It is now undeniable. The university is fucked. There is no other way of putting it. Any form of life that is not fully subsumed by the logic of capital is currently being expelled from campus. The administration at Victoria University of Wellington, having made it clear that patriarchy is no longer up for debate, has now informed us that what goes on between States stays between States. Meanwhile, the administration at the University of Auckland has just failed in the most obscene of power grabs which, had it been successful, would have lead to the sort of intellectual terrorism that makes Norwegian neo-Nazis smile. All this, without even mentioning the government’s recent strike against the collective power of the student body.
Is it really any wonder that so many young people are trying to kill themselves? What are they supposed to do, go to university and train to be psychopaths in the commerce department? Study sociology and discover everything is fucked and there is nothing you can do about it? Join the science department and get sponsored by some huge corporation to fuck shit up? We used to say, ‘Sure, everything is fucked, but we are ok, we study for the sake of study! There is pride to be found in such pursuits!’ But it is becoming increasingly impossible even to claim this. Study for the sake of study? The only people who ever really believed in that is our teachers, and look what has become of them! For a while now they have been writing papers for journals that no one ever reads and books that no one could care less about, but now they cannot even get away with that. We could tell you what proportion of academics are on antidepressants, but would it really surprise you?
What the university’s corporate sponsors understand, which no one else really does, is that the real object of study is to decide. Hence why they are so keen to preempt our decisions by making them for us. After all, didn’t we come here with some idea of ‘making the world a better place’? Of course we quickly realise the impossibility of such things, which is to say we’re being made to realize this. We hardly want to encourage any such ideas, only to have them crushed once more. We think, rather, it is time for us to assert our power. Perhaps such an operation is not as difficult as we think, barely any one really believes in anything anymore, it is no longer a matter of convincing anyone.
What then of our figure? The figure of the student is not the student. The student is the particular subjectivity, the particular way of being, which emerges from the figure; between the figure. The figure of the student is the shape and the form out of which what we call student comes to be, that which induces its way of acting. The figure of the student has a certain rhythm, it slows our senses down, it induces repetition, over and over again, until that which it repeats achieves a certain resonance, able to be thought in all its detail. But, ultimately, the figure of the student produces something which reaches toward a decision. The figure of the student, having forced the object of reflection to slow down and forced its repetition to the extent that it can become known in a way which was previously seemingly unknowable, is figured so as to produce the tendency toward decision. This is how the figure of the student goes beyond itself, how it transcends the student, how it overcomes its fundamental contradiction: the contradiction of study. Having studied and studied, the student is led to ask the question, but what is to be done? What are the consequences of all this? It is from this moment that the student (having emerged from the figure) enters into the production of a new figure, some new course of action, some attempt at going beyond that which already is.
This is why we must resist the urge to defend the university as the pure site of study, we must resist the easy option of saying what is good in ‘student’ is study in its purity. Against the urge to justify study as a means to itself we must realise why it is that we study in the first place, to, eventually, decide.
What role does this figure play politically? The figure of the student does not find its power within, it finds its power without, a power which involves grabbing at carefully chosen moments. The figure of the student is an activating agent: activating a moment in which the student comes into itself as that which it was always told to be: ‘the critic and conscience of society’: its critique becomes too strong, transcending critique and entering into practice, for its conscience is too heavy.
The figure of the liberal presents the figure of the student with the most fraternal of hostilities. The ultimate products of the figure of the liberal are not the neurotic partisans of bourgeois democracy, but those who, in a tactical move, take up the cause of the liberal democratic form in order to curb the most naked consequences of capital, without following the consequences of their desires to their end. It might seem here that we are confusing two figures: the liberal and the one who takes on the robes of the liberal in a political manoeuvre. But it is here that we must be especially clear: the latter provides the ultimate schema for the former. It is flirtation with liberalism which is at the heart of the figure of the liberal. That is to say, the liberal is essentially compromised. Indeed, we should distinguish between the figure of the liberal and the true partisans of bourgeois democracy, whom, themselves are compromised but in a different respect. The failure of the figure of the liberal is to come to terms with that with which they are compromised: the figure of the liberal is essentially compromised because that with which they have compromised ultimately has no loyalty to any particular form. The bourgeoisie will just as easily put their chips in behind fascism when dictated to by capital. When this happens the figure of the liberal is left defending a form devoid of content.
We need only look to what is happening in Europe to see the essential emptiness of the figure of the liberal. In Greece, the state, the democratic state, the bourgeois state, the liberal state, has shown us its reality. It will transform itself, it will ask bankers to take over its administration when required. Just as in Europe in the first half of the 20th century when the bourgeois state did not hesitate to, through democracy, become fascist. Democracy today signifies little more than a form.
This is one of the places where the figure of the student must be prepared to defend itself, against the figure of the liberal, which will attempt to provide it with a form, rather than letting its content find its own form. The figure of the student must combat the figure of the liberal, for the figure of the liberal will tend to disfigure the figure of the student so as to prevent it from following through with its own consequences. In this respect, one of the key necessities the figure of the student finds itself with today is to combat the figure of the liberal. It is clear there is only one way to do this, it is not a matter of convincing, but a matter of forcing the figure of the liberal to confront its essential compromise, forcing it to enter into its own enquiries and follow through with the consequences of those enquiries; it is a matter of forcing the figure of the student.