The implicit epistemology of metric governance. New conceptions of motivational tensions in the corporate university

ABSTRACT

This article aims to develop enhanced conceptions of the motivational drives that may be imperilled by their encounter with new forms of governance in higher education. Of particular concern are the motivational drives behind creative scientific pursuits associated with the humanities, and their vulnerability in the face of metrics governance and audit culture. I argue that the notion of the ‘motor’ of desire that underpins much social theories, including the Bourdieusian I draw on here, offers powerful accounts of the desires leveraged by metrics governance. However, they are less suitable for understanding the motivational drives that are curtailed in their encounter with the audit culture. I therefore suggest that an object-relational notion of the motor of the desire, a ‘desire for resonance’, could refine the Bourdieusian practice theory and yield enhanced conceptions of the motivational tensions in the corporate university. I suggest that these conflicts are not primarily concerning agents’ positions in the field and their relative acquisition of prestige and recognition, but rather conflicts among different modes of employing and directing human energies in the academic field and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• assessment
• Bourdieu
• academic governance
• corporate university
• Bernstein
• metrics government
• winnicott
• psychosocial

Introduction

New forms of governance – the use of audits, performance indicators, global rankings and bibliometric assessment methods – have instigated more market-oriented forms of competition in higher education, designed to channel activities and resources to optimise predefined ends. My aim in this article is to develop an enhanced conception of the motivational drives that may be imperilled by their encounter with these modes of governance. Of particular concern are the motivational drives behind creative scientific pursuits, the ‘imaginary significations’ (Castoriadis, 1987) that seek to retrieve, while producing, the ‘shared meanings’ that envelope and shape subjectivities (Moutsios, 2013). Though such epistemic inquiries might be prototypical for basic research in humanities (see e.g., Collini, 2017; Nussbaum, 2010; Sakhiyya & Rata, 2019), what is at stake here is the more general drive towards formation and creation of meaning: the desire to ‘know the unknown’ (Bernstein, 2000). This drive involves an embodied longing for an investment in, and attachment with, the world characterised by complexity (Keller, 1983; Knorr Cetina, 1999; Loewald, 1988; Lund & Tienari, 2019). Regardless of disciplinary location, such epistemic orientations towards attachment and complexity appear particularly endangered by current modes of epistemic governance (Collini 2017; Sakhiyya & Rata, 2019).

There is by now a large body of literature that describes the profound impact of these new forms of governance on re-shaping academics’ conditions of thought (Shore & Wright, 2000, p. 57). Effects on practices, relations and subjectivities within higher education are typically described as detrimental, e.g., threatening academic autonomy (e.g., Blackmore, 2021; Collini, 2017; Moutsios, 2012; Nussbaum, 2010) and perhaps leading to ‘the death of the public university’ (Shore & Wright, 2017). While some academics are able to ‘switch’ between satisfying the metrics and what they describe as their ‘real’ research activities (Rowlands & Gale, 2019; Ylijoki & Mäntylä, 2003), or can ‘afford to ignore’ the metrics (Rowlands & Wright, 2019), many report severe impacts on creativity and well-being (Burrows, 2012; Gill, 2009; Sparkes, 2007). Often lacking in such critiques, however, are explicit conceptions of the motivational drives, linked to practices, relations and subjectivities, that are disturbed or curtailed by these metrics (but see, Moutsios, 2013; Lund & Tienari, 2019 for exceptions). These are mainly noted indirectly and without elaboration, for example, by alluding to academics’ experiences of ‘continued attachments’ (Decuypere & Simons, 2019) and ‘timeless time’ in the creative process (Ylijoki & Mäntylä, 2003), involved in the ‘real [academic] work’ (Shore, 2008, p. 291) that academics seem to do less of in the contemporary university. But the ‘motor’ that drives these practices is largely left unexplored. This constrains the critical analyses, leaving them susceptible to charges of romantic nostalgia when faced with the ‘new’ and apparently ‘rational’, ‘transparent’ and ‘democratic’ technologies of the audit culture (Shore, 2008).

I suggest that the impasse in critical conceptions of the current modes of governance can be traced back to the notion of ‘the motor’ of desire that underpins many critical social theories, including the phenomenological conception of Bourdieu’s practice theory that I draw on here. The motor typically referred to is ‘a desire for recognition’. Faced with the current modes of governance that leverage exactly this desire to seek fame and recognition in order to optimise predefined ends, it is vital to develop conceptions of the motivations involved in creative scientific pursuits that do not derive from the desire for intellectual prestige. The purpose of this article is to offer a suggestion for how we might theorise just that.

