Call for Papers for Panel at ISA 2008
Please forward this call for papers to those who might be interested.
Panel Title and Abstract
The Crisis of the University in Late Modern Times
The soundings of crisis in the worldwide institution of the university are
today everywhere to be heard. As the institutional space of the university
is penetrated by market forces, ideological contests, class and factional
interests, and sovereign pronouncements of the necessities of security and
war, the relative autonomy of this space seems more and more a nostalgic
remembrance, less and less a contemporary reality. The Kantian architecture
of the university might once have been everywhere celebrated and
near-universally replicated. It is an architecture, as we know, that did not
attribute to the university a place or function beyond or outside provisions
of sovereign law that would regulate society, the life of a population, and
the lives of citizen-subjects. On the contrary, it is an architecture that
would set down for the university a legal foundation upon which, Kant
maintained, every system of law articulated in history must ultimately
depend: the law, the principle, of reason. This law was to be what it had to
be if its timelessness, its universality, and its autonomy was to be
sustained: it was to be, in Giorgio Agamben's now famous phrasing, a "law in
force without significance," a law that could never be collapsed into any
one disciplinary or national discourse, any one system of language, any one
rule of law articulated in history to regulate the lives and life-making of
women, men, and children. And in the architecture of the modern university,
the tribunal convened in the service of this law without describable content
would have its definite location. It would be located among the "lower
faculties"—those departments (e.g., of philosophy, mathematics, the natural
sciences, and the human sciences) occupied by doctors of *philosophy*. It
would be located among those lower faculties where thinking, ever subject to
the tribunal of reason, would regulate the affairs of the university in
general, even with respect to the "higher faculties" (e,g,, of law,
theology) who would be situated at the periphery of the university adjacent
to society and who, so situated, would justify themselves in terms of their
service of various historical objectifications of societal interests. This
is the Kantian architecture. When today it is said that the university is in
crisis, this is the architecture that is said to be threatened: within the
university, the centrality and regulative force of the tribunal of
reason—and, with it, the authority of the lower faculties and their
capacities to justify the thinking and teaching they do—is itself in doubt
and on trial. And when today the call goes out to resist those forces
penetrating the university, imperiling its relative autonomy, and depriving
it of its capacities to function as a site of critical reflection on
society, this is the architecture whose restoration is called for.
This panel proposes to question such interpretations of the university and
its relation to society and the political. More specifically the panel seeks
to question and understand how political science and international relations
scholars' attempts, or refusals, to engage in matters pertaining to the
political might itself be a political act that delimits political
imagination and political transformation.
Panel Organizers
Richard K. Ashley
Arizona State University
Halit Mustafa Tagma
Arizona State University
Please send paper abstracts to halit.tagma@xxxxxxx by May 31.
Please submit COMPLETE contact info:
Paper title:
Paper abstract:
Last Name:
First Name:
Primary Institutional Affiliation:
Address
City:
State/Province:
Zip/Postal Code:
Country:
Phone:
Email:
Please forward this call for papers to those who might be interested.
Panel Title and Abstract
The Crisis of the University in Late Modern Times
The soundings of crisis in the worldwide institution of the university are
today everywhere to be heard. As the institutional space of the university
is penetrated by market forces, ideological contests, class and factional
interests, and sovereign pronouncements of the necessities of security and
war, the relative autonomy of this space seems more and more a nostalgic
remembrance, less and less a contemporary reality. The Kantian architecture
of the university might once have been everywhere celebrated and
near-universally replicated. It is an architecture, as we know, that did not
attribute to the university a place or function beyond or outside provisions
of sovereign law that would regulate society, the life of a population, and
the lives of citizen-subjects. On the contrary, it is an architecture that
would set down for the university a legal foundation upon which, Kant
maintained, every system of law articulated in history must ultimately
depend: the law, the principle, of reason. This law was to be what it had to
be if its timelessness, its universality, and its autonomy was to be
sustained: it was to be, in Giorgio Agamben's now famous phrasing, a "law in
force without significance," a law that could never be collapsed into any
one disciplinary or national discourse, any one system of language, any one
rule of law articulated in history to regulate the lives and life-making of
women, men, and children. And in the architecture of the modern university,
the tribunal convened in the service of this law without describable content
would have its definite location. It would be located among the "lower
faculties"—those departments (e.g., of philosophy, mathematics, the natural
sciences, and the human sciences) occupied by doctors of *philosophy*. It
would be located among those lower faculties where thinking, ever subject to
the tribunal of reason, would regulate the affairs of the university in
general, even with respect to the "higher faculties" (e,g,, of law,
theology) who would be situated at the periphery of the university adjacent
to society and who, so situated, would justify themselves in terms of their
service of various historical objectifications of societal interests. This
is the Kantian architecture. When today it is said that the university is in
crisis, this is the architecture that is said to be threatened: within the
university, the centrality and regulative force of the tribunal of
reason—and, with it, the authority of the lower faculties and their
capacities to justify the thinking and teaching they do—is itself in doubt
and on trial. And when today the call goes out to resist those forces
penetrating the university, imperiling its relative autonomy, and depriving
it of its capacities to function as a site of critical reflection on
society, this is the architecture whose restoration is called for.
This panel proposes to question such interpretations of the university and
its relation to society and the political. More specifically the panel seeks
to question and understand how political science and international relations
scholars' attempts, or refusals, to engage in matters pertaining to the
political might itself be a political act that delimits political
imagination and political transformation.
Panel Organizers
Richard K. Ashley
Arizona State University
Halit Mustafa Tagma
Arizona State University
Please send paper abstracts to halit.tagma@xxxxxxx by May 31.
Please submit COMPLETE contact info:
Paper title:
Paper abstract:
Last Name:
First Name:
Primary Institutional Affiliation:
Address
City:
State/Province:
Zip/Postal Code:
Country:
Phone:
Email: