The University: From Knowledge Socialism to Knowledge Cooperatives

Abstract

When the idea of knowledge socialism is put into the context of the university, we have a strange admixture. Of course, out of strangeness may come new possibilities, for insight, for practices and for venturing forward. And much of that is surely present here, in the juxtaposition of the university and knowledge socialism. But this strangeness should also prompt wariness since, ultimately, I shall argue, the university and knowledge socialism constitute an odd couple; a couple with tensions between them. Such an argument entails that some attention is paid separately to certain strains within the ideas of the university and of knowledge socialism and then, to tensions in any attempt at their being conjoined.