In this pursuit, I draw upon and further develop a phenomenological conception of Bourdieu’s practice theory (Atkinson, 2019; Crossley, 2001; Frère, 2011; McNay, 2004). Bourdieu’s theory of practice has been usefully applied to explore how governance by market competition intensifies tensions between different logics of practice within the academic field (Collyer, 2015; Rowlands, 2018; Rowlands & Gale, 2019; Rowlands & Wright, 2019). Here, I suggest that the phenomenological notion of bodily and emotional modes of ‘being invested in the world’ applied in this literature could be further developed along another conception of drive: the object-relational notion of the desire for resonance: an urge to bridge inner longings and external realities (Loewald, 1988; Winnicott, 2018/1953) that energises creativity and ‘the work of imagination’. This leads me to suggest that the mode of being invested in the world that emerges by engagement in creative scientific pursuits depends on an intrapsychic dialogue with primary experiences, characterised by fewer demarcations between the ‘I’ and the world (Ferrara, 2019; Loewald, 1988). Contemporary academic governance promotes a particular logic of practice in which the human need for recognition is channelled towards optimization in accordance with standardised performance indicators. As such, this mode of governance obstructs the desire for resonance and the related experience of vulnerability.

The next section describes how current modes of governance channel human energies toward economic logics by employing subjective drives, specifically the desire for recognition. I then present the phenomenological development of Bourdieu’s practice theory, suggesting that this strand of thought will be further enhanced by employing the object-relational notions of drives and the desire for resonance. I argue that this development supports an enhanced understanding of the practices involved in creative scientific pursuits. This then allows me to theorise conflicts among different practices. The conflicts in question are not primarily those concerning agents’ positions in the field, and their relative acquisition of prestige and recognition, but rather conflicts among different modes of employing and directing human energies in the academic field and beyond.

Metrics governance and the transformation of motivational drives in higher education

Regional, national and institutional particularities aside, academic knowledge production is increasingly organised in accordance with market-driven rationalities (Slaughter & Leslie, 2001). Following the example of their Anglophone counterparts, universities throughout Europe have become increasingly accountable to public funding agencies during the last two decades, with a formalised focus on outputs and strategic management of human resources to optimise productivity and the effective use of resources (Wilsdon et al., 2015). According to the European Commission (2011) the overall purpose of higher education is to make the European Union the most ‘competitive knowledge-based economy’ (Moutsios, 2012, p. 5). New managerial techniques of monitoring based on various ‘metrics’ – audits, performance indicators, global rankings and bibliometric research assessment – have been introduced to facilitate more effective resource management and distribution by imitating market relations (e.g., Moutsios, 2012; Wilsdon et al., 2015).

These new techniques of academic governance are anything but ‘neutral’ principles (Shore & Wright, 2000). They embody new forms of ‘governance at a distance’ (Lawn, 2011) that incentivize states, universities, and their employees to engage in a competition based on standardised measures (Brøgger, 2016; Naidoo, 2018). This development has fostered a shift from a meritocratic competition aimed at scientific advancement to a competition for positional advantage (Marginson, 2008; Naidoo, 2018). The new managerial techniques, or ‘metrics governance’, appealing to ‘self-actualizing’ agents by ‘allowing people to be judged by the targets that they set for themselves’ (Shore & Wright, 2000, p. 62), function by leveraging drives and desires. Assessment and monitoring techniques serve to bring reputation to the forefront (Shore & Wright, 2000) and may stir passionate investment in ‘doing what counts’ (Lund & Tienari, 2019). As affect theorists show, systematic and highly visible rankings of nations, institutions and individuals generate a powerful dynamic of ‘shaming and faming’ (Brøgger, 2016; see also Burrows). This instigates a self-energising dynamic, where the moments of ‘faming,’ activated by the satisfaction of doing well in the metrics, feed desires for praise and recognition. Such volatile feelings are doomed to last only moments, as they are investments in an ‘illusionary self’, mirrored in the metrics. For this reason, they will simultaneously feed the insecure self and its sense of failure and insufficiency. This way, performance metrics mobilise and direct energies toward the predefined measures through a ‘mimetic desire’.

Psychosocial scholars add a theoretical analysis of this effect, by describing how governance by performance metrics plays so powerfully on anxieties. In the psychosocial conception, anxiety is an integral dimension of human life, and a powerful driver of energies and emotional investments (Baker & Brewis, 2020; Hey & Leathwood, 2009). According to their analysis, people are driven by the urge to manage anxiety. They thus find relief in aligning their efforts with performance metrics, managing anxiety by seeking a secure sense of self, acting ‘through the very promise of self-control’ (Baker & Brewis 2020). Such a promise will never be fulfilled – but that is exactly why it exercises such a powerful control over subjectivity: the subject will always strive, but in vain; in turn renewing the need for a sense of a defined self. This dynamic, driven by metrics governance, ignites a strong competitive desire that leads directly into the narcissistic instinct (Baker & Brewis 2020) to seek praise and recognition (Hey & Leathwood, 2009). Labelling, measuring and ranking can be seen as tools with which to bolster a frail identity. The literature also suggests that academics especially are inclined to feel ‘self-blame’ if they fail to meet the expectations of today’s academic workplaces (Baker & Brewis, 2020; Gill, 2009; Sparkes, 2007). For this reason, academics seem also to be particularly susceptible to the excitement of the audit culture – as well as its toxic effect (Gill, 2009; Hey & Leathwood, 2009; Sparkes, 2007).

