Abstract
This chapter touches upon the damaging impact of neoliberal reason on institutions of higher education, and my efforts as a teacher to help turn things around by re-vitalizing the classroom. After a critique of current neoliberal ‘borderline times’, the chapter takes the reader on a journey of diffractive re-imaginings in which I share some of my experiences of co-learning with undergraduates in an American feminist-philosophical classroom. My central argument is that the neoliberalism-induced crisis in education can be affirmatively counteracted through experimentations with various posthuman and new materialist theories, and the Harawayan-Baradian methodology of diffraction in particular. Furthermore, informed by the impression that theory and pedagogical praxis go hand in hand in many contemporary feminist new materialisms, I zoom in on daily acts of resistance against the neoliberal corporatization of the American university, acts that actualized themselves as feminist new materialist pedagogies. Three examples of diffractive pedagogical strategies are then discussed in detail.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adorno, T. W., & Horkheimer, M. (1997 [1944]). Dialectic of enlightenment (J. Cumming, Trans.). London and New York: VERSO.
Alaimo, S. (2016). Exposed: Environmental politics and pleasures in posthuman times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Aptheker, B. (1989). How to do meaningful work in women’s studies. Women’s Studies,17(1–2), 5–16.
Barad, K. (2000). Reconceiving scientific literacy as agential literacy. In R. Reid & S. Traweek (Eds.), Doing science + culture. New York: Routledge.
Barad, K. (2001). Scientific literacy → agential literacy = (learning + doing) science responsibly. In M. Mayberry, B. Subramaniam, & L. H. Weasel (Eds.), Feminist science studies: A new generation. New York and London: Routledge.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2010). Quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: Dis/continuities, spacetime enfoldings, and justice-to-come. Derrida Today,3(2), 240–268.
Bozalek, V., & Zembylas, M. (2017). Diffraction or reflection? Sketching the contours of two methodologies in educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,30(2), 111–127.
Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Braidotti, R. (2016). Don’t agonize, organize! e-flux. https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/rosi-braidotti-don-t-agonize-organize/5294. Accessed 10 March 2018.
Braidotti, R., Bozalek, V., Shefer, T., & Zembylas, M. (Eds.). (2018). Socially just pedagogies: Posthumanist, feminist and materialist perspectives in higher education. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books.
Choy, T. K., Faier, L., Hathaway, M. J., Inoue, M., Satsuka, S., & Tsing, A. (2009). A new form of collaboration in cultural anthropology: Matsutake worlds. American Ethnologist,36(2), 380–403.
Dardot, P., & Laval, C. (2013). The new way of the world: On neoliberal society (G. Elliott, Trans.). London and New York: VERSO.
De Wachter, D. (2012). Borderline times: Het einde van de normaliteit. Leuven: LannooCampus.
Dolphijn, R., & van der Tuin, I. (2012). New materialism: Interviews & cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.
Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79 (M. Senellart, Ed. and Graham Burchell, Trans.). New York: Picador.
Freire, P. (2001). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage (P. Clarke, Trans.). Lanham and Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield.
Freire, P. (2006). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York and London: Continuum.
Geerts, E., & van der Tuin, I. (2016). Diffraction & reading diffractively. New materialism almanac. http://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/d/diffraction. Accessed 10 March 2018.
Giroux, H. A. (1988). Teaching as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Westport and London: Bergin and Garvey.
Giroux, H. A. (2014). Neoliberalism’s war on higher education. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Groenke, S. L., & Amos Hatch, J. (Eds.). (2009). Critical pedagogy and teacher education in the neoliberal era: Small openings. Dordrecht: Springer.
Haraway, D. J. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies,14(3), 575–599.
Haraway, D. J. (1997). Modest_witness@second_millennium. FemaleMan©_meets_oncoMouseTM: Feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge.
Haraway, D. J. (2004). The promises of monsters: A regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others. In The Haraway reader. New York and London: Routledge.
Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Hickey-Moody, A., & Page, T. (Eds.). (2016). Arts, pedagogy and cultural resistance: New materialisms. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York and London: Routledge.
hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. New York and London: Routledge.
Latour, B. (2005). From realpolitik to dingpolitik or how to make things public. In B. Latour & W. Peter (Eds.), Making things public: Atmospheres of democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Leatherby, L. (2016). US social mobility gap continues to widen. The Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/7de9165e-c3d2-11e6-9bca-2b93a6856354. Accessed 10 March 2018.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Peck, J. (2010). Constructions of neoliberal reason. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Snaza, N., Sonu, D., Truman, S. E., & Zaliwska, Z. (Eds.). (2016). Pedagogical Matters: New materialisms and curriculum studies. New York: Peter Lang.
Subversive Philosophy Memes. (2018). https://estarthewicked.tumblr.com/. Accessed 1 March 2018.
UNdata. (2018). Social indicators. http://data.un.org/en/reg/g1.html. Accessed 3 March 2018.
UNESCO. (2016). Education 2030: Incheon declaration and framework for action for the implementation of sustainable development goal 4. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002456/245656E.pdf. Accessed 5 March 2018.
UNESCO. (2018). Education transforms lives. https://en.unesco.org/themes/education. Accessed 5 March 2018.
UNESCOstat. (2017). Fact Sheet No. 45. September 2017. FS/2017/LIT/45 Literacy Rates Continue to Rise from One Generation to the Next. http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs45-literacy-rates-continue-rise-generation-to-next-en-2017_0.pdf. Accessed 5 March 2018.
van der Tuin, I. (2015). Generational feminism: New materialist introduction to a generative approach. Lanham and Boulder: Lexington Books.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the editors of this book volume, Carol Taylor and Annouchka Bayley, together with Clare Hammoor, for their affirmative, constructive feedback. Special thanks go out to my undergraduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz for their generosity; to Donna Haraway for our wonderful pedagogical lunch conversation in Santa Cruz in 2016; to Bettina Aptheker for teaching me all about feminist pedagogies; to Maija Butters, Delphi Carstens, Lou Mycroft and Kay Sidebottom—my posthumanist companions—and to Iris van der Tuin for her mentorship.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Geerts, E. (2019). Re-vitalizing the American Feminist-Philosophical Classroom: Transformative Academic Experimentations with Diffractive Pedagogies. In: Taylor, C.A., Bayley, A. (eds) Posthumanism and Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14672-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14672-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14671-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14672-6
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)