I occasionally need to remind us of this, those of us at home in certain fragile theological centers where some rhizomatic discourses may have developed such resonance as to appear established. Process, ecological and feminist relationalisms continue to belong to subcultures that have evinced great generativity even as they irritate the power centers of learning. Academic power has its preferred styles of “radicality,” “critique” and “difference” that serve well to keep the intelligentsia properly divided against itself, into disciplines, methodologies, indeed into the hierarchies of separable units of identity that distribute the substance (originally ousia, “property”) of western civilization. It is endlessly versatile and adaptable, but it keeps the multitudes out of the center and out of the dominant subjects of that center. Those subjects may now vary in sexes and colors, but they tow the lines of competitive separativity. We academic progressives on the whole cause more trouble to each other than we ever do to the systems of epistemic and economic power against which we bravely posture.

The above passage comes from a blog post written by Catherine Keller for An und für sich. The post was in response to a conversation the blog was hosting about Keller’s new book, Cloud of the Impossible. It’s no secret that Catherine Keller is one of my all time favorite writers. I could read her for all of my days and be happy.

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Mixed media art above by Elise Nicol

Tags:academiacatherine kellerhigher educationpowerprocess philosophy