Naomi Hodgson

The Entrepreneurial Self

The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level of government – towards open competition, public participation, performance management based on outputs and feedback, for example – require us to understand and conduct ourselves in particular ways. In recent years it has come to feature in the way we understand the purposes of education, and ourselves in relation to it, in particular ways, and thus has become a focus of educational philosophy and theory. The term entrepreneurial in the entrepreneurial self comes not, or not only, from critical educational and social theorists, however; it is the language of policy itself. We are explicitly addressed as needing to be entrepreneurial. The focus here is on the entrepreneurial self as a particular form of subjectivation operative today. That is, the notion of the entrepreneurial self refers to particular discourses and practices according to which we are governed and govern ourselves. This self-understanding is constituted not only in and through formal educational institutions but also through many facets of our daily lives. A shift in recent decades from the hierarchical government of the nation-state to the entrepreneurial governance of late neoliberalism not only constitutes but also requires the entrepreneurial self. This will be outlined with reference to three figures of the entrepreneurial self: the parent; the citizen; and the researcher.

The Researcher and the Studier: On Stress, Tiredness and Homelessness in the University

Recent European policy has seen a shift from a concern with lifelong learning in the Lisbon Strategy to research and innovation in the Horizon 2020 programme. Accordingly, there has been an increased policy focus on the researcher who, like the lifelong learner must be entrepreneurial, adaptable, mobile, but who must also find new ways in which to develop and deploy her skills and competences and smart solutions to current problems in order to ensure sustainability. The subject position of the researcher, therefore, is not a figure distinctive to the university today, but rather one required of us all. For the excellent researcher in the university, resources exist to enable her to identify those aspects of herself that are in need of development in order to keep all aspects of her personal and professional well-being in balance, often drawn from the field of psychology. Here, rather than analysing directly the ways in which the researcher is addressed by such devices, we focus on the common experience of being in the university today. In everyday conversation, we do not describe ourselves as entrepreneurial, innovative, leading, etc., but more often as tired, stressed and not feeling at home there. Rather than taking these as impediments to productivity and aspects of ourselves requiring psychological strategies, the educational aspects of these are explored in relation to the figure of the studier, as developed from Giorgio Agamben by Tyson Lewis. The shift of discourse from lifelong learning to innovation and research in recent policy is seen to effect a further desubjectivation, a division of ourselves from ourselves.

Introduction: Reminders Assembling a Picture of Paul Smeyers

To introduce this volume, we offer a picture of Paul Smeyers as a researcher, one who clearly fits the description of the excellent researcher of the research-intensive university today. But the metrics and descriptors used to define research in this way do not capture what is educational in Paul’s educational philosophy, his approach to it, or what it has contributed to the field. Taking a selection of the Wittgensteinian Leitmotifs that have recurred throughout his work over the last four decades, we provide an (admittedly, wilfully selective) account of his work, its formative influences, and enduring relevance. We situate this within the wider context in which philosophy and history of education exist today, in a university system much changed since Paul’s own doctoral study, to pave the way for considerations that follow of the various ways in which the time and space of and for research might be recollected, understood, and defended.

Introduction: Section 3 – Revisiting Enduring Educational Debates

Debate is arguably a central aspect of philosophy. There are a number of topics, however, on which the weighing of argument and counter-argument does not reach a final conclusion, but only a temporary settlement before the issue raises itself again. Understanding the historical development of such debates in philosophy of education is crucial to an appreciation of contemporary discussions in the field of education more broadly. They are debates that seem to have been always there and that continue to challenge new developments. Each chapter in Section 3, Revisiting Enduring Educational Debates, situates the debate related to a particular topic, considers its relevance, and highlights how it continues to influence educational theory and practice today.

‘Too Busy for Thoughts’: Stress, Tiredness and Finding a Home in the University

In the focus on research and innovation in current European policy two changes of discourse are identified; one, which relates specifically to the activity of the university, is the change from speaking about academics and scholarship to researchers and research; the other is a more general change affecting the self-understanding of the individual today, the governmental shift from learning to research. Focusing primarily on the former of these changes, this analysis takes the language and practices of psychology in the support material for researchers as a starting point for a critique of the way in which the researcher is asked to understand herself. The critique takes the figure of the studier as a figure characteristic of the university in its specificity and as a way of responding differently to experiences that seem to characterise the university as it is today: namely, of tiredness, stress, and not feeling at home. The concluding section relates the analysis of this first change of discourse to the second change identified, from learner to researcher as the subject position required of us all.

The Hermit and the Poet.

The notions of literacy and citizenship have become technologised through the demands for measurable learning outcomes and the reduction of these aspects of education to sets of skills and competences. Technologisation is understood here as the systematisation of an art, rather than as intending to understand technology itself in negative terms or to comment on the way technology is used in teaching and learning for literacy and citizenship. Technologisation is approached here in terms of the understanding of literacy and citizenship as things (qualities, sets of skills) that one has. Being literate and being a citizen are brought together here in order to consider the implications of their technologisation for academic writing in the university. Drawing on the phenomenology of Gabriel Marcel the understanding of literacy and citizenship in terms of having is problematized, as is the distinction between having and being. This opens the way for a richer understanding of being literate and being a citizen explored through the figures of the Hermit and the Poet in Thoreau’s Walden. The question of what we write in the name of in the university is considered in the light of this and of a particular notion of the public.