Event Details

LICA's Charlie Gere and Richard Rushton reflect on the changing nature of research in the contemporary university, with particular reference to Bill Readings’ landmark book, The University in Ruins, published in 1994.

Gere and Rushton reflect on the changing nature of research in the contemporary university, with particular reference to Bill Readings’ landmark book, The University in Ruins, published in 1994.

They consider the ways in which research has gone from being a ‘bottom-up’ set of tasks in which dedicated scholars search for new and original ideas, to being a ‘top-down’ set of instructions delivered by university administrators and external research councils based on strategic agendas and government policy initiatives. They ask whether this change has been a good thing for research. Much of this occurs in the light of Bill Readings’ claim that the Enlightenment grand narratives of truth and emancipation have been superseded by the liberal capitalist narratives of efficiency and profitability.

Gere and Rushton also reflect on the importance of ‘French theory’ in the humanities from the period roughly from the 1970s until the 2000s (Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, Irigaray, Derrida, Kristeva, Deleuze, Lyotard and others). They focus on the ways that French theory inspired new models of thought, and original approaches to literature and the arts. They consider the consequences of the end of that age of thought.