Andrew Wernick

Trent University, Cultural Studies, Emeritus

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Andrew Wernick is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies and Sociology at Trent University in Canada, a Visiting Professor at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, Ukraine, and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. A social theorist, intellectual historian, sociologist of culture and sometime musician, his writings include "Promotional Culture" (Sage 1991), "Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity" (Cambridge University Press 2001), and more than sixty essays on various aspects of contemporary culture and cultural/social theory. He currently serves on the editorial boards of C-Theory, and Pensar la Publicidad. His current work is on nihilism and the sacred in late capitalism, Trump/ism, universities and intellectuals, and on the political theory of the gift.
Phone: (1) 705 748 1011 Ext.1771
Address: Cultural Studies Department Office
Scott House, Room 202
300 London Street
Peterborough ON K9H 7P4
Canada

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Books by Andrew Wernick

Auguste Comte and the religion of humanity: the post-theistic program of French social theory

Promotional culture: advertising, ideology, and symbolic expression

Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life

Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion

Papers by Andrew Wernick

59 ‘The Promotional Condition of Contemporary Culture’

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Dec 30, 2009

Marxisms

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Jun 19, 2007

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Jan 15, 2008

University

Theory, Culture & Society, May 1, 2006

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The (un)sealing of the penultimate

Academic Horizons

Theory, Culture & Society, Oct 1, 2003

ROBINS AND Webster’s edited collection The Virtual University? provides a wide-ranging and multi-... more ROBINS AND Webster’s edited collection The Virtual University? provides a wide-ranging and multi-faceted examination of the ‘seachange’, as Masao Miyoshi puts it in a key essay, that higher education is currently undergoing. As the title indicates, the book particularly focuses on the questions posed – for knowledge, teaching, learning, the professoriate, and universities themselves – by the adoption of new information and communications technologies. A number of the essays directly consider this. Cornford and Pollock examine the work involved in designing and transferring courses on line. Charles Crook illuminates the learning paradigms put in play by contemporary educational psychology. Timothy Luke reports on an instructor-generated Cyberuniversity at Virginia Tech (after all professorial desks had been seeded with Apples). Martin Trow considers what can and can’t be virtualized, and reminds us of the para-educational functions played by localized sites of higher education. David Noble tells the cautionary tale of the early 20th-century boom in correspondence courses and ‘degree mills’. Les Levidow (among others) details the emergence of a global market for virtual universities, and the role played in this by the ‘neo-liberal strategies’ pursued by the World Bank. All these contribute to complexifying the issues, helping us to avoid the simplistic terms of a discussion that too often pits technophiles against technophobes. As the whole volume makes plain, the gains and losses of cybernation vary with the context. Distinctions must be drawn between ICT enhancement of existing courses and programmes, and fully virtual courses; between computerization from below and from above; between virtualizing part of a university (e.g. extension programmes)

Images of Aging

Routledge eBooks, Sep 2, 2003

Promotional Culture

The Future of Religion

Wiley-Blackwell eBooks, Mar 1, 2010

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Dec 1, 1993

Sartre, Jean-Paul

Encyclopedia of Social Theory, Oct 5, 2012

Diremption of Spirit Postmodernism and Religion

Critical Theory and Practice: A Response to Ben Agger

Ctheory, Apr 30, 1979

Despite its limitations, Ben Agger's attempt in Dialectical Sensibility I & II (CJPST I, 1 & 2) t... more Despite its limitations, Ben Agger's attempt in Dialectical Sensibility I & II (CJPST I, 1 & 2) to provide an orientation for contemporary critical theorising has the merit of thematising most of the key issues. In the politically, ideologically and theoretically confused aftermath of the 1960's, the emancipatory project needs philosophical clarification. Any coherent metatheoretical proposal addressed to that end is indeed to be welcomed-if only as a provocation to debate. Agger's vision of how radical intellectuality ought to develop has a great deal of appeal, especially for those of us grappling with the uncomfortable antinomies of academic existence. Critical theory, emancipated from the elitisms of party and school, re-integrates itself with mass politics by identifying itself with the social and anthropological self-consciousness of actual rebellious constituencies ; at the omega point, criticism finally loses its character as a separate, specialised activity altogether and merges into the universal "dialectical sensibility" it has engendered. Unfortunately, Agger's position is vitiated by the very qualities that give it resonance. His particular distillation of early Marx, Marcuse and Freire expresses a form of self-negating moralistic utopianism that is all too prevalent in the contemporary intellectual left. Agger's recommendations deserve serious attention; their inadequacy points towards a critique of the perspectival matrix within which they have been generated, and which in my view must itself be transcended in any project of re-vitalising and re-politicising critical theory. Without pretending to be systematic, the following more specific objections to Agger are being advanced .

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