Leadership, Otherwise

We live in complex times. Shifting and accelerated capitalism (which never breaks; only bends; Braidotti, 2014) requires new analytical tools of resistance. Finding ways to act while working within organisations that fetishise obedience, surveil and micro-manage, or uphold outdated ideologies can create exhaustion or cynicism, however. Further to this, the way in which organisations are led, and leadership is enacted, all too often continues to be rooted in the Vitruvian 'man-of-reason'. Fearful of difference, mired in bureaucracy, shaped around the humanist ideal of ‘Man’ as universal representation of the human and measure of all things, and bought into neo-liberal values of individual success and  competition.

The affective mood across workplaces does not sit outside the very real and recent pain of pandemic; the grief and loss we feel (even if unexpressed) of climate change; or the impending fear of lack of food and heating. It is very real, and very out there, if not acknowledged in the way it should be.  As Brodkey (1996) suggests “The only way to fight a hegemonic discourse is to teach ourselves and others alternative ways of seeing the world." This blog post attempts to offer alternative visions of leadership, where 'leadership' is not meant in the heroic or even transformative sense, but in the sense of every person working ethically outside the leader-follower binary. It draws on Braidotti, Deleuze and Spinoza to summarise three key moves of posthuman leadership (Mycroft and Sidebottom, 2023).

Nomadic Detachment

Braidotti (2019) urges us to undergo processes of de-familiarisation and dis-identification in order to give us critical distance from the systems that constrain us.  Oppressive practices have become so normalised that we cannot imagine other ways of doing things. Yet when we examine structures, organisations and political systems from a critical distance we begin to see the cracks and even feel a sense of the ridiculous. It can actually take very little (as we have seen with Ofsted in the past two weeks) for scales to fall from our eyes. But it requires both the individual process of working ourselves from pain to knowledge, and collective thought and action.

Recognising the ways in which we are attached to organisations and ways of working is not always easy; it can be painful because it connects to hope, dreams, and makes us account for how we spend so much of our waking time. It is a kind of Stockholm syndrome which reveals the complexity of advanced capitalism; we can often also benefit from the very systems we want to resist. As an academic, you can critique research metrics one day, and then celebrate your REF results the next. You may detest the peer review process, but celebrate when your article gets published. And in schools, the false god of Ofsted is maligned in one breath but then you understandably want to celebrate the hard work that got you and everyone around you that Outstanding result.  To admit that we are part of this complexity is difficult and requires a deep analysis of our own relationship to power. And when people feel power-less, it is not suprising that power is sought wherever it can be found. Spinoza famously asked the question: "Why do people fight for their servitude as if it were their salvation?" One reason may be that even servitude can bring a sense of belonging, that may be missing for many in such a fractured and individualising world.

To practice nomadic detachment, then, is to firstly examine our own love of power. As Foucault said:

 

“The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us”  (1983, p.xiii).

What do we love; how does power feel; and what kinds of power do we want to associate with? It is important to remember too, that we all have power in some ways, regardless of our position, identity or status.

We may not be able to be physically nomadic, but in our minds it is possible to detach ourselves from the pull of loyalty and subservience to organisations who will never love us back. Be loyal to people, our friends and colleagues, yes; but not to structures. Think of ways to work beyond organisational silos and find the 'smooth spaces' in which we can move freely, follow flows of positive energy and be beholden to no-one except ourselves and each other.

In nomadic working, ‘teams’ are not forever, projects are time-limited and the work becomes the organisation, rather than the organisation being the work. People come together in ‘constellations of practice’, gathering around shared drive and energy for a limited period of time (and potentially working in several constellations at once) (Mycroft and Sidebottom, 2018). More energy may be required, of course; but this is generative energy '"...based on the shared capacity of humans to feel empathy for, develop affinity with, and hence enter into relation with other forces, entities, beings, waves of intensity" (Braidotti, 2011, p.317).

Potentia Energy

When thinking about power, we are constrained by language. In English, of course, there is only one word for it. French has two (pouvoir and puissance); other languages have many. Spinoza used the words potestas and potentia to form an important distinction between hierarchical, bureaucratic and political power (postestas) and natural, generative, relational power (potentia). Organisations are generally spaces of potestas; rigid, hard to change, and mired in complex processes ('politics-as-usual').  However, potentia power still emerges through the joyful connections and reimaginings made by like-minded souls, and breaks through in leaderless movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy.  You will feel potentia energy in your body, in the moments you connect with someone interesting on social media; when you start a project with people outside your own usual working environment; or when you meet a new person and jump on the flow of energy you feel between yourselves. It is an activist power; rhizomatic in its messy, serendipitousness, and often subversive. 

We cannot work purely in spaces of potentia all the time. Rosi Braidotti recommends a life which is 80% potestas and 20% potentia. Thinking about our own balance of energy, and where we can find the joyful, potentia-full encounters that Spinoza believes are necessary for a fulfilled life, should be an important and regular reflection.

Affirmative Ethics

Spinoza warns against the joining together of people in 'sad passions'; that is, the kind of endeavours that may feel productive, but are mired in negativity.  While joyful endeavours increase our capacity to act and create change, sad passions coalesce around polarity, binary thinking and 'them versus us.' They can feel comforting for a time, but are also the places in which cynicism and fascist inclinations thrive. 

Joyful encounters strike at the heart of what it is to be human; they often involve art or creativity, connection, relationships and care. They can be acts of resistance (think dancing on a picket line) or the very small moments in which you stop rationalising and arguing about the 'right' way to do things, and decide to act differently; by tuning into bodily affects and emotion.

Affirmative ethics is therefore not about morals or values, but a shared ethical commitment to forging equitable futures centred around mutuality, relationality and shared predicament. As Braidotti (2011) states: ‘In affirmative ethics, the harm you do to others is immediately reflected on the harm you do to yourself in terms of loss of potentia, positivity, capacity to relate and hence freedom.’ It maintains a focus on joy over negativity; where joy is not happiness, but used in the Spinozan sense of a commitment to growth and development as life as part of a wider interrelated community. It is about the transformation of pain into knowledge, rather than complaint or negativity, in processes which enhance one’s capacity to affect and be affected by others. This generative approach leads to an emphasis on philosophy as praxis and thus incorporates micro-political moments of activism and wider action for social justice.

