ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that rethinking academic work and politics is an opportunity to rebuild the university from the ashes of modernity just in time for the apocalypse. With reference to the evaluation of former East German historians, academic politics is not embedded in the processes of inventing justifications for (re)structuring the former East German university system. Inventing justifications, rationales, logics to legitimate certain practices while ignoring or erasing alternatives is a part of academic work. The "market" as a form of self-regulation became a mechanism that controlled human action, while policy makers and academic leaders were neither perceived to be responsible nor held accountable for their (non)actions in the creation of positions. Whether the "market" is seen as an ideological tool or a self-regulating device, it is important to see academic politics within a wider context of what Andrew Ross calls a "discourse of limits," or scarcity.
