The Copenhagen Free University has never wanted to become a fixed identity and as a part of the concept of self-institutionalisation we have always found it important to take power and play with power but also to abolish power. This is why the Copenhagen Free University closed down at the end of 2007. Looking back at the six years of existence of the CFU we end our activities with a clear conviction and declare: We Have Won!
The CFU ‘s take on education is an interesting proposition. By trying to make a break with "corporate" controls on knowledge production, they highlight how universities have been industrialised as centres for information and cultural production becomes the central commodity. The CFU also invites as to ask whether even progressive objectives are absorbed and recast in a language of financialisation and entrepreneurialship. By asking who can produce knowledge and who can then subsequently use it, they also ask what that knowledge can then be used for. Clearly for CFU, the knowledge is used for the wielding of power and controlling social relations through cultural hegemony. This last part is not a new idea, but one that CFU set forward and questions very intelligently for the CFU itself is, to my mind, counter-hegemonic, incorporated into a wider political programme the model of CFU could be part of what Grasmci called "the war of position", the setting up of alternative institutions to create a proletarian, socialist (or anti-capitalist) culture. In epistemological terms, the impact that CFU and Rogoff has on our enquiries seems to be that we cannot have any free or open learning unless we break out of the parameters of neoliberalism. For CFU, this is the "corporate" university itself, whereas, for Rogoff, this is the confines of privatised education and the "professionalised" technocrats that go with that, more generally. What CFU want us to ask about education is how can interdisciplinary and peer2peer learning be utilised to produce knowledge that is valid in its own right, regardless of whether it produced any final product or paper. For CFU, education is about sharing and mutual empowerment. This is something that I find to be most significant about CFU, the fact they welcomed people into their space, with those people allowed to bring their own emotional and existential baggage ("The kitchen, the bed, the living room made up our anything-but-sterile laboratories. Dreams, unhappiness, rage were all over the architecture.") to discuss ideas and produce knowledge, not for some material gain but to share ideas independent of the existing corridors of power and to disrupt those corridors of power and gain power and control over their education, rather than have their education monopolised. Some issues arising, however, for me are to what extent is this an anti-capitalist endeavour or anti-authority endeavour? What role would they play in a post-capitalist society, if a achieving such a society is their goal? Would they dissolve themselves, job done, or would they carry on functioning and contributing to educational discourse and knowledge production in a world free of capitalist monopolisation and industrialisation of knowledge? They are also exposed to something of a reformist argument that everyone going off and creating their own universities is cruelly optimistic at best and a fantasy at worst and that, rather than purely working from outside, work needs done inside our universities to liberate education from the stranglehold of corporate interests and practices and bring radical perspectives inside it, as well as working outside too to generate a discourse that can bring about a sea change.