Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

The colonial roots of the modernist framework of free speech is embedded in hegemonic constructions of civility. Inherent historically in the idea of free speech is the marking of communicative space, shaped in the ambits of colonial power. Free speech and colonialism are co-constitutive. The freedom to speak historically belonged to the White colonial master, even as the colonized were systematically and often violently erased from the spaces and sites of articulation. Marked as the "other" of civility, the colonized belonged outside the public sphere, outside the domains of civil society. White colonial societies reproduced the image of the primitive savage to erase colonized voices even as they celebrated emancipatory ideas of free speech. The freedom of speech thus was a privilege of White colonialists while colonized savages, the other of modernity, were systematically erased from spaces of participation. As colonized voices started emerging in resistance

As inequalities have grown globally, global elites (the 1%) and their academic mouthpieces respond to the growing public anger about inequalities by issuing calls for societal transformation. They inform us, inequalities are rising and that's a problem (just as they profit from these inequalities). The urgent need for transformation in the individual mindset is the call of the hour. They appeal to our consience, suggesting a much needed transformation in our beliefs and attitudes is needed to address global inequality. Appeals for addressing inequality are rife with narratives of kindness, heartfulness, caring, and compassion. Elite media are rife with stories of inequality, often hidden behind a paywall. They document different aspects of inequalities and then present expert voices pontificating on the trends in inequalities. Elites urge "greater attention needs to be paid to inequality." Now that elites have declared inequality is a trend for concern,

Professor Reshmi Dutt -Ballerstadt is a Professor of postcolonial literature and theory, feminist theory and creative writing at Linfield College. Reshmi is a vocal critic of the cultures of Whiteness in academia and the ways in which the norms of civility held up by Whiteness erase possibilities of articulation from the gendered, raced, classed margins. I came to know Reshmi and learn about her work when my mentor and cousin Professor Shampa Biswas , the Paul Garrett Professor of Politics at Whitman College and a scholar of postcolonial nuclear politics introduced us to each other because of our mutual interests in critically interrogating civility norms. Reshmi was editing a collection on academics being targeted with the civility regime and I contributed a chapter to her collection on the weaponization of the incivility trope to maintain raced colonial hegemony. Reshmi has been a vocal presence in academe in theorizing the academe, interrogating the habits of the university

The repressive university is a product of the neoliberal turn, and a robust instance of the authoritarian nature of the neoliberal ideology. The neoliberal ideology, articulating the idea that the "free market will take care of societal ills and challenges" promotes itself on the rhetorical appeals of freedom and opportunity. As I have argued elsewhere (Dutta, 2017), the perpetuation of this ideology relies on communicative inversions, "the turning-on-its head of materiality." The ideology itself needs repressive strategies for it to be perpetuated. Let's take for instance the neoliberal university's culture of monitoring and controlling faculty facebook posts, what my colleague Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt refers to as "tone policing." Norms of civility are typically used to justify and perpetuate this repression. That a faculty member has violated some norm of civility, embedded in ideas of those in power, becomes the basis for the haras

In the land where the regime dictates what academics will read, what they will write, and where they will write, bureaucrats in universities serve as gatekeepers of the regime. With their bureaucratic tools, often decorated in neoliberal logics of risk management and performance optimization, managers  define the boundaries of thought for academics, defining the limits and terrains of thought, legitimizing state control in managerial logics. Bureaucrats ask questions such as: How are these books relevant to your research? How do the books contribute to your research program? The definition of the research program of an academic based on bureaucratic rationality becomes the basis for identifying the relevance of reading lists to research programs. Once the appropriate reading list to be read from is defined, the regime can then exert its control on the academic for deviating from the reading list. The tools of the manager are also the tools of the regime. Consider for insta

Metricide, death by metrics, is catalyzed by an accelerated culture of irrationality that parades itself under the guise of reason. I think of the epidemic of metricide each time that I speak with a junior colleague, each time that I write a promotion and tenure letter, and each time that I sit on a review committee. Mentoring assistant professors is an everyday reminder of this death by metrics. The burden of metrics is borne by the most junior academics, subjecting them to a continual state of anxiety. The suicidal anxieties produced in academics by the race for metrics has deleterious health effects, in many instances resulting in poor mental health outcomes among academics; and in some instances, resulting in death (recall the stories of a colleague dying of a heart attack in the office next door). Beyond killing academics, metrics kill academia. They take the creativity, joy, and freedom of academia, and turn these positive emotions into an accelerated chase for numbers.

In academia, the act of evaluation often works to reproduce the hegemonic formation. The hegemony of a particular way of thought, of a particular racial group, of a particular religious group etc. can be maintained through strategies of evaluation based on double standards disguised as meritocracy. So two different standards are applied to academics as they are evaluated. Let's take the category of race. Say in a particular culture, the majority race X is given privilege across all positions and ranks, with entirely different standards applied for members of X as compared to members of other races. Movement to the top is dictated by standards that are often arbitrary. Various positions of decision-making are held by members of X, all the way from College level positions to positions at the level of University leadership. The racist ideas held by members of X are circulated as normative, obfuscating the ways in which these ideas then privilege members of X within instit