Austin J Damiani
Instructor: J. Troyer
CSCL 3331
12 November ‘03
The Ivory Tower Crumbles: Politics of Science and the Humanities Revealed
Science and the humanities constitute a vast rubric of knowledge-producing structures. The products of these structures are inculcated in individuals and subsequently mediate their experiences of the world. Knowledge functions most powerfully in the moment of perception. The sum of knowledge, images, conceptions, and beliefs produced by science and the humanities inform perception and affect an individual’s experience of reality. People, therefore, can be controlled through knowledge. Knowledge, then, becomes invested with power, which motivates the processes of production, distribution, and consumption. Because knowledge can used to control, consumption becomes the focal point of its production.
The consumption of knowledge, however, transforms it. This manifests in several ways. First, networks of mass distribution become necessary for the mass consumption of knowledge. In between production and consumption is the neglected process of distribution. In The Human Use of Human Beings, Norbert Weiner laments that information is being treated as a commodity. Making a compelling analogy to white bread, he detects a degradation of the quality of knowledge inherent in the logistical demands of mass distribution in a capitalist system (132). The key point to draw from Weiner’s analogy is that the logistics of consumption change information, which is the product of science and the humanities. This can be observed in the “dumbing down” of complex topics in media, necessitated by the confines of space, time, and money.
Money is another critical juncture at which the politics of science and the humanities is revealed. Economic considerations dictate production, distribution, and consumption of knowledge. Take technology for example. It is easy and comforting to imagine that any and all technical innovations that could potentially improve standards of living would a priori materialize from research labs into daily use. However, Raymond Williams maintains in The Politics of Modernism that such an attitude constitutes technological determinism, and is blind to the real force that motivates the emergence of technological innovations: investment (120). In other words, it is the potential for a return on an investment that dictates the success of any technology, not the value or meaning that science attributes to it. Politics, in the form of economics, violates the putative autonomy of science. Of course, it happens that the investment opportunity correlates with the epistemological value of a scientific development, vindicating the capitalist system. However, dissonance between the two is equally evident. As investors seek to repeat profitable ventures, the criteria measuring the value of any technology or information become formulaic, retarding creative diversity. Williams asserts, “Production itself becomes steadily more homogenous with the sponsoring and directing institutions” (129). Returning to Weiner’s white bread analogy, the production and distribution of technology and information become standardized, and thus weakened, through the imposition of political-economic restraints. The avenue by which the products of science leave the laboratory and reach the general populous is politically and economically determined. Similarly, as the distribution of information is economically determined, the information distributed is categorically manipulated by the means of its transport.
That what is selected for distribution is determined by the politics of money is indicative of the process by which the consumption of knowledge becomes the focal point of its production. Knowledge, in other words, is made to be consumed. This is the fundamental problematic of the politics of science and the humanities. For example, research is conducted precisely because it will sell. Securing grant money, tenure, prestige, and publication are the political motivators that undergird academic research, in both science and the humanities. Given these political machinations, the ivory tower is exposed as a fata morgana. There are certainly other more lofty concerns that motivate researchers, writers, and artists within science and the humanities, such as the pursuit of truth, but it is critical to realize that the dictates of politics delineate the borders within which those aspirations can exist.
The myth of the ivory tower is doubly misleading. As mentioned above, researchers are not immune to political forces that shape and pull their research. Furthermore, knowledge is produced and archived in the ivory tower, but that is not its final destination. As knowledge, including technology, is intended for consumption, it is essential to consider the human context of its use. In God and Golem, Inc, Weiner stresses that technology is not dangerous in its own right, but only in the hands of humans. It is easy to perceive the power of a technology, of the written word, of the image, but this superficial perception is misleading. Power manifests in the wielding of the object; the wielding of the object actualizes it, so that the potential converts to kinetic. The wielding of technology, of word and image, is the material, political concretization of science and the humanities. Along similar lines, Weiner points to a particular kind of relationship with technology as dangerous. He gives the sobriquet “gadget worshipper” to those dubious persons who abrogate the responsibility of their actions to something external of themselves (53-54). This psychology is a result of the fallacious identification of the device as the source of power. This phenomenon, the abrogation of responsibility to a device, is not limited to technology, where it is most readily apparent. God, as a theological device, is the analogous machine upon which responsibility can be projected. What room is there for personal responsibility in a Homeric epic, in which ill deeds are no one’s fault, but divine fiat? Glory, likewise, is appropriated by the gods. The cleric, then, is perhaps the paradigmatic gadget worshipper, referring blame and responsibility to a device he wields.
Another issue that arises when considering the human context in which science and the humanities are actualized is the notion of ideology. Clearly, science and the humanities can be used as means of social control and the entrenchment of political power. This is clearly evident in the context of colonization. Biology, anthropology, ethnography, journalism, art, comedy, literature, and philosophy—they all manifested ideology in service of political agenda. As science and the humanities carry political agenda, they also serve to legitimate it. The political instrumentation of science and the humanities is ubiquitous, today and throughout history.
When knowledge, technology, art, and information are all seen as destined for human contexts, science and the humanities become implicated in all the effects of their instrumentation. The ivory tower is exposed as but a myth. This fantasy of the ivory tower speaks to the widespread phenomenon of depoliticizing science and the humanities. However, as has been argued here—and revealed by history—politics is the matrix undergirding science and the humanities. This ostensible depoliticization is pernicious if left furtive. Nazism is the most potent evidence. Biological racism bore the aegis of science, which legitimated and normalized Nazi politics. Furthermore, researchers can capitalize upon the political use of science and the humanities. Serving the interests of the powerful becomes lucrative, and this interest no doubt contributes to the collusion of science and the humanities with political interests. It is essential to keep in mind the complicity of science and the humanities with the effects of their instrumentation by political interests. There is a further political interest in maintaining the myth of the ivory tower, because science and the humanities cannot legitimate political agenda if they are deprived of their apodictic authority. This is especially true of science, which currently commands more respect.
Thus, politics both constructs and demolishes the ivory tower of science and the humanities. This insight parallels Giorgio Agamben’s analysis of the extermination camps of the holocaust. In his discussion, he asserts that the severity of the camp experience deconstructs all “metaphysical bulwarks” (66), necessitating a new, post-camp ethics. Agamben makes a startling conclusion. The material reality within the camp—the absolute deprivation of agency—redefines all conceptualization of death. Death, with all of its metaphysical possibilities, becomes impossible; it is replaced by “the production of corpses” (76). The very humanity of man—“this almost infinite potentiality to suffer” (77)—annihilates what all of the knowledge producing and preserving structures have attained: the definition of what constitutes the human. Thus, politics is both the cradle and the crematoria of science and the humanities.