Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

1.2 <strong>Rumbling</strong> on performativity and research from my
advisory position
The relationship between the policy of the UAS itself and the results of policy became
debatable for me. Throughout the years I came to doubt the feasibility or practicability
of planned reform according to some policy and as regularly accompanied by programmes,
assigned budgets, critical success factors and critical performance indicators.
I became interested in how things really are happening and whether there are
other, more helpful ways of policy-making and realizing. In general I became to sense
my work as never ending, ‘as whatever I do, there will always be someone who is not
satisfied’ and I will always have to face the necessity to take yet another step. However,
I suppose it will always be a step within a way of thinking and talking which
produces the next disappointment. For a while in the UAS we even paid lip service to
the motto “Always better”. Or to state this experience in a wide-ranging way: it feels
as if working under the colours of NPM shortcomings are produced by definition.
This self-production of shortcomings under the colours of NPM is what I now designate
as the rumbling on performativity. NPM appears to be a tapeworm which grows
but is never satisfied. Moreover, the bigger the worm grows, the more it needs to feed
itself. With hindsight I realize that from the beginning of my career I grapple with this
creature. At the start of my career I empathized with the work of the French philosopher
Lyotard (1924 – 1998), who for me articulated the evolving ascendency of performativity.
Lyotard termed performativity as a clear and cold calculating approach of
reality in which the whole responsibility would be transferred to the subject itself and
in which every kind of metaphysics or essence would be denied (Lyotard, 1979). According
to Lyotard efficiency is the decisive characteristic of performativity. It is not about
what one does, but about how much and quick one does. In my experience the most
palpable manifestation of performativity became the circle of Plan-Do-Check-Act,
Fleming’s vicious circle of total quality-management. Fleming’s approach of total
quality management was introduced as the basics for the quality assurance system in
the UAS. In due course I had to learn to design my working life in a SMART-way.
In fairness I want to forestall an idea that what evolves in the UAS is something which
only overruns me. I also acknowledge my responsibilities and actions throughout the
years. In different positions I was involved in and co-responsible for the introduction of
all kinds of policy and diverse instruments. Also my hands are ‘dirty’. As a lecturer I was
one of the members of staff who advocated many reforms in my own department.
Later on being a dean, members of staff pointed out to me how constantly I was
talking of and organizing reform. Nowadays being an adviser to the board I notice how
usual it is for members of the board to promote reform and how I became positioned
as a programme-manager to realize reform.
My hands got ‘dirty’ although I keep being annoyed by how light-heartedly politicians
and managers are discussing the need and supposed ease of reform. Not to mention
1. Introduction: research into performativity from a ‘personal’ perspective | 15