Standish, Paul; (1999) Centre Without Substance: cultural capital and The University in Ruins. In: Jahrbuch für Erziehungswissenschaft (Special issue on globalization). (pp. 83-104).

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Abstract

Bill Readings’ book The University in Ruins provides a powerful examination of what he calls the University of Excellence, the university characterised by performativity with its current rhetoric of quality management. Such a conception of the university, he argues, has replaced earlier forms of the university – the Kantian University of Reason and the University of Culture inspired by Von Humboldt. The decline of the nation-state and the advent of globalisation create conditions where the cultural capital of the university begins to traverse national boundaries and where a common currency is established. The university starts to look more like a transnational corporation, converting its capital to a kind of currency that can flow beyond national borders. Excellence functions ideally in such a knowledge economy. Against such a form of the university, Readings advances an account of Thought: it is the name of Thought that must be restored if education is to take place amidst the ruins that the University of Excellence partially hides. For all the power of Readings’ critique, however, his recommendations remain suggestive, even frustrating. The present paper looks critically at these recommendations and attempts to reconstruct a more robust account of what the kind of thinking Readings is concerned with might amount to. It does this in the light of the influence of Jean-François Lyotard on Readings’ work.

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