Academia Inc. and the (culture) war

In discussions of the so-called 'culture wars', it is often the case that 'war' here implies the intrusion of polemic into the otherwise routinely civil exchanges of the universities or 'the public sphere', as distinct from war - polemos - as such. This notion of a public sphere, in which there are no real conflicts because consensus on the fundamentals has already been reached, brings to mind the idyllic space of the gentleman's club. But as with such clubs, so too with the public sphere: the illusion of a truly open and inclusive site of conversation is maintained by the systematic exclusion or suppression of those who do not accept the dominant - essentially liberal - terms of debate. In contemporary society, there is an increasing sense that the public sphere is simply not worth taking part in. Nevertheless, the use of force, polemos, as a means of controlling the actions of those who produce 'public culture', is on the increase. In a sense, the culture wars now bear the imprint of the West's actual wars: the distance between polemic and polemos has been closed. In response to this post September II situation, many intellectuals have sought to reassert the value of an idealised, liberal public sphere. Some have done this in order to reimpose a liberal hegemony, to exclude alternative voices, while others have done so due to a perception that civic engagement in this 'public sphere' brings with it minimal protections against the violence of polemos.