How do we define ‘imagination’? Or, more importantly, should we even try to define imagination? A definition seems to defeat the purpose; it attempts to tie down something (A ‘quality’? An ‘attribute’?) which seems to be part of the definition of what it is to be a human person. Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, claimed that what distinguishes human persons from other animals is the ability to tell stories that feature themselves as characters – in other words, the ability to use our imagination. The standard ‘reading’ of imagination connects it to creativity, in the sense that we use our imaginations to create fictional narratives – in music, film, literature – that enable us to place others (characters) and ourselves in situations which do not – in some cases cannot – exist.

When we look at the way imagination is regarded, and treated, in our educational system, it quickly becomes clear that imagination is seen as a threat to what we can call the established order. In schools, art, music, ‘creative’ writing are embraced in primary, seen as allowing children to develop their ‘personalities’. However, this changes abruptly when the transition to secondary is made. The “imaginative subjects”, so desirable in primary school, are ‘ghettoised’, seen as ‘soft’; in traditional patriarchal terms, they’re seen as subjects that ‘girls’ take. Boys, on the other hand, are encouraged to focus on the sciences, maths and computing. Imagination becomes a threat to the “serious business” of employment and profit. Imagination is gradually categorised as something ‘childish’, a self-indulgence.

With the advent of the TUs and their focus on employment and graduates who are “ready for work”, plus the consequent pressure on the more traditional universities to follow suit, areas which emphasise the development of imagination are consigned to the periphery and, eventually, the scrapyard. In an environment led by profit and “what business wants”, imagination has no part to play – unless we allow its defintion to become “new and more sophisticated ways of exploiting others”. Which is, essentially, the only use that business has for imagination.

So, we might ask, what is business trying to exclude in relegating imagination to the sidelines? Thought. Imagination necessarily involves thought as a primary factor. Imagination involves a consideration of what it means to be a human person, and the positions which human persons find themselves in. What we might call “imaginative thought” focuses on what constitutes ‘good’ for both self and others. It examines exsisting ways of being and evaluates these, identifying injustices and, on occasion, suggesting solutions – how can situation X be made better (= fairer, more just). Imaginative thought refuses to accept that this is “just the way things are” or that ‘tradition’ should followed because it’s tradition.

Artefacts become meditations on Being. Imaginative thought consists of both conscious and unconscious ‘influences’. The work of the academic or the critic is to ‘discover’ these influences, to identify where the artefact has come from, what kinds of analyses it offers, and where it suggests that we might be ‘going’. The imaginative thought of the academic combines with that of the makar, as the imaginative thought of the philosopher interacts with the apparent ‘realities’ of being-in-the-world, to produce something greater than the sum of its parts.

It is this ‘something’ that creates apprehension, fear, in those who see their ‘function’ as “servicing the system”, hence, their attempts to minimise the opportunities students have to study A&H. They attempt to achieve this by introducing “business metrics”, and that simplistic notion of profit, into education. By continuing the marginalisation of A&H that begins in secondary school, they hope to “preserve the system”.

What terrifies the servants of the system is the unpredictability and critical acumen of imaginative thought. The values on which imaginative thought operates are those of the human person, what it means to live in the world, not those of the balance sheet.

So, in the TUs, the Arts & Humanities have been manoeuvred into a position whereby their ‘value’ is calculated in terms of their contribution to the profit/loss model of business. They are not seen as valuable in themselves, but only in terms of “added value”, that is as secondary to the primary focus of business. Arts & Humanities (from now on, “A&H”) do not operate on their own terms of references: challenge; critique; justice & fairness. Instead they play “supporting roles” in the quest for profit…yet, within these supporting roles, A&H retain the ability to disrupt the metanarrative, to expose its uncaring worthlessness. A&H always retain the power to transcend their assigned roles, to expose ruling class ideology.

In the medium of mainstream film, for example, we can see the assumptions of capitalist society laid out in ways that appear to be unthreatening but, should we choose to do so, the edifice can be unravelled. The assumptions such as capitalism = good; heterosexuality – most desirable relationship; rich/poor = necessary for the functioning of society, are represented onscreen as being, in some sense or other, ‘natural’. Yet, as the narrative develops based on these assumptions, the spectator (perhaps “the aware” or “the political” spectator) can begin to decipher the connections between such assumptions and narrative drama. Instability, one can argue, is necessarily a component of any artefact: instability in terms of the posited assumptions, instability in terms of what it appears to be endorsing.

Year and years ago – I think I was 16 – I remember, after seeing a film with some friends, we were discussing it and someone said to me “Perhaps it was just a film. No deeper meaning, just a film.” I’ve always remembered that, mainly because I’d argue that nothing is what it appears to be: simplest, seemingly insignificant actions we perform every day have a deeper, connected meaning…are strands in a web of beliefs and values, all of which are connected, if only we take the time to analyse these. My buying a cup of coffee yesterday has a connection to my watching Last Year in Marienbad or the fifty sixth time six months ago, as it has a connection to my watching Prospero’s Books twenty years ago. Nor is my ‘self’ the connection; ideas and imagination form connections over time in a kind of continual “compare and contrast” flow.

