Disappearing acts: resuscitative reflections on the academy

Abstract

To resuscitate means to revive or make go on. This paper is an exploration of my first six months at a Canadian university as a doctoral student. Through a chronological narrative, I explore my experiences through the governing relations of the academy as a way to provoke dialogue about the role of feminist researcher in the institution. By comparing feminine subjectivity of the ‘woman returner’ (Hughes, 2002) through the character in a feminist science fiction novel the challenges of the academy find resonance and meaning in a reinvention of self.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the peer reviewers of Gender and Education for their helpful comments. This piece is dedicated to Professor Dawn Currie, who by believing in my work, helped resuscitate my fantastical imaginings of the feminine subject in the academy.

Notes

* Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Email: [email protected]

1. Hughes borrows this term from Braidotti’s (1994) notion of the postcolonial subject as nomad.

2. Davies (1992) states that writing is one way to constitute the agentic self.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Twomey*

* Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Email: [email protected]