The kind of re-imaginings I am talking about in these three moves are not beyond our grasp; we see them all the time, but perhaps don't account for them enough. To close with Braidotti:

"Against the general lethargy, the rhetoric of selfish genes and possessive individualism, on the one hand, and the dominant ideology of melancholic lament, on the other, hope rests with an affirmative ethics of sustainable futures. A deep and careless generosity, the ethics of nonprofit at an ontological level. Why should one pursue this project? For no reason at all. Reason has nothing to do with this. Let's just do it for the hell of it - to be worthy of our times while resisting the times and for the love of the world." (2011, p.298).

References

Braidotti, R. (2019) Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Braidotti, R. and Vermeulen, T. (2014) Borrowed Energy. Frieze. [Online]. Available from: https://www.frieze.com/article/borrowed-energy [Accessed 22 December 2020].

Braidotti, R.  (2011)  Nomadic Theory:  The Portable Rosi Braidotti. Columbia University Press.

Brodkey, L. (1996). Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Foucault. (1983). Preface. Retrieved fromhttps://libcom.org/files/Anti-Oedipus.pdf

Mycroft, L. and Sidebottom, K. (2023). Posthuman Professionalism. 10 March, 2023. The Open University.

Mycroft, L. and Sidebottom, K. (2018) Constellations of Practice. In Bennett, P. and Smith, R. (eds.). Identity and Resistance in Further Education. London: Routledge.

'The Time is Out of Joint:' Thoughts on an era of dislocation

When I was around 11 or 12 I met (the then) Prince Charles on a visit to my school. My mum reminded me of this fact (which I had strangely forgotten) and dug out the photo below which - despite being a staunch republican - she has in a frame. Even at 12 I felt fairly ambivalent, but it struck me this week that meeting a member of the royal family has a whole range of connotations and meanings for others. I cannot relate to the desire to lay flowers at Buckingham Palace, or line the streets to watch a coffin pass by, but then again many others will not understand my reluctance to engage in mourning or public recognition of the Queen's passing. I have been surprised by the strength of the sadness displayed by people who I expected to react very differently. And people I thought knew me well have been surprised by my (lack of) reaction, too. My social media timelines are split between the righteous anger of people of colour, and mawkish photos of the Queen in a cloud. To say that this feels disconcerting is an understatement, and takes me back to the Covid days of deeply polarised masking and vaccination discourses. This tendency to fall into binary thinking (which I am as guilty of as many) eludes the complexity of the feeling of these strange, affective times. It is in the spirit and recognition of this complexity that I write this blog. 

Thinking, in an age of academic and expert distrust, is seen as the practice of the elite; yet we are in a time that calls for new ideas and approaches to complex ethical dilemmas more than ever. As Virginia Woolf said 'Think, we must.'  And so, despite calls to put a lid on my thinking or to sit on my hands to prevent myself tweeting (yes, I do this!), it feels like the absolute time for critical thought. We are seeing the convergence of an increasing authoritarian society with public mourning, via infringement on the right to protest; as I write, a number of people have been arrested for public order offences, otherwise known as simply expressing republican views. Schools, who are simultaneously restricting the questioning of rules via zero tolerance policies are unquestioningly instigating mourning rituals and events which may well be troubling at best for students of colour.  Minoritised voices are being shut down at a time when we need to question whose views matter and whose are privileged. And yet at the same time, many people are experiencing very real feelings of grief and despair. Hamlet's call, that our 'time is out of joint' speaks to this growing sense of unease and dislocation; a dis-ease, which is catching an affective mood and transmitting itself through the crowds in London and the proliferation of voices and memes on social media. This affective mood does not sit outside the very real and recent pain of pandemic; the grief and loss we feel (even if unexpressed) of climate change; or the impending fear of lack of food and heating. It is very real, and very out there.

I often speak about Gramsci's notion of interregnum; as he stated in the Prison Diaries:  “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” We are quite literally in interregnum at the moment - the time-lag between the death of one royal sovereign and the coronation of the next - and so it feels apt to mention it again. Gramsci, of course, widened the concept to refer to a wider and deeper social rupture; the kind which we are seeing through stark equality gaps and the rise of far right views and overtly racist commentary.  It is at times like these that I argue we need to turn towards, and not away from theory in order to make sense of these 'morbid symptoms'. As Spinoza calls us, we need to transform pain to knowledge in order to make sense of the world, and this may begin by a return to our own ethics and values. For myself, as a posthuman thinker I try to live by the call to “…mark the end of the self-reverential arrogance of a dominant Eurocentric notion of the human, and open up new perspectives” (Braidotti and Hlavajova 2018, 3). This position requires us to move beyond humanism as we augment and reposition the voices of those overlooked and oppressed by Enlightenment ideas of “humanity.” This week I have returned to the work of bell hooks, Rosi Braidotti, Priya Satia and Mona Eltahawy to remind myself of the thinkers who speak to these ethics and values while trying to make sense of the behaviours around me.

Living through a 'time out of joint' is dislocating and unsettling. It requires the extension of empathy and understanding to those taking different positions (I'm working on this!) alongside a desire to further our knowledge. For myself then, this means a return to history and decolonial theory, to plug the massive and damaging gaps in my own education. It also necessitates a need to examine the 'fascist inside us all'; which, for me, is the desire to trouble my need to feel safe and comfortable in my own opinion and world-view and be dogmatic in the way I impart it to others. I am learning that it isn't enough to rant on social media or to surround myself with those who think exactly like me. I need a more nuanced understanding in order to take on the affective mood of these times.

Whatever we do, let's not shut down critical thought just at the time we need it most. 

To close with Virginia:

“Think we must. Let us think in offices; in omnibuses; while we are standing in the crowd watching Coronations and Lord Mayor’s Shows; let us think as we pass the Cenotaph; and in Whitehall; in the gallery of the House of Commons; in the Law Courts; let us think at baptisms and marriages and funerals. Let us never cease from thinking—what is this ‘civilization’ in which we find ourselves? What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them? Where in short is it leading us, the procession of the sons of educated men?” (Woolf, 1938, p.60)

Of course there were elephants

 “I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, & thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past'' Virginia Woolf.

It's taken a week, but it finally feels time to reflect on the Posthuman Pedagogies weekend and explore what it was that made the time in Malham so special. It's true that you don't always live in emotions as you feel them; and culturally-dominant linear ideas of time reinforce the way that we are conditioned to feel everything in the present moment.  As the person organising the event I felt like my own responses were deliberately frozen in time, and not to be indulged in; being responsible in a way for everyone else (even though we avoided any sense of hierarchy). In a way I would like to go back and run it through again as someone invited to attend, rather than the facilitator; although, as we said a few times during the weekend, you never walk through the same river twice.

