Imagining the university

Ronald Barnett Guest lecture, University of AlbertaMonday, 11 April, 2011

Centre for Higher Education Studies

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This talk

• ‘Imagining the University’• - an examination of the idea itself• What is it to imagine the university?• What is the role of/ the possibilities for the imagination?• - and its limitations

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Feasible utopias

• Identifying possibilities• Not neutral • But value-laden• Utopian – probably will not be reached• But not out of reach• Already instances embryonically visible• Empirical warrant (G&D)

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A critical project of the imagination

• Large role for the imagination• Concept of ‘the imaginary’• Taylor – building on traditions, collective sediments• Sartre – more one of building the future; of willing the future• A critical project – identified shortcomings in the present

– Articulation of imaginative concepts - critical standards

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Responsible anarchism

• The imagination and responsibility have a complex set of relationships• The imagination should, firstly, be anarchic; it should fly, unconstrained, to

envision new possibilities and to find a new language (new ‘conceptual grammars’ – Morley)

• Guided by responsibility, responsiveness to counter-values, new ideas are created, imagined; searching for a poetry of the university

• But then this imagination needs to be restrained by ‘responsibility’ in/to the real world

• The anarchic imagination has to be responsible; even poets have to live in the real world

• (This amounts to an exercise in ‘imaginative critical realism’ – being real and being critical but also being imaginative.)

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Undue pessimism?

• Unremitting bleakness of contemporary scholarship– ‘Commodification’– ‘Neo-liberalism’– ‘Quality regimes’– ‘Managerialism’– ‘Performativity’– ‘The regulative/ evaluative state’

• Not undue optimism • Believe matters could go better – grounded optimism• Positive possibilism• But what is possible? Not likely but possible• Feasible utopia – feasible but utopian. Contains a pessimism; but a muted pessimism.

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(Some) Ideas of the university

The metaphysical universityThe research universityThe entrepreneurial universityThe postmodern universityThe bureaucratic universityThe networked universityThe liquid universityThe therapeutic universityThe souless universityThe ecological university

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Reading the university

• The historic• The ideological• The actual• The emerging• The imagined• The dystopian• The utopian

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The historic university (past being)

• The metaphysical university• The civic university• The service university• The research university

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The ideological (present being)

• The entrepreneurial university – (The enterprise university)

• The accessible university (the ‘open’ university)• The European university• The global university• The postmodern university

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The actual

• The bureaucratic university• The corporate university• The marketised university• The commodified university• The capitalist university• The performative university

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The emerging university

• The borderless university• The networked university• The liquid university [Bauman]• The supercomplex university• The therapeutic university

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The dystopian university

• The soulless university• The subservient university• The selfish university• The self-important university

NB Problem – the dystopian university has already arrived (the ideological and the actual)

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The utopian university

• The anarchic university/ the iconoclastic university• The authentic university• The dialogical university• The ecological university• The translucent university• The chrestomathic university (Young)• The perverse university• The foolish university (Kavanagh)• The wise university (Maxwell)• The virtuous university (Nixon)• The theatrical university (Parker)

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Confronting the real world

• Gap between the real and the possible • To imagine is to strike for freedom • NB Heidegger – ‘to leap ahead’• But what is ‘the real world’?• Overlain with interests, always on the move• There is no ‘pure’ university• And, of course, our ideas are suspect.

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Imaginative limits

• The imagination – necessary but not sufficient condition of transformation

• Can be put to furthering pernicious features – ideological

• Can trap us into an extension of the present

• But utopias, even feasible utopias, are utopian – unlikely ever to be realised

• So a deep pessimism under the optimism

• But feasible utopias extend and deepen the level of responsibility of the university

• Since they are feasible, their failure is an ethical failure

• And so builds in some momentum for change – perhaps.

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Criteria of adequacy

- Range (theory/ ideas/ practice/ policy)- Depth (structures/ experience/ ideas)- Feasibility (power/ organization)- Ethics (flourishing – human/ organizational/ societal/ global)- Continuing possibilities/ emergent properties

Severe tests, but they will extend imaginative ideas

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The Ecological University

• Sees itself within and as part of a global ecology • Does what it can to enable the world to flourish (not just to ‘sustain’ it)• Has a care/ concern (H) for the world• Is active/ is engaged with the world; reaches into the world• Puts its knowledges to work in the interests of the world

This imaginary university passes muster against all of the tests of adequacy (previous slide)

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And what of corporate strategies?

• A form of hopeful fictions• At their best, they lift us out of the present, of the familiar• They open up vistas, hardly imagined possibilities

– Heidegger’s ‘being possible’• They confront the present and open new spaces• They are fictions because their role is not to offer specific goals but to

tell stories – ‘narratives’• They are characterised by daring, by boldness. [‘Dare to Progress’]• They are full of hope for the future, no matter how challenging the future

– which is unknown – may be.

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Conclusion

Our contemporary ideas of the university are hopelessly impoverished1 They are unduly limited2 They are propping up agendas of marketisation and surveillance and

are not seriously addressing the challenges of the twenty-first century We need to imagine the university anew We need lots of imaginative ideas – and daring, bold thinking; identifying the

best in all possible worlds: ie, utopian thinking But there is a responsibility on the imagination – to identify feasible ideas of

the university – ie, feasible utopias Feasible utopias are neither unduly optimistic nor unduly pessmistic - but hold out critical standards against which to test emerging ‘universities’

and to steer us towards positive possibilities – positive possibilism. The university just could help us towards a better world – The imagination isn’t a sufficient condition – but it is a necessary condition.

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