The question of uncertain and open future has been characterized the government of modern societies. Attempts to secure valued life from unhoped futures and steer human action towards desired ones has been called anticipation (Adams, Murphy & Clarke 2009; Anderson 2010; Robertson 2022). In politics, anticipatory action tend to articulate a horizon of expectations based on hypothetical possibilities that might include calculation of risks, forecasting and narration of alternative futures (Adams et al. 2009; Anderson 2010; Robertson 2022). In this research, I explore how anticipation of educational futures works through articulation of ideological fantasies.

Despite seemingly vast possibilities of a contingent future, certain discourses and ideas have kept a strong hold in education policies – they have been sticky (Ahmed 2004). In political economy of higher education anticipatory political futures have been largely relied on the sociotechnic imaginaries of knowledge-based economy (KBE), promoted by international organizations such as OECD and European Union (Robertson 2005; Hunter 2013). Despite of several critiques (e.g. Lauder et. al. 2012; Jessop 2017) the discourses of knowledge economy have remained hegemonic in international (Hunter, 2013; Robertson 2022) and Finnish national (Poutanen et al. 2022) policy actors’ agenda. What could explain the stickiness of economic social imaginaries? How to approach the appeal and longetivity of capitalist order, or in this case, the force of knowledge-based economy in reproduction of higher education policy?

As many theorists have pointed, the construction of desiring subject is essential for the ethos or the spirit of capitalism (Boltanski & Chiapello 2005; MacGowan 2016). However, research related to governance of futures or political economy of higher education is usually focused on the socio-semiotic analysis. While policy scholars have increasingly called attention to the affective elements of policies and how we are moved by them (e.g. Zembylas 2020; Lähdesmäki et al 2020; Sellar & Zipin 2019), the role of desire and inertia of social order have remained less explored in policy studies (Anderson & Holloway 2020; however Clarke 2019; Saari 2021). 

I follow political theorists who have approached the inertia of social and political phenomena and stressed the meaning of desire and mobilisation of passions, affects and emotions in political articulation and justification (Mouffe, 1993; Laclau 2004). From this perspective, the construction of effective economic and national imaginaries requires construction of ideological fantasy frames (Stavrakakis 2007; Glynos 2011) that arouse emotions, mobilise individual and collective passions, and call for action. In other words, anticipatory fantasy tries to get a grip of subjects’ desire and usher one further into identification with the objects it has emphasised (Glynos 2001; Stavrakakis 2007).

In this research I provide an empirical case study of anticipatory policy rhetoric. I will focus on the Finnish higher education policy reform 2017–2019 called “Vision development 2030” by Sipilä Government. The research questions are following:

1. What kind of ideological fantasies were constructed during policy-making of vision development 2017–2019?
2. In which ways the depicted fantasies aim to engage with subject’s desire? 
3. What role do fantasies play in the policy-making practices?

What makes this case interesting is the concurrent rhetoric of austerity-ridden politics and anticipatory ideological fantasy: while the one hand advanced major economic cuts in higher education sector (which lead to redundancies of employment), the other depicted beatific illustrations of significant growth of resources of higher education sector and harmonious working life in its’ institutions. Thus political rhetoric of double binding – semiotic and affective play of crisis and salvation, austerity and prosperity, horrific and beatific fantasy– is noticeably evident. As such, Sipilä Government’s vision development provides intriquing case study of a construction of collective imaginary of the educational future.

The primary research data of this study consists of two main documents that were published during the Vision development process 02/2017–01/2019. The process was lead by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) in collaboration with university communities, labour market associations and industry stakeholders. As secondary sources I scrutinize OECD’s policy evaluation of Finnish innovation system (OECD 2017). I perceive the empirical data discursively: these documents articulate ideological frames, meanings, norms and values and contest alternative views of higher education (Remling 2018; Eberle 2019). Analytical reading based on critical fantasy studies can uncover and inform us about the ideological and affective conditions of policies (Glynos 2011; 2021). Critical fantasy studies, as Jason Glynos (2021) has recently called this paradigm, has its’ roots in political discourse theory (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Glynos & Howarth, 2007), which combines poststructuralist framework to critical political theory and psychoanalytic theory. In such Lacanian infused theory, the concept of fantasy functions as “the object cause of one’s desire” (Sharpe & Turner 2020, 190) – to wit, it links subject’s inner feelings of joy and anxiety to outer objects (Behagel & Mert 2021). This framework suggests that phenomena of inertia and change of the social can be comprehended through the examination of fantasies. The concept of fantasy aims at understanding how we become gripped by certain ideas, norms and identities through affective investments. Fantasy structures subject’s desire through dialectic of fullness and lack (Stavrakakis 1999; Glynos 2011). It depicts a beatific fantasy, a promisory and harmonious ideal that would fulfill the void in the subject, but this promise is conditional – at same time a horrific fantasy, an impediment to the realization of this ideal, enters at the stage (Stavrakakis, 1999; Glynos & Howarth, 2007). Aforementioned simplification of social world is one manner how fantasy aims to provide protection from anxiety and ontological security to a subject. By employing the concept of fantasy in policy analysis I explore the structure of desire and affective enjoyment (Glynos 2011) and its’ operation in Vision development policy documents.

The aim of this study is twofold: Firstly, I examine the roles that fantasies play in anticipatory politics of educational futures. I analyse the ways in which subjects are captivated to relate with fantasmatic objectives of policy vision and its’ normative assumptions concerning future organization of higher education. This approach helps to understand the significant role of fantasies in making of anticipatory policy futures and explicate “the identification-interpellation loop” (De Cleen et al 2021, 35) therein. In this way ideological foundations and affective rhetorics of persuasion in Finnish higher education policy can be placed under critical evaluation and ponder implications of such policy doctrine. Secondly, the research contributes to methodological development of educational policy research methods. Based on psychoanalytically infused political discourse theory (Glynos 2011; 2021; Stavrakakis 2007; Eberle 2019; Behagel & Mert 2021) my intention is to further elaborate the concept of fantasy in empirical analysis and explicate how critical fantasy studies can be applied in case policy analysis.

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