Monday, March 09, 2009

Stanley Fish inhabits a very different academic world from the one I inhabit...

If this is true.
I’ve been asking colleagues in several departments and disciplines whether they’ve ever come across the term “neoliberalism” and whether they know what it means. A small number acknowledged having heard the word; a very much smaller number ventured a tentative definition. I was asking because I had been reading essays in which the adjective neoliberal was routinely invoked as an accusation, and I had only a sketchy notion of what was intended by it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Has Wikipedia not penetrated FIU yet?

Anonymous said...

One amusing lesson to be drawn is that Fish does not read other NYT columnists, since David Brooks declared neoliberalism "dead" in his column exactly two years ago tomorrow, as it happens.

Maybe Fish can be forgiven for not hearing about it because it's now an ancient, half-forgotten doctrine, like phlogiston theory or divine right monarchy. Sigh.