Professing the vulnerabilities of academic citizenship

ABSTRACT

As academics, we do not only produce and reproduce knowledge; we also produce our citizenship as a social and agonistic space. There are nuances embedded within academic citizenship – unqualifiable, but compelling in their production and reproduction of power dynamics, bringing into disrepute notions of academic citizenship as a homogenous or inclusive space. There are ways of being and becoming within citizenship that might be less readily conceivable, and hence, slip beneath the radar of scholarly scrutiny and debates.We have yet to delve into how we come into the presence of one another. In offering an expanded understanding of academic citizenship as alterity, I argue that academic citizenship has to involve wading into a curious uncertainty about the other so that the immensity of diversity, its unknown-ness, is brought to bear on the university, not as fear and estrangement, but as a rupture with a continuity of Othering.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic citizenship
• vulnerabilities
• alterity
• othering
• knowledge

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. This paper was first presented as an inaugural lecture at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, on 19 October 2021.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.