While the psychosocial conceptions of metrics governance motivational drives are persuasive, their accounts of the modes of being and relating, as diminished by the current audit culture, are less developed. The limitations relate to the specific notion of ‘the motor’ of desire that underpins much critical social theory, the desire for recognition.¹ This notion has proven powerful in accounting for the desires developed by the audit culture, which appear as the example par excellence of the ‘desire for recognition’. However, when accounting for the motor that drives practices related to the ‘real academic work’, we need conceptions that differentiate the motivational drive for recognition from the motivational drive involved in the practices of intellectual pursuits – the ‘real work’ that academics are also engaged in. A motor of desire limited to recognition cannot explain, for instance, why some modes of being invested in intellectual pursuits are more susceptible than others to the shaming effects and toxic stress associated with the research assessment techniques. In the following, I suggest that a phenomenological conception of Bourdieu’s practice theory is fruitful for developing an enhanced conception of these motivational drives or modes of ‘being invested in the world’ that emerge in and drive engagement with the creative scientific pursuit.

The phenomenological conception of Bourdieu’s practice theory

For many, Bourdieu is not the obvious choice when seeking to develop enhanced conceptions of the motivational drives involved in ‘intellectual pursuits’ – especially when studying the educational field, where Bourdieu’s (1988) account of reproduction of inequality has proven so powerful (see Beck 2007 for discussion). Moreover, Bourdieu (1983b) is rather explicit in his rejection of any notion of the ‘intrinsic worth’ of intellectual or creative pursuits, such as ‘the love of knowledge’, ‘art for art’s sake’ dismissed as disguised competition for the optimization of intellectual or academic capital. According to this interpretation, the ‘motor’ driving investment in cultural pursuits such as art, science, and intellectual pursuits, is the struggle for intellectual prestige (Moore, 2008, pp. 100–101). This notion relates to Bourdieu’s relationalist epistemology and is, of course, highly contested. Bourdieu has, rightly, been accused of reductionism (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1993), relativism (Bernstein, 2000; John Beck 2007) and instrumentalism (Joas & Knöbl, 2011).²

Nevertheless, the paradigm based on Bourdieu’s practice theory and its conception of a dialectic interaction between subjective and objective structures is indispensable for capturing the kinds of motivational tensions in focus for this study. There is by now a strand of thinking that has further developed the phenomenological underpinnings of Bourdieu’s practice theory (Atkinson, 2019; Crossley, 2001; Frère, 2011; McNay, 2004; Reay, 2015), that arguably moves beyond some of the limitations that critics have identified, by emphasising the interpretive and intentional dimensions involved in the formation of habitus (Atkinson, 2019; Frère, 2011; McNay, 2004). In turning attention to the motivational schemes that emerge in the interpretative experience of what ‘has to be done’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:128), this strand of thinking offers a starting point for developing enhanced conceptions of diverging modes of being invested in the world.

Bourdieu offers a praxis-theoretical notion³ where investments in the world evolve not from a transcendental subject but from a socialised body (Bourdieu, 1998:81). The socialised body emerges from practical engagement with the world, in the dialectic relationship between subjective motivations and the objective structures (e.g., Bourdieu, 2000, p. 165). The phenomenological conception buildes on a Merleau-Pontian notion of a pre-objective contact between the agent and the world and emphasises the interpretative capacities involved in this practical engagement with the world.⁴ What drives and directs a subject is not individual consciousness, but sedimentations of situated experiences, involving interpretations below the level of consciousness and language (Crossley, 2001; McNay, 2004). One could say that the agent could feel held together by experiencing a sense of meaning and directedness in and through its engagement with the world: habitus feels ‘at home in the field it inhabits, it perceives it immediately as endowed with meaning and interest’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:128). As Diane Reay (2015:12) notes, an important premise in Bourdieu’s theories is deeply psychosocial. Bourdieu argues that we are exposed to the world, and because of this exposure we are ‘open to the world’ and ‘invested in the world’ (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 140–141). Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology Bourdieu conceives of this investment in the world as something that emerges in response to ‘what has to be done’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:128). It is this psychosocial notion of modes of being invested in the world that emerges in the dialectic relation between subjective and objective structures that is productive for grasping the motivational tensions stimulated by the shift in the structuring of the academic field.

According to Bourdieu (1983a, p. 194), ‘the motor’, or motivations, ‘resides in the relation between the habitus and the field’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1993, p. 40). As he remarks, ‘it goes without saying that mental structures do not simply reflect social structures’ (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 512): ‘the illusion [illusio] is determined from the inside, from impulses that push toward a self-investment in the object; but it is also determined from the outside, starting with a particular universe of objects offered socially for investment’. Subjective desires encounter ‘a structured ensemble of offers and appeals, bids and solicitations, and prohibitions’ (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 512). In Bourdieu’s terminology, the agents struggle for the ability to act and to ‘express and satisfy their drives and their desires’ and they are simultaneously energised by and forced to ‘sublimate themselves in order to adapt to the structures and to the ends immanent in them’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 165). I suggest that the tensions between different logics of practice within the academic field could be framed in terms of tension between motivational drives: exploring which modes ‘of being exposed to’ and invested in the world are allowed to be ‘expressed and satisfied’ in the engagements in the fields and the ‘ends immanent in them’.

