Rethinking the University
In this series, we attempt to think through the structures of the modern university, from within the modern university. In the first session of this series, Debaditya Bhattacharya discussed his edited volumes The Idea of the University and The University Unthought, discussing the present, and conceptual and practical future of the university.
Routledge, 2019
What is this ‘idea’ of the university? Why does it need to be defended? Does the work of defense preclude the task of rearranging the idea itself? Drawing on these essential questions, this volume traces the historical transformations of the university in medieval Europe and explores current debates on its existence and sustenance in a neoliberal India. It challenges the liberal-humanist ‘ideal’ of academic exchange to inquire into debates on the true nature of the modern university.
Routledge, 2019
Why is it important to have a revolutionary critical pedagogy? What are the new inter/disciplinary engagements possible within the university? What will it be like to live and learn in this university of the future? Drawing on these essential questions, this volume explores the political future(s) of the university. It does not take a simplistic recourse to the tenets of liberal democracy but seeks a more engaged positioning of the university space within everyday practices of the social. It cross-examines the history of this ‘ideal’ university’s relationship with the banal everyday, the ‘apolitical’ outside and what exceeds intellectual reason, to finally question if such historicizing of the university is necessary at all.
