Power Relations between the University and Literature
Power Relations between the University and Literature

Summary/Abstract: This essay aims to illustrate how literature has had a critical attitude towards education, particularly towards the institutional university education, since the emergence of the first system of thought in favor of Reason and against myth. We will present a historicalsociological approach to see how there is a counter-hegemonic literary element in every period in the history of university education, which calls into question the games of truth and education of the university institution. To illustrate that point, we will establish a connection between Aristophanes’ The Clouds and the Socratic-Platonic thought, given that it is in the Academe founded by Plato where we can find a precedent of the universities of our days. Next, we will focus on the development of the medieval university and the appearance of the Goliards, who play a very similar role to Aristophanes’ The Clouds in relation to the institutional education. Finally, we will examine how American and European universities have been transformed by the entrance of the market and capitalist rationality in these institutions, while exposing the reflection of these changes in literature.

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