Contributions for a dialectic critique of the relation between university and neoliberalism: the experience of Argentinian public universities

Abstract

This article reflects on the relationship between university and society in the global context of a revamped neoliberalism. The first section focuses on two features of nowadays dominant ideology whose critique could be undertaken by university but at the same time affect its own inner configuration: economization and anti-intellectualism. Taking into account the immanent presence of neoliberalism in the university, the second section argues, on the one hand, that any critical potential of the later towards society will be tied to a process of critic self-reflection on itself, that is to say, to a social critique of knowledge. And on the other, we argue, nevertheless, that the questioning of its role in the democratization of society has not been absent of the cluster of practices constitutive of Argentinean public universities in the past decades. The fact that even in a university affected by neoliberalism not everything is neoliberal, should be accounted for by a dialectic critique of contemporary university.