‘Dream a little before you think’ : an open invitation to reconsider human agency and the purpose of arts and humanities higher education through the labour of radical imagination

Abstract

Following the long inertia of Enlightenment influence and decades of neoliberal propaganda, generative AI is hailed as the most recent revolutionary force that is prophesied to redefine not only what education and knowledge production mean, but also what human civilization could potentially look like. This thesis critically examines the ideological narratives and forces that propel the “inevitability” of deploying generative artificial intelligence in higher education. Building on Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s foundational critique of technological progress, Walter Benjamin’s examination of historical progress, and Hannah Arendt’s analysis of human agency, it challenges the linear, technologically solutionist vision of social and human progress. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s instruction on the purpose of humanities education and Ruha Benjamin’s elaboration on technological justice through the framework of radical imagination, this thesis argues that to reveal alternative educational futures – ones that aren’t grounded in massive ecological, economic, cognitive, social, and cultural dispossessions – will require a revolution of imagination.