From recalcitrance to rapprochement: tinkering with a working-class academic bricolage of ‘critical empathy’

ABSTRACT

Previous work on working-class academics has highlighted recurring themes, such as micro-aggressions, imposter syndrome, liminality, exclusion, invisibility and habitus. These themes have been encapsulated in a number of metaphors, such as ‘the ghost’ and ‘the phantom-limb’, both of which connote absence, silence and marginalisation. Whilst these metaphors vividly describe the lived experiences of working-class academics, it is necessary to make room for a more positive space in which academics can construct alternative futures. It is necessary to develop a ‘politics of critical hope’. A politics of critical hope seeks to move beyond linear narratives of victimhood, anger and heroic narratives of overcoming. This conceptual paper develops a critical hope that interrogates and repurposes dominant epistemologies in order to foster a bricolage of reparative and empathetic truths. It gestures towards an intersectional politics of academic work, compelling us to recognise that empowerment/ disempowerment is highly complex and stratified in nature.

KEYWORDS:

• Working-class academics
• social class
• bricolage
• the bricoleur
• habitus
• intersectionality

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two reviewers and the editor for their positive response to my work and their insightful comments on an earlier draft. Soundtrack for this paper: ‘Give me some time’ by Jack Lee and ‘Falling’ by Julee Cruise.

Disclosure statement

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