UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

BERKELEY • DAVIS • IRVINE • LOS ANGELES • MERCED • RIVERSIDE • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO SANTA BARBARA • SANTA CRUZ

THE PROGRAM IN CRITICAL THEORY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 4327 DWINELLE HALL #2510 BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720-2510 http://criticaltheory.berkeley.edu/

February 10, 2015

To: The Mellon Foundation From: Judith Butler, UC Berkeley

The Program in Critical Theory at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB)

requests an officer’s grant of $150,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for use in

developing, over a period of 18 months (March 2015 – September 2016), plans for an

International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP). Its immediate purpose would be

to understand and reinforce the centrality of critical theory, and the tradition of critique, as

essential to the contemporary global university. In its planning phase, the program would have

three components: (a) an international board and a multilingual website would establish links

among programs and institutes throughout the world that currently have no established means of

interaction or collaboration; (b) agenda-setting planning meetings that would take place in

Buenos Aires and Berkeley and would explore the challenges of globalization to both critical

theory and the task of articulating the values of the university and develop plans for the

consortium’s future activities; and (c) a program development initiative would delineate and

disseminate models for critical theory programs (undergraduate and graduate), centers, and

institutes that could be adapted to different institutional needs both in the U.S. and globally. By

helping us gather the disparate and disconnected initiatives in this field, the proposed grant

would lay the groundwork necessary for us to ask in a deliberate and collaborative fashions, what UC Berkeley 2 are the global forms that critical theory now takes, and what are the global challenges to the university as a site for critical thinking. It would begin to allow us to open up new institutional links and to pursue new forms of interdisciplinary knowledge, guided by a broad query: what is critical theory under the current historical and global conditions in which the value of critical thought is questioned, and what course should it chart in order to meet these challenges?

(1) Task of the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs

The task of an international consortium of this kind would be not only to preserve and promote the tradition of critical theory in a broad sense, but also to investigate innovations and revisions of that tradition in light of the global range of critical theories as well as the contemporary global challenges to the university and, by implication, to critical thought itself.

The core rationale for such a consortium is to document and connect programs and centers dedicated to the field of critical theory that have no previous institutional forum for such an exchange. The European origins of critical theory have been crucial to its articulation and significant influence, but there are now diverse appropriations and revisions of that tradition so that it speaks now to contemporary historical and economic conditions that traverse Europe and other parts of the globe.

A proposal with a narrower focus might be interested only in establishing the importance of the field within the academy, its history and interdisciplinary reach. That would constitute an effort to protect a niche at the expense of showing the broader implications of what such a program implies both for the university and thinking about global challenges to its current structure and aim. Our firm sense is rather that critical thinking is part of what a university ought to cultivate, and that the task of such a consortium would be precisely to make clear what this task involves, what historical and theoretical resources we need, and what difference it makes

UC Berkeley 3 during these financial times and within this global context in which knowledge is often treated as having instrumental value only. Indeed, our wager is that knowledge can and should be consequential without necessarily abiding by those purely instrumental and cost-benefit measures of value that have tended to devalue the contributions of the arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences. This does not mean that we oppose measures of every kind, or that we underestimate the importance of measures and instruments throughout the arts and humanities (music, poetry, art, and architecture, even the library sciences on which all disciplines rely, are surely bound up with valued instruments of measurement of all kinds).

With the resources supported by this grant, we would be able to provide an institutional structure that has been clearly lacking for this field: we seek to gather a number of programs that are scattered inside and outside the United States that have similar aims and confront structural challenges within the university at this time, to provide for resource sharing through a multi- lingual website, program development, collaborative research and, eventually, faculty and student exchange.

We also intend to take on the challenge of figuring out what critical theory has become, and what it should be, given the disparate historical conditions of its inception in Europe in the

1930s and 40s and the contemporary global forms it now takes as well as the challenges it now confronts, as happens when utility, profitability, and impact become reigning measures of value.

