Depoliticising Knowledge: The Politics of Knowledge in the Neoliberal Context

Rajan Gurukkal | Vol. 1(1) 2011: 09-17 | Indian Researcher

Knowledge production and its transmission for the development of students and society are supposed to be vital functions of any University, discharged through researchers and teachers. Quality in knowledge production is ensured by the social utility of the new knowledge produced. Quality in transmission means the student s utility of the transmitted knowledge in the development of higher cognitive ability, sharper analytical faculty and better articulative capacity. Quality knowledge in any discipline is deep, theoretical, scientific and invariably subversive because it exposes the surface information shallow and shoddy as distinguished from the profoundly buried deeper truth. It is this embedded social transformational potential of learning, which we call the politics of knowledge. Quality higher education is the one that renders politics of knowledge giving rise to critical consciousness plausible and, effective transmission of socially useful knowledge enabling students’ decisive participation in public policy debates, feasible.

The quality of research as well as teaching stems from the intimacy of the researcher/teacher with the act of learning and teaching, enabled by a strong sense of social reality. Intimate learning helps the learner access deeper levels of knowledge, acquire its subversive potential, be clear about its relation to social/national development and, grow critical. A teacher who knows the politics of knowledge lets his students turn critically conscious about social reality and be committed to social justice. This is the quality which should be of top priority in University teaching and research, for that alone can ensure the making of good citizens capable of public policy debates and collective actions seeking social transformation. Critical social understanding is quite vital for any scholar engaged in teaching and research, irrespective of the area of specialization. Such quality education is essential to trigger the politics of collective action which demands equity as a goal of national development and to strengthen the nation’s democracy and secularism.

Nonetheless, our higher education and research are long way off from the goal of quality, despite the proliferation of colleges and Universities.Knowledge production that ought to be inevitably a theoretical exercise has turned out to be descriptive and shallow. There has been a deliberate distancing from theorisation among students engaged in research. This is particularly true in the case of social sciences and humanities, the learning of which has become alienating, deskilling, and exasperatingly depoliticising in most of the universities of the country. The learner gets lost in descriptive literature on one aspect or the other of the society limited to particular spatio temporal context. In spite of the availability of a commendable body of authentic works, tailor made notes which gives a dull description of facts remain authentic for most of the college students and teachers of social sciences in many parts of the country. Good textbooks of high level percolation of latest knowledge accompanied by sophisticated instructional tools are too few. Most of the obsolete stuff bypassed and major part of what is generally considered specialised knowledge included, such textbooks can make learning the subject matter challenging to those graduating in one discipline or the other, as a preparatory phase for politicisation of knowledge production.

Social sciences represent a form of knowledge in the pedagogy of which conceptual clarity is of utmost importance. It is essential to emphasise interconnectedness of social aspects in a holistic perspective, a process precluded in the absence of theorisation. The general distaste for theory is explicit in Ph.D dissertations of most Universities, which suffer from oversimplification. Consequent on the alienation of theory from knowledge production, the conventional method of conceiving the social, economic, political, cultural, religious etc, as independent facets, continues to haunt social science research. Social scientists cannot get away from social theory, for their subject matter would remain inaccessible without a theory. Social theory is an ever-growing domain that helps us unravel processes and interconnections below the surface reality of social life. It is the wisdom accrued through sustained attempts at exploring the deeper meanings of explicit features and practices of the society. By resorting to various analytical strategies it helps us understand the link between the surface reality of social practices and their submerged referential. It is not difficult to make a case for the supremacy of the hermeneutic over plane empiricism, in the context of social science knowledge of intellectual depth. But despite their methodological differences and subjectivity – objectivity debates both – the hermeneutic as well as empiricist – belonged to the same epistemic base. Both of them grew up in positivism and modernism as the obverse and reverse of scientific knowledge.

