Abstract

This essay traces the movement through several distinct stages of a tide of managerialism which has swept across American higher education in recent years. Managerialism, as a pervasive expression of late modernity, is understood as radically antithetical to the humanities in that it is, at root, a form of nihilism: a reduction of all values to those of interest and power, quantity and production, and the resentful insistence that everyone must adopt this view and the practices with which it is associated. In order to save the humanities from being further relegated to the sidelines of education and society, we must envision the humanities anew, in relation to the preservation and cultivation of our humanity in the environment of managerialism. The essay concludes with some suggestions as to what this envisioning might entail, and how reform might still be possible.