Theorizing Outside the Lines: A Self-Study of Collaborative Learning in a Critical Posthuman Reading Group

Abstract

ABSTRACT Neoliberal conditions in academia often preclude space for ongoing processes of collective reflection and growth, particularly for women faculty. In this qualitative self-study, three women faculty members examine working outside the lines of neoliberal institutions and theoretical traditions to nurture onto-epistemological development through a reading group that has now spanned two years. Drawing on critical feminist posthuman lenses, we inquired into the ways in which we worked and talked through challenging philosophical and theoretical texts in community and connected to our everyday experience as researchers/instructors in ongoing conversations. Specifically, we asked: What opportunities were presented through this different approach to reading and thinking together? What connections to practice and scholarship were created? How did these inform our ways of knowing and being? Our analysis of reflections and meeting notes demonstrates the ways our work ‘outside the lines’ allowed us to do academia differently, in big and small ways – helping us disrupt the isolation and competition of the academy by developing an immanent and relational orientation, working to decenter our (white) selves, and folding our complexifying understandings into research and teaching praxis. Ultimately, we recognize our ‘working outside the lines’ as a form of productive resistance to the devastating effects of neoliberal capitalism, a form of affirmative ethics of care connecting into a larger movement of creating a more relational, supportive academia.