On the first evening I introduced some ideas of Posthuman and More-than-Human Pedagogies, and we explored what these might be.  What could we learn from teachers, but not the human kind?  What might happen if we saw moss...fungi...water...trees...the wind, even - as educators, full of things to tell us, them having been - as Robin Wall Kimmerer puts it - on this earth far longer than us?

The theory behind all of this comes from the critical posthumanism of Rosi Braidotti and differs from other strands (actor network theory, transhumanism, anti-humanism, and so on) in that it is not philosophy as such, but a “…theoretically-powered cartographical tool” (Braidotti 2013, 12), or a lens through which to read the world (the latter is a fitting analogy for a practice which draws heavily on the work of Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher and optical lens grinder). Posthumanism is essentially a final call to “…mark the end of the self-reverential arrogance of a dominant Eurocentric notion of the human, and to open up new perspectives” (Braidotti and Hlavajova 2018, 3). It requires us to make a double move; the first, going beyond, or afterhumanism as we augment and reposition the voices of those overlooked and oppressed by Enlightenment ideas of “humanity.” The second move is post-anthropocentrism; the decentering of the human and elevation of other species and ecological systems which have been relegated beneath “Man” in an exploitative and limiting hierarchy. This convergence of ideas – which are often dealt with separately – necessitates complex, non-binary responses to the questions of our times.

Our focus for the weekend was particularly on this latter move; the decentering of the human. I shared an image of mushrooms, ants, moss and - rather randomly - elephants. I joked about how I might struggle to find the latter for everyone in the Yorkshire Dales. We planned workshops on learning from fungi, poetry inspired by material objects, and outdoors art-based practices. We spent a morning walking around Malham Tarn and looking at the landscape through a critical lens, considering the problematic history of pastoral spaces and our own privilege in relation to even being there. I imagined us exploring numerous ways in which we could learn from nature and what that learning might change for our own teaching practice. 

And yet.

'One knows that Life lives on regardless of human pretentious and expectations. ‘We’ can only intervene in this as transversal ensembles, acting collectively: ‘We’-who-are-not-one-and-the-same-but-are-in-this-convergence-together' (Braidotti, 2019, p.182).

What I hadn't fully anticipated was the need for us, after two years of pandemic, to firstly reacquaint ourselves with what it is to be human. Reflecting afterwards with a friend on Sunday night, we talked about the need for a 'reset'; a reminder of what it means (and how much it means) to be in the company of unfamiliar others; to share food; to make new friends; to share the often traumatic stories of what it has meant to try and teach in the presence of a virus, within oppressive education systems, and in the hands of a corrupt and dehumanising government. To decentre ourselves is always already impossible. We needed to think about identity (the 'effect of power', Deleuze put it) but also move beyond this together as ethical subjects. As Braidotti states 'A subject is a matter of forces, of relations, of capacities, of inclinations' (2018, p.182). To acknowledge this was about becoming intimate with naturalised others, but also about being open in relations with other human subjects. Helped by the practices of a Thinking Environment, which opened the weekend with simple but vital question 'How are you?' we had the opportunity to show up as ourselves and reaffirm our values, ethics and forge assemblages that I know will be long-lasting and essential to do the work that is required. I truly hope that others will find similar spaces of reconnection and affirmation.

And the elephants? They are also well-known for their close social relationships and fostering of strong, sustaining communities. Looking out of my window on the first morning I spotted a line of them surrounding Malham Tarn. Well, they were trees of course, and you need to zoom in quite far to see them. But it's all about perspective.

Elephants on Malham Tarn

Braidotti, Rosi. (2013) The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Braidotti, Rosi, and Maria Hlavajova. (2018) Posthuman Glossary. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Braidotti, R. (2018). Affirmative Ethics, Posthuman Subjectivity, and Intimate Scholarship: A Conversation with Rosi Braidotti. In: Decentering the Researcher in Intimate Scholarship. Eds. Strom, K., Mills, T., and Ovens, A. Bingley: Emerald Publishing. pp. 179-188.

Virginia Woolf quote from her journal, Wednesday 18 March, 1925.

Towards an ethics of joy

''She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.''

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I recently returned to this book, wanting to read something that resonated with the strange, other-worldliness of a time of pandemic. Marquez's writing is beautiful and evocative, but the story (as I remembered, coming back to it) is a little problematic. Nevertheless the quote above stood out for me as a kind of theme tune for my experiences so far during lockdown.  I am spending a huge amount of time with my two girls (10 and 12) and it is no understatement to say that just these past three weeks have radically changed my relationship with them. I'm lucky that they are of an age where friendship is possible; we can support each other, laugh together, be silly or just hang-out (when they want me to, that is). Whilst I know they are still very young, it is true to say that they are supporting me as much as I am supporting them.

So it's a strange time to be writing about joy, and also the perfect time. 

Joy is different from happiness; it speaks of moments rather than a state of being, and of the soul, rather than the mind. It requires noticing, and attention to be paid. If the current crisis is teaching me anything, it is that it is pointless striving for long periods of being 'happy' and that instead it is better to spend time spotting and savouring those often fleeting seconds when you suddenly feel joy bubble up, endorphins hitting the bloodstream like a hit of nicotine or alcohol (yes, I take joy from those things too :)

Me, attempting to dance with Oti Mabuse

The Dutch philosopher Spinoza wrote extensively on affirmative ethics as a practice of joy, whereby you firstly pay attention to the things that promote physical and mental well-being (of yourself and others - which may include non-humans).  As Rosi Braidotti states 'A joyful ethics rests on an enlarged sense of a vital inter-connection with a multitude of others by removing the obstacle of self-centred individualism and anthropocentricism on one hand, and the barriers of negativity on the other. ' (2018, p.221).

Affirmative ethics doesn't refuse to acknowledge pain, but suggests we use knowledge to transform it into something positive. In the context of coronavirus, this could mean allowing ourselves to feel pain and grieve, while also taking time to reflect and learn from what the pandemic is telling us. It requires a cognitive step which de-personalises the crisis in order to 'transform its negative charge' (difficult, of course), noticing negative emotions of pain, anger, greed and fear.' (ibid., p.222). To be affirmative is therefore about firstly noticing, and then taking action, riding on the back of a wave of 'potensia' energy; the kind of power that comes from natural and bodily forces rather than the static power of organisations and hierarchies. It asks - what can this joy teach me, and how can I generate more from this moment? How can we use this new knowledge to work together, and construct new horizons of hope and change?

