Understanding the University

Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, LondonSeminar, Faculty of Education, University of Waikato, New Zealand, 1 August, 2013

Centre for Higher Education Studies

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Starting points

• A falling away• The passing of the liberal university• Privatisation; corporatisation (neoliberalism, NPM, surveillance,

measurement …)• Postmodernism; philosophy of incoherence; no stable place; just

alternative ‘lines of flight’ and ‘re-territorialisation’• A double undermining – sociologically and philosophically (and these

have run into each other – in a social theory of spaces)• Q – how now understand the university?

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Two planes (for the inquiry)

- Gap between institution and its possibilities

- Tension between particularities and universalities

(These two planes intersect)

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Idea and institution

So the university presents problems both as institution and as idea But even more problematic For ideas enter the university as an institution And a sense of the university as an institution enters ideas of it A morass of interconnected ideas and social dimensions - and on local, national and global levels (So not a matter simply of isolating ideas (matters of thought) and social

facts)

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The limits of realism

• A revival of realism• Does this help?• Bhaskar’s critical realism; Peters’ post-postmodernism• Anchors us in a real world• Talk of ‘digital labour’; ‘cognitive capitalism’• But the university keeps breaking out of its social facticity; it seems

always to be ‘more’; a ‘beyond’• (cf why do private institutions veer towards the very term ‘university’? If

‘universities’ are so impoverished, so deficient, why hang onto the term?)

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The idea of the idea

• Ideas of the university are still important but:• We cannot resort to an idea-in-itself• It has to be anchored in the real world; or at least take its bearings from

the real world• But what is to count as the real world? • And what is the relationship to be between the idea and the real world?• What kind of idea? Where does it/ should it reside?• ‘Head in the cloud but feet on the ground’?

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The possibility of possibilities

• The university now has possibilities before it• The possibility of possibilities• The idea of the idea gives rise to the possibility of

possibilities• Possibilities – projections; imaginative creations• Now the university can become itself for the first time• - and realize its utopian potential.

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The big ditch

• Not (here) idea and institution as such • But between empirical institution and its possibilities• Here enters the imagination – in identifying possibilities

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An inevitable remainder

• The university is always less than it can be• Always short of its possibilities• The concept – now imagined – opens a gap• Always a beyond• A double remainder• - between ‘reality’ and idea• - between ‘reality’ and possibilities in the future

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Beyond postmodernism

• What kind of ‘beyond’?• Complexity?• Not just multiple perspectives• Sets of contradictions within the university …• Limits to plasticity?• But/ and to imagination?• What/ where is the real; the real thing? - the idea, the

institution, their tensions, their contradictions …?

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Universities as/ in spaces

• UCL – hopes/ projects of a/the university• ‘wisdom’ as a universal theme• ‘Non-representation’• ‘Space of reason’ (Bakhurst/ Sellars)• Closing/ opening• Where is the university? It slips away, elusive• The university as (a) squid (abandon the metaphor of ‘rhyzome’!)• ‘Thinking spaces’ (Thrift) – in ‘new time-space arrangements’ – ‘spaces

of inspiration incorporating many possible worlds’• But still within a set of universal categories – is it possible?

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Textures of the university

• The perniciousness – and the limits – of measurement• Will the university surrender its possibilities – of poetry,

beauty, graciousness, hope, spirit …?• ‘The lightness/ heaviness of being …’• ‘parallax’ – ‘where the two elements never meet precisely

because they are one and the same element in two different spaces’ (like two sides of a Mobius strip) – SZ, 159

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Appearance or reality OR appearance as reality?• The event is the thing• (When I teach, how is a teaching session to be understood?)• (But) the event is unlimited• It contains within itself both the seeds of its destruction and the seeds of

its epiphany; of its transfiguration– ‘an event is nothing but a part of a given situation, nothing but a

fragment of being’. (Badiou in Zizek)– ‘what if the emergence of thought is the ultimate Event?’

