or, perhaps, where would adorno's work have gone without weber, foucault without durkheim, butler without ethnographies/dramaturgies of identity, much of pomo/poststruc scholarship without kojeve's influential reading of hegel, and so on and so forth.
which is not to say i'm upholding some sort of history of ideas that flows on some internal logic. rather, it is to say that, while i agree with ange's characterization which, at least in my experience, is the standard stuff of training in the social sciences, the academy can't really be characterized as a factory in which its workers mindlessly conform, as absent contradictions, fissures, ruptures, than we can or would want to characterize any other factory and its workers.
>> that's a very provocative set of quotations you've
>> marshalled, angela, but can't the point of it all be
>> put more simply? i.e., the academy always shills for
>> state power (and the "natural" pre-eminence of the ruling
>> orders)?
>
>This seems particularly clear in the 'natural sciences' (except that I'd
>replace 'state' with some other phrase - ruling class, maybe - in that,
>through foundations, industry funding, etc. alternative channels of ruling
>class incorporation appear) where an empiricist focus on 'real' results
>easily dove-tails into a focus on 'useful' (for capital) results.
>
>In 'Psychology and Society' (ed. Ian Parker, Russell Spears) one of the
>essays (I think the one by Stephen Reicher) talks about specific instances
>of how funding pressures enforced the 'Faustian contract' that radicals in
>academia are forced to sign with the administrators of the academy. He
>also talks about resisting that contract - on that topic, if there are any
>people in the sciences on this list who are interested in forming a
>radical scientists network (ala Science for the People), drop me an email.
>
>>
>> and that's true whether it's a matter of prescriptive
>> sociology or the more contemporary pomo "radicalism,"
>> which serves mainly to create/reinforce a sense of
>> powerlessness.
>>
>
>While I don't disagree with you, I think it is necessary to dig a bit
>under the surface of the phenomenon to document how it works. I know in
>Computer Science, 'star' intellectuals like Nicholas Negroponte (from the
>MIT Media Lab) define the intellectual horizons of many 'technology
>workers' by their techno-utopian announcements. How this works in the
>'humanities' is less clear to me - who funds Baudrillard, for instance?
>Who validates his results to ensure that he receives further funding?
>
>On the other side of the scale - who funds Eagleton, or Spivak? What are
>the constraints on their actions?
>
>Knowing how the beast moves is useful to know where to hit it first.
>
>Peter
>--
>Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available
>Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man
>shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the
>chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
> NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.
>
>
>