Reordering student affairs: from minority absorption to a radical new

ABSTRACT

Student affairs, a field comprised of many co- and extra-curricular university functions outside of academic affairs, has a durable left-leaning reputation. Roderick Ferguson’s theorization of minority absorption serves as the concept through which we investigate the practices of student affairs. Ferguson argues that student movements of the 1960s and 1970s, which aimed at transforming academic affairs into spaces of radical equity for minoritized students, were ultimately absorbed by institutions, leaving academic affairs relatively intact save a veneer of diversity. We review Ferguson’s arguments on absorption, including his utilization of Foucauldian biopower, and proceed to analyze absorption in three disparate areas of student affairs: student development theory, student outcomes, and cultural centers. As queer scholars, we specifically focus on queerness within these areas. From these critiques we explore the creative potential of Ferguson’s concept of critical possibilities, comprised of analytical framing and practices of dissensus. The practices of analytical framing and dissensus explored can bring the actions of student affairs communities in line with their reputation, and incite radical institutional changes long fought for.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural and media studies
• higher education
• history of education
• philosophy of education
• neoconservatism; neoliberalism
• multiculturalism; multicultural education
• poststructural; postmodern; critical theory
• race
• sexuality
• student affairs
• Roderick Ferguson

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See also St. Pierre (2013) for the spread of biopolitics, or the ‘myth of Science’ (p. 226) to the social sciences, as well as Lather (2016) on the need for ‘cultural studies of numeracy’ (p. 128). These imperatives within student affairs are covered in more detail in Equity in Outcomes below.

2. Clough (2016) details and expands this argument.

3. It is important to note these are communities of dividuals rather than individuals. Dividuals, or units that combine and recombine to produce knowable individuals, are the subjects produced by biopolitics. Under biopolitics, race, gender, and sexuality are dividuated, and thus absorbable (cf. Deleuze, 1992; Raunig, 2016; Smithers & Eaton, 2017).

4. A later addition to this genre was work on the development of majoritized identities. One example is work on white identity development (Helms, 1992), though it too structures development in reference to minoritized racial identities that make white dominance possible.

5. For more on this formulation of critique and creation, see Braidotti (2011).

6. Or ‘captur[ing] the ineffable’ (Ewell, 1991, p. 75).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura E. Smithers

Laura E. Smithers is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at Old Dominion University. Laura’s research focuses on the possible futures created and foreclosed by assessment regimes in undergraduate education. Her current research includes a genealogy project exploring the emergence of student success in undergraduate education and cartographies of practices of student success and impact today. Follow Laura on Twitter @laurida.

Paul W. Eaton

Paul W. Eaton is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Sam Houston State University. Paul’s research interests include inquiries into digital technologies in education and human identity-subjectification-becoming; complexity theory’s application to educational research; postqualitative and posthumanist inquiry; and curriculum theorizing-philosophy in the realms of postsecondary education and student affairs. His current research includes the Networked Communities of Practice study, which is examining the ways higher education and student affairs professionals engage digital technologies for the building of communities of practice and to reconceptualize learning, professional development, and professional identity. In addition, he is engaged in research exploring pedagogical strategies in digital spaces, and how we teach and learn about white privilege in formal academic spaces. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in May 2015, his master’s degree from the University of Maryland College Park in 2005, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2002. Follow Paul on Twitter and Instagram @profpeaton. His blog is located at: https://profpeaton.com.