Thomas, Matthew Krehl Edward and Whitburn, Ben (2023) The plague years in Australian higher education. In, Carrigan, Mark A., Moscovitz, Hannah, Martini, Michele and Robertson, Susan L. (eds.) Building the Post-Pandemic University: Imagining, Contesting and Materializing Higher Education Futures. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 169-185. (doi:10.4337/9781802204575.00018).
Abstract
This chapter explores the plague years of Australian Higher education ushered in by the Covid-19 global pandemic. In so doing we are interested in temporal fissures that are illustrative of a foregrounding of compliance to bureaucracy and the elevation of the clock over equity and relationality. At a time when the creep of neoliberalism hollows out both humanity and community, inclusive ways of knowing and our obligations to communities of difference are negated. The chapter highlights an indecorous struggle for a moral compass, unrequited in the material foundations of the post-pandemic university. The pandemic has exposed our collective ability for selfishness at the expense of inclusive educational ideals. In so doing, criticality becomes a hindrance, and populist thought a solution, when those outside of mainstream discourse are degraded and humbled. The chapter concludes with practical orientations: here we draw on notions of temporality, resourced with ideas from Arendt and Bergson to contest exclusion from higher education in the face of centralised power, expanded surveillance and democratic participation contorted by Covid-19.
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