Our belief is that by connecting programs through the website, and bringing scholars together with a common formation in critical theory through both conferences and program development initiatives, we will be able to develop a sense of the global form and reach of critical theory for our times as well as the potential of critical theory to address the question of which measures of value rightly illuminate the value of the university in a global context. We hope to show the

UC Berkeley 4 public promise of critical theory, and to make the broader case for its institutional support within higher education.

(2) Background on Critical Theory

Although associated with the Frankfurt School, critical theory is a tradition that draws upon Kant and his critics, and which has developed in new ways through French 20th century intellectual traditions, and now includes a host of academic inquiries that oppose the uncritical assumption of dogmatic values. The emergence of critical race theory and critical legal studies, for instance, demonstrate the liveliness and contemporary relevance of the field. Since “critical” relates both to crisis and to thinking, it gives us a chance to think about the crisis of higher education itself not only as a fiscal crisis, but a crisis of values. The opportunity to collect and connect information about critical theory programs on the proposed website would be the first step in developing a global picture of critical theory for our times. Such an account then allows us to more clearly and comprehensively formulate its contemporary value over and against neo- liberal trends that tend to discount the value of critical theory, but also the value of critical thought as a core component of the global university.

Since the inception of critical theory in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, its proponents have focused on the practice of critique, itself formulated most emphatically in 19th century German thought. The focus on critique has brought together a number of disciplines to reflect on the historical conditions of thought itself, offering ways of thinking about both the formal and social dimensions of scholarly and artistic works, and how schemes of value are generated and ratified, sometimes in unmindful and consequential ways. As new forms of instrumental rationality

(what some call “neoliberalism”) enter into basic questions of what ought to be taught, who is qualified to teach it, and what the ultimate tasks of the university should be, it is more urgent

UC Berkeley 5 than ever to encourage those forms of critical thought that call into question received measures of value that threaten to undermine the function of critical judgment within the academy.

Indeed, rethinking the measures of value within the university would be the paramount task of such a consortium. And though “critique” is very often associated with the negative activity of debunking, in our view it is intimately bound up with the clarification and affirmation of values within the terms of our complex historical time.

(3) What This International Consortium can Offer Now?

The stated aims of this consortium and its proposed meetings are to provide an institutional structure that has been clearly lacking: we seek to gather a number of programs that are scattered inside and outside the United States that have similar aims and confront structural challenges within the university, to provide for resource sharing, program development, collaborative research, and eventual faculty and student exchange. Perhaps most importantly, our aim is to take on the challenge of figuring out what critical theory has become, and what it should be, particularly given the global challenges currently confronting critical thought, especially under conditions in which utility, profitability, and instrumental use have become major criteria for institutional support. Our wager is that bringing scholars together who have a common formation in critical theory, but who have elaborated its new forms in response to new historical conditions can help us take stock, for the first time, of what the global form and reach of critical theory are for our times. We also hope to assist scholars who have become used to working in this field under scattered and isolated conditions to build their own programs, supported by a network of colleagues and resources that can provide contemporary rationale and curricular options for program development.

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(4) Proposed Tasks and Costs for the Planning Grant Period

During the next 18 months, we intend to focus on building an international board for the consortium and multilingual website, holding two agenda-setting planning meetings, and creating a program development initiative.

(a) International Board and Multilingual Website: We will recruit an international governing board to serve as a coordinating council for the consortium to include the following:

Bernard Harcourt, Professor of Law and Director, Center for the Study of Critical Thought,

Columbia University; Axel Honneth, Professor of Philosophy, Frankfurt University and Director,

Institut für Sozialforschung; Jay Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School University;

Anne Stoler, Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies and Founding Director, Institute for Critical Social Inquiry, New School University; Achille Mbembe, Professor of History,

University of Witwatersrand and speaker, Johannesberg Workshop in Theory and Criticism,

South Africa; Rosaura Martinez, Professor of Philosophy and Letters, Mexico’s National

Autonomous University; Hent de Vries, Professor of Humanities and Director, Humanities

Center, Johns Hopkins University and Director, Scholl of Criticism and Theory, Cornell

University; Judith Butler, Professor of Comparative Literature and Founding Director, Critical

Theory Program, UC Berkeley; Penelope Deutscher, Professor of Philosophy and Critical

Theory, Northwestern University.

