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Towards a Genealogy of Academic Freedom in Canadian Universities
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- Author / Creator
- Gariepy, Kenneth D.
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In this dissertation, I take a genealogical approach (Foucault, 1977/1995, 1988-1990, 1971/1984a) to the study of the intellectually “free” subject through the analysis of selected academic freedom statement-events. Assuming academic freedom to be an institutionalized discourse-practice operating in the field of contemporary post-secondary education in Canada, I conduct a specific kind of cross-disciplinary, historico-theoretical research that pays particular attention to the productive nature and effects of power-knowledge. The intent is to disrupt academic freedom as commonsensical “good” and universal “right,” instead focussing on how it is that the academic subject emerges as free/unfree to think--and therefore free/unfree to be--through particular, effective, and effecting regimes of truth and strategies of objectification and subjectification. The study suggests how it is that academic freedom operates as a set of systemically agonistic practices and an autodestructive social programme (Foucault, 1977/1995; Gordon, 1980) that might only realize a different economy of discourse through the contingent nature of the very social power that produces it.
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- Subjects / Keywords
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- Graduation date
- Fall 2014
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
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- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.