Fra Humboldt til Horizon

Abstract

This article examines the contemporary conditions of research through a seismographic analysis of the present, identifying a series of governing logics that shape, constrain, and recode the possibilities of research. Drawing on a critical reading of the development from the Humboldtian ideal to today's audit-and-delivery regime, the article demonstrates how research has gradually and almost imperceptibly shifted from autonomy and the pursuit of knowledge toward strategic preconfiguration, performativity, and compliance. Through six analytical dimensions – temporal logic, funding logic, writing genre, evaluation logic, researcher role, and critique – the article describes a cumulative transformation in which new demands do not replace earlier ideals but instead become embedded within and reconfigure them. The analysis argues that this development produces a form of unfreedom in which research loses both its critical language and its capacity to articulate alternatives to the very governing logics in which it is embedded. In conclusion, the article points to the need to reinvent a form of "red ink": a critical, exploratory, and experimental language capable of opening up new ways of thinking about the purposes, practices, and futures of research.