This kind of connectedness can be, when it takes place between works of art, a deliberate creation of the makar, but these intentional links are of much less importance than those which take place, unbidden, in the imagination of the spectator. When this occurs, we often feel that taken as a whole (I don’t want to suggest that connections only take place between two works), these connections form a greater value/form greater values than previously existed, in that by calling attention to aspects of society, the behaviour of self and/or others, to political situations, our ‘reading’ of one or more of these is altered, changed in ways that were previously unthought of. In this way, A&H refine our values and, at one and the same time, present us with a choice: we can, as A&H alters our values become possessed by the volition to act OR we can recognise what one might call the apparent truth of Art, yet still choose to suppress or consciously ignore this volition.

In the wake of our recognition of, say, an injustice, this recognition then ‘ripples’ through the other values of which we are conscious. It has an affect/effect in the way we are in the world, on the ways in which our imagination forms links to other instances of injustice. Ultimately, it affects the concept of injustice that motivates us. It is, however, still our choice whether we act or ignore this revised awareness.

Although it is a matter of choice, on occasion it can appear to us that our ‘new’ or ‘revised’ values compel us to act or to speak out. This is what scares business, and makes the very existence of A&H a threat to its dominance, hence, the marginalisation and, if the TUS succeed, the expulsion from the academy. Should this happen, the Arts will become the preserve of the affluent classes, the ‘realm’ of Art tied to money (and time – it takes time to create, and to foster/have fostered one’s creativity) and that notion that the artist does not inhabit the same world as you and I.

What we can also see here is the TUs position and function in the class structure. Those from a working class background are more likely to go to TUs, therefore, the removal of A&H will reinforce the idea that Art ‘belongs’ to the ruling class, with little connection to the majority of the population.

However, we are not there yet, in that the servants of the ruling class have not managed to destroy the idea of Art as a legitimate expression of frustration, protest and anger. Those servants, whether through false class consciousness, or a deliberate decision to surrender and accept monetary rewards, continue to ply their betrayal under the guise of ‘management’ – or, more accurately, managerialism; these people are rule followers, incapable of original thought. they simply reproduce what has gone before.

Still, these folks have always existed, and have always faded into the background without a trace.

So. What Art does is draw connections between seemingly-disparate ideas; it enlightens people, changes their lives and can alter people for the better. It strengthens outrage at injustice, at inequality and in so doing can lead to societal change or reform (for example, many of Dickens’ works have specific political targets in mind); it leads us to re-evaluate our position in the world, our relation to others, and what counts as a concept of the world itself.

Can Art make you a “better person”? Yes, it can. Artists, through their Art, enable us to ‘see’ what had not been obvious before we engaged with the work. I’ve deliberately phrased the response to this (rhetorical) question like this in order to discuss a statement by Adorno, who wrote, “After Auschwitz, no more poetry”. This is striking and, coming from a philosopher of his standing, has been taken very seriously…but it’s nonsense. Adorno’s argument seems to be that, because those running the death camps listened to Schubert and read Goethe then went out to commit atrocities, Art is useless. It has no power, no effect or affect. However, this discounts the sociopolitical construction of the time; it seems to suggest that Art can be ‘good’ regardless of other factors that contribute to the sociopolitical ‘climate’ of the time. This postulates that Art can be read outwith its, and subsequent, time(s) of engagement. A kind of general version of New Criticism (the idea that a poem refers to nothing outside itself). So what we seem to have here is the notion that Art has no influence whatsoever, it appears for a brief moment, is pretty, then vanishes. Art which lasts over time is simply ‘there’, has been ‘picked’ by a certain group, on purely aesthetic grounds.

There are two ideas to unravel here: firstly, that notion of the disconnection between Art and Society then, secondly, that we interpret Art as category in a conceptual framework that has been designed by others.

To deal with the first: How can Art (of any kind) be in some kind of seperate realm, one that exists independently of society? The artist, the makar, is involved in a dynamic, sociopolitical relation with their society, which is the aim of criticism – to decipher dynamic regardless of whether the artist knows it i contained within their work. From this perspective, the life of the artist is an irrelevance, simply a name which we use as the common denominator to discuss the work. What we are not doing is trying to reconstruct the life of the artist using the work.

For Art to exist in this “seperate realm”, the artist would have to sever themselves from society. Quite literally live as a hermit. Another factor which makes this logically impossible is that the artist uses a language: of film/painting/the novel, which pre-exsists them. They might well introduce innovations to this language, but their first ‘steps’ are taken using it (Joyce, Picasso, Manley Hopkins, Godard). As a footnote, one might also mention here the impossibility of a private language (even Burgess relied on the conventions of the novel, as Godard relied on the conventions of film); language necessarily facilitates communication – even a departure from this language relies on the original to give it meaning. The idea of a private language is meaningless. (In much the same way as the old question, “Do you think in pictures or in words?”, when to identify something as a ‘picture’ or in a picture requires a knowledge of language inorder for its to be a something. Can we define a picture without language? I would argue not.)

