Bill Readings : penser le dissensus dans les ‘ruines’ de l’université
This master’s thesis offers a critical interpretation and exploration of the main proposals of Bill Readings’ posthumous book, The University in Ruins (Harvard, 1996). I situate Readings’ provocative thoughts as a translation of Lyotard’s notion of differend into American pedagogical debates within the literary crisis upon the curricula and the so-called “Culture Wars”. The study expands on the dialogue which opposed Readings to Graff, where the latter sought to posit the notion of “Conflict” as the locus of a renewed academic community. In contrast to Graff, the radicalism of Readings’ “community of dissensus” becomes more salient. While renouncing the emancipatory ideals of Modernity, Readings suggested an understanding of education as a space of heteronomous ethics, and pedagogy as an infinite and asymmetrical relationship to others. Finally, I show that the “community of dissensus” maintains as a permanent question the aporetic nature of its identity as well as of the nature of the social bond within the “post-historical” university. By doing so, this work provides an original contribution which underlines a kinship between Readings’ most controversial statements and Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism and anthropological ideas.
Communication dialogisme Dissensus University Community Dialogism