Production and Politique: Establishing Academic Knowledge Production as Political

This chapter begins by exploring and defending the focus of the book on academic knowledge production and the many ways in which it draws the parameters for discussing issues of justice themselves. By moving away from epistemic discussions of knowledge itself, we can assess the social and political practices, procedures, and philosophies of academic knowledge production. The chapter moves through the harsh realities of the need to quantify the production, acceptance, and impact of academic work in reflection on the crises and discontentment with the structural under-representation of perspectives in the academy as a whole. The chapter establishes the processes of academic knowledge production as an act of power (political). This power is in turn justified through the perceived validity of an ideal concept, merit. For this reason, political theory is a helpful tool in unpacking the problems of academic knowledge production not merely in a specific instance, field, or example but as a larger social process. In seeking to interrogate the reasons and justifications for social order and applications of power, political theory is a means to levy a critique but one that is troublingly produced in and through a system it ought to interrogate.