Chapter 2: Rhythm and the Possible: Moments, Anticipation and Dwelling in the Contemporary University

In a virtual dialogue with Barnett and Gibbs, this chapter attempts to theoretically and empirically ground claims about the “ineradicability of rhythm in university time” and about the nature of time and change in contemporary academia.

Thomas Docherty’s (2015) remarks in the opening of Universities at War offer, in this respect, a good entry point to the following discussion. There, the author describes a university sector globally plunged in a state of permanent crisis. Capital, it is argued, has replaced “thought” as the guiding principle of the institution. As a consequence, management and control of knowledge have colonized not only the quintessential activities of research and teaching, but also thinking and, significantly, “the ‘good life’ together” (Docherty, 2015, p. IX, Preface). This, in turn, has occasioned a “stasis,” the etymology of which – we are reminded – harks back to ancient definitions of civil unrest. For Docherty, the arrhythmia experienced in the contemporary Western university stems from an imposed regime of “continuous improvement” and “change-management” (Docherty, 2015, p. IX, Preface) whereby the social and institutional accelerations experienced within – and without – the academy (Rosa, 2013; Vostal, 2015; Wajcman & Dodd, 2016) are not matched by actual, meaningful transformations: if anything, “Inequality and injustice persist, and ignorance retains all the seductive force of myth” (Docherty, 2015, p. IX, Preface). Docherty’s claims are profoundly and fundamentally political, especially when the “official,” managerial, capitalist, authoritarian, accelerated academy is contrasted with what he dubs the “clandestine” university, that is the quotidian activities of most academics, engaged in collaborative or individual thinking, research and teaching.