Slow singularities for collective mattering: new material feminist praxis in the accelerated academy

Abstract

The contemporary university privileges speed, precarity, competition, and performativity; it operates through modes of accelerationism, work intensification and productivity; and it is oriented to producing academic subjectivities rooted in self-commodification. Much of this is antithetical to feminist ethics and working practices which focus on care, relationality and working together. The article explores these tensions as a basis for moving forward with the question: What does a new material feminist approach offer as an ethical practice to work against these damaging conditions? In response, it draws on the work of Barad (2007) and Haraway (2016) to propose an embodied material feminist ethics of response-ability as an alternative approach to educational research, teaching and mentoring. Further, relating Stengers (2018) insights on the generativity of slow to Deleuze's (2004) concept of ‘singularities’ the article proposes slow singularities for collective mattering as a conceptual and practical means – as a material-discursive feminist praxis – to contest the un-liveable life of the neoliberal accelerated academy. In doing so, it makes the case for feminist work as an un/dutiful response-ability of nurturing decelerated forms of being which might help reimagine the aims and purpose of the university.

Keywords:

• slow
• singularities
• material feminism
• responsibility/response-ability
• ethics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Carol Taylor is a Professor of Higher Education and Gender at the University of Bath. Carol is interested in the entangled relations of knowledge-power-gender-space-ethics, and her research utilizes feminist, new materialist, and posthumanist theories and methodologies to explore gendered inequalities, spatial practices, and staff and students' participation in a range of higher educational sites. Her latest co-edited books are Taylor, C. A. and Bayley, A. (Eds.) (2019) Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research. London: Palgrave Macmillan, and Taylor, C. A., Abbas, A. and Amade-Escot, C. (Eds.) (2019) Gender in Learning and Teaching: Feminist Dialogues across International Boundaries. London: Routledge. Carol is co-editor of the Journal Gender and Education, and serves on the Editorial Boards of Teaching in Higher Education and Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning.

ORCID

Carol A. Taylor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0914-8461