Rereading Lyotard: Knowledge, Commodification and Higher Education

KEYWORDS: LYOTARD, COMMODIFICATION, POSTMODERN, NEW RIGHT, NEOLIBERALISM, HIGHER EDUCATION

Nearly two decades have passed since Jean Francois Lyotard first published The postmodern condition. Following the release of an English translation of the text in 1984, The postmodern condition has been widely cited, and now no major work on postmodernism is ‘complete’ without reference to it. This paper returns to Lyotard’s concise account of the changing nature of knowledge in late capitalist societies, and reassesses his claims about performativity, commodification and the future of the university. An appraisal of the New Zealand policy scene suggests Lyotard was stunningly accurate in his predictions about many features of the changing higher educational landscape. While some commentators, following Lyotard, have announced the ‘death of the professor’ in computerised societies, others believe academics might play a vitally important role in postmodern universities. The paper provides an overview of this debate, and considers its relevance in the New Zealand context. The paper analyses the views of A.T. Nuyen — a theorist who takes the latter position — in the light of the New Zealand context, and assesses prospects for pedagogical resistance against the dominant metanarrative of our time.