Re-imagining the university

Vibrant matters and radical research paradigms for the 21st century

Abstract

This paper invites a re-imagining and re-envisioning of 'the university' in its being and becoming (Barnett, 2011a, 2011b, 2013).The paper explores 'feasible utopias' (and dystopias) for the university and moves to provoke and promote 'radical' paradigms that are more inclusive of everything. The ideal of the 'ecological university' (Barnett, 2011a) is used to unfold three 'radical' paradigms that embrace object-oriented ontologies (through Actor-Network Theory), affectivity (through Non-Representational Theory) and (im)mobilities (through the new mobilities paradigm). The paradigms are intertwined and illustrated through a selection of e-learning vignettes drawn from a larger Australian university ethnographic study of four fully online postgraduate subjects to show how the various sociomaterial affective networks enact different experiences and perceptions of 'the university'. This is an invitation to dream - that we might imagine enriched accounts of the world that embrace vibrant matter(s) for 'feasible' university utopias.