Bourdieu’s notion of libidinal drives and the desire for recognition

While Bourdieu generally does not focus on what holds together and drives individual interpretations and investments in the world, in his later writings he increasingly addresses such subjective emotional processes (Aarseth, 2016; McNay, 2004; Reay, 2015). This is most evident in the introduction of the concept of ‘a socialised libido’ (Bourdieu, 1998:78) that energises agents’ investments in a field. Bourdieu’s notions of socialised libido, or ‘modes of desire’ (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 512), have the potential for further developing a psychosocial conception of what drives investments in the world. As Bourdieu notes,

… sociology and psychoanalysis¹ should combine their efforts (…) to analyse the genesis of investments in a field of social relations, thus constituted as an object of interest and preoccupation, in which the child is increasingly implicated and which also constitutes the paradigm and also the principle of investment in the social game. (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 166)

However, when Bourdieu (2000) develops his notion of libidinal strivings being transformed into a social life and a socialised desire, he draws on the notion ‘desire for recognition’. Desire for recognition is ‘one of the motors which will be at the origin of all subsequent investments’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 166). This implies that libidinal energies are something that must be ‘traded’ in order to take part in society. According to Bourdieu, we desire the rewards at stake in a particular field because these rewards have come to embody recognition. In fact, he suggests that human agents are prepared to do what is required: to make all kinds of renunciations and sacrifices in exchange for recognition, consideration and admiration (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 167). In order to enter the real social world, ‘the narcissistic organisation of libido’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 166) must be abandoned and replaced by a striving to achieve recognition, initially from care persons, and eventually as an optimisation of symbolic capital. This implies that, when Bourdieu gets to the ‘motor of meaning’ that drives investments in creative intellectual pursuits and imaginary signification, the urge to play with the world, ludus, is in the end no more than a search for recognition. Bourdieu’s conception of the ‘true meaning’ of social life and ‘the principle of all truly social energy’ is ‘a struggle to the death for symbolic life and death’ (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 196, as cited in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1993, p. 39).

In his conception of drives, Bourdieu draws on the aforementioned notion of desire for recognition. In this conception, that could be traced back to the reworking of Hegel’s dialectic of recognition, desire emerges as part of the child’s discovery of other-consciousness: it is by recognizing that others are conscious of the world and of us that we develop self-consciousness, but this also binds us in relationships of interdependency with others. In this psychosocial rendering, our awareness of their awareness of us generates a paranoid tension and alienation, an insecurity that can be resolved only if we win their recognition (Crossley, 2001, p. 87). Admittedly, the explanatory power of this conception of ‘desire for recognition’, which has come to pervade much social theory, including Bourdieu’s, has proven impressive. One could perhaps say that the power of the audit culture to ‘transform subjects’ so that they increasingly perceive themselves as ‘auditees’ (Shore, 2008, p. 281) hinges on the recognition drive. The problem, however, is that this notion fails to differentiate between the drive for recognition and the drive for formation, that is, the ‘imaginary significations’ (Castoriadis, 1987) that seek to retrieve, while producing, the ‘shared meanings’ that envelope and shape subjectivities. The first is a notion of a sense of being ‘held together’ consisting essentially of ‘being oneself in another’, a ‘crude binary of recognition and the lack thereof’ (Ferrara, 2019, p. 89). The affective dynamic of ‘shaming and faming’ in the audit culture (Brøgger, 2016) exemplifies the extreme of this notion in practice. The psychosocial dynamic triggered by metrics competition is the striving to manage anxieties by seeking recognition, manifested in the metrics themselves and therefore apparently ‘stable’ and ‘real’. I argue that we need enhanced conceptions of the motivations that drive investment in creative scientific pursuits, beyond this admittedly powerful instinct to seek praise and recognition – one that draws on a subtler interplay between inner experiences and the outer world.

To understand what is at stake in the heightened struggle for ‘the capacity to act’ in the positional competition for metrics achievement we need conceptions that allow us to differentiate the motivational drive for ‘recognition, consideration and admiration’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 167), from the motivational drives that characterise creative scientific pursuits, the desire to ‘know the unknown’ (Bernstein, 2000). Bourdieu (1988) conceives of this conflict in terms of a struggle between intellectual and academic capital (Collyer, 2015). However, when ‘the rewards that have come to embody recognition’ are increasingly defined by audits and rankings, the likely outcomes are ‘mutual adaptions’ between subjective and objective structures, a ‘compliance effect’ (Rowlands & Gale, 2019; Rowlands & Wright, 2019) and ‘blurred boundaries’ (Bernstein, 2000; Sakhiyya & Rata, 2019) between these forms of capital. Therefore, it is critical to take this notion of tension between logics of practice beyond Bourdieu’s (2000) underpowered ‘motor’, limited to the desire for praise and recognition.

