Amsler, Sarah (2011) Strivings towards a politics of possibility. Graduate Journal in Social Sciences, 8 (1). pp. 83-103. ISSN UNSPECIFIED

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Abstract

It stands to reason that critical theorists should be interested in the newest student movements working to challenge the neoliberalisation of higher education. Yet, while these politics are pushing the limits of critical knowledge about the cultivation of new modalities of radical political resistance, their theoretical significance remains marginalised within the academy. While the academic literature is replete with analysis of the long-anticipated ‘crisis of the university’, many professional responses to the most recent privatisation policies have been muted and ambivalent; or, at the very least, hopeful that the trends can be arrested or mitigated by sanctioned operations of professional critique and opposition. In this essay, I suggest that some of the recent work of student activists demonstrates both the contingency of this position and the possibility of cultivating new political subjectivities and critical-experimental modalities of resistance, within and beyond the university.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	It stands to reason that critical theorists should be interested in the newest student movements working to challenge the neoliberalisation of higher education. Yet, while these politics are pushing the limits of critical knowledge about the cultivation of new modalities of radical political resistance, their theoretical significance remains marginalised within the academy. While the academic literature is replete with analysis of the long-anticipated ‘crisis of the university’, many professional responses to the most recent privatisation policies have been muted and ambivalent; or, at the very least, hopeful that the trends can be arrested or mitigated by sanctioned operations of professional critique and opposition. In this essay, I suggest that some of the recent work of student activists demonstrates both the contingency of this position and the possibility of cultivating new political subjectivities and critical-experimental modalities of resistance, within and beyond the university.
Keywords:	neoliberalism, politics of possibility, professionalisation, student movements, the university
Subjects:	L Social studies > L370 Social Theory X Education > X342 Academic studies in Higher Education X Education > X300 Academic studies in Education
Divisions:	College of Social Sciences > Centre for Educational Research and Development (CERD)
Depositing User:	Sarah Amsler
Date Deposited:	30 Mar 2012 09:18
Last Modified:	13 Mar 2013 09:05
URI:	http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/id/eprint/4971

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