Public scholars, legitimation, and the “subject of history” predicament

Abstract

This essay explores recent trends in contemporary educational studies that have focused on developing closer partnerships between university-based scholars and school practitioners and community-based organizers. With a focus on the antidote, as seen in the 2016 American Educational Research Association’s conference theme to recalibrate university-based education scholars as professional educational researchers in the service of the public, the author exposes how the contemporary trend, although running counter to, cannot be extricated from the Marxian problematic concerning the subject of history.

Neoliberalism, education policy and the life of the academic: A poetics of pedagogical resistance

“…Hence, there is no space for asking questions about different languages of education. Neither is there space to ‘rework or resist a set of dominant space-bounded binaries such as university/community, intellectual/practitioner, private/public, and theory/practice that are invoked quite comfortably in both contemporary mainstream and progressive education scholarship’ (Tavares, 2018: 881).…”

“…Tavares (2018) explores the positioning of the scholar in this knowledge economy, through the context of university–community partnerships and a critique of the possibility of a radical contribution to the public in a knowledge market. She asks, what does a call for a more public role for scholars of education actually mean (Tavares, 2018)?…”

“…Tavares (2018) explores the positioning of the scholar in this knowledge economy, through the context of university–community partnerships and a critique of the possibility of a radical contribution to the public in a knowledge market. She asks, what does a call for a more public role for scholars of education actually mean (Tavares, 2018)? For Biesta (2009; 2014), as for Noddings (2003), this care is addressed through the very question of purposes and aims in education – in other words, inquiring into the nature of the public role for scholars is the public role of scholars.…”

“…Can education scholars move the public toward a more just society? What unstated assumptions are being made about the social and political power of scholars in education and the knowledge of the social and educational sciences to know and to right in an imperfect world (Tavares, 2018: 880)?More than this, Tavares (2018: 880) argues that it is unhelpful to imagine higher education and higher educational research as being in any way unitary or having, in Derrida’s words, ‘one sole memory’. In neoliberalism, unity is a value associated with certainty.…”

“…In the age of knowledge capitalism, as noted above, uncertainty is a problem to be solved by managing knowledge in particular ways. This process is recognised by Tavares (2018: 882–883) as a ‘drive toward a static form of social unity or enforced consensus’ – in this context ‘forces such as discord, uncertainty, disagreement, and dissention’ are not recognised for their productive possibilities (Tavares, 2018: 883).…”