An object-relational conception of the drive for creativity

I suggest that Bourdieu’s notion of the underlying motor that drives investments in the world, the ‘desire for recognition’, must be complemented with another concept of drive that encompasses the energies involved in intellectual creative pursuits. Particularly useful here is the object-relational notion of ‘desire for resonance’ (Loewald, 1988, p. 32). This notion enables richer conceptions of the tensions arising between the drives involved in the urge to ‘know the unknown’ (Bernstein, 2000) on the one hand, and the drive to ‘make all kinds of renunciations and sacrifices in exchange for’ the rewards that ‘have come to embody recognition’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 167) on the other. True, tension exists between this twisting of Bourdieu’s psychoanalytic conception and the relationalist epistemology many hold as the distinguishing principle in Bourdieu’s theory (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Joas & Knöbl, 2011). Yet, I suggest that the incorporation of the object relational notion of ‘libidinal strivings’ would take the phenomenological notion of motivational drives in Bourdieu’s practice theory beyond the limitations discussed above. Also, this object-relational notion complements well the Merleau-Pontian development of Bourdieu’s practice theory that I engage with here, with its emphasis on a sensuous and interpretative body ‘held’ in its’ engagement with the world. In this Merleau-Pontian optic, ‘the mental’ aspects of the human agent are not separate from the body, but are ‘emergent properties arising out of the total structure of the organism and/in its environment’ (Crossley, 2001, p. 320). This object-relational notion can enhance the phenomenological notion of praxis and push further the practice theoretical conception of the conflict between different modes of being driven that some, and not others, experience in today’s academia.

The object-relational conception proposed here allows a richer analysis of the interactions between unconscious, primary experience and the outer world (Gerard, 2020). An important inspiration for this conception is (Winnicott’s, 2018/1953) notion of ‘transitional experience’. According to (Winnicott, 2018/1953, p. 96): ‘No human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality, and […] relief from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of experience which is not challenged (arts, religion, etc.)’. In this conception, therefore, anxieties need not be managed by a relentless search for comfort in the promise of a defined and integrated self; anxieties can themselves be employed in the urge to bridge inner longings and external realities. In this conception, a human urge exists to link the inner world with the outer circumstances, energised by the existentially overwhelming early trauma experienced when the infant learns to distinguish between their own needs and those of their primary caregiver. This urge is an important source of ‘work on imagination’, crucial in art and in creative scientific pursuits (Loewald, 1988). Winnicott, 2018/1953) holds that the child’s early experience of a narcissistic union (or, as he terms it, ‘subjective omnipotence’) is the child’s experience of itself as an all-powerful central being: it creates the world, and makes things happen. Into this subjective omnipotence, argues Winnicott, eventually dawns the harshness of objective reality: the world does not immediately fulfil the child’s wishes; nor does it always make desires come true. This traumatic experience of objective reality, however, does not replace the experience of subjective omnipotence: the two are experienced at different levels and coexist in a dialectic relationship – a transitional experience – of reality as neither subjectively created and controlled, nor separate, but somewhere in between. That trauma is the psychological origin of investment in a transitional object, in (Winnicott’s, 2018/1953)theory exemplified by the teddy bear, one that is later developed into more complex forms of engagement with the world in art, aesthetics and creative sciences (Loewald, 1988). This process of transference creates a space between the subject and the external world, one characterised by playfulness and creativity underpinning the drive for formation.

This ‘transitional experience’ functions as a non-climactic tension, a ‘subtle interplay’ between inner experiences and ‘the harsh reality’ of the outer world. This interplay is a mode of employing libidinal drives, Freud’s ‘life instinct’ or ‘il primo motore’ (Loewald, 1988, p. 11) not aimed toward discharge of tension. It works, according to Winnicott (1967:369), as a lasting tension, experienced as pleasurable in itself – ‘akin to the frisson or “electricity” generated in meaningful or intimate contact’. ‘It is like waves, oscillations, vibrations in a magnetic field’ (Loewald, 1988, p. 25). Such ‘non-climactic phenomena belong to the experience of relating to objects’ (Loewald, 1988, p. 24). The ‘ultimate aim’ of such binding tension, suggests Loewald (1988, pp. 30–32) is perhaps ‘perpetuation of tension, of the excitation inherent in living substance?’ He suggests that this phenomenon can be thought of as ‘resonance with the ‘wavelength’ of a neighbouring system, resulting from an ‘openness to the latter’s level of binding or organisation of activity’. This binding of energy in resonance, as opposed to a cycle of charge and discharge, plays a central part in original scientific work and in artistic creation. This notion of a drive for creativity, based on an urge for resonance between the inner world and the outer circumstances, can enhance our conception of the presently endangered motivational drives behind creative scientific pursuits.

