Hardt at Yale: ‘militant truth-telling’

Reporter Nick Levine of Yale Daily News weighs-in on political theorist Michael Hardt’s recent visit to Yale to talk about Foucault and the relevance of academic critique here:

Hardt at Yale, 2010

Hardt said critique has been a prominent project for students of philosophy, literature and sociology since the 1960s. But he added that many scholars now think critique — which was intended to “reveal hierarchies of power in what was presumed to be neutral and natural” to society — has failed to improve society; however, during his talk, Hardt said he could not provide examples of how Foucault’s theory of “militant” social change would work in the real world.

Hardt began his talk by stating his ambivalence toward the mandate for academics to claim their work as political, which started in the 1980s. He used Foucault’s last lectures at the Collège de France before his death in 1984 as an example of politicized theory. Hardt said Foucault’s final works outline “a form of philosophical and political militancy beyond critique” that could be used to reach political autonomy. Foucault, in turn, used the work of German philosopher Immanuel Kant as a jumping-off point and used ancient Greek history to narrate the interplay between truth-telling and democracy.

Hardt concluded with Foucault’s depiction of the Greek Cynic philosophers, whose stubborn, uncompromising way of life offended their peers but pleased Hardt’s crowd.

The Cynics rejected wealth and social codes, Hardt said before drawing laughter from the audience with stories of the Cynics’ racy public antics, which included public defecation. The group tried to spread their own version of truth “to humanity, in order to change humanity,” Hardt said, and serve as a model for a new approach to political activism. “Militant truth-telling,” Hardt said, could overthrow the existing order where academic critique just sought to minimize harm from power structures.

Check out the entire piece here. (h/t to Stuart Elden)

What I found particularly alarming was that “[t]hree of four graduate students declined to comment about the talk. Two said they could not comment because they did not want to harm their job prospects.” Is this what ‘higher’ education has come to? These students (or maybe their advisors?) should be embarrassed. If academia becomes ONLY about getting a nifty job in a discourse factory then maybe such institutions are indeed no longer legitimate?