(71) A plea for the cultivation of academic practice as a political practice
Date:
Contributors: Huber, S. E.
Venue: International Conference on Critical and Radical Humanist Work and Organizational Psychology, Innsbruck, Austria, July 11-13, 2022
The focus of this contribution is on the embeddedness of a critical and radical humanist work and organizational psychology in a broader framework of academia. In order to be a critical work and organizational psychology, it cannot refrain from reflecting on conditions enabling and framing (or impeding?) both its origin and continuance. With this poster in particular, I would like to offer the perspective that a strict humanist point of view is not merely an arbitrary choice but of utmost importance for a consistent conceptualization of academia, both from an ethical and an epistemic angle. By reflecting on some of the historical roots of modern research in ancient Greece, I shall argue that academic practice is intrinsically a political practice and that not recognizing and not appreciating it as such would result in corroding its very foundation and in consequence thereof, corroding also its social legitimacy. Furthermore, I shall outline several conceptualizations of what may define the ‘political’ (Arendt, 2017, 2019; Habermas, 2011a, 2011b, 2019) as well as some theoretical starting points (Neuberger, 2006) to analyze, evaluate and develop the political within academic practice. Finally, I shall argue that the political within academia requires active engagement and continued cultivation rather than attempts to minimize its influence. Uncultivated political practice, in contrast, is conceived as fueling the perceived need for exactly those managerial attempts (such as tendencies of digitization or economization) which aim to reduce (seemingly) malicious consequences of (collective) human decision making by effectively limiting the role of humanity per se, conflicting thereby fundamental humanist principles. For an academic institution founded on a humanist notion of education this implies nothing less than a moral responsibility to counterbalance such attempts by providing sufficient space for the subjective, analogous and unruly, inevitably linked to the human condition of the concrete individual, and for the also inevitably resulting imponderabilities of social action, i.e. by cultivating political practice. I hope that this poster can serve as a conversation piece with which I would like not only to provide there and then some space for the political in academia, but also to readily offer some stimulation to enrich it with the necessary life, spirit and soul.
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