Societal studies in general cannot end up formulating all inclusive equations for obvious reasons. Many aspects of society are abstract and metaphorical, hardly amenable to quantification. The term society itself is a metaphor, an ambiguous word that makes little sense unless defined conceptually and explained theoretically in terms of material processes, relations, systems and structures. Description of surface features of the society makes little sense if it does not lead to an explanation in the context of social structure. There are profoundly buried complex processes and relations below the surface of social existence. It is indispensable to examine the stratification, expropriation and hierarchy of a society to reach any meaningful conclusions about its social reality. Descriptive characterisation of social practices fails to capture not only connotations and denotations but also their ontology. What do we understand about conventions in a hierarchical society if they are merely described and not explained in the light of social theory of hierarchy? Interconnections and correlations between practices and system of social relations have to be discovered by the social researcher. It is important to unveil the embedded as well as the entrenched nature of the social practices by drawing upon their relation to social structure. Practices signify the socially and structurally contingent power relations, which is often covered by a veil of ideology indispensable to the system. In short, for a social scientist to ask serious questions based on theoretical insights into correlation of social aspects, is essential.

Nonetheless, many a researcher think quantification a substitute for theorization. Quantification hardly exhausts alternative derivation possibilities of the same data. The exercise makes no sense if research questions are not inspired by critical social reality. Higher level quantification through sophisticated techniques is fine for achieving precision in answers, but often statisticians ignorant of social theory waste their time answering a wrongly framed question with precision. The social use of social sciences has to be given top priority in social research, a re-orientation that helps us turn knowledge production based on social issues. People first approach in research encourages scholars to develop an intellectual encounter with social issues and leads to production of strikingly fresh knowledge of corrective power. There are several success stories that can be cited to substantiate the argument. For instance, the fall out of social scientists intellectual response to the strategic needs of local level social development is remarkable and their initiatives in the people centred institution designing and capacity building have attracted world-wide appreciation. There is a need to create alternative knowledge with a people first approach which should go beyond the semantic reforms by the World Bank sponsored social research.

Education and research in the science and technology is in a similar predicament. Science happens to be learnt without imbibing the scientific temper and taught without insights about science policy, for in both the processes noted for alienating institutional practices of teaching and evaluation, the radical aspect of the knowledge form gets contained. Technology is imparted as a mere skill. Students of science and technology seldom learn the history and philosophy of their knowledge domain. With the result, they fail to understand the relation of their knowledge to politics. It is no wonder that India has the largest number of irrational and apolitical scientists and technologists. In short, the overall pedagogic strategy, learning mode and evaluation method followed in institutions of higher education prove to be most effective means of de-politicisation. It is high time we rearticulated the higher education curricula on the basis of a thorough revamping with the rigour of a movement. A Participatory Curriculum Revamping Movement in every discipline is necessary in every University with a view to drawing students closer to deeper knowledge and its socially useful aspects.

Researchers and teachers have to converge with the centrality of social goals. This convergence with the critical social agenda leads to a holistic integration of specialized knowledge diffused in multiple disciplines, a process to be identified as the interdisciplinary movement. Over the past few decades several non-conventional areas of knowledge cutting across physical, natural and social sciences have come out as a result of researches beyond disciplinary boundaries, letting disciplines draw closer to one another. This is a world-wide process facilitating interdisciplinary researches and teaching. It is important to note that interdisciplinary is not to confront disciplines. As rightly observed by Roland Barthes, “Interdisciplinary work, so much discussed these days, is not about confronting already constituted disciplines none of which, in fact, is willing itself to let itself go. To something interdisciplinary it is not enough to choose a subject (a theme) and gather around it two or three sciences. Interdisciplinary consists in creating a new object that belongs to no one”. Interdisciplinary research and teaching is inherently inclined to extension of knowledge for social development. Knowledge produced across disciplines is innately linked to questions of social equity and environmental sustainability, and hence critical of capitalism from the point of view of its recklessly extravagant exploitation of natural and human resources. Scientists, social scientists, linguists, artists, literary critics and creative writers alike articulate protests against the dehumanizing and anti-environmental aspects of capitalism. (Barthes:1977). This is made possible by the politics of knowledge.

