ACADEMIC CAPITALISM IN PORTUGAL "TANDEM ABVTERE PATIENTIA NOSTRA?"

Abstract

This article problematizes the traditional division "right-left", restoring a complexity that characterizes it, and conjugates it with some concepts discussed in contemporaneity, such as: radical centrism; fundamentalist centrism, radical neocentrism; liberalism, neoliberalism, neoconservatism; populism; absolutism, State, State of well-being; Managerialist state, Nation state; public; private; democracy; public school; mercantilization fundamentalism; exception state; neofundamentalism; disciplinary society; society of control; empire, imperialism, biopolitics; biopower, exodus, multitude, people. At the same time the contemporary world draws a series of communication and information electronic revolutions, as well as genetic and biotechnology ones; it also mobilizes political, social and culture fundamental transformations and in this article it is highlighted the growing reduction of investment in public education, and the progress of some social ills which mankind thought to be eradicated at the end of the millennium - the return of slavery, of the exploitation, of the fast acceleration of human inequalities. The attempts to control public spending, the public services reforms, and the creation of new forms of public service, have led to a gradual mercantilization of everyday life, a lack of responsibility from the state, a new world order that does not eliminate exploitation, but redefines it. It is in this context that one must reflect, in Portugal, on the great transformation that is proposed for public higher education, a transformation subjugated to the limits and possibilities imposed by the Bologna Declaration and, more recently, by the new Legal Regime – which contemplates the possibility of public universities and polytechnics being able to become foundations that obey the rules of private law. The article calls a “pedagogy of negation”, not exactly a meta-theory, but a countertheory that cares about how it is possible to maintain academic freedom; to resist the promiscuous market and the demagogic cultural massification; and to engage with a curriculum research that exceeds regulatory and administrative issues.