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Academic Dystopia: Knowledge, Performativity, and Tertiary Education

Jean-François Lyotard’s classic work, The Postmodern Condition, was first published in 1979 and has been available in English translation since 1984 (Lyotard 1984). Intended as a ‘‘report on knowledge,’’ The Postmodern Condition has gained a wide readership among critical policy analysts with an interest in universities and research. It is not hard to see why the book has been so influential. The Postmodern Condition provides a highly prophetic account of sweeping changes in key areas of economic, social, and educational life. Lyotard identifies fundamental shifts in conceptions of the nature, function, and status of knowledge that would become clearly evident both within and beyond the confines of the academy. His concept of performativity explains a mode of thinking that has become cemented in the bureaucratic mind and embodied in institutional procedures and priorities. His comments on computerization foreshadow the emergence of the Internet as phenomenon of profound cultural significance in the last part of the twentieth century. Finally, in his discussion of the shifting role of the state and the rise of multinational corporations, Lyotard depicts a possibility that has become a now taken-for-granted reality in many parts of the world. Lyotard did not frame his work in terms of the organizing themes of utopia or dystopia, but The Postmodern Condition lends itself readily to analysis from such a perspective. With so much having been written about Lyotard, and The Postmodern Condition in particular, it can be helpful to focus on a quite specific context as a means for making some broader theoretical observations. This will be my task in the present article. I examine developments in tertiary education and research policy in New Zealand, paying particular attention to the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) as an example of performativity, competition, and the commodification of knowledge in action. (In New Zealand the term tertiary education is employed to cover all postsecondary educational institutions and organizations, including universities, polytechnics, and private training establishments.) I argue that the trends evident in changes under the PBRF constitute a form of academic dystopia. The article begins with an overview of Lyotard’s The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 35:27–43, 2013 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1071-4413 print=1556-3022 online DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2013.753757