The Will to Inquiry: Scholarship under Strain

This article examines the erosion of scholarly volition under contemporary institutional conditions. Drawing on critical social theory, it argues that the strain experienced in academic life cannot be adequately explained by familiar accounts of marketization, audit culture, or performativity alone. Instead, the article develops alienation of will as a diagnostic concept that captures how the historical reorganization of academic labor under late capitalism reshapes not only the conditions of scholarly work but also the capacity to intend, sustain, and identify with inquiry. It shows how this condition is stabilized through crony academic capitalism, understood not as a deviation from market competition but as a form of academic capitalism organized through oligarchic gatekeeping, reputational dependence, and patronage. It further shows how cynicism emerges as a socially produced mode of consciousness that renders estrangement livable without overcoming it. By tracing the movement from material conditions to institutional form and subject formation, the article treats the contemporary university as a privileged site for diagnosing broader dynamics of voluntary compliance under late neoliberalism. The analysis concludes by considering the fragile conditions under which intellectual self-determination might still be sustained without recourse to programmatic or managerial remedies.