Learning to (depoliticize) critique: Critical knowledge and the formation of elite habitus in a predominantly White institution

Abstract

Liberal arts education is highly commodified, yet it also boasts to cultivate critical thinkers and progressive changemakers. What exactly is the kind of “critical mindedness” that liberal arts institutions produce? Drawing from Bourdieuan concepts and recent anthropological work on elite subject formation, I explain how undergraduate students in an elite, predominantly White institution refashion the notion of “critique” as part of their elite habitus. I argue that neoliberal educational institutions enable the new elites to speak about (and advocate for) structural change without ever having to scrutinize their own elite subject position. This depoliticized notion of “doing critique” promises little progressive social transformation and reinforces the hegemonic power of neoliberalism from the inside out. I conclude by highlighting the situatedness of “critique” and its pedagogical potential and limitations.

The agency of “doing something”: Ethnographic research on subject positions at predominantly White institutions

“…At the same time, such para-curricular programs fulfill another corporate facing function: the programs-in particular, the outcomes of them, taken in the form of the products of student research and the cultivation of skills-can be used as pitches to the corporate world, showcasing the (neoliberal) value of an otherwise abstract liberal arts education (Urciuoli, 2003). Contextualizing the emergence and popularity of these para-curricular programs, anthropologists demonstrate that these programs are designed to showcase a neoliberal form of subjectivity, and the programs often reproduce neoliberal notions and discourse, including the obsession with "skills," "giving back (often to an empty signifier called 'the community')" and "passions for making change" (Wang, 2022;LaDousa, 2013LaDousa, , 2018Handler, 2013;Hickel & Khan, 2012;Urciuoli, 2016).…”

“…The question by the faculty member did not take the authors aback: as anthropologists teaching about issues of inequality and inequity in the context of education, we have often encountered similar questions, from our colleagues as well as our students. In Wang's “anthropology of the university” course, students regularly write discussion questions like “given that we now know the neoliberal nature of a college, what can we do to combat the reproduction of privilege and marginalization of minoritized students?” (also see Wang, 2022). While LaDousa has published about the processes of neoliberalization through the vantage points of experiential education, campus funding initiatives, and faculty life (LaDousa, 2013, 2018, 2019; Lee & LaDousa, 2015), some of their colleagues half‐jokingly see them as a scholar who “only thinks” and “does not act.” Elsewhere on our campus, social justice‐oriented colleagues put together various groups to discuss how “to build community partnership,” to “decolonize pedagogy,” and, sometimes, to “build an anti‐racist institution.” These groups receive support for these conversations from various offices/centers at the College.…”