Abstract This paper proposes the applicability of object relations psychoanalytic conceptions of dialogue (Ogden, 1986Ogden, T.1986. The matrix of the mind, London: Karnac. [Google Scholar], 1993Ogden, T.1993. “On potential space”. In In one's bones: The clinical genius of Winnicot, Edited by: Goldman, D.Northvale, NJ: Jason Aaronson. [Google Scholar]) to thinking about relationships and relational structures and their governance in universities. It proposes that:
the qualities of dialogic relations in creative institutions are the proper index of creative productivity; that is of, as examples, ‘thinking’ (Evans, 2004Evans, M.2004. Killing thinking: The death of the universities, London: Continuum. [Google Scholar]), ‘emotional learning’ (Salzberger-Wittenburg et al., 1983Salzberger-Wittenburg, I., Henry, G. and Osborne, E.1983. The emotional experience of learning and teaching, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) or ‘criticality’ (Barnett, 1997Barnett, R.1997. Higher education: A critical business, Buckingham: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]);
contemporary institutions' explicit preoccupation in assuring, monitoring and managing creative ‘dialogue’ can, in practice, pervert creative processes and thoughtful symbolic productivity, thus inhibiting students' development and the quality of ‘thinking space’ for teaching and research.
In this context the paper examines uncanny and perverse connections between Paulo Freire's (1972Freire, P.1972. Pedagogy of the oppressed, London: Penguin. [Google Scholar]) account of educational empowerment and dialogics (from his Pedagogy of the oppressed) to the consumerist (see, for example, Clarke & Vidler, 2005Clarke, J. and Vidler, E.2005. Creating citizen-consumers: New labour and the remaking of public services. Public Policy and Administration, 20: 19–37. [Google Scholar]) rhetoric of student empowerment, as mediated by some strands of managerialism in contemporary higher education. The paper grounds its critique of current models of dialogue, feedback loops, audit and other mechanisms of accountability (Power, 1997Power, M.1997. The Audit Society: Ritual's of verification, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]; Strathern, 2000Strathern M.Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academyLondonRoutledge2000[Crossref], [Google Scholar]), in a close analysis of how creative thinking emerges. The paper discusses the failure to maintain a dialogic space in humanities and social science areas in particular, exploring psychoanalytic conceptions from Donald Winnicott (1971Winnicott, D. W.1971. Playing and Reality, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), Milner (1979Milner, M.1979. On not being able to paint, New York: International Universities Press. [Google Scholar]), Thomas Ogden (1986Ogden, T.1986. The matrix of the mind, London: Karnac. [Google Scholar]) and Csikszentmihalyi (1997Csikszentmihalyi, M.1997. Creativity, New York: Harper Perennial. [Google Scholar]). Coleridge's ideas about imagination as the movement of thought between subjective and objective modes are discussed in terms of both intra- and inter-subjective relational modes of ‘dialogue’, which are seen as subject to pathology in the pathologically structured psychosocial environment. Current patterns of institutional governance, by micromanaging dialogic spaces, curtail the ‘natural’ rhythms and temporalities of imagination by giving an over-emphasis to the moment of outcome, at the expense of holding the necessary vagaries of process in the institutional ‘mind’. On the contrary, as this paper argues, creative thinking lies in sporadic emergences at the conjunction of object/(ive) outcome and through (thought) processes. 相似文献