REINVENTING HORIZONS nize the imbalanced nature of their relationship, so grows their ACCELERATING ACADEMIA: demand for equality and their technical capacity to be in charge of their destiny. This realization opens up a space for intervening ON HYPERSTTION in history and for creating new horizons of possibility.22 IN THEORY Armen Avanessian Recall that hype is the ratio of expected earnings to earnings (EE/E), whereas the above impressions are based on the ratio of capitalization to earnings (K/E). The latter number refects both hype and the discount rate (K/E = H/r), so un- less we know what capitalists expect, we remain unable to say anything specifc about hype. But we can speculate[…] —Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan1 The new realist and materialist philosophy and the new po- litical theory which it explicitly inspired, assert that reality can be known and that change is possible. Rather than spell out here what this entails in the various currents of thought that range from New Materialism via Speculative Realism to 22. A diferent version of this essay was originally presented as part of Ashkal Alwan’s Home 1. Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan, Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder, Works 7, a Forum on Cultural Practices in Beirut on November 18, 2015. (Milton Park: Routledge, 2009), 190. 76 77 REINVENTING HORIZONS AVANESSIAN—ACCELERATING ACADEMIA Accelerationism, I would like to look at the discursive framework logical. This common folkloristic mystifcation of the past is best and background information that have led to their engagement countered with an accelerationist perspective on the origins of with the scientifc and (fnancial-) economic phenomena that the modern research university. Only in this way can we develop characterize the early twenty-frst century. Yet these phenomena an alternative scenario which we need, in my view, to focus and are largely ignored in the everyday academic life of the human- conceptualize the considerable defcits of the way the human- ities, marked for decades now by a conservative philologism and ities produce theory today – a preliminary but necessary step in a politically motivated, yet nonetheless vague and inert theoret- bringing about actual change. ical relativism – the legacy of ’68. In its various guises – “ma- How, then, do we think (of the academic present) diferently? terialistic turn,” “speculative turn” – the abandonment of the The starting point would have to be the Humboldt nostalgia, dogmata into which poststructuralism and critical theory have rampant not only in Germany, with its wistful phantasm of an petrifed has made an undeniable impact. Suddenly, there are amalgamation of two contradictory claims: to advance research alternatives to the stubborn technological and scientifc analpha- and to promote teaching, a synthesis alleged to have succeeded betism of the humanities, alternatives that recuse the dominant so much better in the past. This combination, the story goes, cultural pessimism. The astonishing ignorance, enmity even, of makes the free development of academics’ individual talents and the ofcial academic apparatus notwithstanding, these new real- creativity possible in the frst place and thereby guarantees origi- isms and materialisms have refocused public attention on philo- nality and quality in research, theory production, and knowledge sophical theorizing outside the academic bubble. transmission. This high-fown scenario of a gradual decline of The discursive-political framework is linked to the political/ Humboldtian ideals, said to be caused primarily by the processes economic and intellectual crisis of the university. To understand of economization which, after all, do not spare the university, is this crisis, we must frst resolve an apparent paradox concern- misleading in more than one way. First of all, it is doubtful, from ing the self-conception of most humanities scholars. Both the an accelerationist perspective, whether such a utopian outside academic feld of the humanities and the function of scholars of capitalist conditions is even possible. When we look, frst, at in it are often misunderstood. There is, frst of all, the critical the origins of the modern research university in Prussia prior self-conception of the protagonists. They see themselves threat- to 1800 and, second, at the reactions of contemporary univer- ened by an increasing economization. What is at stake, in their sities after 1800, the situation looks very diferent from what it view, is nothing less than the construction of a bulwark against is said to be in the ever-popular humanist tale. The judgments capitalism (today, capitalism of the neoliberal variety). A more of the professoriate back then – be it at the Sorbonne, at the careful historical archaeology of the contemporary university, English colleges, or among the Vienna Jesuits – bear a striking however, reveals this view to be quite illusory, not to say ideo- resemblance with the laments about the state of afairs we hear 78 79 REINVENTING HORIZONS AVANESSIAN—ACCELERATING ACADEMIA today. What Humboldt’s contemporaries merely had an inkling from which “artists in life” are to emerge.4 Aesthetics becomes of has today emerged as the (long repressed) historical truth a philosophical discipline at a time when a new “aesthetic re- of the modern research university: an economic orientation is gime” (Jacques Rancière) produces, as its correlate, an aesthet- inscribed in its very purpose, which is to provide education as ic subjectivity.5 Without being able to elaborate it here, it may professional training. And this shift produces, not as a side ef- thus be necessary to take an even broader approach in deriving fect but as its intended governmental goal, a new type of aca- from the critique artiste the new spirit of capitalism and its “cre- demic and, in my view, aesthetic subjectivity. The switch from ativity dispositif,” the “‘aesthetic capitalism’ of today” (Andreas an oral disputatio (which served to demonstrate mastery of the Reckwitz),6 than Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello have done established canon of knowledge) to a written dissertatio (which fo- in their trailblazing study.7 Even before the Romantic bohème, cuses on innovative research) is one example. Another is the bu- the matrix of today’s neoliberalism began to take shape in the reaucratization of the universities. Often presented as the result universities, which are responsible for a general aestheticization of an increasing capitalization of the institution, it too has an of discourse. Autonomy, fexibility, creativity, and all the other antecedent history in Prussian politics and policing – be critical! is ingredients of innovative research were frst conceived and em- an imperative proclaimed beyond just Königsberg.2 As historian ployed in precisely those laboratories of the humanities that to- William Clark pointedly remarks: “The researcher as modern day, wilfully ignoring their genesis, act the part of distinguished hero of knowledge, the civil servant as work of art was a work pockets of resistance. of German irony.”3 Given such misunderstandings, it comes as no surprise that Among the philosophers, including Hegel and Schleier- the critique that has been practiced with such devotion in facul- macher, who were working on this fundamental and, to this day, ties of humanities for more than two hundred years now often internationally reverberating reorientation of the university, it is probably Fichte, who in coining the term Wissenschaftskünst- ler, or academic-artist, has best characterized this new type of 4. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höheren subjectivity. The Romantic-idealist university, for him, was to Lehranstalt, die in gehöriger Verbindung mit einer Akademie der Wissenschaften stehe be “a school of the art of the scientifc employment of reason” (1807),” in Idee und Wirklichkeit einer Universität: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Friedrich-Wil- and of “the practical employment of the art of science in life,” helms-Universität zu Berlin, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960), 34. 5. Jacques Rancière, Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art, trans. Zakir Paul (London and New York: Verso, 2013). 2. See Armen Avanessian, Überschrift: Ethik des Wissens und Poetik der Existenz (Berlin: Merve, 6. Andreas Reckwitz, Die Erfndung der Kreativität: Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung (Ber- 2015), 24-46. An English translation is forthcoming from Sternberg Press. lin: Suhrkamp, 2012), 11. 3. William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: Univer- 7. Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott (Lon- sity of Chicago Press, 2006), 211. don: Verso, 2005). 80 81 REINVENTING HORIZONS AVANESSIAN—ACCELERATING ACADEMIA takes the form of “transcendental miserabilism.”8 The main dif- From an accelerationist point of view, solving societal prob- ference between the various forms of critique – be it immanent, lems requires contextualizing local problems (e.g. working con- external, implicit, explicit, be it called critique or criticality – and ditions in the university) within the global. The crisis of the uni- the speculative and accelerationist approaches already men- versity within globalized capitalism, which is also an intellectual tioned lies in the latter’s emphatic insistence on the potential of crisis, is usefully defned by a formula articulated by economic the future: they attempt a recursive