Politics and Knowledge, and the University Reforms

The so called “Bologna process” initiated a large reform of the European Universities. This process affects not only the academic organization at all levels, it produces a radical change in what has to be conceived as “knowledge”. Knowledge is redefined in relation to the ib keyword “skill”: its value is strctly depending on the achievement of practical ailities. Since their very beginning, Feminist and Gender studies have fostered a “situated knowledge”. Can we welcome the reform as an answer to this inspiration? In order to develop an analysis, a distinction has to be made between the practical and the generative dimension of knowledge. If the one responds to the criterion of professionalization, the other responds to the criterion of citizenship. In other words: to whom are we teaching? In which order of discourse are we writing and making research? Is it for the labour market, or is it in the wider horizon of becoming citizens? Can the social actors be plainly identified with workers? How do we put in question the relation between knowledge and the social realm? Italian Feminist Theory – all along with what has been recently defined “Italian Theory” – offers some clues to reconsider the relations between knowledge and its agents, knowledge and participative politics, knowledge and its institutional forms. Some examples – illustrating the experiences of autoformazione”