Martin L. Davies

Institutionalized nihilism: An outline of the academic function

This essay is a variation on the theme of academia and academic practices in Sande Cohens work. It develops through reference to two systems of discourse: Cohens semio-critical analysis of academic writing and its cultural and political implications; and writings on epistemology, social-psychology, and semiotics, not just in themselves relevant to the analysis of academia, but including some of those orientating Cohens writing. Taking the discipline of history as the paradigmatic academic practice, it outlines the academic function as a technological device that authorizes and facilitates the wide range of cultural and political behaviour generated by the economic system of totalitarian capitalism. It argues that the academic function discloses itself not as knowledge seeking ‘truth’ but (in the Platonic sense) as sophistry with privileged currency and value in the socio-economic climate of information and opinion. The academic function, therefore, operates cognitively in terms of equivalence and identity: its language encodes it as a socially affirmative, natural attitude, as a common sense. Additionally, both by its claim to universality and by its internal logic of self-amplification, its authoritative expertise has a theological aura, a clerical posture. Its structure is narcissistic since the world the academic function reflects and interprets is a likeness of the techno-sphere it helps to maintain. It culminates in nihilism because the profuse production of expert opinion on heterogeneous topics results in the redundancy of meaning and the negation of all values except production for its own sake. Even so, as Nietzsche recognized, because it negates, nihilism can also liberate.

The redundancy of history in a historicized world

In this essay I argue that in a world by now thoroughly historicized, ‘historical knowledge’ claims to authority and legitimacy are predicated, ironically, on the notion of redundancy. By redundancy, I mean here that the whole semantic field of history (of history culture) now comprises superfluous production leading to irrelevance (the amplification, atomization, ephemeralization of knowledge generating tautologies, solipsisms, obsolescence, and uselessness); the essay concludes that history thus projects the aura of a finished world.

Orpheus or Clio? Reflections on the Use of History

Clio, &dquo;a shadow in Hades, a shadow at the edge of the tomb along with innumerable other shadows&dquo;, is now an oracle of despair. Her grave words voice the accumulated experience of all time, &dquo;the common memory of common humanity&dquo;. Her sober insights deploy the devastating wisdom of hindsight. Her convictions carry an incontrovertible sense of finality because, as she says, her function is

Cognitive inadequacy: history and the technocratic management of an artificial world

Abstract History is the dominant form of human self-comprehension in a world dominated by global capitalism: it is this system in ideal form. But this is an artificial world constructed against nature. It is governed by the disciplined studiousness that sustains the social historian-function. It is maintained by the history-focussed behaviour of the technocracy (administrators, experts, technicians, and – not least – academics) that manage it. But historical judgment is by definition faulty, its comprehensive managerial stance cognitively inadequate. As the examples cited here demonstrate, civilization based on it looks catastrophic: history compromises the very human existence it is meant to reassure. Nurturing its illusions, automatically imposing its disciplinary authority, history exposes its own redundancy.

Disobedience reconsidered: history, theory, and the Morality of Scholarship

This essay vindicates the concept of disobedience that Keith Jenkins advocates in Rethinking History and At the Limits of History. Starting from the conflict between postmodern theories of knowledge and historical practice, it explores the psychopathological complexes, the affirmative social and cultural values, the complicity with political and economic power sustained by historical scholarship and its historicizing procedures, not least those elaborated in response to postmodernism. It thus argues that disobedience, ostensibly a purely academic disaffection, offers a basis for the micro-politics of opposition.

‘Education after Auschwitz’ Revisited

Adorno’s essay, ‘Education after Auschwitz’, first appeared as a radio-talk on 18 April 1966. Its immediate historical context makes it look dated. Primarily, the chapter is about the social function of schools in the German Federal Republic in the mid-1960s. Still, it does provoke reflection on contemporary educational practice. However, the word ‘education’ needs glossing. Adorno focusses not on personal development [Bildung] (i.e. ‘education’ in a general sense), but on pedagogy or learning [Erziehung]. He’s interested in its public function as enlightenment [Aufklarung], as an element of society’s intellectual climate.1 Further, it disregards the role of memory and history in the process of socialization: that might strike contemporary, historically hyperconscious minds as a grave omission. Equally Adorno’s advocacy of a primary ethical intention in schooling seems improbable now ‘institutionalized philistinism’ dictates educational policy and its social agenda.2 But, if you do want to think about education post-Holocaust, these qualifications only enhance the essay’s significance.