HIGHER EDUCATION IN
CRISIS: CRITIQUING ALTERNATIVES TO THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY
Call for Papers
This is a stream of the London
For full details on the conference, see: http://londonconferenceincriticalthought.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/lcct-2013-call-for-papers.pdf
Stream organiser: Joyce
Canaan
Numerous critical authors have recently observed that higher
education is: in ‘crisis’ (Thorpe 2008); under ‘assault’ (Bailey and Freedman
2011); at its ‘end’ (Vernon 2010) or ‘in ruins’ (Readings 1996). These observations capture
critical academics’ efforts to evaluate how processes of privatisation,
marketisation and financialisation have impacted northern and southern
university systems during the past 40 years and have led to a nearly ‘complete
subordination of intellectual life to instrumental values and, most brutally,
to the measure of money’ (Thorpe 2008).
Recent resistance to government policies on university has
taken two forms: student-led demonstrations, occupations and actions and the
emergence of ‘free’ or ‘alternative’ universities. This stream seeks to explore
the latter, less explored alternatives, guided by Brown’s (2005:5) observation
that the concept of critique comes from the Greek word ‘krisis’, used to
explain the processes of ‘judging and rectifying an alleged disorder in or of
the democracy’. The contemporary meaning of critique as ‘temporal rupture and
repair’ (2005:7) contains elements of this earlier meaning; it entails and
presumes a certain urgency to reconsider and rebuild, or to create an
alternative to, that which has been torn asunder. Critique might also benefit
from insights from historical materialism. Brown (2005:13), building on
Benjamin, notes that the historical materialist reroutes ‘by rethinking the
work of history in the present, stilling time to open time’. Stilling the seeming
inevitability of the trajectory from past to present opens up the present and
past to: ‘act[s] of reclamation’, re-viewing and thereby potentially reworking
for a more emancipatory future.
Papers for this stream are thus asked to explore how
emergent alternative universities today can be seen to operate as acts of
reclamation—and might do so more effectively in future. Questions for
consideration include:
·
What perceived limits of the public university
impel a group to build an alternative?
·
Which theoretical and activist traditions inform
their project?
·
What vision(s) of critical theory and/or
historical materialism guide them?
·
What understandings of critical education shape
their efforts to overcome/avoid perceived limits to the public university?
·
What theories of radical pedagogy inform their
practices?
·
To what degree do insights from social movement
theories and practices inform their theories / practices? And, in addition,
contribute to the social movement literature?
·
What kinds of spaces do they seek to meet, teach
and act in? Why?
·
How do they negotiate problems? What theories
and practices inform these negotiations?
·
What are their strategies for reaching others as
teaching and/or researching partners and how effective are they?
·
How central is praxis to their project?
Please send abstracts for 20-minute papers to londoncriticalconference@gmail.com
with the subject as: ‘Higher Education
Submission’.
**END**
Posted here by Glenn
Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski
Online
Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
A paper on the crisis in higher education, by Glenn
Rikowski:
Rikowski, G.
(2012) Life in the Higher Sausage Factory,
Guest Lecture to the Teacher Education Research Group, The Cass School of
Education and Communities, University of East London, 22nd March, online
at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Life%20in%20the%20Higher%20Sausage%20Factory
For more on this paper, see: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/life-in-the-higher-sausage-factory-the-paper/