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The fragile university

• Fragility suggests liable to break apart• But it also suggests something of beauty• to be treasured, vouchsafed, safeguarded• ‘.. This ontological ambiguity-fragility of the “thing itself that is difficult to express …’

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Schizophrenic university

• 1st position: The university lives in the space between its facticity and its possibilities (reality and idea)

• 2nd position: its facticity and its possibilities are not separate realms but are part of the totality of the university (its members live their (academic) lives partly through their ideas and hopes of the university)

• 3rd position: The university is both pernicious and ideal at once. The critical university gains its force by being pitted against its opposite (‘the entrepreneurial university’; ‘the corporate university’; ‘the bureaucratic university’ …). – position of inherent schizophrenia

Not the case that sunny uplands await, if only …

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On living with negativity in the university in (the company of Zizek (and Hegel))• Zizek’s idea of ‘an insurmountable parallax gap’ – two closely linked perspectives

between which no common ground is possible’• ‘a fundamental antimony which can never be dialectically “mediated/ sublated” into a

higher synthesis’ (TPV, 4)• ‘noncoincidence of a thing in itself’ (30)• ‘Universality is not the neutral container of particular formations, their common

measure … but this battle itself, the struggle leading from one particular formation to another’ (30).

• ‘… the Universal names the site of a Problem-Deadlock, of a burning Question, and the Particulars are the attempted but failed Answers to this Problem.’ (38)

• ‘For Hegel, external circumstances are not an impediment to realizing inner potentials, but on the contrary the very arena in which the true nature of these inner potentials is to be tested’. (TwtN, 142)

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The antagonistic university

• And so the university is an inherently antagonistic institution• But what kind of antagonism is this?• Is it an external antagonism – the university battling against external forces imposed

upon it?• Or is it an internal battle, the university battling against itself?• For the former, the standard reading, the battle could be resolved one way or the

other; • But for the latter, the more radical reading, (to which I want to hold), the battle is

essential; it is part of the university’s being• No internal battle; no university!• So the problem becomes one of living with this inherent antagonism

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The end of universality – or the possibility of universality?• The empirical messiness of the university; a sea of particularities• But the (Bhaskerian) ‘real’ just happens – in its globality – to be universal (global

economy/ neoliberalism/ IT revolution)• And the horizon of ideas that inform the idea of the university is composed of universal

ideas– liberty, freedom, reasonableness, truthfulness, disinterested inquiry, critical dialogue– And the idea that persons matter (even behind their particular truth claims)

• The university: a space of universal hopes/ themes• Zizek – ‘what Hegel has in mind …the inherent contradiction of the notion of form which

designates both the principle of universalization and the principle of individualism’ TwtN (135)

• Tension between this universal realm and the particularities of the university – both at institutional and at individual levels

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The authentic university

• Holds conflict/ tension together• Now, for the first time, the university can be truly radical in

containing both beauty and perniciousness• The daily round …!• Bearing in mind that there is a fundamental indiscernability

here, ‘there are no objective criteria that enable us …’ (to differentiate an authentic university from a non-authentic university, for they look very alike – at least, to conventional research techniques) SZ, 78

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Realizing the university’s possibilities

• Assembling the resources for answering the question: ‘how do we understand the gap between the ‘real’ university and its possibilities?

• A shortfall – deficiencies• The university is less than its possibilities, less than the sum of its parts

(negative energies)• (University leadership – a means of energizing the university)

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But which possibilities? Return to universality/ universalities• Competing universalities• Reason/ equity/ public/ wisdom/ ecology/ growth/ liberty• But these universals are suspect – the voices of Western democracy/ of

stillness and calm• What of exhilaration/ anxiety/ excitement/ boundary-breaking/ rule-

bending/ scariness/ hope? • And what of those siren voices – those other universals – of power/

competition/ of impact/ • Task becomes that of the adjudication of (such) competing universalities

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The liberating power of the imagination

• The liberating power of the imagination• Not to set off against ‘reality’• But to build a new ‘reality’• Tests of adequacy of imaginative ideas

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The imagining university

• But this is to remind the university (again) of its own predispositions – even though now being occluded (by outcomes, impact, knowledge ‘transfer’)

• Hence, the imagining university (cf the ‘university of dissensus’)• Calls for a new kind of leadership, concerned with the university in the

twenty-first century. (After Newman (C19), Heidegger (C20), …)• A concern for the university as such.

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Conclusions How do we understand the university? Always a gap between the university and its possibilities

But which possibilities? The more we understand, the more murky things become It contains within itself inherent antagonisms – institution and idea(s) of itself;

particularities and universalities Understanding the university turns out to be a species of

potholing - of closure/ openness; of universality/ particularity; of practice/ ideas; of lightness/ darkness; of struggle/ exhilaration.. Understanding the university is partly a political matter;

of its political (and empirical) possibilities But it is also conceptual matter, of identifying the conceptual and value horizons

against which it might move And it is an imaginary matter, of imagining new forms of the university that address

its antagonisms The university is behind us, and with us, but it is also before us;

even before itself. It is always susceptible to being re-conceived, in being born again,

and in being given new life.

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Short bibliography

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