The resonance approach for non-alienated relationships: beyond slowness in higher education

ABSTRACT

Critical studies in higher education often embrace the ideas of the slowness movement to address time pressure. However, this desirable horizon presents some limitations. On the one hand, by emphasizing solutions at the individual level, boosting slowness may promote tactics incapable of producing changes to the underlying structural dynamics of time pressure. On the other hand, approaches based on slowness may also inadvertently foster a form of ethical paternalism within the context of ethical pluralism by prescribing substantive models of practice ultimately based on ‘do this quickly or do it slowly.’ This theoretical research moves away from the temporal paradigm to that of the way of relating. Building upon the ethical concept of resonance, the approach focuses on a formal critique of the current socioeconomic and ethical dynamics of social acceleration, growth, and innovation that can contribute to projecting non-alienated relationships in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Slow
• resonance
• higher education
• time pressure
• social acceleration

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Hartmut Rosa defines social acceleration as a cycle, driven by economic and ethical factors, encompassing three distinct phenomena that constantly reinforce each other: 1) technological acceleration; 2) acceleration of the rate of social change, involving the rapid destabilization of institutions and social practices; and 3) acceleration of the pace of life (Rosa 2010, 13–25).

2. The Marxist formula M-C-M’ (Money-Commodity-Money plus profit) refers to the circuit of circulation and accumulation of value in an economy through the buying and selling of commodities (Marx 1906, 163–73).

3. In collaboration with Endres, Rosa proposes in Resonanzpädagogik. Wenn es im Klassenzimmer knistert (2016) the basis for redesigning educational processes rooted in competencies. While the latter are mainly an ability to control, resonance implies engaging with other people, things, or oneself in a meaningful way.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Universities (Spain) under the Scholarship “Margarita Salas” MGS/2022/14, financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU, and has been developed within the framework of the grant PID2022-139000OB-C22, for the research project “Cordial Bioethics and Algorithmic Democracy for a Hyperdigitalized Society”, obtained from the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain).