The cultural battle over knowledge: paradoxes of useful science and the neoliberal assault on the commons in Argentina

Abstract

This article analyzes the neoliberal assault on the social sciences and the humanities in Argentina as part of a broader cultural battle. Countering the official narrative that discredits knowledge without market value as useless, it reveals the paradox of a critique emanating from the hegemonic currents of Economics, thereby exposing a political project that seeks to naturalize the market as the sole criterion of legitimacy.

This work traces the continuous defunding of public universities and science and technology agencies, alongside their discursive delegitimization, from the Cambiemos government to the current administration of La Libertad Avanza. It argues that these attacks are not novel but are embodied in abstract universalisms and the Eurocentric matrix of modernity, which has historically hierarchized beings, forms of knowledge, and practices.

Based on the framework of the cultural battle (a concept appropriated by key figures such as Agustín Laje, one of the main "intellectuals" of Javier Milei's government), it demonstrates that the ultimate objective transcends economic adjustment: it is, primarily, a systematic attack on the public production of knowledge and what is common, seeking to erode the symbolic and material foundations of critical thought.