Knowledge Contract

B. Downing David

Description

The Knowledge Contract intervenes in the ongoing debates about the changing conditions of higher education in America, with a special focus on English studies and the humanities. This highly original study integrates three crucial concerns: the economic restructuring of higher education, the transformation of disciplinary models of teaching and research, and the rise of the academic labor movement.

 

Whereas most contemporary critiques of higher education have focused on the impact of global economic forces, The Knowledge Contract adds a new dimension to the discussion by addressing the tensions between disciplinary and nondisciplinary forms of academic work. David B. Downing draws on several traditions of scholarship: histories of the university, sociological studies of education, critiques of disciplinary and interdisciplinary forms of work, histories of academic capitalism and the labor movement, and field-specific analyses of the history of English studies. Building on his analysis, Downing develops alternative possibilities to the dominance of disciplinary forms of labor and offers scenarios for creating more equitable working and learning conditions for faculty and students.

Sujets

• Education

Informations

• Publié par: Nebraska Paperback
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803250246
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

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T H E K N O W L E D G E C O N T R A C T

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THE KNOWLEDGE CONTRACT PoliticsandParadigmsin the Academic Workplace

David B. Downing

university of nebraska press lincoln and london

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Acknowledgments for previously published material appear on p. 295. © 2005 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Downing, David B., 1947– The knowledge contract : politics and paradigms in the academic workplace / David B. Downing. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-8032-1730-0 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8032-1730-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Universities and colleges—Curricula. 2. Interdisciplinary approach to knowledge. I. Title. lb2361.d378.1'2—dc22 200500660569 2005

Set in Quadraat by Kim Essman. Designed by Ray W. Boeche. Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc.

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For Joan, Peter, Jordan

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Acknowledgments

CONTENTS

Writing the Knowledge Contract: An Introduction

1. Working outside (and beside) the Knowledge Contract 2. Professions, Disciplines, and Paradigms: Reconstructing Academic Labor within the Nonmodern University 3. Paradigms Performed and the Kuhnification of the Humanities 4. Radical Diversities and the Cosmopolitan Self: The Disciplinary Intellectual Confronts the Multivalent University

5. Pragmatic Interventions: The Lure of Method and the Rise of Disciplinary Labor 6. The “Mop-up” Work of Theory Anthologies: Theorizing the Discipline and the Disciplining of Theory 7. Beside Disciplinary English: Working for Professional Solidarity by Reforming Academic Labor

Imagined Futures:A Miniepilogue

Notes Works Cited Index

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267 295 313

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In any project that grows over many years, personal and professional in- debtedness becomes intangibly mixed. I want to thank my colleagues and students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania for teaching me a great deal about working conditions in higher education. Claude Mark Hurlbert read and commented on every page of the manuscript, and this book first took shape as we shared writing sessions over coffee. David Hanauer also read the entire manuscript and offered valuable suggestions. I appreciate the friendship of Maurice Kilwein-Guevara, and his response to chapter 6 was for me an important affirmation of why both poetry and theory cut new edges on the language we encounter and create in the world. James Sosnoski has been a friend, colleague, and collaborator on many projects over the past twenty-five years; he helped me clarify key sections of the manuscript, and I have valued his wisdom on many of the issues I take up in this book. Patricia Harkin has also been a longtime friend whose care in reading portions of the manuscript led to important revisions. I thank Arthur Efron for unwavering personal and professional support for thirty years; it was he who first showed me what cultural criticism, anarchism, and radical pragmatism could be. For reading and commenting on various stages of what became various parts of the manuscript I thank Brian Cara- her, Teresa Derrickson, Jeffrey DiLeo, Gerald Graff, Steven Mailloux, Paula Mathieu, Don McAndrew, Derek Owens, and Mike Sell. Marc Bousquet’s suggestions after reading the manuscript were invaluable, and it is to him I owe the suggestion for the title. Jeffrey Williams’s detailed comments on the manuscript were immensely helpful, and he led me to several important sources. I want to thank Rena Mei-Tal for her unfailing grace and unerring judgment, especially concerning my questions about the title for this book. Ladette Randolph has been an exemplary editor and supporter of the project at every stage of its production with the University of Nebraska Press, and for that I am very grateful. I am especially appreciative of the innumerable improvements Mary M. Hill made in copyediting the final manuscript. The faults, of course, are my own. I could not possibly list the innumerable ways my wife, Joan, my son, Peter, and my daughter, Jordan, have made this entire project both possible and rewarding. My indebtedness simply goes beyond words, which is why this book is dedicated to them. In the spring of 2003 Indiana University of Pennsylvania granted me a sabbatical that was crucial for the completion of this book. An earlier version of chapter 5, “The Political Consequences of Pragma- tism; or, Cultural Pragmatics for a Cybernetic Revolution,” was published in

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