Say, you are intelligent but not extremely brilliant. You want to live the life of the mind. Or, rather, what you imagine that life to be. Mostly, you really want tons of free time and comfortable pay coupled with the status of an intellectual authority. Suddenly, there arose in the West a number of societies wealthy enough that they could afford to have a sizable group living precisely this kind of lifestyle. It was a historical glitch, as we can now appreciate, that so many people could afford to live this kind of life. This is all now going away. And the paradox of the situation is that the group that was able to come into existence and really enjoy this status and material conditions was responsible for putting an end to this glitch.
While the glitch still existed, though, all of these people who wanted to enjoy academic life had to produce articles, books, and conference papers for tenure and promotion. The idea that everything in existence is bad and needs to be subverted offers an endless supply of material. You don’t have to think much or come up with an argument of your own. Take any work of literature, painting, event of history, political system, etc and condemn them for being what they are.
Incidentally, “everything should be constantly subverted and replaced” is one of the foundational ideas of neoliberalism. Academia became the servant class and the wrecking crew doing the demolition work of neoliberal change. Until neoliberalism started saying, “ok, thanks for all the help, but now is the time to replace you, so bye.”
No nation-state means no large middle-class means no mass higher education means we revert to the status quo of before the glitch. The work of the intellect will continue and some people will live the life of the mind but their number will be dramatically reduced. That’s not a bad thing.
What will they think and write about?
Finally, we will get to the answer in the next post.
Clarissa's Blog 