Obstacles to a New Student Movement and a Democratic University: Marxist and Ideology-Theoretical Perspectives on the Relationship between Theory and Praxis in Higher Education

Abstract

This thesis considers obstacles to the constitution of a new student movement in pursuit of a democratically organized university. The issue is construed in line with the classical problem of translating emancipatory theory into political practice and addressed from a Marxist and ideology-theoretical perspective with three focal points. Firstly, a common theme across various critical and Marxist accounts of pedagogy is theoretically reconstructed and explored, namely the conception of education as ambivalently conservative and emancipatory in character. This contradiction serves as a starting point for notions of revolutionary pedagogy, but also presents itself as a threat to the reproduction of existing economic and social relations to the ruling power-bloc. In other words, there is an interest in preventing emancipatory impulses from manifesting in political practice. Secondly, the resulting insights inform an ideology-theoretical analysis of concrete practice-forms in higher education, with an emphasis on practices of academic self-governance. It is established that under certain conditions, these forms may serve as obstacles to emancipatory practice while ideologically suggesting self-rule, thereby reinforcing the defunct state of academic democracy and student and staff organizing. The ideological is conceived as one dimension and modality of domination in a larger complex of repressive structures. Thirdly, some strategic conclusions are drawn in regards to strengthening the emancipatory element of education and overcoming these obstacles in pursuit of uniting theory and practice in the university context and beyond. The thesis mobilizes a practice-theoretical understanding of Marxism, deliberations from the ideology theory of Projekt Ideologietheorie, as well as some political guidance from the revolutionary Marxist tradition, against a background of Perry Anderson’s work on the historical theory-practice divorce.