Thinking Dangerously in an Age of Political Betrayal

The assault on critical thought is taking place in a variety of spheres, including higher education, especially at a time when corporatism, a mad empiricism, and market-driven ideologies are the dominant forces at work in defining what counts as labor, research, pedagogy, journalism, and learning. The notion that thinking dangerously produces forms of literacy in which knowledge is related to issues of agency, public values, and social problems is quickly disappearing from higher education and other sites. For example, Republican governors in states such as Texas, Maine, and Florida defunding those fields of study in higher education that cannot be measured in economic terms, while redefining the mission of the university as merely an adjunct of corporations, the military-industrial complex, and government intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, higher education houses an increasing number of intellectuals who have slipped into diverse forms of unprincipled careerism in which matters of critical thought have less to do with politics and power, or social justice for that matter, than with a kind of arcane cleverness–a sort of ineffectual performance that allows them to threaten no one. This probably sounds harsh, but personally I have seen this trend growing since the 1980s and actually believe it has a lot do with the cultural capital and investment in careerism that many academics now bring to the academy and their roles as intellectuals—partly a response to the corporatization of the university. These are middle and ruling class intellectuals on the move, always looking for new opportunities, all too willing to be quiet, safe, and ready and eager for the next promotion. In addition, too many academics are giving in to the seductions and rewards of corporate power, and are complicit in destroying theory and critical thought as tools that enable faculty and students to relate the self to others, public values, and the demands of a robust democracy. Of course, what often happens in this case is that by not having any viable vision or sense of the political, for that matter, such academics do an incredible injustice not to their roles as potential public intellectuals to critical thought itself. As Larry Grossberg once put it, they are clueless in taking up the challenge of theorizing the political and politicizing theory. What is sad about this state of affairs is that theorizing the politics of the twenty-first century may be the most important challenge facing the academy and any other public sphere committed to critical thinking, thoughtfulness, dialogue, and the radical imagination. If we lose control of those spheres that cultivate the knowledge and skills necessary for rigorous analysis along with a culture of questioning, it will become more and more difficult for students and others to question authority, challenge commonsense assumptions, and hold power accountable. Thinking, theory, and ideas become critical and transformative when they become meaningful and have some purchase on peoples’ lives. They also play a powerful role in shaping the formative cultures necessary to keep the spirit of democracy alive in a society. Theory or general frameworks of thought are always at work in what we say and practice. The question is whether we are aware of them and whether they constitute a hidden dimension of thought or are critically engaged frameworks. But the so called abuse of theory and critical thought in the academy is not simply the fault of errant professionalism and careerism. Defining theory and dangerous thinking as part of a critical pedagogy and emancipatory project becomes increasingly difficult for part-time faculty and those not on the tenure line who are harnessed with the increased pressures posed by the corporate university coupled with the market-driven production of an ongoing culture of uncertainty, insecurity, and fear which makes the black hole of despair more paralyzing and crippling. Killing the imagination and the quest for truth is not too difficult when faculty are struggling to survive the tasks of teaching too many courses, receiving poverty wages for their teaching, laboring under savage debts, and excluded from the power relations that govern their time. Under such circumstance, time becomes a burden rather than a luxury to be used to enable one to be self –reflective, thoughtful, and capable of critically examining the assumptions and institutions that shape our lives. Of course, at the same time, there are still a number of public intellectuals including Cornell West, Chris Hedges, and Stanley Aronowitz to Gayatri Spivak and Dorothy Roberts who use theory to address a range of social problems both in and outside of the university including issues such as right-wing fundamentalism, the attack on the welfare state, racism in America, and a host of other issues. Moreover, there has been a resurgence of public intellectuals in and outside of the academy who are refiguring the role of dangerous thinking and critical as central pedagogical elements in fashioning a new language for politics, one that begins with the question of what a democracy should look like and in whose interest it should operate. Such intellectuals refuse the notion that any appeal to theory automatically makes them suspect. All of these intellectuals accept the notion that thinking becomes critical when it “brings theory into the focus of analysis by refusing to accept its authority without proof, by denuding that the grounds on which is authority is claimed be revealed, and, eventually, by questioning those grounds… theory is an activity rather than a body of knowledge…in that it produces practices” and refuses to be satisfied with the world as it is. On the other side, the diatribes against theory and dangerous thinking by the press, media, etc. can be construed as a kind of resentment, the product of a turf war, a defense of neoliberal fundamentalism, or an expression of ignorance and anti-intellectualism in the service of power. Of course, it is all these and more, but I think one important issue highlighted by Bob McChesney and others lies in the corporatizing of the media and its ongoing refusal to address important problems with intellectual rigor and theoretical depth–not to mention any simple honesty (Fox being the most obvious and horrible example). The dominant media has become lap dogs to corporate power, serving largely as a source of entertainment, hate, and militarism, all provided in ways that resemble barking commands. Public spaces are simply being eaten up and turned into offshoots of what Fox News and hate right-wing talk radio have become, a toxic advertisement for various elements of right wing and fundamentalist discourses. Of course, there are alternative public spheres and one should never underestimate the power of resistance, even in times such as ours, but the colonizing of alternative views, ideas, and knowledge available to people constitutes not only a crisis of theory and critical thought but a crisis of pedagogy and democracy itself. This is not new, but it has become more intensified and dangerous. But in the current historical conjuncture, serious questions have to be raised about what role artists, intellectuals, journalists, writers, and other cultural workers might play in challenging the authoritarian state while deepening and expanding the process of democratization. One answer might be found in the important work of people like Edward Said, Pierre Bourdieu, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Naomi Klein, Stanley Aronowitz, Bill Mckibben, and others who have provided important work in this regard. Your support matters…

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