To cite this article: David R. Shumway (2000) Fetishizing fetishism: Commodities, goods, and the meaning of consumer culture, Rethinking Marxism, 12:1, 1-15,
A new form of intellectual authority and professional status has emerged in literary studies since the 1970s. Although some scholars have always been more influential and famous than others, only recently have such scholars been constructed as stars in the media and in the profession. This star system, similar to the one that flourished in studio-era Hollywood, makes leading scholars into personalities. It is related to the growth of the conference and lecture circuit and to the rise of literary theory. Although this system does not necessarily reward the wrong people, it does contribute to the public delegitimation of the discipline.
Neoliberalism has since the 1970s had a significant negative impact on higher education in the U.S., but this ideology and political program is not solely to blame for the current situation of the humanities or the university. The American university was never the autonomous institution imagined by German idealists, but it was rather always strongly connected to both the state and civil society. Many of the cultural currents and social forces that have led to the reduction in public spending on higher education and to lower enrollments in the humanities long antedate neoliberalism.
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