The Space of Bad Faith

Abstract

Provoked by Ananya Roy’s activist lecture tour, this essay questions the efficacy of academia’s social critique and the notions of agency and vocation that emerge therefrom. Moving from Roy’s reinterpretation of liberalism and Marxism to an appraisal of academic space as a faithless one shorn of its intended social and urban impact, this essay wonders out loud if academic production is too safe a space when it comes down to the political. Academics are necessarily involved in the production of sociopolitical conditions which are the subject of academic criticism. Rather than disavowing their connection to the nation state, academics should acknowledge their role in it. Taking cues from popular culture, this essay polemically prods scholars toward a discomfiting disengagement from the academic comfort that may stand in the way of difficult engagement with the world beyond academia. Aspirational as this is, the hope is that the practice of humbling (self-)honesty short-circuits to a hubristic heroism, mortal as that may be.