Intellectuals the world over, inspired by the politics of deeper knowledge is strongly positioned against the capitalist ways of unbridled economic growth which does not care for social equity and ecological sustainability.Even within the capitalist world there have been anticipations raised about the sustainability of the neo liberal model of growth. Reviewing growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continuing unchanged, the Club of Rome intellectuals brought to the world attention a few decades ago the limits to growth on this planet, which will be reached within the next century. This alarming truth cannot be ignored anymore. Capitalist growth’s effect on ecology and environment is disastrous. Pollution of the air, water and soil is beyond control. Increase of carbon in the atmosphere and emission of poisonous gases has reached a frightening proportion. The problem of Ozone Layer depletion due to the reckless release of CFC is being discussed all over the world. Destruction and irreversible reconstitution of the landscape eco-systems are inevitable to spatialisation under capitalist industrial growth. Special economic zones and smart cities represent the state-sponsored spatialisation of capitalist industries. Capitalist spatialisation inevitably involves relocation of poor people, destruction of their habitat, and disruption of their cultural continuity, which has been an ever widening process triggering popular movements of dissent and protest in the third world. India is no exception to this.

An in-depth understanding of environmental issues and related social and financial aspects, by intellectuals across sciences with awareness of the politics of profound scholarship, demands every nation to navigate through its business with a thorough environmental cost accounting and show readiness to discharge socio-legal obligations. (Lefebvre:1973). Environmental capital includes components such as environmental quality and restoration costs, ‘externalities’ or social costs, future liabilities, and perceived environmental risks. Pollution cost is inestimable for it affects human health and general quality of life across generations. Politics of knowledge urges every researcher to strongly react to the fact that no rationalised cost-accounting exists in any industry today and even after the tragic incidents of Chernobyl or Union Carbide. Public auditing of industries has to become universally feasible. Most of the social scientists in general and economists in particular hardly realize this, an innocence they owe to their discipline based indoctrination. This is all the more true in the case of economists who are converted into the watch and ward of capitalist enterprises.

Nevertheless, we have a commendable line of such intellectuals, ever since the enunciation of Marx’s critique of political economy and thesis on capitalism, such as Andre Gunther Frank, Walter Rodney, Samir Amin, Immanuel Waller Stein, Hopkins, to mention only a few. They have shown that the accumulation drive of capitalism will continue exhausting all ways and means, even the least imaginable.

The best minds among the academic are moved by the politics of their specialized knowledge – i.e. the undeniable link between the deeper knowledge and socio-ecological justice. They have been contributing immensely for developing critical consciousness in the minds of the public and thereby empowering the common people to intervene in national policy debates. The best scientists discuss science policy publicly for facilitating public awareness, the most vital aspect of democracy. The most committed social scientists discuss the under currents of the present world political economy. Their awareness of the politics of specialized knowledge delves deep into the relation between advanced knowledge and society. They seek to caution people about the social disasters and environmental hazards ensuing from the agenda of the capitalist world order.

Like development the word globalisation is deceptive too letting people attribute all their hopes to it. Just as the word development that cleverly and successfully kept its real meaning of capitalist growth implying colonialism and imperialism concealed, the word globalisation also kept its meaning of financial globalisation implying neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism hidden. Financial globalisation that facilitated the flight of American and European capital to developing countries through liberalisation of capital market has been leading privatisation, free trade, foreign investment growth, hegemony of global organisations, mounting debt, intensifying competition, strengthening of new market pressures, heightening of political, cultural, social and economic insecurity etc. In the third world the TNC/MNC capital makes unbridled influx into areas of natural resources and eco-systems of bio-diversity causing dispossession of local people and their age old subsistence strategies, disruption of culture, destruction of local wisdom and, devastation of habitat.8 The sudden and arbitrary withdrawal of foreign capital investment happens in the name of one excuse or the other pushing the host nation in trouble as experienced recently by Malaysia and Indonesia. Decline of the public sphere is another disaster.