We will also begin to lay the groundwork for a website where we can list all programs, centers, and institutes explicitly dedicated to critical theory (we have included the beginnings of that list with this proposal as Appendix A) for the purposes of resource sharing, program development, exchanging syllabi, and establishing bibliographies across linguistic regions. We have already been in conversation with David Goldberg, Director of the University of California

Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), who has agreed to help plot the construction of the

UC Berkeley 7 website, coordinate with existing UCHRI holdings, and reanimate an old website at UC Irvine with key documents on critical theory.

In addition, we have been in touch with Srinivas Aravamudan, Director of Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and Professor of English at Duke University, to discuss possible collaborative activities and shared structures, and we have plans to meet with him in person in the near future.

(b) Planning Meetings: We will hold two meetings in the fall of 2015: a planning session for a South American meeting in Argentina and a planning meeting for the international governing board for the consortium at UC Berkeley. We propose holding a planning meeting in fall 2015 at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), long recognized as a center for European social and literary theory. Buenos Aires is also the residence of several scholars who have worked on the Frankfurt School and its contemporary legacies. The general aims of this meeting would be to take stock of the new historical and global conditions that alter what now counts as critical theory and to ask, in particular, what form critical theory should take now so that it might address the broader challenges to critical thinking posed by those who query the usefulness or profitability of such modes of inquiry, especially within the university. Participants would include Beatriz Sarlo (Professor Emerita, UBA), Rosaura Sanchez (Professor of Philosophy and

Letters, Mexico’s National Autonomous University), Vladimir Safatle (Professor of Philosophy,

University of São Paulo, Brazil), Nelly Richard (Professor Emerita, University of Arts and Social

Sciences, Chile), and Paula Biglieri (Professor of Philosophy and Letters, UBA). All of these scholars have worked intensively in the European critical theory tradition, adapting that work in relation to Latin American social and literary theory. The hope would be to find faculty among this group who will help us understand and formulate global dimensions of critical theory that would include Latin American trajectories as well as those who could take an active part in

UC Berkeley 8 activities in the U.S. and in other global sites. We also hope a by-product of this meeting would be the establishment of a network among the group that would provide each of them with resources and support for making the case for the important place of the humanities and critical thought in their own universities.

The UC Berkeley meeting of the new international governing board will take place in the late fall of 2015. Its agenda will include: establishing the governance structure for the consortium; assessing its capacity to realize its stated goals; developing a funding plan for its maintenance; considering collaborations with such institutions as CHCI, UCHRI, UC Irvine, and

Columbia University; and plotting the details of potential future conferences in Latin America,

Europe (Turkey), and South Africa, including funding sources and possible publication venues.

We will be able to present our initial ideas about a first conference in Latin America at this meeting of the board. I intend to travel to the East Coast, Europe, and Brazil in the coming months to recruit people to be part of the consortium and future conferences, and so I will be able to present some concrete ideas to the governing board by the time it meets. The meeting at

UC Berkeley would be accompanied by a public event featuring some of these invited scholars on the theme of the global reach and challenge of critical theory now, and will be an occasion to bring in scholars and students at UC Berkeley who wish to be engaged in this project.

We intend to meet with the President of CHCI prior to this meeting in order to establish how our activities can be partially integrated into existing research collaboration and program development overseen by that organization. We also plan to work closely with the Columbia

University Institute for Critical Thought, which is exploring the idea of a conference in Istanbul in 2017 and has substantial resources for this project.

