A paradoxical academic identity: fate, utopia and critical hope

Abstract

Using a dialectical mode of exposition, I offer a reflexive sociological theorisation of the paradox that characterises my academic identity: a fatalistic disenchantment concerning the colonisation of Higher Education (HE) by neoliberalism co-exists with a utopianism concerning HE's emancipatory possibilities. I begin with a discussion of Weber's contention that disenchantment is the fate of bureaucratised modernity. This is followed by a consideration of Freire's conception of hope as a universal ontological need and Bloch's conceptualisation of the objective and subjective dimensions of hope. The significance these authors attribute to dreaming in the development of the utopian imagination is also addressed. Next, I argue that the tensions in my identity, generated by the paradox of fatalism and utopianism, are partially resolved in the practice of a pedagogy of critical hope. I conclude by suggesting that this pedagogy can only be interstitial, existing within the gaps in bureaucratised, neoliberal higher educational institutions.