I wrote this poem a while ago about counting my daughter's freckles. It speaks of numerous moments of noticing, allowing myself to be affected, and being mindful of the often surprising nature of 'joyful encounters'. There might not be so many during the weeks to come. But I'll keep trying to notice them.
http://writingaftertherainscame.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-easy-it-is_9.html

Braidotti, R. 'Ethics of Joy'. in Braidotti, R. and Hlavajova, M. (2018). Posthuman Glossary. London: Bloomsbury.

Reframing Home

Over the past couple of weeks (and most likely for the foreseeable future), home in all its imperfect glory has become a site for reflection, and so it seems timely to reflect on the language and framing of 'home' in the context of quarantine and forced isolation. The government's mantra of 'Stay home, protect the NHS save lives' is being repeated ad infinitum, but what isn't being considered within this frame is the politicised nature of domestic space and place. What is meant by 'home', and what ideal is being invoked by it?  This blog attempts to provoke some thinking and as ever I would be really interested to hear your views.

'Home' as promoted in Conservative party ideology suggests a hetero-normative calling to a world of standard families, warm sunny gardens, the scent of fresh baking and the sound of happy children crafting in spacious rooms downstairs. The reality for most, of course, is something quite different. Home, as a concept, is never neutral; it is an ideological as well as physical space, and this global crisis is calling these unspoken assumptions into question.  For many, home may be 'not-work'; a space of antithesis and refuge from a neo-liberal world of forced productivity and consumption. For others, particularly those at risk of domestic violence and coercion, home invokes a sense of threat or imprisonment. Home, for those bound to it through disability and caring responsibilities, will have long been problematised, and isolation may well be nothing new. Meanwhile, the nuclear family of two heterosexual parents and 2.4 children, routed in humanist ideals, has long since stopped being a standard, and is certainly not something to aspire to (if it ever was).   As Stacy Alaimo (2016, p.17) states '...domestic space has served as the defining container for the Western ''human'', a bounded space, wrought by delusions of safety, fed by consumerism, and fueled by nationalist fantasies.''

We are also seeing the leaky boundaries of home, as work creeps into spaces which may have previously appeared impermeable. Rooms are now being given over to makeshift work spaces and classrooms; 'surveillance creep' via management diktat to log hours and productivity is becoming commonplace.  We're reminded of Foucault's 'panopticon', where '...disciplinary power is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility. In discipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen. ...It is this fact of being constantly seen, of being able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection.' (1977, p.187)  We are realising the extent of the leakiness of bodies too, as fears of the virus contaminating parcels, supermarket food and leaflets dropping through the letterbox remind us daily that our home is no longer our castle. Our houses - just like our bodies - are full of holes. 

Harriet, Inside

We are realising the unbounded nature of our local environments. From Welsh mountain goats to foxes and deer in East London; social media is full of stories of nature reclaiming spaces which were previously overrun by cars and humans rushing about their daily business. The nature/culture binary, and seeking of 'pure' spaces 'just for us' are being truly troubled; just as invisible viruses transcend our breathing space, so animals previously kept out through imagined or physical boundaries are beginning to return.  Perhaps it is time to rethink humans as species, as we move from anthropocentric frames to an understanding of a greater and much-needed relationality. After all, we marvel at the architectural skills of bees without respecting them as architects. Is it time to decentre the human and begin to see ourselves as more animal, whilst at the same time elevating our views of the 'minds' of non-human others?

These re-imaginings are not easy, and old habits of mind are hard to break. In re-thinking our relationships to the natural world, Alaimo refers to Walter de Maria's art installation, New York Earth Room; a permanent exhibition of soil filling a city apartment to waist-height. Visitors can view the earth and breath in the smell, wondering at the juxtaposition of pristine white walls and ageing humus. As ever, art can offer a route into reconfiguring our understanding of the nature/human divide, and in the months to come, may well play a key role in the emergence of a new sociological imaginary.

The zoonotic nature of the virus, and the increasing sense of blurred boundaries (both human and non-) speaks to the breakdown of dualistic beliefs which have separated humans both physically and ideologically from the natural world.  For me, this time of interregnum raises the following questions. What might it mean to embrace multi-species living, but with a new respect for difference and kinship? What does it say about entrenched global and local inequalities, and how do we challenge Western dualisms which perpetuate ideas of difference? And what might it mean for our homes, to know that we were never really separated at all?

Alaimo, S. 2016. Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

#30DaysReflectResist

As educators, we have little time to reflect on our practice. I'm convinced that the reason for this is largely political - who knows what we might think, share, or decide to change if we have time to really explore and consider the issues affecting what we do in our day to day working lives? Means of resistance are becoming more squeezed, as we fight the bureaucracy of 'academic capitalism', where time is money, and less time is our own. Twitter exchanges are carried out in soundbites; there is anger and there is frustration, and most of all, there is pain. We are all grieving for something - our disconnection from the natural world, from each other, for a world of equality which is unlikely to come in our lifetimes, for certainty and answers when everything feels upside down.

Yet we need to continue to seek out affirmative approaches to change, that take us out of places of pain and inspire hope. These might just be temporary 'lines of flight,' but the disruptions to the status quo can produce a ripple effect that lead to lasting change, even if we can't see what these might be right now, or know where they might take us. Networks like #ClearTheAir slow down linear time as conversations loop and emerge through thinking that is deeply relational and reflexive; but most of all informal, driven through the will of individuals to learn and share together in a spirit of humility and vulnerability. These are the kind of spaces where learning happens, but they require a presence and openness that can be difficult, particularly when we are fearful. Being reflective in this context means letting go; or as Brene Brown would say, 'daring greatly.'  Perhaps this is one resolution to start with in this new year.

In 2017 the fab Benjamin Doxtdator (@doxdatorb) put together a podcast which encourages us to take a pause and reflect on the 'productive interruptions' which might create small ruptures in the systems that limit and constrain us. You can listen to it here: http://www.longviewoneducation.org/give-educators-pause-2018/ On the back of his brilliant idea, I suggested we take the first 30 days of January 2018 to continue pausing and reflecting in response to different questions about social justice in education, grouping them with the hash tag #30DaysReflectResist.  And now I'm suggesting we do it again in the early days of 2020.

I have started to post reflective questions on the 30 Days Google doc - please take a look and add your own question to the list.  I will then post one for each day of January on Twitter using the hash tag #30DaysReflectResist. How much or how little you join in is up to you, but if you would like to pause and reflect in the company of others, it might be a great way to start your new year.

It's in our interests to stay awake and alert to means of resistance, even when anaesthetizing (in whichever way we choose) feels like an easier way to deal with the pain. As the structures within which we work become more restrictive and stultifying, it may be that the rhizomatic connections we make through projects like this really are the best hope we have for change and transformation.

