Decolonising the neoliberal university : law, psychoanalysis and the politics of student protest

Taking the postcolonial – or, more specifically, the post-apartheid – university as its focus, the book takes the violence and the trauma of the global neoliberal hegemony as its central point of reference. Following a primarily psychoanalytic line of enquiry, it engages a range of disciplines – law, philosophy, literature, gender studies, cultural studies and political economy – in order better to understand the conditions of possibility of an emancipatory, or decolonised, higher education. And this in the context of both the inter-generational transmission of the trauma of colonialism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the trauma of neoliberal subjectivity in the postcolonial university. Oriented around an important lecture by Jacqueline Rose, the volume contains contributions from world-renowned authors, such as Judith Butler and Achille Mbembe, as well as numerous legal and other theorists who share their concern with interrogating the contemporary crisis in higher education. This truly interdisciplinary collection will appeal to a wide range of readers right across the humanities, but especially those with substantial interests in the contemporary state of the university, as well as those with theoretical interests in postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, gender studies, cultural studies, jurisprudence and law. Cover Endorsements Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of contributors 1. Overcoming Hamlet – notes for a future 2. The Legacy 3. We still have not broken the code 4. The university now: What it will have been for what it is becoming 5. Within the time of the aftermath 6. “Lock your doors!”, or “the beginning of after” 7. The queer in decolonial times: Rhodes Must Fall and (im)possibilities in times of uncertainty 8. A change in, but not of, the system 9. On the materiality of #MustFall protest: Shame, envy, and the politics of spectacle 10. An untimely meditation on a time “out of sync” 11. Thoughts on the planetary: An interview with Achille Mbembe 12. The afterlife 13. Protest, play and the failure of haunting in the land (sometimes) called Australia – a response to Jacqueline Rose 14. Afterword Index Taking the postcolonial - or, more specifically, the post-apartheid - university as its focus, the book focuses on the violence and the trauma of the global neoliberal hegemony.