Re-learning hope: On alienation, theory and the ‘death’ of universities (original) (raw)

Gibb, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6999-6227(2024) Re-learning hope: On alienation, theory and the ‘death’ of universities.Sociological Review, 72(4), pp. 914-929. (doi: 10.1177/00380261241258617)

Abstract

Informed by Irving Horowitz’s view of the Festschrift, this article adopts both a retrospective and a prospective approach to the work of the sociologist Bridget Fowler. On the one hand, it assesses some of the key characteristics and contributions of her three single-authored books: The Alienated Reader: Women and Popular Romantic Literature in the Twentieth Century (1991), Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory (1997) and The Obituary as Collective Memory (2007). On the other, it takes cues from these books to develop a more forward-looking type of reflection that connects some recent sociological and anthropological research on ‘the neoliberal university’ to writing about hope and utopia. The article emphasises that Fowler is attentive not only to processes of social reproduction but also to what John Holloway terms ‘cracks in the texture of domination’, that is, to examples of freedom, resistance and the imagination of alternatives in popular culture and elsewhere. At the same time, it shows how thinking about utopia and hope can contribute to debates about ‘the alienated academic’ and the ‘death’ of universities. The article concludes that Fowler’s sociology is, alongside its many other qualities, a valuable contribution to ‘re-learning hope’, arguably one of the most important challenges facing us today.

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