Questioning (as) violence: teaching ethics in a global knowledge enterprise

Abstract

This article seeks to address the contemporary politics and ethics at work in the teaching of ethics in higher education. It will do so by addressing the stakes inherent in the translation of certain ‘urgent reformulations’ of teaching ethics in a contemporary Asian university, in light of a ‘demise of politics’ due to corporatisation. Using Derrida's reading of Levinas’ ideas on ethics, the article claims that the debate on teaching ethics engenders an acceleration of the ‘aporia of hospitality’. The article concludes that, since the corporate-managerial reformulation of the university as well as the call for reviving ‘real’ critical thought both labour under the mark of a growing sense of moral urgency, they are both also violent. This points to the instability of the academic institution, making the Asian university's complicity in colonialism and neo-liberalisation precisely the moment where the promise of philosophy gets intensified, thus allowing students in that Asian university to ex-propriate the European idea of justice.

Keywords:

• pedagogy
• Derrida
• corporatisation
• higher education
• teaching ethics

Notes

1. Butler (2000) for instance, makes an informed and passionate case against this ‘retreat of politics’ in ‘Ethical ambivalence’, as does Mouffe (2000) in ‘Which ethics for democracy?’.

2. This particular Asian university has emerged from earlier colonial teaching institutions and its highly politicised split from one of these effectively clamped down on the communist voices that were highly prevalent in its arts and social sciences faculty.

3. In fact, this university has gradually moved towards the North American higher education system by implementing a model based on higher semester fees, introducing the Bell curve for student grading and research/teaching bonuses, and inserting compulsory modules and tutoring for postgraduate students, in an effort to make learning more ‘vocational’.

4. Another typical example is the by now notorious Dutch–American ‘right-wing’ appropriation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's ‘liberal feminist’ politics for islamophobic, nationalistic and xenophobic ends.

5. Worth noting here is that not many in this university itself actually conceive of the 2002 shift to a ‘global knowledge enterprise’ as the demise of the ‘original’ university and its pursuit of ‘true knowledge for social justice’ – after all, in this university and its predecessors, the ideas of ‘truth and knowledge’ always already worked for Empire more overtly, while European universities could bathe in the illusion of true progress.