Post-critical Perspectives on Higher Education

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   • Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe, Piotr Zamojski

   Pages 1-11

3. Practicing Universitas

   • Piotr Zamojski

   Pages 13-25

4. From Ruins to Response-Ability: Making a University in a Palestinian Refugee Camp

   • Hans Schildermans, Maarten Simons, Jan Masschelein

   Pages 27-41

5. Rationality and Trust in the Governance of Modern Academia

   • Łukasz Stankiewicz

   Pages 43-58

6. Participation in Partition: Post-critical Approaches to the University

   • Christiane Thompson

   Pages 59-72

7. University Lecturing as a Technique of Collective Imagination: On Seeing Things as If They Had Taken a Bodily Form

   • Lavinia Marin

   Pages 73-82

8. Modes of Meetings in Academia and the Spectres of University: From Breaking the Chains to Appreciative Mutual Understanding

   • Jarosław Jendza

   Pages 83-96

9. Reclaiming the Educational Through Embodied Narratives of ‘Know Thyself’

   • Oren Ergas

   Pages 97-109

10. Looking for Love in the Student Experience

    • Richard Budd

    Pages 111-131

11. Profaning the University Apparatus: A Plea for Study Groups

    • Tyson E. Lewis

    Pages 133-143

12. Philosophy As Education: A Post-Critical Approach to the Position and Future of an Academic Discipline

    • Joris Vlieghe

    Pages 145-157

13. Colloquium

    • Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe, Piotr Zamojski

    Pages 159-168

14. Back Matter

    Pages 169-171

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This book addresses essential educational dimensions of the university that are often overlooked, not only by prevailing discourses and practices but also by standard critical approaches to higher education. Each chapter takes a different approach to the articulation of a ‘post-critical’ view of the university, and focuses on a specific dimension, including lectures, academic freedom, and the student experience.  


The ‘post-critical’ attitude offers an affirmative approach to the constitutive educational practices of the university. It is ‘post-’ because it is a movement in thought that comes after the critical, which, in its modern and postmodern forms is considered, in Latour’s terms, to have ‘run out of steam’. It is an attempt to articulate new conceptual and methodological tools that help us grasp our current conditions. It is not anti-critique; but rather than seeking to debunk current practices, this affirmative approach offers perspectives that shed new light on what we do as educators, on the essence of our educational practices, and on their immanent value. The focus on the educational, then, applies not only to practices that happen to take place in the educational space of the university, but also to those practices whose value we can understand in educational terms.

• Critical theory
• Debates in higher education
• Post-critical approach
• Thinking about higher education
• Collaboration
• University of Excellence
• Pedagogical hermeneutics
• Hermeneutic pedagogy
• Academic freedom
• Transformative potential of education
• Philosophy of education
• Philosophy as education
• Educational practices
• Affirmation

• Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK

  Naomi Hodgson

• Education, Culture & Society, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

  Joris Vlieghe

• University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland

  Piotr Zamojski

Naomi Hodgson is an Associate Professor of Education Studies at Liverpool Hope University, UK, where she teaches and researches in philosophy of education. Her research focuses on the relationship between education, governance, and subjectivity. Her publications include Philosophy and Theory in Education: Writing in the Margin, with Professor Amanda Fulford (Routledge, 2016), Citizenship for the Learning Society: Europe, Subjectivity, and Educational Research (Wiley, 2016), Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy, with Dr Joris Vlieghe and Dr Piotr Zamojski (Punctum Books, 2018), and most recently, Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children: The Grammar of Upbringing, with Dr Stefan Ramaekers (Palgrave 2019).


Joris Vlieghe is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Education at the KU Leuven, Belgium. With Naomi Hodgson and Piotr Zamojski he recently published a Manifesto for a Post-critical Pedagogy (Punctum Books 2018) and, with Piotr Zamojski, Towards an Ontology of Teaching. Thing-centered pedagogy, affirmation and love for the world (Springer 2019). He is also interested in the impact of digital technologies on education, and more specifically in how fundamental notions such as schooling, attention, community, transformation, literacy and creativity change when a culture of the book is (rapidly) replaced by a culture of the screen.


Piotr Zamojski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. He has authored four books, including two recently written in collaboration with Naomi Hodgson and Joris Vlieghe (Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy, Punctum Books 2017), and with Joris Vlieghe (Towards an Ontology of Teaching. Thing-centered pedagogy, affirmation and love for the world, Springer 2019). He has also published on issues concerning the bureaucratisation of education, totalitarianism and educational theory, building a public sphere around education, and the role of cultural codes in schooling.

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