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