Admining beyond certainty: generating new educational imaginaries through more-than-faculty roles

Abstract

ABSTRACT In higher education, the discursive establishment of ‘faculty’ vs. ‘administrator’ creates a dualistic, hierarchical structure, informing relationalities between/within ourselves and faculty. As administrators, we found/find ourselves in relational encounters, entanglements of material-discursive bodies, that we were/are a part of producing. In these relational encounters, we experience ethics, care, and response-ability within immanent decision-making processes that bear the imprint of tradition and hierarchy. We think-write-live with our academic roles, gendered-racial-cultural-ethic identities, and experiences as administrators in higher education to consider how various philosophical concepts inform how we do admining. We ask, how do post-philosophical perspectives come into being with/in/through administration(ing), especially in the current political, higher education context? We think with relational encounters and post-philosophical concepts to illuminate that contemporary, care-full contestations of admining can create new educational imaginaries in hope-full renewals.