Publisher's Synopsis
1.All literary research is ... 2.Counterarguments 3.The Tricky Anteriority of Literature 4.What is the Literary Product? 5.Are These Serious Arguments? 6.Research for the Public Good 7.Joycean Lessons: Applied and Basic Research 8.Missteps 9.A Way of Arguing 10.Changes and Futures 11.Disinterestedness and Academic Freedom 12.In Bad Faith 13.Literature Can Criticise Research 14.What Literary Researchers Actually Do: Clarifying Terms 15.Disciplining Research 16.Two Notes: Public Funding and the Entrepreneur 17.A Certain Kind of Pressure 18.Away From the Monopolistic University 19.The Corporate Research that Universities Commission 20.Corporate Research and Academic Research 21.Privatisation Notes 22.Which History? 23.Neoliberal Temporality 24.The Entrepreneurial Literary Researcher 25.Literary Close Reading 26.Profitable Close Reading 27.Blue-Skies Research 28.Purpose in Literary Interpretation 29.Professional Interpretation 30.Interpretation and Object 31.Profitable Literary Interpretation 32.Academic Responsibility and Profitable Convergence 33.Positive and Negative Notes 34.Skills and Knowledge 35.Targeted Cynicism and Parasitic Authority 36.Literary and Commercial Value 37.Measuring Values in the Cultural Industries 38.Doubts 39.Modelling as Literary Research 40.On Alexander's Projects 41.Disqualifications and Qualifications 42.The Shrinking Teacher and Pedagogical AI Introduction An entrepreneurial spirit has gripped academia. The debate presented in this book is about what that means and portends for researchers, espe-cially those engaged in literary studies. Organisations or individuals are considered to be entrepreneurial when they single-mindedly pursue profits from whatever productive activ-ity they are concerned with. That is the sense in which 'entrepreneurial' is used in the following debate. This definition overlooks some of the con-ventional nuances of the term, some of its heroic flavour and upbeat charge, the social contribution and creative edge it commonly suggests. This book does not go along with such normative associations uncritically. The adjective 'entrepreneurial' has followed the noun 'entrepreneur' through several connotative shifts since its appearance in English in nine-teenth-century political economy. In his textbook An Introduction to Political Economy (1891), Richard T. Ely had paused on what was then still a relatively new term in English: The one who manages business for himself was formerly called an under-taker or an adventurer, but the first word has been appropriated by a small class of business men and the latter has acquired a new meaning, carrying with it the implication of rashness and even of dishonesty. We have conse-quently been obliged to resort to the French language for a word to desig-nate the person who organizes and directs the productive factors, and we call such a one an entrepreneur. (170) Alexander Search is an independent scholar. He has worked in several sectors of the culture and education industries that are examined here. This is his first book. Suman Gupta is Professor of Literature and Cultural History, The Open University, UK. He is the author of Philology and Global English Studies (2015) and a co-author of Usurping Suicide (2017). Fabio Akcelrud Durao is Professor of Literary Theory, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil. Recent books include O que e critica literaria (2016) and Essays Brazilian (2016). Terrence McDonough is Emeritus Professor of Economics, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland. His edited books include Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises (2010) and Was Ireland A Colony? (2005).
