Tracking the Nomadic Life of the Educational Researcher - What Future for Feminist Public Intellectuals and the Performative University?

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Elsa

The paper examines whether the liberal university is effectively dead and whether postmodern conditions can still be emancipatory for academics and educational researchers. It analyzes knowledge-based economies that commodify and manage knowledge, challenging the university’s legitimacy through postmodernist, feminist, post-colonial, and indigenous critiques and new educational instrumentalism. It asks what roles remain for researchers, their organizations, and especially feminist public intellectuals in a performative postmodern university shaped by public-private convergence.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages24

Reading Time1 h 0 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Universities, knowledge, markets and governmentalities

Information as commodity and the informational society

Debate on the future role of the university

Four positions on the university’s future

Entrenched liberal critique

Postmodern thesis and performativity

Reflexivity thesis and transdisciplinarity

Globalisation thesis and corporatisation

Tracking the Nomadic Life of the Educational Researcher: What Future for Feminist Public Intellectuals and the Performative University? Jill Blackmore Deakin University Abstract Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the postmodern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory–practice divide merely collapsed in an era of ‘new knowledge work’, or has the university just become one aspect of market states and global capitalism? Knowledge-based economies locate universities as central to the commodification and management of knowledge, while at the same time the legitimacy of the university and the academic as knowledge producers is challenged by postmodernist, feminist, post-colonial and indigenous claims within a wider trend towards the ‘democratisation of knowledge’ and a new educational instrumentalism and opportunism. What becomes of the educational researcher, and indeed their professional organisations, in this changing socio-political and economic scenario? Is our role one of policy service, policy critique, technical expert or public intellectual? In particular what place is therefor feminist public intellectuals in a so-called era of postfeminism and public–private convergence? The paper draws on feminist and critical perspectives to mount a case for the importance of the public intellectual in the performative postmodern university. Universities, knowledge, markets and governmentalities Many social theorists argue that we have undergone radical transformations in social, political and economic life in the late twentieth century marked by shifts in relations between the individual, communities, the state and markets in the context of globalisation. Have we, as Beck (1992, p. 9) suggests, been ‘eye witnesses, subjects and objects, of a break within modernity’?1 What does this mean for the future of the university and for us as academics working within the interdisciplinary field of The Australian Educational Researcher, Volume 30, Number 3, December 2003 •1 JILL BLACKMORE education, and indeed for our professional organisations. Is there a place for public intellectuals and feminists in particular to work within/against new governmentalities and organisations marked by performativity and corporatisation? Information has become a core product of commercial exchange, and the management of information a key occupational sector, together with a move from production to consumption. The informational society is characterised by ‘more and more information, and less and less meaning’(Baudrillard 1983, p. 95) . Audiences are more ‘creative and aware, more reflective and sceptical’. Knowledge, the primary rationale for the modern university’s formation, is now the centre of the economy. Calas and Smircich (2001, p. 148) comment: The moment ‘knowledge’ was positioned as a commodity in the wider context of capitalist modes of production and ‘free market’ forces, universities were to receive declining support for continuing as sanctioned sites for the production of innovations in the arts, the sciences and the professions, and still less support for continuing as places of ‘disinterested knowledge’ in the quest for a better society. Debate within the academy as to the future role of the university has centred around four positions described by Delanty (2001): 1. The entrenched liberal critique views the university as a site of cultural reproduction. The liberal left opposes vocationalism in which generic competencies supplant the generalist skills of liberal education. The right’s opposition to cultural studies, feminism, and multiculturalism rests on the defence of the traditional culture of the canon that is elitist and patriarchal, a deeply conservative strong humanism based on the arts and high culture. Both advocate a universal humanism that depicts postmodernism as producing an ‘absence of values’(Barnett and Griffin 1997, p. 60) . 2. The postmodern thesis foresees the end of

FAQs

What key question does the paper raise about the university and emancipatory possibilities?

It asks whether the liberal university is dead, whether the postmodern university can be emancipatory, and how theory–practice relations change under new knowledge work and market-state conditions.

How does the paper describe the impact of knowledge-based economies on universities?

It argues that universities are positioned as central to the commodification and management of knowledge, while legitimacy for the university and academics as knowledge producers is contested through multiple critical claims.

Why does the paper emphasize feminist public intellectuals?

It uses feminist and critical perspectives to argue for the importance of the public intellectual in a performative postmodern university, and to clarify what space feminist public intellectuals have amid postfeminism and public–private convergence.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Elsa