JOÃO MENELAU PARASKEVA

2. ACADEMIC CAPITALISM IN PORTUGAL

Westernizing the West

In memory of my mother

INTRODUCTION The main goal of this chapter is to analyze the interplay between the Bologna Declaration (1999) and what Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) called “academic capitalism” as it has been developed in Portugal. This project raises critical fundamental issues over the lethal impact of neoliberal social policies—what I coined as neoradical centrism—forcing a new dangerous role for higher education within the European Union. Understanding and analyzing neoliberal globalization (Sousa Santos, 2005a; 2008) involves an accurate set of critical hermeneutical processes that digs extensively into the very marrow of the cultural, economic, and political origins of these policies. Neoliberal globalization—in its multiple forms—did (and it is) not happen(ing) in a social vacuum. Actually, “it is precisely in its oppression of non- market forces that we see how neoliberalism operates not only as an economic system, but as a political and cultural system as well” (McChesney, 1999, p. 7; Olssen, 2004), which creates endless intricate tensions between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization (Appadurai, 1996). Thus, accurately examining the forms of neoliberal globalization (Sousa Santos, 2005a) implies a cautious consideration of the emergence of Reaganism—Bushism and Thatcherism—Majorism in the United States and England. They were quite responsible for the origins of a cultural revolution that, among other issues, initiated a feverish and frenetic attack not only on the state (apparatuses) but also precisely on the very idea of the welfare state highlighting the market not only as the solution for the crises but also actually the only one. The 1980s “will be known as the Reagan decade” (House, 1998, p. 18), or as a period that witnessed a conservative “right turn” that renounced the commonsense meanings of particular central social concepts that underpin a just society” (Hall, 1988). Such a “right(ist) turn” needs to be understood as a nonmonolithic bloc, which has been able to edify an intricate and powerful coalition incorporating seemingly antagonistic groups—neoliberals, neoconservatives, authoritarian populists,

J.M. Paraskeva (ed.), Unaccomplished Utopia: Neoconservative Dismantling of Public Higher Education in the European Union, 15–40. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. PARASKEVA and a fraction of a new middle class (Apple, 2000). As I have been able to document elsewhere1 (where I have conceptualized and justified Apple’s organic intellectuality as anchored in three trilogies), Apple’s outline might not be a proper fit to explain particular frightening realities in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Angola, or Mozambique. However, it helps us understand, as Sousa Santos (2005b, p. vii) claims, “the neoliberalism contrary to what is commonly maintained, is not a new form of liberalism, but rather a new form of conservatism,” in which discreetly specific yet powerful religious groups are steadily assuming prominent power positions. Actually the role played by O(cto)pus Dei nowadays, a Vatican within the Vatican (Hutchison, 2006) and a kind of sophisticated expression of light Christi-fascism (Kincheloe and Steinberg, 2007), threatens the way we examine the hegemonic forces behind neoliberal globalization that have been developing and upgrading their strategies. In analyzing the latest metamorphosis of New Rightist policies, Mouffe (2000, p. 108) stresses that both Blair and Clinton were able to construct a “radical centre.” Unlike traditional political groupings, the “radical centre” is a new coalition that “transcends the traditional left/right division by articulating themes and values from both sides in a new synthesis” (Mouffe, 2000, p. 108). However, as I have examined elsewhere (Paraskeva, 2007), Fairclough (2000, pp. 44–45), unlike Mouffe (2000), stresses that the “radical center “strategy does not consist only in “bringing together elements from these [left and right] political discourses” but also in its ability to “reconcile themes which have been seen as irreconcilable beyond such contrary themes, transcending them.” Fairclough (2000) also argues that this strategy is not based on a dialogic stance. That is to say, the “radical center” achieved consent within the governed sphere “not through political [democratic] dialogue, but through managerial methods of promotion and forms of consultation with the public; [that is to say] the government tends to act like a corporation treating the public as its consumers rather than citizens” (Fairclough, 2000, p. 129). While such radical centrism targets the state, Hill (2003) claims neoliberal forces actually need a strong state to promote their interests, especially in areas such as education and training—fields that are deeply related to the formation of an ideologically submissive labor force. What has evolved then is a State that has fostered the development of “the magnet economy” (Brown and Lauder, 2006) so that “whatever the market cannot provide for itself, the state must provide for it” (Gabbard, 2003, p. 65). It is actually the state that has been paving the way for the market (Sommers, 2000; Paraskeva, 2003, 2004, 2009; Gabbard, 2003; Macrine, 2003). Recent bailouts to banks, insurance companies, and car industry bores testimony to our claim. As Appadurai (1996) and Olssen (2004) claim, although from different angles, state sovereignty has never been in jeopardy within the contemporary global cultural flows. In essence, neoliberal imprimatur is a result of nonstop struggles between the state and market forces. Such intricate tensions are the needed fuel for the neoliberal intellectual engines (Paraskeva, 2001; 2006a; 2009). In fact, such radical centrism, while searching for the dissolution of old contradictions between “right” and “left” (Fergusson, 2001), was able to lay the solid foundation for the

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