The second question is the more interesting one (even though I’ve seperated them, they are intertwined): Art as a category in a conceptual framework designed by others. There are two parts to this: (a) Who decides what ‘counts’ as Art? This is a question that has, in one sense, already been answered, by Duchamp, Joyce, Pollock and Cage to name but a few. It is still a question that fascinates philsophers, take George Dickie or Noel Carroll for example – the former argues that setting is crucial (apocryphal stories abound of gallery cleaners disposing of items they took for rubbish), the latter tries to identify ‘qualities’ that a work must possess (always a dangerous game).

The second part of this question, (b), concerns who decides what Art should do, its place in society, the importance it has. In these senses, it is far more connected to the current attitude dominating TUs. What I mean by this is that we are seeing a repeat performance of the marginalisation of Art/artists that occurred in the nineteenth century. By prioritising business, Art is once again pushed to the periphary in an attempt to form the dispositions of generations, suggesting to them that the critiques of society that Art offers are irrelvant, created by those who don’t inhabt “the real world” (defined as the world of economic profit and loss). Art is mere entertainment, a distraction from ‘reality’, the only realm in which values such as justice, fairness and equality can have purchase. Film? Simply an exercise in special effects and stunts. Music? Just background noise unless a controversy can be used to sell more albums or newspapers. Games? The latest convenient scapegoat for violence (look at the progression here, starting with Plato in The Republic. First of all, it’s theatre, then poetry, then theatre again, then film, then TV…now games). Look at Macron: rather than contemplate the idea that the police are violent racists, he has claimed the ‘rioters’ play too many violent games. Perhaps we might better argue that games give us the distillation of life in a capitalist society? His claim is a good example of the “moral panic” that grips people when faced with a new form of Art. However, it also acts to illustrate how afraid the ruling class is of the power of Art, and illustrates why they feel the need to both control and marginalise it.

There’s an idea kicking about at the moment that some call “culture wars”. This seems to be connected to what right-wing ‘commentators’ describe as ‘woke’, although it’s rather difficult to nail down a definition. It appears to be the idea that being thoughtful in how you treat others, being conscious of racism, sexism homophobia, transphobia and misogyny, and how derogatory terms have been “built into” language, so much so that people use these terms without thinking. This would appear to be what upsets right-wing commentators the most: that we might think about our attitudes and revise them. In fact, one might say that their main objection is to thought itself.

Likewise, when tabloids scream about “culture wars” and accuse folks of being ‘unpatriotic’, what they are really taking issue with is people thinking about history, recognising, for example, that the British Empire was built on murder, massacre and corruption, and is, therefore, not something to celebrate. Neither should our streets be named after slave traders, or should statues of slave traders remain on public display.

This is anathema to the right. Their fervent wish is that we plod along, doing X in way Z because “we’ve always done it like that. It’s tradition.” From these ‘traditions’ they construct an entirely nostalgic picture of a “Golden Age” which, as with all nostalgic constructs harks back to something that never existed, is entirely illusory. All we need do here is recall Thatcher’s bemoaning of the loss of “Victorian values” – no trade unions, ricketts, children being sent up chimnies, slum housing, folks dying because they couldn’t afford medical care. These facts were conveniently passed over in her account.

What is also worth remarking on is the lack (complete absence) of right-wing festivals, whether it’s literature, film, painting etc. There appears to be little aptitude for, or engagment with, Art. This is hardly surprising; a film, say, or a novel that simply records what already exists, trying in some way to ‘celebrate’ this, would generate little or no interest. Even when the odd attempt is made, such artefacts are immediately subject to critique by “leftie bleeding hearts” or, as the Tories are now fond of calling them, the ‘wokeiratti’ .

We also see continuing criticism, particularly in the United States (although I have come across this attitude myself, referring specifically to me), of the ways in which “leftie academics” try to poison the minds of undergraduates with their Marxist/Socialist doctrines, their belief in social communities and (so it seems to some in the USA) their atheism. Parents complain that their offspring go off to college and return ‘changed’ (or ‘possessed’ as one partiularly amusing comment from a parent expressed it).

The question, then, is why should this be the case? Well, in the case of right-wing artefacts, there are always elements which diminish our ability to class X as a “work of art” without our having reservations. Take Reinfensthal’s Triumph of the Will for example. Without doubt, there are some fine shots, and it’s fascinating as a film…BUT it celebrates Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. We can say much the same of Wagner: The Ring Cycle is an astounding, ground-breaking work yet, no matter how much we allow ourselves to be swept up in these operas, the fact remains that they contain antisemitic themes. Works such as these attempt to persuade us into adopting their positions, asserting the superiority of one group over another.

In tje right’s attitude to academics, we can perhaps identify the defining factor. Academics, who spend their lives thinking (it’s what they do for a living) move towards the left. When topics such as justice, equality, fairness and community, together with many others, form part of your working day then a shift to the left is more than likely because these concepts are vital to a just and democratic society. Such a society prioritises the human person, regardless of nationality, class and all the other ephemera that the right use to apparently ‘justify’ their outlandish claims that competition is ‘natural’, that some people are simply ‘lazy’ and ‘feckless’, that nepotism and “old boy’ networks do not exist.

