A universidade, a extensão universitária e a produção de conhecimentos emancipadores: ainda existem utopias realistas

Abstract

This work tries to help understand the potentíalities of some extra-mural activíties carried out at UERJ and registered at the Vice-Chancellorship for Extra-Mural projects and Culture - that ís, theír congregating and emancípating characteristícs, their emancipating role in the student's formatíon, and the staffs posítian towards public policies ín the fields comprised by the projects. At present, universíties face many obstacles placed either by the society, which questions their existence, or by the State, which restricts financial support. The university's crises also have to do with questions on its hegemony and legitimacy. ln this sense, more than analysing its structure and/or sítuatíon, we ought to think about the university's daily work, looking for changes, experiences that discuss a kind of formation other than the one based on modem knowledge, in which reason is apart from feelings, where relations are quantifíed and experience has become silent. This reflection is based on concepts stated by Boaventura Santos, for whom emancipating is the knowledge that thinks about the consequences of its acts, where the relation subject/object is replaced by reciprocity among subjects, and solidarity and participation are present. Through documental analysis of projects and interviews with coordinators, students and users, we could notice that the activities contribution to the student's formation occurs on two leveis: technical formation, and one concerned with the quality of relations, based on respect and affection. lt was also possible to notice that the proposal's health concepts do not reduce man to his diseases, that teaching, research and extra-mural activies are not completely apart yet, and that knowledge, less disciplinary and more contextualized, is materia!ízed in articulation with other forms of knowledge and with other actors.