In and Beyond the Now: A Postscript

Abstract

We never would have imagined a world so changed, such an uncertain and precarious future, nor such a watershed as 'now' has become. The responsibility of this time weighs heavily on the academy and the disciplines within it by implication. In this chapter we assert that historians are known to embrace interdisciplinary thinking and critical epistemologies, and to stretch boundaries and are therefore well placed to forge ahead into an uncertain future.We never would have imagined a world so changed, such an uncertain and precarious future, nor such a watershed as 'now' has become. Barnett (2020) tells us that 'From now on (the first quarter of the twenty first century) the world falls into two temporal categories, BC and AC -before Coronavirus and after Coronavirus'. He asks us to consider the interconnectedness of the world, humans and technology, economies, nations, values, knowledge systems and surveillance, and of course, he argues, 'implicated' in them all, is the contemporary university (Barnett, 2020). With interconnectedness comes vulnerability and if COVID-19 has done anything, it has exposed those vulnerabilities and created fissures, pauses and folds for reflection. Barnett ends his blog post with the stark announcement, that this is the time for 'a completely new theory of the university.' 'All has to be rethought', he declares. Barnett and Bengsten (2017, p. 8) even call specifically for epistemologies to be reconceptualised and argue for a 'speculative epistemology'. 'We suggest', they say: