3. On public goods, cursing, and finding hope in the (neoliberal) twilight zone

Abstract

This chapter traces the predicaments of public higher education in the neoliberal “twilight zone”, stuck between neoliberal globalism and global neoliberalism (Khoo, 2017; Schuurman, 2009). Confronting a rising sense of darkness (Fleming, 2021) and dread (Goldberg, 2021), this chapter reverses the aphorism that “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness”. Cursing the darkness that neoliberalism visits on HE might be a critically generative thing to do, to surface the normative foundations otherwise occluded by a pervasive sense of dread. The chapter discusses the importance of hope, turning to gentler educational darkness and generative aspects of dark pedagogies. To dare to think about what is meant by public good, educational good or higher good requires more than the lighting of candles. It calls for energetically rejecting the cursed times that all are living through and opening the possibility of reclaiming reality.