Description
This paper draws on my PhD research, which ‘thinks with’ feminist new materialism in an attempt to reinterpret what it means to be a female academic in higher education. Situated within ontological experimental philosophy, I have allowed myself to see and be taken by the affective forces of an experience. The affective wonder for this data-and researcher encounter (MacLure, 2013) was stimulated by the construction of a junk model, in the shared office space, in which I work. The junk model, installation emerged from the day-to-day debris typically found in a modern-day office environment; paper cups, plastic bottles, waste paper were installed on a dividing shelf. Colleagues were invited to contribute items to the construction. The immediate conversations, bodily intra-actions spurred by the installation, continued to interrupt and affect the office environment. This paper will explore how a playful, material assemblage was affective in an adult, female-dominated environment. Through a data assemblage that draws from conversation, text and image, I will explore how the lively intra-active potential of the junk model assemblage, which has the agential capacities to ‘debunk’ the discourses that frame the body (Latour, 2004:246) can also affirm bodily discourses of gender, women and female (Maclure, 2015). I will consider the ways in which materially-inspired creative endeavours, in the disciplined, demarcated office environment intra-act with, and ignite tension and fear, for female academics. I will explore how experiences of the mess and the messy in higher education need to be practiced, related to and experienced in new ways (Law, 2004: 2) in order to continue to resist the patriarchal intra-actions that oppress in higher education contexts.| Period | 22 Jun 2017 |
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| Event title | Gender and Education : Generative Feminism(s): working across/within/through borders. |
| Event type | Conference |
| Degree of Recognition | International |