What Art (and the Humanities) do is to expose the ideological basis of these claims: the attempt that the right make to ‘argue’ that their narrow self-interests are universal, that they have everyone’s “best interests” at heart. Their concept of freedom is based solely on private property and exploitation – this, as Badiou argues, seems to be the guarantor of all other freedoms.

In short, the right do not like thought because thought, and the competing rationalties we find within it, contradicts their simplistic view of the world. It exposes the inherent violence of capitalism, its cruelty and its corruption.

This is why the universities, especially the TUs, must be brought into line, must be run as businesses. Only by doing this can the capitalist class (and those who serve it) assert that there is no alternative. The battle appeared to be over once the Berlin Wall fell, but universities as centres for the discussion of ideas remained.The expected capitulation did not happen, despite the best efforts of postmodernism…and the resistance was, and is, led by Art.

Art, as I’ve said before, is produced by conflict, by dissatisfaction with the way things are. It presens us with alternatives, with different perspectives; it is, from one point of view, philosophy in action – praxsis.

What we are experiencing with the advent of TUs in Ireland is the return of Mr. Gragrind from Dickens’ Hard Times.

As “business practices” have infiltrated every aspect of life, accelerated by the advent of cheap digital technology, the definition of ‘value’ has become more corrupted, more univocal. Whereas we once realised that there are a multiplicity of objects/relations/dispositions that are valuable, as business-speak has colonised our language (therefore, our thought) one Archemedian point has become dominant: profit (another term that used to be defined in terms of its context). Monetary profit has come to be regarded as the only signifier of value, with a knock-on effect when one talks of ‘success’. In another sense, profit has also becomes inextricably bound up with the “the individual”, in that the concept is now linked to there being an advantage for the individual in any, and all, social relationships – personal or professional.

There is also a certain irony in writing this on the day when the newspapers are carrying the story of Tony Blair (the man who began the Labour Party’s move away from socialism, and the destrcution of the left within the party) announcing that the NHS needs to make “greater use” of private healthcare. This is the man who, during his premiership, appointed an ex-CEO of Tesco as head of the NHS because, apparently obviously, selling groceries is a good preparation for running an organisation dedicated to providing free healthcare. I could go on and on (and on) about Blair, but I don’t need to: this single act makes my point. Put another way, Blair introduced “business practices” into healthcare…and look at the NHS now…

Likewise education. What we’ve seen over the past few decades is a shift from education (non-profit, for the benefit of society) to training and skills (for profit, for the benefit of business, therefore, the individual). Education was run by those to whom administrative bureaucracy and personal gain were alien, hinderances to be minimised and endured. Now, some years later, “the business of academia” is run by failed academics (because who would rather administrate when they can teach?) who saw career and revenge opportunities in the extension of bureaucracy to Kafkaesque levels. Layer upon layer of administrative control has been introduced in the name of ‘transparency’, yet this ‘transparency’ does precisely the opposite, obscuring and denigrating the process of education, turning it into a system operating on the traditional business binary opposition of profit and loss. The system has become the ultimate ‘goal’ of the system, its maintenance the primary object, which is to say that the value of the system is dictated by the system itself. The idea that the system is there to serve values other than those dictated by the system itself is seen as puerile thinking. And what are those ‘values’? That education be run (i) as a business, that is, for-profit, (ii) that those enmeshed in the system work for the system and, (iii), the only question to answer is “What does business want?” – the apparent guarantor of (i) and (ii). There is one other significance factor at work here: this system has been devised, and is run, by failed academics playing at being “business people”; their focus is on (a) what others want (‘others’ here referring to politicians and “business people”) and, (b), their own self-interest (defined as being pliable and obedient to the commands of (a)). In much the same way as other fields, mainstream media journalism for example, these folks only occupy their ‘position’ because they will “play the game” according to rules established by others. They have surrendered their capacity for independent thought, contented themselves with the nostrum that “this is just the way things are”…and large salaries. In short, they have abandoned (‘betrayed’?) the values of education: enquiry; challenge to what exists; concepts of “the good”; democracy.

What, then, are we left with? A system which refuses to recognise alternatives to neoliberalism and anarcho-capitalism, a system based on “the individual” (which it defines), a system that is continually moving further to the right. The idea that we are a community of human persons continues to be undermined by nationalism – what else are anti-immigration policies based on?The immigrant is, apparently, ‘foreign’, does not share ‘our’ values…values manufactured to be exclusive, to be ‘ours’: as in “our jobs”, “our housing”, “our services”.

In junking the Arts, universities initiate, perpetuate and hone the myths of separation, competition (as ‘natural’), of individualism and, most importantly, the singularity perspective (rather a contradiction, given that it attempts to claim there os only one). Students are not invited to question, leaners are instructed, they learn: Whereas going to university was, in the past, about a range of experiences – fields of study, social experiences (hence, empathy), developing political views (based on questions of what ‘good’ is for both self and others) – it has now become about training for a job and controling factors that would prevent this. As a consequence, strong student unions are out, as are demonstrations. Studying for a degree in an area that one is interested in is out (seen as being childish), replaced by studying for the one that offers the highest ‘return’ (for four years of ‘investment’). Add to this folks having to live at home (with oarents) because of costs; having to take a variety of part-time jobs to suppot themselves (grants are inadequate), and we can see that university is no longer about experimentation and experience, it’s about preparation. Preparation to live in a controlled, consumer society. Values such as empathy, responsibility and obligation have been lost, replaced by separation, self-interest and the contract which, much like a computer operating system, constantly runs “in the background”.