Advocates of politics of knowledge inform us that within a decade of globalisation and WTO reign, economic nationalism has become impossible and sovereign power impaired, in the third world. The number of the poor people has increased phenomenally. Many are deprived of access even to drinking water that is a commodity of MNC/TNC industries today. Globalisation has caused the loss of aids to food and fuel, making the life of the poor incredibly miserable and pushing them into popular revolts for survival as exemplified by the upsurges in Indonesia in 1998 for food and fuel, and Bolivia today for drinking water. Commercialisation of health, education, drinking water, agriculture, media, information system and what not, has made miserable the life of the middle class too. There is a peremptory halt to welfare measures in all developing countries. With the state growing indifferent to problems of drinking water, food, education, welfare schemes, public distribution and so on enhancing market dependence, localities decline. In the light of the new drafts on Intellectual Property Rights all life forms are being patented. Having made agricultural seeds a patented commodity, the peasants are unable to exchange them any more. Fertilisers have become all the more expensive making agriculture costly but with a lot of uncertainty about the market for their goods. There is widespread social unrest across the third world where the governments are advised to suppress the people’s movements ruthlessly. Privatisation of public assets is pushing developing nations like India into solvency crisis, where public sector disinvestment is forging ahead under the pretext of a reform, transferring national resources into the hands of a minority. Underdeveloped and developing nations are in debt traps and people commit suicide under the myriad of pressures that the market-friendly culture exerts. Naturally there is economic decay, starvation, suicide, drug abuse, prostitution, mafia rule, terrorism, bribery and other forms of corruption in unprecedented magnitude.

Critical stratum of specialized knowledge warns us that irrespective of the fact whether the recession is overcome or not, speculative capital flights will continue. More heinous strategies of accumulation will get unfolded intensifying the dehumanising means and relations of capitalism further. Obviously, the process of capital growth at the cost of equity is heading for the cul-de-sac. What turns out to be undeniable beyond the epi-phenomenon of the rise and fall of accumulation is the ultimate point of exhaustion – the dead-end unveiling limits to capital growth, its ecological non-sustainability and the inevitable collapse. The capitalist pattern of technology-intensive, energy-intensive, and chemical-intensive resource-use for profit-maximising production and exchange cannot ecologically sustain itself and cannot socially let itself to continue. The terrible imbalance in the domain of natural resource sharing, which shows the alarming ratio of developed countries that contain only 20% of the global population exploit 80% of the earth’s resources. The developed world has used up the fossil fuel entitlement of the three generations of the third world people to be born. Population, food production, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources are increasing in the rate that mathematicians identify as exponential growth.

Critical knowledge also informs us that the critical dimension of knowledge is not easily available to all because of its being incessantly diffused and strategically distracted in the capitalist world. Knowledge production is an alienated activity and a process of depoliticisation. Knowledge production is so designed as to be incapable for any researcher to be disseminating the politics of it. There is a strong and built-in system for depoliticizing the students through the distortion of the processes of acquisition and transmission of knowledge. Spreading the myth that knowledge is invariably neutral is the basic strategy. Delinking of knowledge from social reality is another strategy. Yet another strategy is the conversion of knowledge itself as part of the rhetoric and ideology of capitalism. Capitalism has its built-in mechanisms for reproducing and perpetuating itself even by turning its enemies into self-referential constituents, a system or power technically referred to as autopoiesis. (Agarwal, 1985).

Knowledge production and transmission is under the control of the autopoetic mechanisms of capitalism, which alienate learners from social reality about the knowledge. This process of depoliticisation leaves teachers, researchers, and students unaffected by knowledge. They draw blank about the social use or consequences of it. They become neutral, self-centred, apolitical and least perturbed by social consequences if any. This predicament demands organized intellectual efforts towards re-politicisation of knowledge.

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