Pluriversity and subversity, let’s see them?

Is writing in Spanish, French, English, Arabic, Chinese or Japanese a sign of a colonised mind? Is reading in any of those languages a sign of an infection of colonialism? Is directing Oedipus Rex in English by a Sri Lankan professor, in a Ghana, university a sign of damning colonisation? Was Ludowyk, when he directed Androcles the Lion in the University of Colombo, trying to colonise young minds? Is listening to Schubert or Stravinsky an act of a colonised mind? Is writing in Pali to a Sinhala audience in the 21st century an antidote to colonised minds? What is a colonised university and what is a de-colonised one? What comprises decolonized education and pedagogy? One is grateful to Professor Andi Schubert for permitting even a man outside academia to raise these questions. Oftentimes, the writing on these subjects is so dense and mind-boggling that one dares not touch it but with an extra-long barge pole.

I am still confounded by the use of the terms ‘pluriversity’ and ‘subversity’ attributed to Boaventura (is an n missing?) de Sousa Santos (whom I have not read) in last Wednesday’s The Island. The term university, that we use, is mediaeval Latin in origin. When the Pope issued a Bull addressing ‘universitas vestra’, he was addressing the collective of students and teachers to whom he gave a charter establishing a universitas generale, the progenitor of modern universities. The Pope established a teaching institution with its own privileges and rights and still there are echoes of that autonomy in running universities. The university, in structure, still is a mediaeval institution. There are rectors, vice-chancellors, faculties, departments, professors and lecturers as there were in Bologna, Montpellier, Oxford or Wittenberg. US universities have a system of administration headed by a President but a Provost, Deans, Faculties, Departments and Professors carry on the functions of a university, regardless. Derek Bok, a distinguished President of Harvard, gave currency to the term multiversity to recognise the multiplicity of functions carried on by universities in the US in contrast to the practices common in Europe. The term has not been in use now for almost a half-century. Universities whether in Nsukka, Montevideo, Yokohama, Wollongong or Walla Walla have been able to accommodate changes in university life across the world and centuries. It is now more than 1,000 years since the first universitas generale was founded. Universities have been able to accommodate within their structure the incredible expansion in knowledge from the quadrium to natural and moral philosophy. For someone who mastered a discipline in the humanities 30 years ago, it is impossible now to step into a classroom with confidence. It is not simply that what was taught has drastically changed during those years but that the methods of learning, research and teaching have undergone change. Yet the university has not changed.

Then why pluriversity and subversity? For effect? Silly, isn’t that? By all means, engage in ‘challenging the continued functioning of capitalism and colonialism in pedagogy and intellectual production’ and succeed. But forgetting the origin of the term university is no promising way to do that. Karl Marx challenged the whole caboodle of the superstructure of knowledge in capitalist societies to great effect. Universities teach and research on the lines that he showed us more than 150 years ago. It is true of the great work of Michel Foucault; he worked at one of the oldest universities in the world. We also find that societies that claim to be communist have universities no different in structure from those in capitalist societies. It may be written in Cyrillic but the structure of a university in Moscow is no different from that of Charles X in Prague. In Hanyu, it is Beijing da xue or Tsinghua da xue, but in structure, they are no different from Northwestern University in Chicago.

What’s in a name? If you want to subvert the ‘continued function of capitalism and colonialism in pedagogy and intellectual production’, go ahead and do it. If it comes soon enough, I would enjoy the fun.

Old Fogey