Abstract
Drawing on struggles between academe as a place that historically
harbours critique and new public management that fosters instrumental
knowledge, I reimagine the university as a counter-space for thinking.
Initially, I deploy the work of Scott Lash to show how informational
capitalism suffocates critique. Notwithstanding, his solution of
Informationskritik resigns itself to the monism of technoculture.
I therefore turn to Jacques Derrida’s idea of the university in relation
to informationalisation. To ensure its autonomy, the university is
supplementary to society, yet associated by its reflexivity that is on
behalf of society. Finally, I invoke Michel Foucault’s notion of
heterotopia, which tracks the tendency of society to instil homotopic
spaces of sameness. Such a blueprint of the university as a heterotopia
acts as a barometer of the critical credentials of reason that is
manifest in social practices. In parallel, it carries forward Derrida’s
idea for it and resuscitates a space for critical thinking.