Quite obviously, the Arts in this society (I don’t subscribe to the idea that, somehow, universities are not part of “the real world”) are, to say the least, undesirable. When we engage with an artefact we are emotion-testing, developing empathy with others, asking ourselves “What would it be like to be in situation X?” or “How would I react to/cope with X?”. The artefact causes us to refine who we are, to question our ‘selves’. It also asks “the Big Questions”: “What is the purpose of living?” and/or “What is my position in society?” and/or “What does being ‘alive’ mean?”. In the Arts, there are no definites but always challenges and questions.

Quite obviously, in this kind of society (I don’t subscribe to those bogus notions of universities not being part of the “real world), the Arts are, to say the least, undesirable. When we engage with an artefact it offers us another perspective, a set of values that can be vastly different to our own – it often forces us to formulate and refine what we think about X, to reflect on “What would X be like?” or “How would I react to X?”. Engaging with Art also forces us to emotion-test, to investigate ourselves, to question the world and our place in it, to explore what are called “the Big Questions”, for example, “What does it mean to be human?”, “What is the purpose of my existence?” “In what senses am I living a sincere, authentic life?”

Over the past few years, the ‘job’ of the academic has changed: it used to be, primarily, concerned with talking to students, discussing ideas, formulating concepts, trying to go beyond (surpass?) what existed. However, as neoliberalism/anarcho-capitalism gradually made inroads – something we can date back to Thatcher, her resentment of academia and worship of “the market” (nor should we forget that FG/FF are neoliberals, pushing the same kind of individualistic, self-interested, market devotion) – Irish education began its lurch to the right, kick-started by the 2008 recession. Education, as with all other public services and servants, paid the price for the reckless endangerment committed by bankers. Politicians who, by and large, appear to know nothing about anything except self-promotion, seized the opportunity to make academics pay for their intelligence (the academics, not the politicians) and what they (the politicians, not the academics) perceived as “ivory tower” lifestyles. Business pracitces were ‘frontloaded’, a need for centrally-controlled “quality assurance” was manufactured. A new management ‘system’ for education was created, based on mistrust and distrust. ‘Accountability’ would be guaranteed by “learning outcomes”, together with ever-proliferating streams of paperwork. Academia would shift from teaching to being assessed/seen to be teaching. At one and the same time, Administration would be elevated to primary position, expanding exponentially with each passing year. Business practices would tame the academy, make it “tow the line”, force it into “meeting the needs of industry”. In short, turn education into training and “skills acquisition”, stripping out thought, replacing it with drone-like obedience to the whims of the market.

Students have become ‘learners’ – adjusting their ‘allowance’ of individuality to what the capitalist system permits, identifying conformity as ‘choice’. Their status as ‘human’ is diminished by the replacement of the designation of ‘student’ wth that of ‘learner’: a ‘learner’ eventually finishes (in some sense or other) ‘learning’ by the arbitrary imposition of a cut-off point; by completing and passing this module, thus, meeting the “learning outcomes”. Collect the set of modules and your learning is done. You too are now permitted to enter the ‘adult’ world of ‘work’, amassing the usual markers of adulthood: mortgage; children; car; ambition; consumerism…the panoply of ‘adult’ indicators.

As the student is diminished (one can remain a student of history, of philosophy, of literature, forever) so is the academic. Indeed, the academic cannot be trusted to write “learning outcomes” without being trained to do so: they must use certain words (appropriate to particular ‘levels’ of learning) in specific ways…for which they require training (or, as it is laughably described, “continuous professional development”). Uniformity and obedience have become the primary requirements of academic positions, ideologically integrated to appear to be ‘choice’. In addition, standards must be ‘benchmarked’ – merely another way of insisting on uniformity. “The look” must always be directed towards “the other(s)” because, apparently, only by doing this can competitiveness be assured, and the market given it’s rightful place – as the guarantor of freedom.

Yet what does such ‘freedom’ consist in? Freedom to serve the system; freedom to obey; freedom to ‘choose’ the discourse of business; freedom to believe that you are a free individual…the freedom of self-deception.

In all of this, academic freedom has been lost, has become a simulacrum of freedom (as have all other ‘freedoms’). It is only a matter of time before Ireland too falls to the metrics of ‘output’: publish or be damned. As we see in America and the UK, it is not the content of publications that count, but the very fact of their publication. Quantity over quality – the university becomes little different to a factory, churning out product; it is of no importance what it is, what it says or what it does, the simple fact of its existence is validation enough. Thus, the academic becomes just another labourer, alienated from their work and themselves, whose ‘real’ life exists elsewhere.

And where does that ‘life’ exist? In consumerism – one’s value and values are displayed in what one possesses.

