Passion, pedagogies and the project of the personal in higher education

This paper traces different trajectories of ‘the personal’ from their international origins. We pose the question about whether the increasing acceptance of the personal in higher education can be read as a continuation of the radical epistemological project/s of feminism and other critical pedagogies or whether there are other interpretations and ideological locations of the personal. First, we re-visit our own passionate involvement in the project of the personal from second wave feminism and the epistemological claim that the personal is political. Second, we explore how theories of the personal and the individualisation thesis came to predominate in the social sciences with the rise of neo-liberalism. We then explore the more recent trajectory of the ‘employable subject’ in mass higher education by considering the discourse of ‘personalisation’ based on individual choice mediated through the increasing potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate students' capacities to personalise their own learning. We argue that the pedagogies that flow from these latter framings are not necessarily critical and indeed can be read as part of the global neo-liberal project. We then argue that without specific and theorised pedagogical intent the personal may become shallow simulacra of critique and reflection. Therefore, there can be no simple reading of the incorporation of the ‘personal’ into the curriculum of higher education or indeed into education more broadly across the life course. The personal is now a contested site of meaning in both education and in general public discourse. Our analysis attempts to reclaim some of the critical meanings of the personal and reconfigure them so that the rich legacy of feminist pedagogy, scholarship and engagement are not, yet again, erased from history.