Looking forward to reading your thoughts and tweets over the coming month - many thanks for sharing.

#BeMorePhilosopher - Taking Back Space as Thinkers

One of the big frustrations of teaching on a Childhood Studies degree is the lack of esteem with which the qualification is held. Despite being an interdisciplinary grounding in philosophy, psychology, and sociology; a multi-modal space for engaging with visual, literary and artistic perspectives; and a programme populated with vocational opportunities for connecting theory to practice, students often talk of the degrading way in which it is viewed by others.

It's our responsibility as lecturers and students not to fall into this trap but to continue taking up and owning space as thinkers and philosophers of practice. Of course, we are not helped by the dominant discourse around what makes a thinker or philosopher; Google these words and you're likely to see a row of white men (often ancient, or - if French - smoking and looking pensive). The images do not speak to our many students or lecturers, be they female, people of colour, 18-year olds, non-binary or intersections across these identities and many more.

Searches for more recent theorists offer revealing trends too. Men are often pictured alongside women who are not named or acknowledged in the photo - but are theorists or thinkers in their own right. A search for photographs of Jean Piaget with Barbel Inhelder, John Dewey with Helen Parkhurst, Jean Paul Sartre with Simone de Beauvoir, and so on reveals interesting displays of power along with a lack of adequate naming and accreditation.

In her blog, Existing While Female, Jana Bacevic reminds us of the way in which women are rarely able to just sit and think; interiority for us is not seen as useful or productive. When women think, they should be in the company or others and/or otherwise occupied (embroidery; walking; or perhaps these days, engaged in well-being or self-care activities). Just sitting and thinking in space as a woman is in itself a counter-cultural act of resistance.

Men doing thinking stuff

Next Tuesday (24th September) myself and students will be instigating a photo hack which aims to take back space for us as under-represented thinkers and philosophers of practice.  Using the hash tag #BeMorePhilosopher we will create our own photographs of ourselves - perhaps emulating the men in the ones here; re-mixing them to photoshop ourselves into their spaces; or subverting the whole notion of what it means to think in public space and creating an entirely new genre.  We'll share them on this Padlet too https://padlet.com/kaysidebottom/philosophyhack

Why not join us?

Claire Birkenshaw and Nicole Gridley
'Thinking while female'

Walking, otherwise

Critical posthumanist thinking is on the rise as a new way of theorising the world - much-needed in these complex and concerning times. Yet the term itself is contested and often conflated with other approaches such as transhumanism, anti-humanism, metahumanism and many other schools of thought. At a time when we are crying out for guidance and instruction, rejecting binary positions and embracing challenging philosophical theories feels counter-cultural, and downright scary. Yet, 'think we must' as Virginia Woolf reminded us during the 1938 rise of fascism (1938, p.60). Difficult times call for hard work, not anti-intellectual stances.

This week, our band of nomadic thinkers* are running a series of 'posthuman walks' for The Sociological Review's exciting event, Thinking on the Move.  It therefore feels timely to set out our own interpretation of posthumanism in order to set the scene. What might it mean to think in posthuman ways? or to walk in them?

Tight-rope walker, Utrecht

For us, Posthumanism is not a recipe card, a tick-box of activities or one philosophy, but a navigational tool or lens through which to read this rapidly changing world. As Braidotti and Hlavajova (2018, p.5) state‘…[it is] a field of enquiry and experimentation that is triggered by the convergence of post-humanism on one hand and post-anthropocentricism on the other.’  

Posthumanism here first critiques the humanist ideal of ‘Man’ as the universal representation of the human. We are all familiar with Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man; the finely-honed figure of the 'perfect' human body (male, white, European, physically able, buff, symmetrical, unattainable). In this world we (generally) reject this limited and biased idea of what it means to be human, but many of our systems continue to be built around it, discriminating and excluding on this basis.  Posthumanism is therefore a '...final call to ‘mark the end of the self-reverential arrogance of a dominant Eurocentric notion of the human, and to open up new perspectives.’ (ibid p.3). These perspectives may be post-colonial, feminist, queer, critical-disability, and many other things besides.

Using posthuman approaches as a navigational tool requires teachers and researchers to elevate the voices of those deemed ‘non-human’ throughout history, accept and work with technological mediation, consider the role in our practice of non-human actors such as animals, artificial intelligences, and take account of the agency of material ‘things’. 

The second, post-anthropocentric element takes into account the damage done by humans to the earth and seeks to re-imagine ways to live symbiotically, re-thinking human/nonhuman relationships and challenging species hierarchy.  Both elements bring the body back in, rejecting Cartesian dualisms and building towards new relationalities that challenge individualistic paradigms and practices.

Our posthuman walks will aim to bring these ideas to life, asking questions such as:

- what happens if we pay attention to the embodied nature of ourselves as walkers in the city?

- what happens if we reject the idea of thinking as an individual act and develop active walking practices in which we think as a multiplicity? 

- who are our non-human walking companions and how do we become more aware of their presence?

- which kind of walkers is the city designed for and which 'walkers' are excluded?

- how can understanding the algorithmic design of the digital world help us make sense of the physical one?

We look forward to walking with you!

*Lou Mycroft, Peter Shukie, Kay Sidebottom.

Braidotti, R. and Hlavajova, M. (2018). The Posthuman Glossary. Bloomsbury Academic.
Woolf, V. (1938). Three Guineas. London: Blackwell.

'Think, we must'; a call to reclaim spaces of intellectual endeavour

I’m learning a huge amount from my PhD, but one thing that has excited me is realising how liberating it can be for educators to engage philosophically with education. Debates about the ontological and epistemological beliefs underpinning education systems; the impact of neo-liberal structures on our agency in the classroom, and the wider purpose of education using post-structural and post human concepts is proving sustaining and empowering. There is a thirst for spaces of critical engagement; much like the spaces we try to seek out for our own students. It’s doubtful that institutional CPD would include courses on educational philosophy, and teacher training (pushed as it is to more instrumental, tick-box content) can only offer limited amounts too. It is the kind of thing that happens on EduTwitter to a degree; although character limitations and binary thinking often sends interesting discussions down conversational cul-de-sacs; ending up with a resort to gifs and memes that leave the interesting ideas hanging. Our values and actions as teachers depend on our fundamental beliefs about the world and the role that education plays in it – so where are the spaces for slow, meaningful discussion and theoretical engagement?  

