Reimagining the new pedagogical possibilities for universities post-Covid-19

Notes1 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/pandemics-coronavirus-covid19-economics-finance-stock-market-crisis/2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03772217050035773 https://www.silive.com/coronavirus/2020/03/coronavirus-cuny-suny-suspend-study-abroad-programs-in-5-countries.html4 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fhigher-education%2Finternational-students-need-support-says-qut-leader-margaret-sheil%2Fnews-story%2Fcca8ba572e08e0db2269104cf1a1e826&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium5 https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120400677/education-institutes-around-the-world-scramble-to-prepare-for-online-teaching6 https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/will-coronavirus-make-online-education-go-viral7 https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-universities-are-shifting-classes-online-but-its-not-as-easy-as-it-sounds-1330308 For more elaboration on such connections, see Papastephanou, M. (2019). Political education in times of political apathy and extreme political pathos as global ways of life. Educational Studies in Japan, 13, 81–95.9 Roy, A. Pandemic is a portal. The Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca quoted in the Call for Papers to which this commentary of mine responds.10 In the Call for Papers: ‘The COVID-19 pandemic offers us the opportunity to rethink not only new digital, online, and pedagogical possibilities but also the basic purposes of education’.11 Roy, A. Pandemic is a portal.12 Although a pandemic cancels journeys and visitations, the very term evokes them. Pandemic originates from the Greek pandemia, from pan + demos (in Greek ‘all people’) and denotes an epidemic (coming to [epi] a people [demos], a visitation) that crosses all borders, travels everywhere, shrinking space and time.13 Self-reflectively, this could also, and arguably, be the shadow of this brief commentary too, despite its style going against any possibility of viral influence and despite its effort and intention to unmask the ‘we’ as ‘masked philosophers’ being inclusive, universal and aware of the shadow enough to stave off any charge of self-exemption. Still, it is a shadow that causes me unease as to the Sartrean counter-finalities of commentaries on the epi-kaira (kairos = lived time), as topical, public, academic interventions in what, say, an epi-demic has, timely and, ironically, made more visible behind the protective masks than ever. I develop this point elsewhere.14 Call for Papers.15 Etymologically, from the Latin prae (in advance, before) + dicere (to say). https://www.etymonline.com/word/predict16 See, for instance, Giorgio Agamben’s https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-l-invenzione-di-un-epidemia [I am indebted to Prof Ronald Sultana for drawing my attention to it]. I consider Agamben’s initial reaction to corona virus measures rushed, and his applying to them his notion of the state of exception infelicitous. Agamben’s intervention, in my view, utterly modern in its tailoring reality to a (meta-)narrative masked as post-, operates as a subtext concerning some critical points that I raise in this commentary.17 Prejudice comes from the Latin prae (in advance, before) and judicium (judgment).18 Roy, A. Pandemic is a portal.19 The Call for Papers reads: ‘The clear bias against online teaching that would never match the real thing, is destined to become a thing of the past’ [The CfP refers this idea to this source: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/will-coronavirus-make-online-education-go-viral]. I have added the emphasis on the ‘real thing’ in my main text.20 See, for example, https://teachercenter.withgoogle.com/ [accessed 25 April 2020].21 The I, 25 April 2020, p. 76.22 See https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/slideshows/10-public-universities-run-by-highest-paid-presidents and https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/12/vice-chancellors-pay-universities-england-2017-18.1 socavamos la sociedad interiormente. por ésto somos subersivos [sic] y amorosos. además somos tan pequeños y desconocidos que la libertad es nuestro delirio, no sólo imaginativo. sino real….nuestro intento macabro es de ar [sic] desnudos a los humanos. sin ideas preconcebidas ni atamientos convencionales, atamientos-vestiduras. no se asusten, nuestras obras tardarán años en aparecer: no estamos jugando. la parte interior de las semillas es suave.we undermine reality from within, which is why we are subversive and loving. and being so minor and unknown means we can take pleasure in our freedom, both imaginatively and literally….our macabre intent is to leave humans naked, without preconceived notions, without conventional attachments-attire. have no fear. our works will take years to manifest. we are not playing around. the interior of the seed is soft. [Vicuña, C. (1967/2018). No Manifesto de la Tribu No/No Manifesto of The No Tribe. In C. Vicuña & R. Alcalá (Eds.), New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (pp. 248-249). Berkeley, CA: Kelsey Street Press.]2 By the late 1940s Camus was exhausted and depressed at the burden of expectations placed on him as a public intellectual: as he confided to his notebooks, "everyone wants the man who is still searching to have reached his conclusions.” From the “existentialist” philosopher (a tag that Camus always disliked), people awaited a polished worldview; but Camus had none to offer. As he expressed it through Rieux, he was “weary of the world in which he lived”; all he could offer with any certainty was “some feeling for his fellow men and [he was] determined for his part to reject any injustice and any compromise.” [Judt, T. (2001). A hero for our times. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/nov/17/albertcamus]3 Oxford Dictionary.4 Indonesian Wayang puppeteer in T. Vitale (Director). (2018, October 7, 2018). Indonesia. In Zero Point Zero Production Inc. (Executive producer), Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown: CNN.5 Koenig, J. (2014, November 9, 2014). Vemödalen: The Fear That Everything Has Already Been Done. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftDjebw8aA; (“The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of invented words written by John Koenig. Each original definition aims to fill a hole in the language—to give a name to emotions we all might experience but don’t yet have a word for. All words in this dictionary are new. They were not necessarily intended to be used in conversation, but to exist for their own sake….you can settle it yourself on your own terms, without feeling too lost—safe in the knowledge that we’re all lost.” https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com)6 Borges, J. L. (1956). “La biblioteca de Babel,” Ficciones; Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 507; Borges (1962), “Library of Babel,” Ficciones, New York: Grove Press, p. 503.7 Juniper, A. (2011). Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence: Tuttle Publishing.