Sujet libéral de l’université : C Newfield, Ivy and Industry

Il faut 11 pages pour m’amener non pas à me dire que, dawning, mais à m’esclaffer en ponctuation exclamative au crayon ; remettant Chris Newfield à la place idéologique que je n’avais pas du tout devinée ou supposée en le lisant dans ses travaux soit sur After PC (il coordonnait, 1995) ou contact trop passager avec Unmaking the Public University (2011, tout de meme sous-titré The 40 year assault on the middle class), ou déclarations ultérieures.

Equations étonnante du sujet libéral, tranquille, posé comme évidence et sans besoin de conceptualisation ou avertissement. Humanities, humaniste, conditions humaines, human development. “Individual agency” comme équivalente à “professional” (rapidement morphé en “managers, vus comme individus, avec attention subjective, dans le courant d’une culture post-industrielle du management, elle placée en défaut et perte de la dignité artisanale/bourgeoise), dans une éthique économique de “good work”, “craft work” distingué du “labor movement’ which was largely ignored (or despised) in the university” (11, posé sans problème). Humanities contre les “identités” et “identity-based social movements” (9).

Comme quoi : il peut y avoir dans la position de critique de l’université néolibérale des parts du faisceau de résistance situées dans ces zones politiques : le libéral contre le néolibéral. Combien on est sot de ne l’avoir pas situé d’avance. Ancien capital, moyenne bourgeoisie, les cadres, ou avant même les cadres, proto-formes des. Avocats dans la Révolution française. Leur culture. La culture, zone politique, contre l’anarchie victorienne, autant, M Arnold. – An interesting complement : “the linkage of aesthetics and craft“, 11. Morris ?

Ce qui situe aussi Newfield dans ses rôles plus contemporains, maturités de carrière, et engagement public, white papers, reports. C’est aussi un engagement. On pourra dire “public“. Qui a son goût, ses cultures (et ses traditions estimables) états-uniens.

Point sur le i :

The research university’s most important result by far is its graduates, most destined for some segment of the professional middle classes. Ivy and Industry asks whether this middle group can really be the agents of history rather than the servants of it — the servants of the top executives and owners and moguls and political players who make the major decisions. Where the university’s middle class acts autonomously¹, can it side, to put it bluntly, with those injured by the university’s founders? (11)

Woops, “siding with”, and a quick reversal to home target : itself? Otherwise who’s that, those injured? Which alliance are we talking about? “Founders” speaks of early New England Protestant radicals, and liberal paternalists educationalists, possibly Victorian – now it will also have sedimented a new layer of: cancel-worthy.

Ceci dit évidemment la classe professionnelle bourgeoise aura été, par sa situation articulatoire et moderne, levier historique indispensable, cruciale. Fonction, légitimité dans le projet de l’émancipation donc, sa part de. Vue marxienne comprise.

*

“the central concept of humanism itself. (12 – WTF?) its contradictions : “a radically emancipatory vision for human potential … Am and French Revolutions, British Rom, abolitionist and civil rights movements, decolonization struggles² At the same time … helped justify colonization abroad and draconian social control at home … with … cultural exceptionalism, or more accurately cultural supremacism. … Humanism’s impact has therefore varied widely³, and in this book my starting point for handling its contradictions is to treat it, restrictively, as a theory of American middle-class possibilities under industrial capitalism.

Right, well and clearly framed. Fonction politique-historique de l’université libérale, “humaniste”, dans l’histoire du XIXe puis XXe libéraux.

OK too, 12 : “The middle class … endlessly debated category … my … ‘university middle-class’, or more familiarly the ‘professional middle-class’, which by and large does knowledge work for a living.”      PMC
… doctors lawyers engineers who retain a version of guild structure. + “has devoted itself to self-governance within large organizations, and this wish for autonomy has coincided, in theory, with the sense that autonomy depends on some kind of peer-group democracy, though of a highly managed kind.

Et ainsi, depuis ce point de vue, contribution et plausibilité du récit :

While many sociologists thing the market has conquered the middle class, I believe that the middle class is at war with itself over its response to the market.⁴.  this quiet but pervasive war⁵. The outcome will decide whether the middle class will help the rest of society continue the evolution of autonomy and democracy as forms of life, or rather help our increasingly narrow political system to reduce these to market functions. => Age of Experts, b.

“My hope … this book contributes to a better synthesis of recessive yet visionary humanistic perspectives with their recent, irresistible antihumanist critiques.” 14 – market forces, but also identity-driven new or none- humanities ?

1. ?? [↩]
2. exactly [↩]
3. conclusion and inference problematic [↩]
4. “parts of the middle class continue an older tradition of defining professional skills through their social value … involving aesthetic, spiritual, intellectual, or other personal values – the mysterious, indispensable contents of self-development as such.” — all the while rejecting “identity-based movements” [↩]
5. written in 2003 [↩]