Criticism of university reason

The pamphlet of Geoffroy de Lagasnerie starts from a paradox where one is tempted to see a contradiction: the same intellectuals – Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Pierre Bourdieu in this case – which made the trial of university academism and its character “ Conservative and repressive In the 1960s and the early 1970s, the most harsh adversaries of the media system, in the name of university knowledge and institution, proved to be, in the late 1970s. After having valued the “ out of life “, They stored with the same conviction to the” life of inside ». The university adventure, castigated in their young years for the benefit of a “ knowledge insurrection And a release of speech, became their practical and theoretical withdrawal base to criticize a media-intellectual sphere made of impostures, over-cost television glories and inexpensive essayism. No one had the harder tooth than these clerics returned to the convent in implacable contemptors of the turpitudes of the world …

If G. de Lagasnerie sees in these two successive positions, the opposite faces but accomplices of the same rhetoric, it is still to the criticism of the second that he devotes most of his reflection, because she is, he notes, “ now dominant, even hegemonic ». The book program is this: “ To wonder about the effects of such a rhetoric of restoration of the university and its values, and (in) criticize the theoretical and political foundations “, Avoiding falling back into the trap of the first position, that is to say” an apology from the outside of the academic field and the spontaneous knowledge that arises there ». In short, it is a question of breaking “ belief in the border “Between the institution and its outside,” individuals and communities that carry theoretical renewal (not having) no natural spaces assigned in advance ». In doing so, this book does not seek the medium term or half-measure: it is indeed committed to the path of a critical rearmament for “ Understanding according to what logic heresy can be truly supported and encouraged ».

How did these intellectuals reversed ? G. de Lagasnerie takes up the arguments of a philosophical crusade against the “ journalistic power “And describes the rise of a” university fetishism and its values ». Two dates seem to play a driving role in this turnaround: 1975 and 1976. 1975 is the birth of the apostrophe television program which will quickly impose itself as the place where editorial reputations and successes are made ; 1976 is the birth of “ New philosophers Whose notoriety is constructed almost entirely in the press. G. de Lagasnerie proposes to analyze this change of foot of our four intellectuals in the light of the concepts they themselves forged. He thus shows that their defense of the university citadel can be understood as a behavior “ tactical ” Or “ strategic », To use the categories of Mr. Foucault. It is a question of reacting to a situation which threatens their acquired situation, because the new “ media capacity to embody an alternative power of consecration ” East “ likely to produce a very powerful mulching of intellectual hierarchies ». “” Isn’t that a kind ofCommon intellectual habitusconfronted with a radical change in cultural order, which has been expressed in their analyzes (…) ? In short, Bourdieu, Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault would have liked to reaffirm their monopoly on intellectual things and defend a dearly acquired rent.

The analysis convinces all the more since the same had not shunned the media world when they release their books, multiplying interventions “ extra-scientific »And the interviews (Foucault in eleven for the release of Words and things and the archeology of knowledge ; Bourdieu gives four for that of the distinction ; Deleuze Six for Anti-Oedipus or the edition of the Complete Nietzsche works ; Derrida, meanwhile, intervenes twenty-two times in the media between 1980 and 1989…). “” Allies, journalists would therefore have become opponents ».

In the second part of his book, G. de Lagasnerie questions “ the relevance of beliefs and representations that implicitly or explicitly underlie journalism criticism ». The mechanisms of “ peer recognition “, The belief in the school title, the social conditions of access to the scientific space, the idea that the university would be the only autonomous place to certify the quality of a work and that all those who seek to succeed outside its walls would be weak who could not have succeeded within its walls … The University Empire makes a brilliant critical review of the mechanisms and beliefs that organize the progressive cartelization of “ real »Producers of knowledge. This very system, including Roland Barthes or Philippe Ariès had to know the exclusive, but also Michel Foucault (refused to the Sorbonne in 1967), Jacques Derrida (beaten by “ A Marxist Professor of Local Recruitment in Nanterre », Underlines G. de Lagasnerie)…

One of the great merits of this little book is precisely to educate here again a criticism of university fetishism which is based on a reading of the texts and points to the contradictions of their authors. Thus Pierre Bourdieu praises the empowerment of the university field and the “ peer judgment “, Even though he had brilliantly highlighted the effects of censorship of this type of fence about the political field. Ultimately, it is very often by a kind of loyalty to their primary ideas that G. de Lagasnerie attacks the university cantonment of which Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida and Bourdieu made the champions. He makes their works work as a war machine against the apology of the norms of the academic field and awaken against their authors all the critical energy they contain. In this sense, and to put it in the terms of that time, the work of G. de Lagasnerie is properly subversive.

The last part of the book shows that many innovative thinkers have indeed built against the academic order and the “ Conservatism of those who control university powers ». At the apology of the judgment of peers as judgment of producers on producers (Bourdieu), The University Empire opposes a critical fruitful “ Reproducers’ judgment on producers ». Manet and Zola (Zola supporting Manet against academism) occupy a strategic position in this last movement of the demonstration, not because they would have to do with the academic world, but because Bourdieu himself, in a text that has become almost not found, made the heroes of an attack “ At the very heart of academic art ».

G. de Lagasnerie’s reflection, however, never sacrifices a form of romanticism of free creation and inspired against the diktats of the institution. On the contrary, she invites “ think relations “, To observe what is played on the border of” fields Even if it means exploding the barriers that separate the learned world from the profane world. If we want to criticize this journey, it is not the “ scientific community “That must be defended against” heretics community “, But the argumentative apparatus which he borrows so skillfully from his master figures and singularly from Bourdieu. But that’s another matter.