The State of Intellectual Play: A Generational Manifesto for Neoliberal Times

Abstract

This paper constitutes a manifesto for Generation-X academics, in the form of eight diagnostical and prescriptive theses. It is written in response to shifting conditions at two levels: externally, the hegemony of neoliberalism in the socio-political environment within which North American universities operate, which has spawned the dogma of inter-institutional competitiveness and educational vocationalism; and internally, a generational changing of the guard within universities, which is accompanied by a sense of despondency toward intellectual life and is thereby producing strategies of resigned quietism or instrumental careerism. By contrast, the manifesto proclaims that we must invent a practice of intellectual craftwork and publicly engaged scholarly research, one simultaneously striving for analytical rigour and theoretical boldness in order to convert the academy into a space of critique of the status quo and invention of alternatives.