Winds of Progress: The Administered University

Abstract

Analyzing the 1968 student movements in Europe, many saw the end of the liberal illusion, widely shared by the left, of education as an equal right for all and of meritocratic selection based on individual skills and talents.

Taking into account the scope of modern society, the state must revise and strengthen the means of distributing cultural products… Contemporary channels must reproduce the models of large supermarkets, making cultural objects increasingly accessible … For me, cultural politics is an activity that is linked on three levels: the producer, the distributor and the consumer… you flatter the distributor… the consumer is, above all, the formation of new audiences.

—Eduardo Portela (Minister of Education and Culture during the dictatorship in Brazil)

They have been given a new place in society, but in spite of this intellectuals are unable to carry out a new function. What they can specifically do however, is refuse to remain there. And, to avoid the traps that have been prepared for them, there is nothing better than to begin by examining the new place they have been given.

—Claude Lefort