After-postmodern University and “1968”

Humbolt started the Modern University when he founded the University of Berlin in the beginning of the 19^th century. It was the “University of Culture”. In the second half of the 20^th century emerged the Post-modern University or, as Bill Readings used to say, the “Post-historical University”, and also as he wrote, the “University of Excellence”, that replaced the University of Culture. According to Bill Readings, the students’ French movement of 1968 was ambiguous between the former two models of University: the Ancient University and the Modern University. They did not want the oldest model or the modern one. In a certain way that movement helped to establish the University of Excellence: a kind of excellence that has no center point for the university except “the excellence itself” instead of the idealistic aim of Culture for the former Modern University. Felix Guattari was enthusiastic for the movement of 1968, but he became disappointed after the eighties, because he saw that cultivation of “subjectivity” was not valorized and he adverted that if someone do not take care of its own subjectivity, “something” outside would have power over it. So, he used the term “ecosophy” to explain an idea of ecology of the external but also the internal environment inside the human being. Readings just lived until the apex of Postmodern Era and he saw in the University something happening similar to what Guattari thought about subjectivity. They both did not see the coming of the After-postmodern Era and the weakness of pragmatism, efficiency and Excellency. Toward the University goes one cannot say, but it is neither “modern” nor “postmodern”… Maybe the after-postmodern model could come from theories and practices of transdisciplinarity and complexity.        

After-postmodern timing

20^th century`s Sci-Fi could not imagine mobile phones… At those days people imagined several kinds of complicated machines for everything, but not some so simple and, at same time, so complex as a mobile phone. Maybe “The Jetsons” approached something similar with that “talking watch”… But nothing as a small computer shooter talker photographer library etc. etc. that you can carry inside your pocket.

This great invention, maybe one of the greatest in history of mankind, brought even a kind of new step for democracy and citizenship… How many people can achieve information of the entire world and, at same time, can communicate anything…

But, everything has, at least, two sides… So, mobile phones also changed the human timing… People are forgetting patience, forgetting to wait, to wait for anything… to be far from anything… to be unwired… “Unplugged”… So the only time is now and in a not poetical way, or even philosophical…

This one of the greatest after-postmodern paradoxes.

      

After-postmodern University – Part 4

The postmodern period can be divided in two parts: the first from 1950 to 1989 and the second from 1990 to 2008 approximately. Historical periodization is not exactly determined. The transition between eras is a blurred zone. So, some characteristics of the precedent period can persist in the next.

When Bill Readings writes about University he is in the nineties of the 20^th century. At this time, postmodern ideas and practices were in the apex, with the so called “excellency criteria” cited by Readings as the main target of that institution. He criticizes that criteria and sees the “modern University”, from the modern era, lost in its original meaning as a focus of Culture linked to nation-state; with the economic “globalization” of the end of the 20^th century, the nation-state was weaker more and more.

With the end of the postmodernity, globalization became weaker and entered in a new step that we do not know yet where it will go. The nation-state regained a new form that we also do not know where it will go.

In that way, after-postmodern University is not anymore in that entire “excellency standard” even with the continuing use of that word in international rankings. Nevertheless, current internationalization of university is not quite the same as the former “globalization”; that internationalization can be seen under the net and complexity theories.

Maybe the after-postmodern University could have some mixed characteristics of modern and postmodern universities, looking for a kind of “Humanized Excellency”.   

   

After-postmodern University – part 3

Bill Readings wrote that the “modern” University founded by Humbolt in the beginning of 19^th century had “Culture” in its center and had relation with the creation of the nation-state. In postmodern times the University became a bureaucratic institution and, instead of Culture, “Excellency” was the main reference to evaluate University. The modern University of Culture worked around ethnicity and the construction of the nation-state. The postmodern University of Excellency was a space where administrators became more important than the professors, functioning more as a corporation intended “to sell its products”; excellency was something not related to anything except “excellency itself” in a world with weaker nation-state and stronger “globalization”. Readings thought that postmodern or posthistorical University became something empty of meaning, like a kind of “University in ruins”. So, in after-postmodern times, with “the end of efficiency” and interrogation about Excellency, will the pendulum of history bring the modern University back, or something new and different is coming?     

After-postmodern University - part 2

In the Introduction of The University in Ruins, Bill Readings writes that “the University no longer participates in the historical project for humanity that was the legacy of the Enlightenment: the historical project of culture”. So, he asks if it is a new beginning or an end of the social function of the University, in a kind of “postmodernity” of the University. In that way, he cites the emblematic book The Postmodern Condition, by Jean-François Lyotard, where “the question of the postmodern is a question posed to the University as much as in the University”. Readings prefer to use the word “posthistorical” rather than “postmodern” to the contemporary University, because it is an institution that keeps itself existing beyond its own historical identity. He do not agree with some kind of “more modern” University than the modern one, that could be the argument for a postmodern University.

Anyway, in the end of the 20^th century Readings saw that posthistorical postmodern University in the ruins of its cultural function. Now, in the second decade of the 21^st century, what can we think about a “after-postmodern” University? 

After-postmodern University

University is an institution whose origin was in Middle Ages. Its configuration and purposes changed from time to time and in the beginning of the 19^th century it followed a “modern” model associated to the establishment of the state-nation, with some characteristics of the emergent science. That modern model became different in postmodern era.

In the book “University in Ruins” (posthumous publication – 1996), Bill Readings argued that the University with strong cultural tendencies became controlled by consumerism and international bureaucracy, where the administrators were more important than the professors; everything under the so called “globalization”. The aims were excellency, quality, efficiency, and other similar impressive words all conditioned by that consumerism and bureaucracy. So, university lost its cultural finality.

We can add to it the weakening of subjectivity. Guattari wrote that if one cannot take care of its own subjectivity, other will do it instead and inner freedom of each one can be lost.

In after-postmodern times it is all mixed: modern and after-postmodern conditions together with the end of the efficiency in the productive sense of the end of the 20^th century. After all, young people are questioning what kind of job they can take after years of study, or maybe they do not feel anymore that the university can bring meaning and understanding of life in full sense.

At the same time, the university expanded in the virtual space and achieves much more people in the world, although subjectivity is something more difficult to cultivate far from some kind of mentor…

The university in after-postmodern times is an opened question looking for after-postmodern paradigms.

The five pillars of Third Industrial Revolution of Jeremy Rifkin

Jeremy Rifkin wrote that the third industrial revolution has five pillars that are connected each other and need to come all together:

1 – Changing for renewable energy.

2 – Local micro generators of energy.

3 – Storing of energy in all buildings and constructions.

4 – Sharing of energy among those “small” generators.

5 – Change the transporting vehicles to a kind o energy source that can be exchanged in a net of energy.