Freedom: The Function of Criticism at All Times

Literary disciplines’ loss of integrity began at the end of the Cold War and accelerated after the financial crisis of 2008–09 because of internal changes responding to external desires along with direct pressures from money and power. Academics follow the desires of moneyed and state interests away from the formation of critical humanists, removing key social values of judgment and self-formation from the ideals of humanistic education. Following the nudges of neoliberal administrations and inventing their own methods and positions congenial to the holders of power and wealth, literary academics in the United States especially have facilitated their own weakness as disciplines with dire political consequences in an era of neo-authoritarianism.