(Re-)Occupy Critique! The Condition of Theory and Praxis in Contemporary American Academia

Political activism should not be taken for granted in academia; it is a project that requires the creation of an adequate environment for critique and action. That is because, rephrasing Gramsci’s recommendation (Gramsci 1971, 175), social change needs both the practical ‘optimism of the will’ and the theoretical social diagnostics provided by the ‘pessimism of the intellect.’ Based on such assumptions, the paper points out the necessity, on the one hand, to go beyond an idealist conceptualization of the intellectual and instead to look materially at the field of action of academics, and, on the other, to problematize the currently dominant theoretical understanding of critique.