The dissociative university: Pragmatist reconstructions in democratic pedagogy

Abstract

The American university is in transition, witnessing major changes to its institutional structures and processes. While the 1960s and 1970s were decades of progressive democratization in American higher education, today’s university is more aligned with the economic theory of neoliberalism. Existing at the intersection of two dominant but contradictory cultural discourses, each with its distinct version of public pedagogy, education, and identity, today’s American university can no longer clearly articulate its ethical, political, ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic essence, vision, and mission. Its identity is dissociative, inhospitable to delineation and prescription, and it as such suffers a Dissociative Identity Disorder. This article starts by articulating the two constructs of Public Pedagogy and Dissociative Identity Disorder. It then moves to an exposition in higher education of the ethical, political, ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic contradictions between the progressive liberal democratic tradition and the economic theory of neoliberalism. The article concludes by stressing that a democratic public pedagogy in higher education should take seriously the causes and underlying symptoms of cultural dissociation, one of which is a cultural quest for foundational certainty.