Knowledge for Sale: The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education
nity from empirical verification allow myths to be ideologically appropriated by different actors for strategic purposes. The American myth of civic individualism was, for instance, important in the struggle for gay rights. The myth of individual rights, so deeply ingrained in the American ethos since the establishment of the republic, is currently used by both pro life and pro choice activists. An issue worth pursuing would be the extent to which we really believe our myths. Sometimes a myth takes the form of an official discourse to which we have to pay lip service in public while contradicting it in private as a matter of course. Whether (or the extent to which) this discrepancy between public affirmation and private contradiction is experienced as a problem is an empirical issue. An example is the myth of French resistance during the Second World War. The official position on the matter, one that was voiced by all kinds of social actors, for a long time was that most French people not only refused to collaborate with the Nazis but also actively resisted them. In private, many French people were far more skeptical; they knew that actual resistance was far more limited. Still, it was largely understood that one had to pretend as if the myth, so central to French identity, were real. Of course, this pretense could have changed some private disagreements with it, but many French people were fine with the discrepancy between public statements and their private beliefs about the resistance. And the matter was not simply one of pluralistic ignorance. Collaboration or impassivity during the war was common knowledge or at least common belief among many people. Nevertheless, in public the French or at least most of them subscribed to the myth for a long time. Bouchard ends the book writing, 'There are no societies without myths; there are only societies that ignore them' (p. 132) This reader was convinced. Knowledge for Sale: The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education, by Lawrence Busch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. 155 pp. $24.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780262036078.