Mass Intellectuality of the Neoliberal State

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

   PDF

2. The Political Potential of Mass Intellectuality

   • Nicolas Fleet

   Pages 1-30

3. The Non-bureaucratic Basis of the Bureaucracy: Universities and Mass Intellectuality

   • Nicolas Fleet

   Pages 31-90

4. The Shift of State Autonomy: From Formal Bureaucracy to Autonomous State Work

   • Nicolas Fleet

   Pages 91-121

5. The Labour of State Transformations: Public Professionals and Political Process

   • Nicolas Fleet

   Pages 123-169

6. Professional Configurations of Political Change and the Ideological Division of Intellectual Labour in the Chilean Public Administration

   • Nicolas Fleet

   Pages 171-216

7. Administration and Emancipation: Intellectual Ideals and Autonomous Action of Public Professionals of the State

   • Nicolas Fleet

   Pages 217-266

8. Conclusion

   • Nicolas Fleet

   Pages 267-289

9. Back Matter

   Pages 291-308

   PDF

This book addresses the political effects of the massification of higher education and intellectual labor in the neoliberal state. Using the case of Chile, the author argues that public professionalism emerges in the mass university system, producing excesses of knowledge which infuse the state with political purpose at many levels. The emergence of the student movement in 2011, then the major social mobilization against the neoliberal state since the restoration of democracy in 1990, provided a clear manifestation of the politicization and ideological divisions of the mass university system. In conditions of mass intellectuality, public professionals mobilize their political affinities and links with society, eventually affecting the direction of state power, even against neoliberal policy. Through several interviews with academics, public professionals, and other documentary and statistical analyses, the book illustrates the different sites of political socialization and the ideological effectiveness of the emergent mass intellectuality of the neoliberal state.

• knowledge production
• chilean politics
• chilean public policy
• student movements
• neoliberal state

“This book is a required reading for understanding the current crisis of the Chilean neoliberal state. Most studies so far highlight the role played by the massification of higher education in the anti-neoliberal protests conducted by the student movement. Fleet’s main contribution is to identify the key role played by a totally unexpected actor: a large mass of highly educated public servants, who are the product of the explosive expansion of education and for decades have also contested the neoliberal state from within.”—Patricio Silva, Professor of Modern Latin American History, Leiden University, The Netherlands


“This highly original and readable study is going to re-invigorate debates on state theory and enliven current discourses on cognitive capitalism and the knowledge economy. The author's insightful investigation of the Chilean university student and secondary school student movements is eye-opening and vitally relevant to the current struggles in Chile and all of Latin America today.”
—Stefano Harney, Honorary Professor, Institute of Gender, Race , Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia, Canada


“Nicolas Fleet shows how a mass intelligentsia grew out of a segregated education system in the world’s only truly neoliberal state. His masterly account of the bureaucracy, of education and of the clientelistic party system, offers a highly original explanation of the explosions of youth protest that opened the way to an unprecedented national consensus for the refoundation of the state in a Constitutional Assembly."
—David Lehmann, Emeritus Reader in Social Science and former Director of the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, UK

• Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez, Santiago, Chile

  Nicolas Fleet

Nicolas Fleet is Dean of Social, Legal and Economic Sciences at the Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez, Chile. He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, UK. His research focuses on political sociology and higher education.

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