Paper short abstract:

The paper narrates a wave of student protest at the Bolivarian University in Venezuela. It speaks of the difficulty for students of radical professors to frame their own independent and more radical critique, and the general impasse of critique in post-revolutionary contexts.

Paper long abstract:

The paper deals with the dynamic of protest on the Bolivarian University of Venezuela (UBV). UBV was designed by Chavista intellectuals, former student movements members under the Venezuelan "Fourth Republic". Professors were disappointed their own students did not inherit their radical tradition. Yet, when in 2008/9 UBV faculty were challenged by the emergence of a new UBV student movement, they were all but happy and negated the radical potential and claims of the movement. Under the critical gaze of faculty, who have the credentials of radicals under a more repressive regime, students slowly watered down their critiques to fit within the framework of the Revolution. Contextualizing this wave of protest within the Venezuelan and global history of student protest, I claim that it discloses the imminent paradoxes of internal critique in post-revolutionary contexts. It also shows the challenge of traditional institutions - as universities - to serve as locus of radical reform.