   

There is of course also a culture of anti-intellectualism at play, whereby subjects such as art, literature and science are downgraded into the kind of knowledges that can be regurgitated to suit prescribed tests rather than studied deeply and meaningfully. This instrumentalism can affect educators on a micro level too, deadening our own attitudes towards learning without us fully understanding why. Thinking, in an age of academic and expert distrust, is seen as the practice of the elite; yet we are in a time that calls for new ideas and approaches to complex ethical dilemmas more than ever. ‘Think, we must’ as Virginia Woolf said*; but in accelerated consumer cultures of product, customer and service, time and space for these activities is eroded. What I am not arguing for however is self-indulgent, ‘navel-gazing’ practices of rumination; what matters is not necessarily what we think, but how we put this thinking to work through social action. It becomes more Gramsci’s idea of ‘philosophy of praxis’, pushing thinking outwards to incorporate the politically-informed, socially relational aspects of our situated lives.

One helpful philosophical concept I have recently explored with practitioners is teacher as ‘cosmic artisan.’ (To be clear; I am no artist, and the word 'cosmic' is most familiar to me from early '90's school slang). The ‘cosmic’ here actually suggests having a greater awareness of the flows and multiplicities connecting us to each other; the concept has its roots in the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari and can speak to the deep affective nature of teaching as craft and potential for re-imagining the world.  Cosmic Artisans are sensitive to the affective, intense moments of learning that cannot be captured formally, in teaching observations or in testing frameworks.  They are attentive to moments of affect; below our normal threshold of attention. Who hasn’t experienced that strange shiver of embodied knowledge that somehow tells us learning is taking place?  Cosmic Artisans tell stories, not those fixed in positivist research practices of Enlightenment thinking, but ‘views from a body’; stories that challenge what it means to research, what knowledge is, and whose knowledge counts.   What might it mean to pay more attention to these moments in teaching, to acknowledge them and bring them into being?

Moments of affect can be best expressed and explored through creative endeavours; poetry, art, music.  At this point it is important to say that being cosmic artisan does not mean being an artist; it is more about recognising that we do not have to be limited by standard modes of expression in our responses to moments of affect. As Jagodzinski writes ‘ …this is not an out-of-the-world practice; it is just the opposite; it is to reveal, expose and experiment to show that the cosmic is of this world.’ (2017, p.36). I have written previously about the use of art as a stimulus for thinking differently about our teaching practice, going beyond the limits of reflective practice to a space of creative re-imaginings.  Artistic responses can challenge our linear capturings of teaching practice and give us new means to tell the stories of beauty and joy in our classrooms.

Last week at the StoryMakers Festival I explored the ideas further with a fantastic group of professionals. We considered those moments of teaching that affected us and elevated them, using poetry as a means of exploring feelings and intuitions more deeply. Using Al Zolynas’ ‘Love in the Classroom’ as a stimulus brought the philosophy of Cosmic Artisan to life.  In this way, standard reflective practices become diffractive moments of embodied knowledge, underpinned by connection to theory and philosophies that allow us to explore new ways of viewing education.

Cosmic artisans are ‘...committed to 'summoning forth a new earth, a new people...fabulating and fabricating new worlds...intensifying and livening events. They transmute the mundane or the machinic into a vision of excessive beauty and invention.’ (Sholtz, 2016). Studying philosophy together through engaged practices is empowering, in an educational world of struggle and disenfranchisement. It allows thinking to grow in oppressive spaces and offers something truly ‘for us’, unregulated, unrestricted, nomadic and liberating.

To close with the words of Virginia Woolf:

“Think we must. Let us think in offices; in omnibuses; while we are standing in the crowd watching Coronations and Lord Mayor’s Shows; let us think as we pass the Cenotaph; and in Whitehall; in the gallery of the House of Commons; in the Law Courts; let us think at baptisms and marriages and funerals. Let us never cease from thinking—what is this ‘civilization’ in which we find ourselves? What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them? Where in short is it leading us, the procession of the sons of educated men?” (Woolf, 1938, p.60).

* thank you to Rosi Braidotti for sharing 'Three Guineas'; an important and overlooked work.

Jagodzinski, J. (2017). What is art education? After Deleuze and Guattari. London: Palgrave.

Sholtz, J. (2016). Intervals of Resistance: Being True to the Earth in Light of the Anthropocene. University of Alberta. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv3sgCISVK4

Woolf, V. (1938). Three Guineas. London: Hogarth Press.

Growth Rings

It was a year of words
So full, that some spilled over
To be corralled into formal shapes
others gravitating
to half-forgotten sediment
breaking down letter by letter,
fragments landing rich and fertile
covering the leaf litter words of rotten men
to re-emerge with the surprise of exclamation marks
punctuating shoots of joy.

A year of multiple rhythms
And odd ellipses of silence
three dots heavy with their own message
and closing doors of full stops.
Words infused by marching characters
softly changed as if brushed against pollen
rhizomic webs of reciprocity
appearing different in the slanting light
crystallising new perspectives.


If you mark the good years
with wide concentric rings
then this book should have gaps








For new pages
where you can see the grain, if you look hard enough
White and waiting
with ink soaking through like sap
a reminder;
We are here, We are here.

25 questions for Multi-Academy Trusts

The recent episode of Panorama, 'Profits Before Pupils' revealed worrying issues regarding the financial management of a number of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs). The academy landscape is complex and difficult to navigate; so how can parents and local communities keep themselves fully informed about potential changes and short and long-term impact of academisation?  

This crowd-sourced question list attempts to give a steer to parents. While it particularly focuses on consultations where schools are joining MATs, the questions may be useful to pose to any school considering changes to governance.  Many thanks to everyone who contributed.

1. What are the potential benefits and disadvantages of joining the MAT?

2. What will the change actually mean on the ground, for the children in the school?

3. What other options are possible and have been considered?

Values and Identity

4. What are the values of the MAT?

5. What discussions are being had about compatibility, in terms of values?

6. How will the individual identity of the school be preserved? What steps will be taken to ensure this actually happens?

7. How diverse is the Board?  What is the representation of women and people of colour?

8. What work is the MAT doing around equality and inclusion? Do they invest in resources (materials, books etc) that reflect the diversity of the communities they serve?

9.  What are the demographics like in the other schools?  Will constant comparison be made to these schools?

10. What is the view on uniform? How is affordability prioritised? 

Governance and Finance

11. Will the MAT have local governance?

12. Is there a clear scheme of delegation?  How do we access it?

13. Has the Chair been visible and an active participant in discussions about joining? 

14. Will the school's top slice not only provide better value for money, but higher quality services including CPD, curriculum resources, supply staffing, recruitment support, employee benefits and technology/site management support?

15. Is the school committed to supporting the MAT's other schools and is that commitment reciprocated?

16. Will staff be able to contribute their expertise and best practice to feed into MAT-wide improvement/innovation or will they be passengers?

17. Will PTA fundraising be ring-fenced?

18. Will any cash reserves the school brings be ringfenced for our school?

19. To what extent will any one school's funding be used to top up another in the MAT who might be in deficit? Is this capped?

20. Can the MAT evidence a clear breakdown of the central service top-slice charges?

Policy

21. What do the behaviour, inclusion and SEND policies look like?

22. Who will carry out school improvement support?

23. What are the planned strategic and sustainable benefits for staff professional learning and development across the trust? 

24. How often do executive leaders spend time in school, with teachers, students or chatting to parents?

25. And an important reminder from @JulieEClarke to consider Tony Benn's '5 Essential Questions of Democracy' - which cut to the heart of the matter:

What power have you got?

Where did you get it from?

In whose interests do you use it?

To whom are you accountable?

How do we get rid of you?

Breathing life into the curriculum - an evaluation of Why is My Curriculum White? in a university school

When you crush hierarchy, and replace it with network, then the cultures held in the different languages generate oxygen. They cross-fertilize. Cultures are able to breathe life into each other. Every culture should be taught with a nod to other cultures. 

(Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 2017).

A few months ago I started a small-scale research project looking at the impact of a Why is My Curriculum White? campaign within a university school.  I have published my ongoing audio reflections here - these mainly focus on my problematic position as a white researcher of privilege. The paradoxical nature of attempting to do 'white work' that enables the voices of those marginalised in academic space, whilst managing my own conflicts and ethical considerations, has been an ongoing concern. Barbara Applebaum's book 'Being White, Being Good' has been instrumental in helping me to get over myself and focus on the dismantling of whiteness. I would highly recommend it to other white researchers in a similar position.

In my study I invited staff to participate in an anonymous on-line survey and carried out interviews with key participants (academics, support staff and students) within the School. The decision was taken to include staff in the project who do not teach directly, but are involved in wider curriculum delivery through activities such as Advice and Guidance, Student Experience, Admissions, Academic Support, Induction and general administration.  I also undertook detailed analysis of one curriculum area (Learning and Teaching) as part of an ongoing concern with the biases within teacher education.

As a posthuman thinker my focus was particularly on the material nature of the campaign and the embodied nature of reactions to change and barriers to decolonisation. This ontology also encouraged me to act in a spirit of affirmation, and a belief in the power of small changes to enact bigger transformations. In the words of Maldonado-Torres, ‘…the decolonization project needs to be a collective one where subjects give themselves to each other and are receptive to each other in love, understanding, and their shared rage against modernity/coloniality.’ (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p.279). 

My methodology, ethics, findings and discussion are only briefly summarised here but I am happy to share the details of the study with anyone interested - please contact me via Twitter @KaySocLearn for the full paper and references.  

Curriculum decolonisation - setting the context

‘Decolonisation, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a programme of complete disorder…It never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. If we wish to describe it precisely, we might find it in the well-known words: ‘The last shall be first and the first last.’ (Fanon, 1961, pp.27-28). 

It is firstly important to examine ‘colonialism’ within the academy before considering what it might mean to ‘decolonise’; as Patel states (2016, p.7) ‘…to decolonize requires the apprehension and unsettling of coloniality.’ A colonised curriculum can be seen to be one that upholds traditions of white imperialism and makes assumptions of value based on white priority and domination. Colonialism can play out through not only the materials selected that form part of a syllabus, but the wider influence of a university’s pedagogical methods, admissions criteria, commemorative statues and building names, policies and procedures, stipulations for academic writing, and so on. Whilst not colonising in the settler sense, Bhopal (2018) suggests that English universities in their nature continue to play out the values of imperialism through Eurocentric degree content, the privileging of formal English as a communication mechanism, and entrenched racism and discriminatory practices (for students and staff). In this sense, colonialism is ‘on-going colonisation by capital’ (Hall and Smyth, 2016, p.2), and very much situated within the wider political and social context; a ‘pedagogical project at the level of society’ (ibid, p.22). 

For the purposes of this evaluation, curriculum was therefore defined in its widest sense; as Kelly (1999, p.3) states: 

‘Any definition of curriculum…must offer much more than a statement about the knowledge-content or merely the subjects which schooling is to ‘teach’ or transmit. It must go far beyond this, to an explanation and indeed a justification, of the purposes of such transmission and an exploration of the effects that exposure to such knowledge and such subjects is likely to have on its recipients’. 

Further to this, it is recognised that curriculum is, in itself, always political and entangled with wider social and cultural factors. As Apple states ….’The curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection, some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge. It is produced out of the cultural, political, and economic conflicts, tensions, and compromises that organize and disorganize a people. (Apple, 1993, p.222). 

Given the systemic and material nature of decolonising work I came from the standpoint that interventions such as academic support, Information and Guidance, Induction activities and ‘student experience’ comprise elements of teaching and thus form part of the centre’s wider curriculum (albeit informal, or even part of a ‘hidden’ curriculum (Kelly, 1999, p.4)). 

To decolonise the curriculum would mean firstly to problematize all aspects of a student’s university experience, inferring that issues are systemic and go wider than an individual tutor’s influence over their programme of teaching and learning. Given that the academy can be seen in itself as a perpetual colonising force (Patel, 2016) the question is raised as to whether decolonising is actually possible, or whether in fact an entirely new system needs to be created. Certainly, as Tuck and Yang (2012, p. 36) stipulate, it needs a different perspective to traditional social justice approaches: ‘Decolonisation is not an ‘and’ – it is an elsewhere.’ 

Maldonado-Torres (2016, p.243) also draws an important distinction between ‘coloniality’ and ‘colonialism’: 

'Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breath coloniality all the time and everyday. '

In doing this Maldonado-Torres encourages a shift to a ‘decolonial turn’ which is ‘pragmatic’ in nature – focused on action as well as the recognition and problematisation of colonialism. These important linguistic differences will be returned to in relation to understandings and actions concerned with this evaluation.

Why is my curriculum white? 

This project began in the UK in 2015, with the NUS Black Students work at University College London (UCL). Drawing on international campaigns, such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ in South Africa, students challenged the lack of diverse voices within university curricula and argued that ‘…education at universities is shaped by acts of colonialism and imperialism in which the experiences and contributions of non-white groups are ignored.’ (Bhopal, 2018, p.98). 

