What comes after the ruin? Designing for the arrival of preferable futures.
Rikke Toft Nørgård, Aarhus University
7th April 2022, 1-2pm
Abstract
In The University in Ruins (1996) Bill Readings argues that the university has outlived its purpose. In recent decades, the rise of rankings, managerialism and the neoliberal university determined by market criteria, the university is, if not a ruined institution, then at least a somewhat unkempt or broken-down institution. The present university today is governed by administrative and accounting strategies and techniques which has transformed it into a globalizing, bureaucratically-administered, transnationally corporate university (LaCapra, 1998). Perhaps, a university in ruins is more akin to a modern-day glistering glass-monolith corporation than a withered gentle ruin in the woods. However, even though Readings pinpoint ‘Thought’ and ‘Dissensus’ as potential ways forward (Readings, 1996), he has less to offer when it comes to methods and practices for designing and materialising a future university beyond the ruins. Reading’s central question: ‘How are we to reimagine the University, once its guiding idea of culture has ceased to have an essential function?’ (Readings, 1996, p. 119), both acknowledges the current ruined state of the university, and poses the question of how to work positively and productively among those ruins. But the imperative question of how to actually do this through designing for the arrival of more preferable and ‘unruined’ futures for the university is left somewhat unanswered. There are no blueprints or building instructions for an envisaged future university to be found amongst the ruins. And no concrete methods or processes for how to materialise such unknown mythical beings.
As a response to Readings’ ruinous university, and the widespread lamenting of the present state of the contemporary university, this talk presents a possible framework for imagining and manifesting more preferable future institutions, systems or forms of governance in the form of materialised ‘feasible utopias’ (Barnett, 2018). This is done in four steps. Firstly, speculative design is introduced as a way of working with the deliberate materialisation of imagination and possible futures that can help us design for the university after the ruin. Secondly, collective visioning and the futures cone are presented as methods for widening the field of possible futures for the university and for visioning preferable future universities. Thirdly, the concepts of hopepunk and imagination are introduced as an opening framework for daring to hope for more preferable futures. And lastly, design fictions and design probes are touched upon as two concrete future-making strategies and techniques for moving the future university into the present in the form of materialised mini-unitopias.
Biography
Rikke Toft Nørgård is Associate Professor in Educational Design & Technology at The Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, where she is also Steering group member of Centre for Higher Education Futures (CHEF). She is elected board member of the international Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society (PaTHES) and elected board member of the national Danish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education (DUN) where she is also Co-leader of the DUN-SIG on Digital Pedagogy & Learning in Higher Education. Dr. Nørgård’s research focuses on the complexities, challenges and potentials of education, design, technology and philosophy in relation to the future of higher education and the university.
The talk build upon my book chapter in the upcoming book “Transformation of the University: Hopeful futures for higher education” coming out on Routledge April 26th.