Abstract:
In this paper, I attempt to contextualise the question regarding
the public role of the academic as intellectual in terms of the
present, global, neo-liberal "govern-mentality". With the aid of
thinkers such as Bourdieu, Foucault, Sennett Arendt, but also
social geographer, David Harvey it becomes clear that neoliberalism
radically attenuates the individual's capacity to enter
the public sphere. This incapacitation leads to the inevitable
depoliticisation of intellectual labour through the increasing
individualisation of the sell on the one hand, and the rampant
privatisation of the public, on the other hand. This is explained
by laying bare the corrosive impact and pervasive nature of neoliberalism.
Foucault and Bourdieu nevertheless believe in the
possibility of resistance, which they locate in the individual and
in his/her capacity as politicised intellectual. However the
repoliticisation of intellectuals and their role in the political
sphere presupposes a more fundamental recovery of the public
sphere. The tactical question regarding the possibilities of and
means to resistance is therefore rooted in the ontological
question regarding the freedom of the self that comes into being
in the social space between the self and the other. In the final
analysis, the thought of Levinas is used to argue that fidelity to
the self is not realised through the pursuit of limitless freedom
(although our freedom is undeniably at stoke), but in the social
dimension which enables the self - via the other - to re-enter
the public and eventually the political sphere.
