TY - JOUR TI - Globalization and the Geopolitics of Knowledge: The Role of the Humanities in the Corporate University AU - Mignolo, Walter T2 - Nepantla: Views from South AB - [First paragraph:] here are two kinds of histories of the university as an institution that may help us understand the dilemmas now confronting universities in Latin and Anglo-America. Since the European Renaissance and European colonial expansion in the sixteenth century—that is, the foundational moment of the modern/colonial world—the accumulation of money has gone hand in hand with the accumulation of meaning and of knowledge. Today “historical-structural dependency” still structures the world, both economically and epistemically. If the Latin American university, as an institution, is in crisis (as is the political and economic system, from Argentina to Colombia, from Venezuela to Peru, and from Brazil to Mexico), it is obvious that the accumulation of money cannot be detached from the institutional accumulation of meaning and knowledge at the university. Economists like Joseph Stiglitz and financial giants like George Soros have been denouncing the crisis of capitalism since the early 1990s. Shortly before then, Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1987) published a booklet about the crisis of science. Is it a coincidence that capitalism and scientific practices have a parallel biography, and that they both have arrived at a critical stage, together? What are the possible futures that can be imagined from our daily practice at the university? And how can we reimagine the connections between knowledge, the state, civil and political society, and an economy that is coming apart under the guidance of market fundamentalism? In addition to exploring these questions, this essay will detail how one institution, the Universidad Intercultural in Ecuador, has responded to them in a way that demonstrates that an institution of higher education need not be subservient to the values of the liberal state, the needs of corporations, or hegemonic conceptions of “universal” knowledge. DA - 2003/// PY - 2003 DP - Project MUSE VL - 4 IS - 1 SP - 97 EP - 119 LA - en SN - 1529-1650 ST - Globalization and the Geopolitics of Knowledge UR - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/40206 Y2 - 2020/03/16/06:46:47 KW - Humanities KW - Humanities and economic value KW - Humanities and higher education KW - Humanities in Latin America ER -