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This paper is concerned with how research candidate becoming is situated within the contemporary higher education policy context and in investigating alternatives. The idea for the paper arises out of a simple observation: that the Doctorate is a degree in philosophy. What does this observation have to offer for understanding research candidate becoming? Prevailing discourses tend to locate research education as a ready source of labour and commodities for the new economy, which is said to trade principally in knowledge. This stands in stark opposition to a time when knowledge was considered so scarce that even Socrates, perhaps the most significant philosopher of all time, considered that if he possessed any, it was knowledge of nothing—a paradox no doubt, but strikingly arcane in the current context. This paper explores the tensions between the notion of knowledge as a commodity and knowledge as ephemeral through Socrates' account of philosophical desire that appears in the Symposium. This provides fertile ground for exploring what becoming a researcher could mean today.
Robyn Barnacle (Sun,) studied this question.