(Semi-)Academic Rants: Liberal Arts is what we make of it
Recently, I applied for a job in "Global Liberal Arts." One of the questions on the job application stated: "What do you consider the value of a BA in Global Liberal Arts to be and how would you want to shape the programme over the next three years?" At this point, I am more interested in speaking my mind than pandering to search committees. So here is an edited and incomplete version of my response, which I admit may have taken the form of an academic and political rant: “Liberal Arts” is a floating signifier: it would be absurd to assign a sui generis value to a floating signifier. Instead we can acknowledge that 'Global Liberal Arts' can be what we make of it. ‘Liberal Arts’ can serve as a throw-back to the classics and their “seven liberal arts,” or as a post-disciplinary gesture that transcends the hegemonic delimitation of systems of power-knowledge (this is not to say, of course, that the options are limited to these two extremes or that they are n