Mino Conte, On Governmental Reason in Educational and Research Institutions

The “power” that we intend to investigate in this paper in some of its constitutive connotations and in the ways it affects teaching and researching in the educational field, is that of “neoliberal rationality”, whose fundamental connotation is that of being a “governmental” rationality according to the formulation adopted again recently by Dardot and Laval, based on some seminal writings by Foucault. This work, methodologically, refers, as recommended by Adorno as the opening of his “Theory of Half-Education” (Theory der Halbbildung), to the necessity, to enlarge one’s viewpoint to the “extrapedagogical realities”, constituting a “horizon of connections”, that it would be first necessary to explain. As a rationality, neoliberalism tends to give form and substance not only to the action of those governing but also to the conduct of individuals among the governed. This form of governance, in fact, aims at self-governing by means of freedom synchronizing didactics and research to neoliberal rationality. Thinking education today, consequently means trying to reconstruct the preconditions for it becoming thinkable after a critique of governmental rationality in the institutional systems of learning and research.

 

Pubblicato su: Pensare l’educazione oltre le derive del presente N. 23 Nuova Serie – Anno XII 2016