Tension between the desire for recognition and the desire for formation

Combined with Bourdieu’s praxeological notion, the object-relational conception of a ‘desire for formation’ should be seen as ‘a mode of being exposed to and invested in the world’ that simultaneously drives and emerges from engagement with creative pursuits. Accordingly, this mode of being invested requires continuous intrapsychic dialogue between conscious conceptual activity and less-organised levels of experience. Loewald (1988, p. 81) suggests that the ‘magic is connected with the return, on a higher level of organisation, to the early magic of thought, gesture, word, image, emotion, fantasy, as they become united again with what in ordinary non-magical experience they only reflect, recollect, represent or symbolise’. The desire for resonance in creative scientific work is, therefore, nurtured by these ‘primary’ less distinct experiences and modes of thinking (Loewald, 1988, p. 24; Ferrara, 2019; Gerard, 2020). ‘Work of imagination’ is characterised by a capacity for engagement in intrapsychic dialogue between these primary, more diffuse experiences and conceptual thinking. These practices and modes of being invested in the world play out as a continuous ‘trying out’ of inner perceptions and imaginaries: projections of oneself onto the world, and internalisations of the environment (Gerard, 2020; Loewald, 1988; Moutsios, 2013). This includes the interpretation or retrieval of the more intuitive and imaginary levels of perception and consciousness that in Bourdieu’s theory constitute the world prior to the conscious categories. Access to the ‘imaginary significations’ that constituted the world prior to our cognitive conceptions of it, requires a drive to invest in interpretation and retrieval of the intuitive and imaginary levels of perception and consciousness characterised by blurred demarcations between the self and the world.

Therefore, one could suggest that this mode of ‘being exposed to and invested’ in the world that employs anxieties in a subtle interplay rather than an urge for external mirroring also requires a ‘mental space’ (Young 1994) allowing an enduring sense of less-distinct boundaries between the self and the world. That space is circumscribed by metrics governance working through the ‘paranoid tension and alienation’ (Crossley, 2001, p. 87) deriving from the desire for recognition (Baker & Brewis, 2020; Brøgger, 2016). As Crossley (2001, p. 102) explains, the desire for recognition ‘gives us an account of motivational springs which might rise to any number of contests for status, privilege and everything else which ultimately represents recognition’. Those ‘motivational springs’ are powerfully employed in current modes of governance in higher education, partly because they are also powerful springs for anxiety and shame. Governance by performance metrics functions by pressing forcefully on this sense of vulnerability, and the narcissistic instinct to seek recognition – including the inevitable sense of shame that accompanies the failure to gain it. The psychoanalytic idea that underpins the ‘desire for recognition’ conception of motivation is highly productive in accounting for the affective dynamics of the audit culture.

The object-relational theory outlined above shows, however, that this powerful dynamic of recognition is but one way to employ drives energised by an existentially overwhelming sense of vulnerability, which in the psychoanalytic optic is seen as part of the human condition. Further, the more the subject encounters this anxiety, the more susceptible they are to the power of recognition, or its absence. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that, as Ferrara (2019, p. 93) notes, individuals involved in creative pursuits are often ‘pathologically “acclaim-driven”’. According to the object-relational tradition I engage with here, however, this susceptibility can also potentially be employed in the creative tensions of the ‘subtle interplay’; the desire to resonate with the environment. This follows from the notion that the desire to engage in the creative pursuit of formation is energised by the ability, perhaps inclination, to experience a blurred demarcation between the I and the not-I, or a state of ‘merging with aspects of the world’ that may ‘under favourable conditions, result in […] a special awareness of the significance of aspects of the world often unnoticed by others’ (Ferrara, 2019, p. 93). Loewald (1988, p. 24) develops further Winnicott’s notion that the employment of energies in creative cultural pursuits requires a form of regression to earlier states of less differentiated mentation: a return to less differentiated experiences represented by ‘their embeddedness in the environmental world, from which they become alienated’. In genuine sublimation, says Loewald (1988, p. 24), this alienating differentiation is being reversed ‘in such a way that a fresh unity is created by an act of uniting.’ What takes place is the simultaneous growth of connectedness and estrangement with and from the world, achieved through the increasingly complex conceptual and categorical organisation of it. This provides us with a notion of creative and interpretive powers that involve a libidinal striving to bridge inner imaginaries with ‘primal urges’ and significations.

This object-relational conceptualisation, therefore, adds power to Bourdieu’s ‘motor of meaning’ – the socialisation of desire that drives investments in creative intellectual pursuits and imaginary signification – by elaborating on what, beyond the desire for recognition, drives this particular mode of relating to the world. The conflicts between optimization and formation therefore run much deeper than those suggested in a Bourdieusian emphasis on ‘interests’ to optimise whatever represents the rewards in the field. Developed this way, those investing in creative scientific pursuits are driven by the urge ‘to express and satisfy’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 165) ‘their drives and their desires’ for ‘subtle interplay’ (Winnicott, 2018/1953) and resonance (Loewald, 1988). This is perhaps particularly the case in the kind of ´hermeneutic reflexivity´ (Lash, 1994), epistemic orientations in which the studied object cannot be subsumed under predefined concepts, but lingers in-between the linguistic and conscious on the one hand, and a less organised level of experience on the other. This mode of being invested in the world holds a potential for managing anxious energies, redirecting them toward a desire for formation and an urge to play with and resonate with the world. It enables anxieties to be managed and employed in the dialogue or interaction between earlier affective experiences and later, more differentiated and more abstract levels of affective perception of the world. However, this requires a capacity to be open to the many sides of one’s own person, including earlier, less-integrated stages, providing ‘a vital richness of intrapsychic events’ (Honneth, 1999, p. 230In contemporary corporate universities, containment of such anxiety is increasingly difficult (Gill, 2009; O’Neill, 2014).

