IBM: Ideology, Babel And Museum
The Myth and Reality of Universities - Contd...

University of Virginia Art Museum

University as Ideological State Apparatus

Althusser defines state as ‘State power’. He says, “State has no meaning except as a function of state power.” Its basic function is to repress the oppositional forces. And for this repression, the state uses its own organs.

“In order to advance the theory of the state it is indispensable to take into account not only the distinction between state power and state apparatus, but also another reality which is clearly on the side of the (repressive) state apparatus, but must not be confused with it. I shall call this reality by its concept; the ideological state apparatus.” (Infrastructure and Superstructure- What is a Society?’ Louis Althusser)

Althusser gives a list of these ideological state apparatuses (ISAs): Religious ISAs, Educational ISAs, the Family ISAs, the Legal ISAs, Political ISAs, Trade Union ISAs, Communication ISAs, Cultural ISAs.

My focus is on the Educational and Cultural ISAs. Both are manifested in a university system. The universities, in this sense, become the fields of reproduction of a certain ideology of a certain state in which the university is located. In order to keep the territorial integrity and local flavor of the ideology, the universities are forced to play the role of ‘Here’ (local) more than ‘There’ (universal). This in turn makes the members of the universities as mere but powerful tools of ideological reproduction.

Guarding the territorial integrity may not necessarily be an exclusive project. While expecting and accepting influences and funding from outside of its own territory and also accepting research goals and directions from corporate funding agencies (which function in tandem with the state), the universities play a very ambiguous role of mediation, integration, conservation and resistance.

I would like to quote Ulf Wuggenig, a German sociologist, who in his essay titled ‘America in Germany’ observes that capital (investment) is important in the reproduction of certain ideologies. The extraneous economic interests influence and shatter the exclusivity of the concept of universities as the ‘disinterested seats of excellence.’

“Universities (for example) can be distinguished from one another by the economic capital made available to them by the state, by research promotion institutions or by the economic field.” (America in Germany, from Branding the Campus, P.100).

The Hegelian disinterested pursuit of the ideal becomes almost impossible in this scenario. The incursions made by the economic and other forces (all those forces originate from and drive through the various ISAs) on the Utopian idea of universities do naturally come to have effects on the campus. Reproduction becomes inevitable. If we consider University as a social formation, then this Althussarian formulation cannot go implausible. He says:

“Every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and in order to be able to produce. It must therefore reproduce a) productive forces, b) the existing relations of production.” (from Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Althusser, 1971)

However, Althusser’s observations cannot be taken for truisms. They do not go without dispute. Universities (therefore campus too) have always been the places of resistance against the state ideology. Universities have always been the places of rebellion and unrest. Most of the bourgeoisie revolutions find their origin in universities. Even today it is a fact. Then, universities are the fields of oppositional forces testing their might for supremacy. But it should be qualified that these oppositional forces might reproduce the existing conditions after each period of rebellion.

During the fast Americanisation of universities how far these oppositional forces hold a long term resistance against the steamrolling effects of corporate economic investment in the field of higher studies is a pertinent issue. Bill Reading, the noted American sociologist looks at Americanisation as an economic replacement of nationalist identities.

“Americanisation today means less a process of national imperialism than the generalized imposition of the rule of the cash-nexus in place of the notion of national identity as determinant of all aspects of investment in social life.” (Bill Reading, quoted by Ulf Wuggenig)

In the current world scenario, replacement of national identity with economic interests becomes seriously problematic. The national interests can no longer be wished away by the pleasure-desire dream offered by the economic interests. The concepts of territory and local are going to be once again severely against ‘universal/global’ economic interests, which could be translated into ‘American interests’. These are being reflected and will be reflected with added vigour in the universities and campuses all over the world.

However, it is not a unilateral cause and effect situation. Universities have to fight in three fronts at the same time. One, against the local/territorial interests of the state ideology. Two, against the auto-reproduction of the same ideology with in the university structure. Three, against the universal/global economic interests. This fight becomes more poignant at the fronts where the question of the national identity is debated, validated, discarded and protected according to the strength of the opposition, that is the global economic interests.

Michel Foucault locates three kinds of struggle, which could be applicable to the members of the universities, “either against the forms of domination (ethnic, social and religious); against forms of exploitation which separate individuals from what they produce; or against that which ties the individual to himself and submits him to others in this way (struggles against subjection, against forms of subjectivity and submission) – (quoted from Subjectivity and Social Relations ed. Veronica Beechey and James Donald. Open University Press 1985).

Contd.. »

« Prev. [1] [2] [3] [4] Next »