Drift and desire: defamiliarizing academic subjectivities

Susan Cannon; Maureen  Flint

doi:10.59391/inscriptions.v4i1.89

Authors

Susan Cannon Mercer University
Maureen A. Flint University of Georgia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59391/inscriptions.v4i1.89

Keywords:

measurement, algorithms, citational politics, subjectivity, speculative fiction

Abstract

In this commentary, we invite ourselves to create speculative fictions of the good life in academia. We take note of the ways that academic platforms and counting practices orient us, and perhaps other academics, toward a good life that is achieved through maximum production of citations, mentions, and connections. Through a close reading of N.K. Jemisin's Non-zero Probabilities, we consider the refrains and rituals that structure our interactions with academic platforms as junior tenure-track professors and our desire for recognition. Then, we put forward two innovatory practices, drift and desiring ambivalence, that prompt us to turn to other poles of valorization in a process of defamiliarization, turning affirmatively toward another good life.

Author Biographies

Susan Cannon, Mercer University

Assistant professor of early childhood/middle grades education at Mercer University. Her scholarship traverses the fields of mathematics and statistics education, qualitative inquiry and teacher education. She reads and thinks with feminist, critical, new materialist, and post humanist theories in order to work the boundaries of concepts and fields.

Maureen A. Flint, University of Georgia

Assistant professor in qualitative research at the University of Georgia where she teaches courses on qualitative research design and theory. Her scholarship explores the theory, practice, and pedagogy of qualitative methodologies, artful inquiries, and questions of social (in)justice, ethics, and equity in higher education.

References

Angervall, Petra. “The Academic Career: A Study of Subjectivity, Gender and Movement among Women University Lecturers.” Gender and Education 30, no. 1 (2018): 105–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1184234.

Ball, tephen J. “Performativity, Commodification and Commitment: An I-Spy Guide to the Neoliberal University.” British Journal of Educational Studies 60, no. 1 (2012): 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2011.650940.

Barad, Karen. “On Touching: The Inhuman That Therefore I Am.” D i f f e r e n c e s: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 25, no. 5 (2012): 206–23.

Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

Braidotti, Rosi. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2019.

Cheney-Lippold, John. “A New Algorithmic Identity: Soft Biopolitics and the Modulation of Control - John Cheney-Lippold, 2011.” Theory, Culture & Society, 28, no. 6 (2011): 164-181, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263276411424420.

Cannon, Susan O., and Maureen Flint. “Measuring Monsters, Academic Subjectivities, and Counting Practices.” Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research, in press.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Feliz Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Flint, Maureen, and Susan O. Cannon. “Becoming Feminist Swarm: Inquiring Mentorship Methodologically Together.” In Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research: Collaborating and Inquiring Together, edited by Kelly W. Guyotte and Jennifer R. Wolgemuth. Routledge, in press.

Freitas, Elizabeth de. “Calculating Matter and Recombinant Subjects: The Infinitesimal and the Fractal Fold.” Cultural Studies ? Critical Methodologies 16, no. 5 (2016): 462–70.

———. “Number Sense and the Calculating Child: Measure, Multiplicity and Mathematical Monsters.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 37, no. 5 (2015): 650–61.

Freitas, Elizabeth de, Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román, and Patti Lather. Alternative Ontologies of Number: Rethinking the Quantitative in Computational Culture.” Cultural Studies ? Critical Methodologies 16, no. 5 (2016): 431–34.

Guattari, Felix. Three Ecologies. Translated by Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton. London, UK: Althone Press, 2000.

Jemisin, N. K. “Nebula Awards 2009 Interview: N.K. Jemisin.” Interview by Larry Nolen, April 14, 2011. https://www.sfwa.org/2011/04/13/nebula-awards-2009-interview-n-k-jemisin/.

———. “How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? The Toxins of Speculative Fiction, and the Antidote That Is Janelle Monae.” Blog. N.K. Jemisin (blog), September 30, 2013. http://nkjemisin.com/2013/09/how-long-til-black-future-month/.

———. “Non-Zero Probabilities.” In How Long ’til Black Future Month: Stories, 1st Edition., 362–72. New York, NY: Orbit, 2018.

———. “The WD Interview: Author N.K. Jemisin on Creating New Worlds and Playing with Imagination.” Interview by Jera Brown, March 29, 2019. https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/the-wd-interview-n-k-jemisin.

Monea, Alexander. “The Graphing of ifference: Mediation and he Case f the Knowledge Graph.” Cultural Studies ? Critical Methodologies 16, no. (2016): 452–61.

Parisi, Luciana. “Automated Thinking and the Limits of Reason.” Cultural Studies ? Critical Methodologies 16, no. 5 2016): 471–81.

Parisi, Luciana. Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and Space. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013.

Sellar, Sam, and Greg Thompson. “The Becoming-Statistic: Information Ontologies and Computerized Adaptive Testing in Education.” Cultural Studies ? Critical Methodologies 16, no. 5 (2016): 491–501. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708616655770.

Sutton, Paul. “Lost Souls? The Demoralization of Academic Labour in the Measured University.” Higher Education Research & Development 6, o. (2017): 625–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1289365.

Whelan, Andrew. “Academic Critique of Neoliberal Academia.” Sites: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 130–52. https://doi.org10.1157/stes-vol12iss1i258.