As Lynne Layton (2010) argues, societal formations characterised by intense competitiveness tend to produce environments in which shedding feelings of dependency and vulnerability is essential, whatever the cost. In order to optimise competitive capacities in market competition, the self must continuously strive to capture an illusion of being defined and integrated, which requires an ability to suppress anxieties stemming from primary feelings of vulnerability and dependence. Therefore, the mode of being invested in the world, characterised by an urge for bridging inner and outer, is systematically undermined and obstructed in the incentive structures of the ‘faming and shaming’. The continuous intrapsychic communication, or ‘subtle interplay’ between less-organised imaginaries and anxieties and more pointed conceptions, requires staying in touch with one’s own vulnerabilities. The logic of practice that drives and is driven by investment in these epistemic inquiries therefore calls for a ‘mental space’ where human vulnerabilities, anxieties and longings can be contained, reflected upon, and savoured (Young 1994). In the passionate ‘hunting for points’, the mutual projection, and receiving of inner imaginaries may be replaced by more expedient and instrumental orientations driven by search for a secure sense of self. Performance metrics introduce a self-energising dynamic where the need to manage anxieties through positional competition diminishes the possibility for ‘intra-psychic dialogue’ (Honneth, 1999), in turn fuelling the need for positioning. Understood this way, the audit culture of metrics governance inspires a range of defence mechanisms, such as continuous efforts to galvanise the self and project vulnerability and neediness onto others (Layton, 2010).

Moreover, in this revised conception of Bourdieu’s phenomenological practice theory the struggle for ‘the capacity to act’ could be understood as one’s ability to access the deep resonance of the dialectic between inner and outer worlds, and to engage with ‘shared meanings which are conditions of existence, indeed are the very existence, of the “we”’ (Lash, 1994, p. 146). Engagement with ‘creating, questioning, and explaining meaning’ (Sakhiyya & Rata, 2019, p. 293) in an urge to develop knowledge of ‘the unknowable’ (Bernstein, 2000) is a striving to retrieve, and, in that very moment, produce the ‘shared meanings’ that shape and envelope subjectivities. These motivational drives aim to appropriate the ‘unthought conditions’ of our practices, the embodied, creative capacity to understand the world (Crossley, 2001; McNay, 2004). They could be seen as a striving to ‘lay open the ontological foundations of communal being-in-the-world’ (Lash, 1994, p. 146; Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1993). This includes the interpretation or retrieval of the more intuitive and imaginary levels of perception and consciousness that in Bourdieu’s theory constitute the world prior to the conscious categories. In this way, these epistemic orientations are directed towards the reflexivity and meanings that must be present in the shared and taken-for-granted background practices, the ‘social imaginaries’ (Castoriadis, 1987) that ‘is the already there’ (Lash, 1994, p. 152) of the world into which the self is thrown.

The implicit epistemology of metrics governance

In this article, I have explored theoretical conceptions of tensions between the desire for recognition and the desire for formation in the field of higher education today. Current employment of metrics governance and audit culture is subject to much critique, including assertions that epistemic pursuits linked to basic research and humanities are obstructed. The current techniques of governance by metrics assessment are particularly forceful because they blend the desire for positional competition with the desire for a secured self in a single ‘metrics desire’. We lack, however, conceptions of what subjective emotional dynamics are actually involved and obstructed. I have drawn on phenomenological developments of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as a mode of perceiving and being invested in the world. Still, Bourdieu’s (2000, p. 165) notion that ‘the desire for recognition’ is the motor that drives social elaboration and intellectual pursuits fails to distinguish between modes of being invested in the world linked to formation and optimization. The desire for recognition points to a motivational ‘motor’ that is today powerfully employed in the audit culture (Shore & Wright, 2000), driving a passionate investment in ‘doing what counts’ (Lund & Tienari, 2019). Instead, I suggest that an object-relational conception of desire provides enhanced notions of this tension. Here, the desire for formation, the libidinal striving involved in the urge for ‘imaginary significations’ (Moutsios, 2013) is conceived of more broadly as a mode of handling inner anxieties by an urge to bridge inner longings and external circumstances.

