Musings on becoming the ghost in the machine: writing into practice subversive academic relations towards care

ABSTRACT

In I, Robot the phrase ‘ghosts in the machine’ referred to the unexpected possibility of artificial intelligence evolving past its original intended purpose. In this paper, we use the metaphor to conjure the possibility of us all evolving past those originally intended purposes, uses, and limitations set for us within colonialist academic institutions imbued with white supremacist logics. We call on each other to exceed those limitations, igniting possibilities otherwise by triggering spectral, subversive mis-repeats that agitate a domino-effect disruption of those billions of academic machines that for too long have been left on automatic status quo.

Résumé

Dans la série I, Robot, l’expression « le fantôme dans la machine » se réfère à la possibilité extraordinaire que l’intelligence artificielle dépasse de loin son objectif de départ. Cet article utilize cette métaphore pour évoquer la possibilité que les humains évoluent au-delà de ces objectifs de départ, usages et limites définies pour nous par les établissements d’enseignement colonialistes, dominés par une logique suprémaciste blanche. Nous appelons à dépasser ces limites, à provoquer des événements en lançant de faux récits subversifs qui créeront un effet domino susceptible de perturber les milliards d’institutions universitaires qui perpétuent le statu quo depuis trop longtemps.

MOTS-CLÉS:

• changement institutionnel
• réinventer le secteur universitaire
• enseigner différemment
• désapprendre

KEYWORDS:

• Institutional change
• reimagining academia
• doing teaching differently
• unlearning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Whom ‘we’ are is always up for grabs, shifting, moving, unsettling, and transient. Only you can decide if this ‘we’ speaks you into being, or perhaps you are merely choosing to look in, or are running away as fast as you can. For further discussion see: (Moran & Berbary, 2020).

2. La paperson (2017, p. xv).

3. La paperson (2017, p. xiv) insists ‘on the possibilities for a third world university committed to the practical work of decolonization. I frame the university broadly as an amalgamation of first, second, and third worlding formations. That is, the university is worldmaking. First worlding universities are machinery commissioned to actualize Imperialist dreams of a settled world. Second worlding universities desire to humanize the world, which is a more genteel way to colonize a world that is so much more than human. A third worlding university is a decolonizing university.’ Thanks to MK Stinson for bringing this book into our lives.

4. Halberstam (2013, p. 6) prefaced Harney and Moten (2013) writing that ‘if you want to know what the undercommons wants, what Moten and Harney want, what Black people, Indigenous peoples, queers and poor people want, what we (the “we” who cohabit in the space of the undercommons) want, it is this – we cannot be satisfied with the recognition and acknowledgement generated by the very system that denies a) that anything was ever broken and b) that we deserved to be the broken part; so we refuse to ask for recognition and instead we want to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places that we know lie outside its walls. We cannot say what new structures will replace the ones we live with yet, because once we have torn shit down, we will inevitably see more and see differently and feel a new sense of wanting and being and becoming. What we want after “the break” will be different from what we think we want before the break and both are necessarily different from the desire that issues from being in the break.’ Thanks to Dr. Aby Sène-Harper for bring this book into our lives.

5. As La paperson (2017) reminded, ‘because school is an assemblage of machines and not a monolithic institution, its machinery is always being subverted toward decolonizing purposes…driven by decolonizing desires, with decolonizing dreamers who are subversively part of the machinery and part machine themselves’ (p. xiii).

6. These violences do not destroy us all in the same ways or to the same magnitudes, some bodies/existences are more easily targeted than others due to inequitably distributed policing, resources, wealth, and societal care. Or, as Harney and Moten (2013, p. 10) puts it, ‘it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?’

7. Reading Joy James’ Seeking the Beloved Community (2013) reminded that our activism must also move outside of the academy, given that our institutions are incapable of providing the conditions for radicalism as anything other than performance’ (p. 221).

8. We recognize that for many academics, having TAs to work with is a luxury not afforded. We also recognize that teaching assistantships create an entirely different set of complexities that must be constantly negotiated and reconsidered towards more just relations and loving experiences in process.