studies,” Chronicle of Higher Education (19 February 2012), http://chronicle.com/article/An-Emerging-Field-Deconstructs/130791/

[7] The Government of Ontario, Canada recently used this phrase in the title of a report on the higher education sector. The words “university” and “college” were not included in the title.

[8] Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State and Education (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)

[9] Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State and Education (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 279

[10] Andrew Martin and Andrew W. Lehren, “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College,” New York Times, 12 May 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/student-loans-weighing-down-a-generation-with-heavy-debt.html?pagewanted=all (accessed 1 May 2013).

[11] Andrew Ross, “The Rise of the Global University,” in Toward a Global Autonomous University, ed. Edu-factory Collective (New York: Autonomedia, 2009), 18–31.

[12] Brian Whitener and Dan Nemser, “Circulation and the New University,” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 28 (2012): 165–70.

[13] Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996)

[14] Phil Cohen, “A Place to Think? Some Reflections on the Idea of the University in the Age of the ‘Knowledge Economy,’” New Formations 53 (2004): 12–27 http://www.newformations.co.uk/abstracts/nf53abstracts.html (accessed 3 April 2006)

[15] Mieke Bal, “From Cultural Studies to Cultural Analysis: ‘A Controlled Reflection on the Formation of Method,’” Interrogating Cultural Studies: Theory, Politics, and Practice, ed. Paul Bowman (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 30–40; Michael Griffin, “The Uneasy Institutional Position of Communication and Media Studies and Its Impact on Academic Labor in Large Universities Versus Small Colleges,” International Journal of Communication, 5 (2011): 1827–36.

[16] Of course there are many notable exceptions to this. I acknowledge that everyone must deal with the particularities of their own institutional and personal constraints in their own ways, and am not interested in “naming and blaming,” just in sketching out the very broadest of trends.

[17] Gary Rhoades, “A National Campaign of Academic Labor: Reframing the Politics of Scarcity in Higher Education,” New Political Science 33, issue 1 (2011): 102.

[18] Thomas Discenna, “Academic Labor and the Literature of Discontent in Communication,” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 1843–52.

[19] Jonathan Sterne, “The Politics of Academic Labor in Communication Studies: A Re-Introduction,” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 1853–72.

[20] Scott Jaschik, “Rejected for Being In-state,” Inside Higher Ed, 13 August 2012, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/13/one-cal-state-department-refuses-let-out-staters-over-state-residents (accessed 1 May 2013).

[21] Melonie Fullick, “The National Path to Internationalization,” University Affairs, 24 August 2012, http://www.universityaffairs.ca/speculative-diction/the-national-path-to-internationalization/ (accessed 23 September 2012).

[22] Tamara Baluja, “Report Urges Canada to Double Down on Foreign Students to Fuel Innovation,” Globe and Mail, 14 August 2012, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/report-urges-canada-to-double-down-on-foreign-students-to-fuel-innovation/article4480232/ (accessed 23 September 2012).

[23] Stefan Collini, “Browne's Gamble,” London Review of Books, 4 November 2010. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble (accessed 10 December 2010).

[24] Chris Parr, “Not Staying the Course,” Inside Higher Ed, 10 May 2013, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/10/new-study-low-mooc-completion-rates (accessed 15 May 2013).

[25] Steve Kolowich, “Why Professors at San Jose State Won't Use a Harvard Professor's MOOC,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 May 2013 http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Professors-at-San-Jose/138941/ (accessed 15 May 2013).

[26] Richard Pérez-Peña, “Harvard Asks Graduates to Donate Time to Free Online Humanities Class,” New York Times, 25 March 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/education/harvard-asks-alumni-to-donate-time-to-free-online-course.html?_r=3& (accessed 15 May 2013).

[27] Tony Bennett, “Interview with Tony Bennett,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 10, issue 1 (2013): 107.

[28] Godard, “The Risk of Critique,” 30.

[29] Bennett, “Interview,” 108.