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Public opinion and many academics conceive the university as a space that is relatively isolated from social problems. Of course, this rather commonplace representation is historically justified: Humboldt used to say that academia should be isolated from political and government interests, if it was to fulfill its final goals —knowledge and culture—.The present essay, contradicting this idea, analyzes five novels: Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, Changing Places by David Lodge, White Noise by Don DeLillo, Ravelstein by Saul Bellow, and The Human Stain by Philip Roth, in order to reconstruct a brief history of American academia between 1950 and 1998 which reveals its connection with politics. The concentration of political tensions in the image of the campus also makes it possible to identify the relationship between the private and academic lives of the works’ characters.

El propósito de este artículo es reconstruir un perfil de Juan Manuel Roca, como crítico de su realidad, a partir de la interpretación de su obra. Esta noción crítica estará emparentada necesariamente con la reflexión sobre el quehacer poético presente en su creación y, a su vez, con sus otros trabajos en los que la pregunta por la función de la poesía implica un cuestionamiento a sus contemporáneos, bajo presupuestos que no excluyen ni lo ético ni lo estético.