Which it isn’t really – just a way of restating the central purpose here: identifying the privatisation of education and, in consequence, the marginalisation of the Arts, the ultimate purpose being the removal of critiques of capitalism and, more importantly, of critical thinking per se. The aim is to push the Arts out to the periphery, confining them to: the “heritage industry”; artefacts becoming mere “investment opportunities”; Arts degrees becoming the preserve of the rich.

We may not have actual fees in Ireland yet, but who can afford to study without significant input from their own, extracuricular, labour or their relatives, thus, their ‘choices’ become circumscribed by debt, in both senses.

In addition to this, in the TU, creativity must be harnessed to “what business wants”, the space for experimentation, for simple joy in the act of making (in old Scots, the word for poet was ‘makar’)/constructing/designing, constricted by the demands of “the market”. The creative (critical) act is limited by the need for employment, by apparent educators warning of the ‘skills’ business wants and the importance of marrying these with what already exists. The Nietzschean call, that “we must challenge the views of our forebears, not because they’re wrong, but because they exist” counts for nothing. The idea of the university as a site of challenge, debate and critique is being replaced by that of perpetuation (of what already exists). Put another way, that we should “know our place”. We have already been told that the TU “certainly won’t be teaching philosophy”, something widely quoted in newspapers. This, in itself, gives the game away: philosophy is about the perpetual why, the perpetual challenge to justify/prove that what exists, X, is in some sense or other “better than” what might exist, Y. Philosophy is the positing of the theoretical against the existent – to “Don’t look at it like that, look at it like this”. We might sloganeer here: All Art is philosophy, All philosophy Art.

Thus, philosophy represents a permanent threat to business, particularly if one is talking about moral philosophy. What business suggests is that everything can be run as a business, run for profit – whether that be healthcare, television stations or education. Business ‘thinking’ (call it that for the moment), however, is especially dangerous to those professions previously seen as ‘vocational’; business thinking cannot comprehend the idea of engaging in an activity, any activity, for anything but profit. Business turns vocational professions (for example, education) into career opportunities for the mediocre. In education, management engages in managerialism – an endless stream of petty bureaucracy ‘justified’ by an appeal to ‘transparency’, ‘consistency’ and ‘accountability’. Yet, if we interrogate these three terms, they all embody one quality: power. The power of the bureaucrat to interfere with, and constrain, the academic. To obscure this connection, the bureaucrat argues that they are merely fulfilling the demands of “the system”, the suggestion being that they would love to behave otherwise, but the system requires them to do X, Y and Z. “Computer says No.”

This ‘system’ destroys collegiality. The academic becomes just another wage labourer, increasingly alienated from their workplace and themselves. The satisfaction that they once derived from their human inactions with others is lost to systemically-controlled meetings. Codes of conduct and of practice replace authentic human exchanges (for both lecturers and students).

What we see is education being supplanted by training, by “skills acqusition” and by a system that demands rule-following at the expense of thought. Gradually, education is being absorbed into the “business system”, whereby the aim is to maintain the system, not to encourage independent thought. Regardless of discipline, students imbibe this kind of social interaction as part of their being-in-the-world; they are taught to be individuals in this specific sense, while, at one and the same time, being deceived into thinking that this is their choice. However, what they cannot do is choose to be an ‘individual’ in any way other than the narrowly-defined sense of ‘individual’ with which they are presented. This reinforces the major contradiction of capitalism: “the individual” is presented as the basic unit of society, and a central part of the definition of this ‘individuality’ is that one’s choices are one’s own, made freely…yet being “an individual” within capitalist society is very clearly delineated. To stray from the rules will result in penalisation (either literallly or metaphorically).

If we return for a moment to the idea of the human person and work. Marx argues that the highest expression of one’s humanity is the work one does. Labour of whatever sort or kind is the highest expression of your humanity, your self, an integral part of being human. Capitalism, on the other hand, imposes a kind of ‘dualism’: a work self and a real (authetic?) self. The work self labours to obtain money to facilitate the real self which exists outwith work. In regard to work, the slogan is “Never mind the quality, feel the wealth”. This dualism pits individual against individual, as Descartes pits mind against body and contributes to that proto-capitalist, christian notion of the “next world” making up for the privations of this one.

The market, of course, offers you the opportunity – with enough wealth – to create a pre-lapsarian world on earth. Expressly though at the expense of others; their ‘success’ is a direct threat to yours…but don’t question why this should be the case. Simply accept it as “the way things are”.

Art, I’d argue, is initially borne of discontent, of dissatisafaction, with the the way the world is from Beethoven, to Proust, Godard, computer games and hip hop. As Eisenstein put it, Art is produced by conflict, by the dynamic that exists between the maker and their socio-political moment. We can go back to Sophocles to see a playwright who is disputing the wisdom of the Gods, asking questions which only spectators can ‘answer’ – or consider – for themselves. One might argue that this is how an artefact transcends its time: the questions it poses remain pertinent to successive generations and epochs…Sophocles’ questioning of freewill, Goldsmith’s critique of technology, Proust’s consideration of perception over time, Wagner’s representation of myth and its relevance, Pollock’s attempt to make sense of a post-nucelar world.

