Foucault News

Conor Heaney, ‘What is the University today?’, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 13 (2), 2015, 287-314

Full PDF here and here

Abstract
What is the University today? In this paper, a Foucault and Deleuzo-Guattarian inspired approach is taken. I argue that the University is, today, a site of ‘neoliberal governmentality’, which governs students and academics as sites of human capital. That is, students and academics are governed to self-govern themselves as sites of human capital. This transformation in how students and academics are governed will be identified as a recent trend through the examination of relevant UK-government reports on higher education. Furthermore, it will be identified as a trend that ‘decodes’ knowledge – in the specific sense developed by Deleuze and Guattari – which renders academic knowledge (the knowledge the student ‘consumes’ and the knowledge the academic ‘produces’) meaningless.

Keywords:
Foucault, University, Deleuze and Guattari, neoliberal governmentality, knowledge