SPACE AS AN ELEMENT OF CULTURES IN HIGHER EDUCATION OR THE PLACES OF HEROIC STRUGGLES

Abstract

This article analyzes higher education from the perspective of the relationship between space and place, understood as cultural and subjective constructions. Inspired by Humboldt, it discusses the contrast between the ideal of the autonomous university, dedicated to the articulation between teaching and research, and the tensions imposed by contemporary institutions. Antonio Viñao Frago's notion of school cultures is used to highlight the coexistence and conflicts between teaching, student, administrative, and operational cultures, demonstrating how such dynamics shape the formative experience. Psychoanalysis offers central tools for analysis: Ferenczi, with the concept of introjection, and Freud, with his reflection on the malaise in culture, allow us to understand the passage from physical space to place, when the latter is symbolically appropriated. In this sense, the architectural asepsis of certain campuses is read as a device of silencing and critical passivity, while the marked spaces, traversed by expressions and interventions, reveal potentialities for cultural resistance. The distance learning modality is problematized as an experience that shifts the meaning of place to the subjective space of the student, challenging traditional links with the teaching figure. Finally, the teacher-hero is discussed as a cultural and symbolic construction, an expression of the tensions between subjectivity, institutional culture, and formative space.