Art also exposes the myth of a “ruling rationality”, that is, the idea that there is a single, univocal rationality to which everyone aspires and subscribes. In Art we see alternatives; it’s tempting to say that we only see alternatives – which is possible if we exclude mainstream film from the ‘category’. Yet even mainstream film is useful, in that it enables us to see the ideological assumptions on which this type of film rests: capitalism is the ‘best’ system; poverty is a useful motivator; some people are inherently ‘evil’; some people are ‘lazy’; men and women are inherently ‘different’. Wthin the mainstream film world, such assumptions become self-fulfilling prophesises, perpetuating themselves. ‘Adulthood’ is defined as accepting that “this is the way things are”; positing other ways of being, other rationalities, become adolescent fantasies or hormonal phases – temporary flashes of rebellion before accepting “adult values”.

‘Floating’ in the background, I think, of any discussion of Art and value is Heidegger’s contention that it is Art that produces society. If this is the case, then it raises the inevitable question of why, if Art occupies what we might call a “revolutionary space”, we don’t live in some kind of utopia acheived by a kind of artistic “trickle down” effect. Put another way, if Art can really make one a ‘better’ person, then why do we live as we do, in a world riven by injustice, inequality and individualism?

The easy answer is that philosophical gambit, “Define ‘better'”. Ok…a world that is more empathetic, caring, community-based (Never ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to! Maxwell Fife and a host of others over the centuries.) What artists cannot control is the interpretation of their work, how it will be used to political ends (take Shakespeare for example, although one can argue that he wrote for deliberate political ends). Nor can they control the perception (of them as a group) which society has of them. If we look back into history, we can see a progressive marginalisation of Art and artists: in the 17th century, Henry VIII, in England, begins the creation of the modern British state. To this end, he establishes the position of Lord Chamberlin, a forerunner of the modern censor, to whom all works must be submitted before performance or publication. We can go further back philosophically, to Plato’s The Republic; Art and artists are banned because they represent things, people, emotions “as they are not”. Jump to Aristotle and we’re presented with the formula that persists to this day: give the spectator an individual character to identify with. This character can then act as a ‘guide’ to perception of events and situations encountered while, at one and the same time, appearing to be an “everyperson” – paradigmatic of “reasonable response”. Move forward to Kant, a philosopher who, as the embodiment of the Age of Englightenment, attempts to formulate a set of rational responses to Art, all the while dealing in a univocal concept of rationality – his most ‘interesting’ idea is that emotion clouds aesethic judgement, actually makes that judgement incorrect (in some sense or other). Yet Kant’s ideas rely (in the same way as Descartes’ cogito ‘proof’) on the existence of (a) God.

In Hume’s Of the Standard of Taste, we again see an assumption of a univocal rationality while, at the same time, he introduces two notions that are still popular: (i) that the young are swayed by their emotions, thus, invalidating their judgement of Art and, (ii), that to ‘know’ the value of Art time has to pass, we have to see if if X endures over time…

Now, this line of argument might seem rather odd, but what I’m doing is leading into a discussion of Heidegger’s assertion that it isn’t society that makes Art, it’s Art that makes society. In short, why do we value the works we do and, if Art has power (to changes minds/to improve society), why do we have the society that we have in 2023, a society characterised by unfairness, inequality, racism, sexism etc.

To begin to discuss this question, one has to look at the ways in which Art and Artists are regarded in society – their ideological positioning. We can also ask who, or which institutions, decide on what is considered Art…and, more importantly for my purposes, how Art is ‘used’ and perceived in education.

As recently as the early nineteenth century, Shelley wrote that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”…but he’d reckoned without the relentless march of industrial capitalism as the century wore on. What’s fascinating about the nineteenth century (and I’ll stick to the UK) is that we have this (apparently) flourishing age of industrialism and imperialism (or put another way, exploitation of people “at home and abroad”), but this is not celebrated by artists – read Dickens, Eliot or Gaskell, look at the paintings that depict the industrialised landscape as akin to hell. What we see is critique (similar trajectories are seen in France and Germany too), a questioning of the effects of technology and colonialism on people and their communities, on Being itself. Ideologically, this leads to the gradual marginalisation of the artist: the myth of the starving artist in the garret, who doesn’t inhabit the ‘real’ world, who cannot accept ideas of ‘progress’ (even though such ideas are morally repugnant). This marginalisation was, and remains, highly successful, now augmented by the profit motive and, theoretically, by postmodernism – a theory that claims metanarratives are obsolete, redundant, whilst it is itself part of the metanarrative of capitalism…sleight of hand at its most effective.

Once, apparently, metanarrative becomes obsolete, alternative rationalities become ‘equal’, everyone’s opinion becomes ‘equal’, one decides on worth for oneself.

Yet, as Marx argues, not only do the ruling class control the means of production, they also control the flow of ideas, and those ideas themselves – what is covered in the media, what is published, what is made…what is valued and what is marginalised. In short, it is relatively easy to argue that ‘history’ is controlled by the ruling class and that, therefore, Art is controlled as part of history. Those artefacts that ‘contribute’ to stability and security, to the status quo, are preserved over time, their “cultural position” being redefined as and when required, but fundamentally doing the same ‘job’: maintaining the ideological position of the ruling class.

Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals works for Art too. Artefacts and the ideas they represent are anointed by “cultural controllers”. These artefacts are then passed down to following generations as a “base line” of (political) artistic standards.

End of Part 1…

Where does one start with value? By pluralising? By identifying different types?

It seems to me that a “good place” is with the human person, regardless of any ‘qualifiers’. The human person is valuable. There is no Platonic, Aristotelian or Kantian reasoning required; the human person is valuable because they are human. From this “base line” (as business-speak would no doubt describe it), we can move on to responsibility, obligation and duty. One has these to others in virtue of their ‘human-ness’. My moral responsibility (R), moral obligation (O) and moral duty (D) to others in this respect is absolute: it guides my thought, my action, my being-in-the-world. The combination – ROD – is the formulation of my consciousness and conscience as a human person. My first thought should always be “What does this mean for others?” This formulation should temper my self-expression, inform my choices, be an integral part of my creativity and imagination.

This is what we see in the Arts; a set of practices (applicable to any medium) that puts forward, in a broad sense, the idea “Don’t see it like that, see it like this” and “These are the injustices, what can we do to make these right?” (N.B. The artefact does not necessarily have to posit solutions, merely foster questions in the spectator.)

This is why the TU undermines and rejects the Arts. Its ‘mission’ is to reproduce what exists and variants on what exists. It is decidely not in the business of encouraging critical thought about, or recognition of, societal unfairness or injustice. The ‘idea’ of the TU is to perpetuate the system as it is, to suggest, by omission, that there are no alternatives. (N.B. We might here acknowledge the class-basis of the TU; the TU is ‘for’ the working class, hence the emphasis on producing graduates who are “ready for work” – market-led and market-driven.)

The TU attempts to position itself ‘outside’ politics, yet its proponents fail to realise that this is a reactionary, right-wing stance – there is no political neutrality in claiming to be non-political (in much the same way as the HEA). This bogus argument is on the level of those who argue that “this is just the way things are”, making grandiose claims about human nature and ‘tradition’…their notion being that, regardless of one’s position in history, the human person remains the ‘same’.

This is, of course, an ideological position but one that denies ideology – as business is wont to do. The economic is prioritised over the human; this kind of ideological notion hides behind ‘tradition’ (cf. Edmund Burke, Reflection on the Revolution in France) – a tradition that claims the elite must prosper because, without them, society as we know it would cease to function, would collapse. If we abandon the system, those characterised as ‘lazy’, as ‘feckless’, would have an input into decisions. The redistribution of power would lead to a re-evalution of value(s).

Thus, what we have lived through, and continue to live in, is the ideological ‘refinement’ of capitalism: the natural order is one of comeptition amongst individuals who, because of their nature, strive against one another, strive to be “better than” each other. The metric of ‘betterness’ being financial wealth.

Financial wealth, accepted as the core value, generates binary values: rich/poor; good/bad; success/failure; hard-working/lazy. The value that it does not, cannot, conceive of is morality. When wealth, therefore, profit is central, morality is redundant: good/bad are notions linked to wealth generation, outwith this the terms cease to have meaning.

However, what becomes central, in terms of the pseudo-education I’m discussing are metrics. ‘Outcomes’ must be measurable in conventional terms – those which aren’t, for example value and values, are first marginalised then disguarded. Is it possible to measure the value of philosophy? Of Art? Or would such an attempt call the validity of metrics into question? What are the value(s) of metrics? What hides behind the supposedly “real world” nostrums that it is claimed they represent?

The introduction of “learning outcomes” several years ago can illustrate some of the points I’m making. The administrative apparatus was not content to demand that academics predict what students “will know” have taken this or that module, lists of acceptable terms were introduced. Professional Development workshops were held on “Writing Learning Outcomes” which instructed on which temrs could be applied to which stages of a degree programme, regardless of discipline. This marked, one can argue, the “businessifcation” of education: the idea that “one size fits all” and, more importantly, that education could be run as a business – as we’ve seen, for instance, in healthcare, social care and national broadcasters. Behind this is the idea that the market is the guarantor of freedom, of choice. With the introduction of market forces, the consumer is reinstated (so the argument goes) as the central ‘player’. Yet, one might ask, is the student a consumer? Should a university be bound to the vagaries of “the market”?

What we’ve seen in education is, as business ‘practices’ become dominant, the demand for uniformity increases, monolithic administrative control grows ever tighter. The bureaucratic paper trail becomes all-encompassing, from learning outcomes, to assignment extension forms, to records of meetings with students. In short, another “base line” has been introduced: distrust. Academics are encouraged to distrust students, who will cheat and lie if they can; admin staff should distrust academics, who will blithely go on their chaotic ways. Collegiality is lost in a plethora of mission statements, administrative requirements, committees and handbooks. Thus, the deliberate undermining of democracy is complete…but this ‘system’ goes further: students are being trained to expect rules which they must obey without question and, thus, they are “ready for work”…

Which wasn’t where I expected to end up when I started. Back to value next.