Academia and the Luster of Capital

Ideas, says Cohen, have now attained "commodity" status in the academy and knowledge is now seen as another capitalistic "industry". In "Academia and the Luster of Capital", the specific and material workings of this economy of the marketplace of ideas are both revealed and interrogated. Cohen uses paradigms from Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze, and Guattari to assemble a "war machine" against the well-oiled apparatus of self-preservation and self-reproduction of the academic...
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Ideas, says Cohen, have now attained "commodity" status in the academy and knowledge is now seen as another capitalistic "industry". In "Academia and the Luster of Capital", the specific and material workings of this economy of the marketplace of ideas are both revealed and interrogated. Cohen uses paradigms from Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze, and Guattari to assemble a "war machine" against the well-oiled apparatus of self-preservation and self-reproduction of the academic institution. In detailed and concrete arguments, he challenges accepted theories of criticism, especially university-based myths. "Academia and the Luster of Capital" constitutes a compelling statement for the abandonment of legitimating, officiating paradigms of thought in all academic disciplines, and outlines possibilities for the emergence of the new in thought and action. Sande Cohen is the author of "Historical Culture: On the Recoding of Academic Disciplines" (1986) and many articles on cultural criticism and ideology. This book is intended for those in the fields of cultural theory, historiography, cultural criticism, art-theory (modern), theory of criticism, modernism.