(c) Program Development: Because the planned consortium anticipates curriculum and similar resource sharing, we intend to use the planning period to explore ways to share models,

UC Berkeley 9 materials, resources, and initiatives; to consider possible structures for student and faculty exchanges; and to consider different forms of start-up stimulus best suited to their specific conditions. We will focus our attention on how this information might be most useful for scholars interested in starting programs because it is an area of study, particularly graduate study, in broad demand across a wide number of departments and programs at many U.S. and overseas universities. Critical theory concentrations often emerge at universities through non- conventional structures which are unlike departments and programs. (Five examples are: institute-only or summer-school only academic programming; graduate programs lacking undergraduate majors or minors; graduate programs based in the provision of graduate certificate qualifications only; the innovative Mellon graduate “cluster” model developed to complement departments and programs at Northwestern University; and forms of undergraduate led critical theory programming outside the classroom.) Their innovative structure may be among the most valuable aspects of critical theory programming, and essential to some of the benefits. However, the non-conventional structure can also pose challenges to faculty hoping to use conventional university resources and structures to initiate such programs. The aim of this portion of the grant is to gather and share information about models which have quickly lead to viable concentrations, clusters, and summer schools, while at the same time taking into consideration different institutional conditions. We hope to develop strong justifications for administrative support for critical theory, explaining its history, its purpose, and its value to an increasingly global university.

I have been in conversation with Professor Penelope Deutscher (Northwestern

University) to begin to formulate and test models for building undergraduate and graduate programs as well as establishing centers and research institutes in critical theory and, eventually, student and faculty exchanges. We propose to provide a subgrant to Northwestern to allow

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Professor Deutscher to consult with faculty hoping to initiate new critical theory programming at their own universities. She has identified three to four U.S. campuses to visit to consult with the following faculty: Srinivas Aravamudan, Director at CHCI and Professor of English, and

Ranjana Khanna, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of English, Literature and

Women’s Studies, at Duke University; Andrew Parker, Director of Comparative Literature at

Rutgers University; Amy Allen, Professor of Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies

(currently at Dartmouth College), and Eduardo Mendieta, Professor of Philosophy (currently at

SUNY Stony Brook), both soon to be professors at Penn State University. In addition to supporting travel to meet with the faculty, the subgrant will provide course relief for Professor

Deutscher to afford her the time to conduct this research. We intend to meet in person twice during the grant period to review the research.

The grant will be administered by the Consortium for Interdisciplinary Research (CIR) in the Division of Arts and Humanities in the College of Letters & Science at UC Berkeley. CIR supports the Program in Critical Theory at the university. Currently CIR has a faculty director

(Jonathan Sheehan), an Associate Director (Susan Miller), a full-time program coordinator, a graduate student researcher, and four work-study students all of whom work on activities for critical theory as well as other interdisciplinary programs. CIR will coordinate the hiring of a part-time (40%) staff person dedicated to coordinating the grant’s activities as well as hiring graduate student researchers to collect information on all programs in several languages and to help maintain a website that would cross-reference programs and produce regional directories.

(5) Summary

This consortium and its projects offer an unprecedented chance to bring together scattered programs and centers that sometimes do not even know about each other’s existence, to

UC Berkeley 11 fortify the rationale for critical theory within the university, to show the importance of critical theoretical reflection on the schemes of value at work in contemporary governance of the university, and to reformulate a fecund and far-reaching theoretical tradition that examines seriously not only the contemporary values that govern public policy, but reflects on the way that thought is grounded in, and shaped by, historical conditions it also helps to shape. Although critical theory has been a field at the center of many conferences and programs, there has not yet emerged an international platform to take account of its global reach and to plot its future possibilities. In this sense, this is an unprecedented opportunity to establish a set of global scholarly connections that will help us answer important questions: Why critical theory now?

What does the global view tell us about the future direction of critical thought in the university?

Now it is particularly opportune and urgent to underscore the value of critical thought, formulated as critical theory, to the future of the university, understood now, and irreversibly, as a global university.