Higher education, violent modernities and the ‘global present’: the paradox of politics and new populist imaginaries in HE

Abstract

ABSTRACT Higher Education (HE) constitutes a space that calls urgently for new understandings in the contemporary political moment. One way of establishing such an understanding of HE is to consider more fully the work of political theorists in relation to questions of power in the modern nation-state, particularly as these impinge upon the key problem of the rise of populism in the twenty-first century. In this task, I argue that a productive conceptual approach is to be found in the recurring idea of political paradox in the political philosophy literature, an idea which I utilize to explore the role of conflicted national politics, moralising state practices, and scientific rationalities in reconfiguring the governing rationales of HE. While most definitions of populism are remarkably consistent, the underlying reasons, processes and contextual particularities amongst institutions and groups are contested. Importantly, this definition cannot therefore suffice on its own in comprehending the place of populism in HE. Rather we need to conceptualise HE as an experimental ‘problem space’ (Scott 1997, 2004). Fundamental to this problem space are the political paradoxes that inhere within the aspirations of liberal democracy globally, within nation states, and within liberal institutions such as the university. In this paper, I engage the work of political thinkers who have sought to understand the role of modern nation building, the changing features of modern power and authority, and the rise of bureaucracy and technocratic rationalities as they impact upon political institutions – in this case, how they impact particularly upon HE. I draw chiefly from Hannah Arendt, Bonnie Honig, Chantelle Mouffe, Etienne Balibar, Frederiche Nietzsche, Michel Foucault and Achilles Mbembe, amongst others, to articulate the paradox that concerns us – to consider how and why populist strains of national and transnational governance may find a home in HE as a consequence of unresolved and contradictory political dilemmas and conflicts. Importantly, in this context, the paradox of politics in HE is not necessarily the naming of a discrete conflict between two political logics or the process of a mass movement seeking to overtake HE in the name of a popular constituency. Rather, it involves a highly complex set of forces – emerging out of the bureaucratic machinery of modernity and the fundamental paradox of liberalism itself - that positions the university as a testing ground for the tasks of politics and governance, particularly in relation to state crises, crises in knowledge making and in critique and geo-political conflicts.