The University and the Need for Bifurcation for Sustainable Futures

The urgent needed societal bifurcation towards a sustainable future challenges the university and the university’s knowledge production: research and education as well as science, technology and innovation. The established knowledge types and its dominant epistemologies are questioned: In general, epistemologies which are and have always been interlaced with power, interests and values need to undergo a bifurcation. At issue is what counts as legitimate knowledge, and based on this, what counts as a reasonable structure of the economics system and as societally desirable technology. Required is a new spirit and mindset, combined with inter- and intragenerative awareness, justice and virtues for a new future-oriented culture of being and becoming human. In this chapter, we discuss the context and the background for a new spirit and mindset of the university that enables critical thinking about technocapitalist (infra-)structure, framing and thinking (dispositif). We face options on how to re-imagine the sustainable (autonomous) university and which role open-source and low-tech approaches can play. The main idea is to develop appropriate tools for fostering institutional bifurcations. The vision sketched in this chapter is a university of ethical, participatory and inter- and transdisciplinary practice organised around critical-reflexive thinking, eudaimonistic ethics, broader participation, and contributory research. The university’s practice fosters sense-making and purpose-creation for sustainable development in a deliberative way. We explore the epistemological bifurcation which can be considered as a core element of the envisioned responsible university. We clarify the inherent relation of bifurcation and epistemology, and we reveal that the capitalist system is based on a specific (positivist) epistēmē. We problematise this type of epistemology, reflect options for new values and show perspective and prospects: The university can become a bifurcation lab for a sustainable development of society at large.