Identifier

etd-11102015-134219

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

Institutions of higher education, the nation’s ideological filters, shape our world and our very being-in-the-world. Given the current anthro-cultural state of affairs around the globe, this investigation posits institutions of higher education’s complicity in the proliferation of societal dis-ease and its responsibility in assisting to recalibrate the global moral compass. Following these assertions this inquiry is focused on the other-than-ness of higher education, and re-imagines both humanity and higher education to be what it is not yet, but must become. More specifically, through Buddhism and Ubuntu, this investigation (re)thinks institutions of higher education as transformational educative environments of human becoming rather than factories of knowledge acquisition and workforce deployment. Exploring the shift in the aim of higher education beginning in the latter half of the 20th and intensifying in the 21st century, this study theorizes the necessitation of an ontological revolution—a (re)turn to the equanimous privileging of ontology and epistemology—which opens up to the possibility of being differently in the world. Utilizing two non-Western knowledges/philosophies, the South African philosophy of Ubuntu and Eastern Buddhism, this inquiry de-centers Western ontological and epistemological positionalities. Asserting the inseparability of ontology and epistemology, this inquiry embarks on a re-conceptualization of the Western subject. The newly re-conceptualized Being-West sets the inquiry on a futural line of flight, (re)imagining an absent present-future in higher education bolstered by a new conception of self, and an onto-educational philosophy of higher education, which engenders being-becoming more human and an understanding our shared humanity. Finally, this conceptual inquiry offers no solutions, but provokes, encourages new lines of flight, which generate rhizomatic nodes of becoming, pregnant with the possibility of catalyzing a revolutionary human becoming.

Date

2015

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Secure the entire work for patent and/or proprietary purposes for a period of one year. Student has submitted appropriate documentation which states: During this period the copyright owner also agrees not to exercise her/his ownership rights, including public use in works, without prior authorization from LSU. At the end of the one year period, either we or LSU may request an automatic extension for one additional year. At the end of the one year secure period (or its extension, if such is requested), the work will be released for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Alsandor, Danielle

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.2440

Download

Included in

Education Commons

Share

COinS