Feeling our way: academia, emotions and a politics of care

Askins, K. and Blazek, M. (2017) Feeling our way: academia, emotions and a politics of care. Social and Cultural Geography, 18(8), pp. 1086-1105. (doi: 10.1080/14649365.2016.1240224)

[img]
Preview
Text
122893.pdf - Accepted Version

317kB

Abstract

This paper aims to better understand the role of emotions in academia, and their part in producing, and challenging, an increasingly normalized neoliberal academy. It unfolds from two narratives that foreground emotions in and across academic spaces and practices, to critically explore how knowledges and positions are constructed and circulated. It then moves to consider these issues through the lens of care as a political stance towards being and becoming academics in neoliberal times. Our aim is to contribute to the burgeoning literature on emotional geographies, explicitly bringing this work into conversation with resurgent debates surrounding an ethic of care, as part of a politic of critiquing individualism and managerialism in (and beyond) the academy. We consider the ways in which neoliberal university structures circulate particular affects, prompting emotions such as desire and anxiety, and the internalisation of competition and audit as embodied scholars. Our narratives exemplify how attendant emotions and affect can reverberate and be further reproduced through university cultures, and diffuse across personal and professional lives. We argue that emotions in academia matter, mutually co-producing everyday social relations and practices at and across all levels. We are interested in their political implications, and how neoliberal norms can be shifted through practices of caring-with.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Askins, Dr Kye
Authors: Askins, K., and Blazek, M.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
Journal Name:Social and Cultural Geography
Publisher:Taylor & Francis
ISSN:1464-9365
ISSN (Online):1470-1197
Published Online:03 October 2016
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
First Published:First published in Social and Cultural Geography 18(8):1086-1105
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher

University Staff: Request a correction | Enlighten Editors: Update this record