Intellectual Intelligibility

As the University strikes come towards the end of a fourth week of action, it is particularly relevant that the assigned reading for this week discusses the place of the University in society.

Reflecting last weeks discussion on the place of museums and galleries institutions, and Herbert Muschamp’s claim that this sector ‘now has more power than the curators in certain decision-making areas’[1] Bill Readings contests that even within the University institution ‘the dignity they acquire is not that of authenticity but of marketability’.[2] This claim is certainly pertinent right now as the relationship between the institution (which may be increasingly informed by commercial and capital concerns) and the intellectuals who form the body of the institution ‘is never static but always evolving and sometimes surprising in its complexity’[3]

As we have discussed previously, the institution, or the institutional frame, confers legitimacy. However, the bias or imperative (political, social, commercial) of the institution may subtly compromise judgement and restrain the critical voice.’[4]

Edward W. Said discusses the idea the ‘The intellectual today ought to be an amateur’:[5] a term which, here, implies love. The inherent bias is of something deemed ‘amateur’ being concomitant with poor quality, or not as legitimate. Professionalism implies payment, and cost infers quality, in the sense of ‘you get what you pay for’, yet money can also produce prejudice (for example, a researcher may be inclined to read results to conform to the ideals of the person paying). This is why he uses the term ‘amateurs’ which implies ‘not being paid’. I would argue that what he means by ‘not being paid’ is more that they are free, not beholden, and can think both critically and objectively.

An amateur photographer is able to indulge their own interests rather than a client's brief
Image Credit: Zebrowski Photography

Said also writes that ‘education… is an impossible profession, systemically incapable of closure.’[6] We are always learning, so the idea that a quantifiable amount of learning can be done in a set amount of time is based on payment: the length of time one can ‘learn’ for is determined by the amount of money you can spend on it. The commercialisation of university institutions, and the worry that, as institutions seek our more and more commercial partnerships for funding opportunities, the place of the university as a cultural institute will be meaningless, and merely become a site of profit and loss is also reflected upon by Readings:

Once transnational capitalism has eroded the meaning of culture, and once the institutional system begins to show itself capable of functioning without reference to that term, then the role of education cannot primarily be conceived in terms of cultural acquisition or cultural resistance.[7]

How do you place a monetary value on the value of learning?

Readings also asks ‘how to think after culture… the analysis of culture can no longer assume a stable ground…’[8] As the role of the University shifts within society, so does the frame of reference in which the very analysis of culture can take place: if the frame is moving, how can we frame our ‘frame’ of reference? If culture is shifting, how can cultural institutions claim to represent it, except by shifting too?

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[1] Herbert Muschamp, ‘Art Institutions in Conflict Between Monoculture and Cosmopolitanism’ in The Discursive Museum, ed. Peter Noever (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2001) p.157.

[2] Bill Readings, ‘The Posthistorical University’ in The University in Ruins (London: Harvard University Press, 1997) pp.119-134 (p.121).

[3] Edward W. Said, ‘Professionals and Amateurs’ in Representations of the Intellectual (London: Vintage Books, 1994) pp.65-83 (p.65).

[4] Said, ‘Professionals and Amateurs’, p.68.

[5] Said, ‘Professionals and Amateurs’, p.82.

[6] Said, Professionals and Amateurs’, p.128.

[7] Readings, ‘The Posthistorical University, p.119.

[8] Readings, ‘The Posthistorical University, p.120.