Today at the “Student Forum” discussing the glowing technofuture of the 21st century curriculum at Mills College there was something fundamental mentioned twice, but only in passing – a driving assumption behind the proposed curricular “revisions.” As the reader may know, these “revisions” include proposals to close the American Studies and Book Arts programs and eliminating the Dance major. It is worth trying to consider the total implications of the proposed changes, but that is not what I will do here (nor does any of us have the capacity to do that alone). What I will do is address the driving assumption and my understanding of some immediately relevant context surrounding that assumption.
The assumption is this: the college needs more students. There were two reasons for this articulated today by the administrators conducting the forum, one of which is radically misleading, the other of which is insane in the exact same way that capitalism is insane and this is because it is precisely the insanity of capitalism we are dealing with.