The psychosocial development of Bourdieu’s phenomenological notion, that I build on here, clearly runs counter to Bourdieu’s relational methodology. My aim has been to contribute to the phenomenological development of Bourdieu´s thinking by suggesting enhanced conceptions of the horizontal conflict between practices invested in symbolic and economic resources. That conflict is burgeoning in today’s academic field. The incorporation of an object-relational notion of ‘libidinal strivings’ helps to develop the phenomenological notion in Bourdieu’s thinking (Aarseth, 2016). It provides us with a conception of the desire to ‘play’ with the world, as in ‘ludere’, the sense of being invested in the game beyond the ‘illusion’ that we play it only to optimise recognition. It is also a drive to try out projections of more diffuse perceptions and meaning formation onto the world, and to take the various parts of the world back into the self. Developed this way, the ‘struggle for death’ for symbolic capital (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1993, pp. 39–40) cannot be fully contained by the struggle for ‘recognition, consideration and admiration’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 167). Enhanced conceptions of the emotional dynamics involved in the production of knowledge equip us to better identify epistemic, emotional and societal implications, such as the risk of turning knowledge production into basically ‘friction-less’ thought (Parker & Weik, 2014) and more ‘reified’ consciousness’ (O’Neill, 2014). It is not easy to move effortlessly between a passionate investment ‘aimed at doing what counts’ and an ‘hermeneutic reflexivity’ that depends on continuous intrapsychic dialogue with more vulnerable feelings. The latter requires a ‘mental space’ (Young 1994) that enables the researcher to employ and draw on her own imaginaries: experiences that are characterised by more diffuse and less demarcated levels of mentation (Ferrara, 2019; Loewald, 1988) that are not immediately available for linguistic formulations.

As such, the object-relational notion of libidinal strivings for a ‘subtle interplay’ can further enhance our understanding of the tensions arising between, on the one hand, ‘a structured ensemble of offers and appeals’ (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 512) such as the standardised performance measures, and the investment in ‘the drive to retrieve, while producing the “shared meanings” or “imaginary significations” (Castoriadis, 1987; Moutsios, 2013), on the other. Redressed along the object-relational line of thinking, the conflict between hermeneutic and instrumental pursuits can be conceived as a struggle for the possibility to employ human vulnerabilities and imaginaries in a “subtle interplay” with the world. This conflict is not primarily concerning agents’ positions in the field, but different modes of employing and directing human energies in the academic field and beyond. To be in contact with the more diffuse, less demarcated experiences and imaginaries could also nurture ‘a special awareness of the significance of aspects of the world often unnoticed by others’ (Ferrara, 2019, p. 93). Arguably, the capacity for subtle interplay and resonance is critical in today’s society, where natural and democratic sustainability is threatened by diminished capacity for dialogue and the resulting polarisation (e.g., Blackmore, 2021; Nussbaum, 2010). In contrast, the encouragement of more expedient forms of thinking promoted by market rationalities encourages increasingly ‘reified consciousness’ (O’Neill, 2014, p. 3). As Adorno, 1969/2005, p. 200) notes, such a consciousness is ‘blinded to all historical past, all insight into one’s own conditions, and posits as absolute what exists contingently.’

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Rebecca Lund and Julie Rowlands for inspiring and appropriate comments to previous drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Norges Forskningsr?d [296510] and the Research Council of Norway.

Notes on contributors

Helene Aarseth

Helene Aarseth is Professor at Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo. She is the author of two books and several articles on changing masculinities and everyday life of the late modern family in the Nordic countries, with a particular emphasis on parenting and social class. Recent publications include ‘Against the grain? The craving for domestic femininity in a gender-egalitarian welfare state’. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2021, and Fear of falling – fear of fading: The emotional dynamics of positional and personalised individualism, Sociology 2018.

Notes

¹ In the French edition (1997:199): ‘Et la sociologie et la psychoanalyse devraient unir leurs efforts ....’ In the UK translation (2000:166) this is rendered as ‘psychology and sociology should combine their efforts…’

1. This concept of desire can be traced to Kojéve’s (1969) interpretation of Hegel’s master slave dialectic and has had a strong influence on French thought, both in Lacanian versions of psychoanalysis (Whitebook, 1995). perhaps more surprisingly, in Merleau-Ponty’s theories (Crossley, 2001, p. 87). It has been a particularly powerful inspiration in Lacan-inspired psychosocial thinking. Lacan holds that the infant’s bodily experience is originally that of an unintegrated and fragmented state, ‘the body in its bits and pieces’ (Lacan, as cited in Whitebook, 1995, p. 124). Integration or oneness is ‘an illusion’, a virtual image, one that Lacan traces back to the mirroring experience where the child perceives a synthesised image of him or herself as integrated. Thus, we are doomed to a profound experience of fragmentation and insecurity – and it is this experience that drives the search for recognition.

2. Engaging in these broader discussions on Bourdieu’s relationalist ontology would fall outside the frame of this article. According to his critics, Bourdieu lacks a notion of mediations between the subjective and objective structures (Joas & Knöbl, 2011).

3. I use ‘praxis’ here to refer to the idea of praxis emanating from Hegel and developed by Marx, emphasising the dialectic relationship between subject and object (for discussions see, Joas & Knöbl, 2011). The notion of ‘Practice theory’ refers to a different strand of theories of practice including those of Bourdieu and Giddens. These may, but do not necessarily, build on the dialectic notion of praxis.

4. According to Merleau-Ponty, ‘[p]erceptual consciousness is a sensuous relationship to the world, effected through embodied interactions with it and the habituated schemas such interactions manifest’ (1962, as cited in Crossley, 2001:73).