Locally, the NUS of the university in question took up the campaign, identifying it as a movement that ‘…aims to decolonise and critically challenge course content and perspectives offered through the accepted Western white canon of knowledge.’ The transcript from the launch event highlights a fear the ‘dismantling the structures’ is not being done (University Union, 2016) suggesting that the institution is paying lip service through piecemeal interventions such as mentoring schemes. Student campaigners called for a focus on dismantling barriers; on confronting the systemic challenges rather than diversifying individual programmes per se. The campaign ran from October 2015 to January 2017, and was led by the then NUS Education Officer. It comprised the following events: 

· a panel debate on the topic ‘Why is My Curriculum White?’ 

· a library campaign in which students suggested new textbooks which were then purchased by the university 

· a university-wide survey which led to the development of a report containing recommendations which were passed by the university in June 2016 

· other activities and events including a TED talk, further panel debate, and dissemination of publicity materials such as mugs, posters and badges 

· presentation of 13 Recommendations to the Taught Students Education Committee (TSEC). 

However, since the conclusion of the campaign in January 2017, and as key campaign leaders have moved on, it is unclear what the longer-term impact has been.

Analysis of Findings 

Twenty five per cent of staff within the Centre completed a questionnaire; of the respondents two thirds were teaching staff and one third non-teaching. Eighty per cent had worked for the organisation for longer than two years, so had been present during the WIMCW campaign. Although participants were asked to identify their ethnicity, no pre-selection criteria were established. As stated previously, this meant that analysis of responses could be problematic – however, 23 respondents chose to self-identify as white, and either English or British; of the remaining three, one identified as Asian, another as Pakistani, and the final respondent responded ‘N/A’. 

Four interviews were undertaken; two of the participants were members of staff and two were Student Representatives. 

Data was analysed manually through subsequent examination of both interview transcriptions and questionnaires. It was then tagged for keywords with the aim of constructing a thematic framework. The ensuing themes were: 

- Understandings of curriculum decolonisation 

- Impact of the Why is My Curriculum White? campaign 

- Material nature of the campaign 

- Barriers to decolonisation. 

Understandings of curriculum decolonisation 

The question ‘What do you understand by the term ‘decolonising the curriculum’?’ elicited a variety of responses and definitions. Diversity was a key theme, recurring in phrases such as ‘diversifying content and pedagogy’, ‘bringing in diverse perspectives’, ‘including diverse voices’ and so on. ‘Decolonising’ was also identified most commonly as a positive action; participants used words such as, ‘changing’, ‘acting’ ‘reflecting’, ‘enriching’ ‘appreciating’ and ‘rebalancing’. 

Two of the respondents stated that they didn’t understand the term; one stating that they wished ‘these terms were rendered in plain English’. 

In interviews, participants stated that:

'There needs firstly to be an understanding of how the curriculum is colonised – and what is meant by that term'. 

'Not everyone understands what it means to be colonised…how can you begin to decolonise without this basic understanding?'

Impact of the Campaign 

Despite evidence of a good understanding of decolonisation, awareness of the local WIMCW campaign was not as high as anticipated. Seven respondents were not aware of it all – of those who were familiar with it, most (24%) had learnt about it through the debate held on campus for Black History Month. A larger number (38%) were aware of the national campaign by NUS Black Students and accompanying film. 

In terms of change to the curriculum, 26% of respondents said that their curriculum had changed as a result of the local WIMCW action. The most significant changes made were amendments to reading lists and other resources (23% of participants reporting change had altered these). Other key changes involved instigating discussions with students (18%) and adding new topics to the syllabus (18%). Interestingly, no participant reported making any changes to teaching methods. 

The two students who were interviewed were not present at the instigation of the campaign. However one noted that:

' My tutor mentioned Why is My Curriculum White? when we talked in class about the current curriculum in schools. Some of us watched the film… but it was a bit awkward to discuss in depth in class, as some of us were a bit defensive. I’m not sure we all understood what it was saying, if I’m honest.' 

The desktop analysis of the ‘Learning and Teaching’ degree programme curriculum revealed that books and other recommended materials were drawn almost entirely from white, European, North American and Australian theorists. Figures for the three modules analysed for this evaluation showed an alarmingly low percentage of writers of colour across over fifty sources (even allowing for the eventuality that authors were writers of colour (where their ethnicity could not be identified), the figure for white theorists held at a minimum of 97%). Although some new texts had been added between 2015 and 2018, and others removed, there was also no indication that WIMCW had influenced change in terms of the diversification of reading lists on the programme. 

Material nature of the Campaign 

Interestingly a key factor in awareness-raising came through the material objects used to promote the local campaign – ironically, tea as one decolonising force - as one tutor stated in the survey comments: 

'…it was the Why is My Curriculum White mug which I discovered 6 months ago in the staff room which captured my imagination. My induction certainly did not flag up the campaign and there is nothing on the notice board in the staff room to flag it. Thank goodness for cups of tea!' 

In an interview two participants mentioned the posters that were displayed around campus as being key to their awareness of the campaign. The centre's Equality Lead stated that: 

I remember seeing the [WIMCW] posters…that’s the first thing I saw about it, and I thought ‘this is brilliant’ and it connects to the other campaigns, I think at Oxford...and then the other way I connected with it was when they [NUS] came into the office with the mugs and the badges…’ 

Barriers to decolonisation 

Where changes hadn’t been made, in a number of cases respondents felt that this was because change was either out of their control or not relevant due to their role. A number of support staff stated that they do not have influence over course content. Certain curriculum areas also were identified as problematic; one respondent stated that: 

' Science definitely has issues with barriers to who can contribute to the body of knowledge and as such a fraction of the material I teach had definitely been discovered and refined by over-represented people… I can’t present science that has not been peer reviewed. The peer-review process is supposedly blind, and so has made steps to ensure meritocracy, however if you do not write in English then the scientific community in Britain/US and parts of Europe will probably not hear what you have to say… I can see that there is a real issue here. I would really welcome further discussion about this because I have no idea what it means for us and I haven’t immediately put my hands on resources which are trying to apply this to scientific disciplines… '

The interviews provided further context to the notion of barriers to organisational and curriculum change. One interviewee felt strongly that it was connected to individual responsibility: 

'If you’re teaching at university level you have a responsibility to understand it [decolonisation] and also to understand the ways in which you have internalised bias – it’s not just about what your teaching them [students].'

For one student, the variation between approaches in different academic schools and inconsistencies across the organisation were significant barriers: 

'I’d got used to bringing in different voices and perspectives on the [Interdisciplinary degree] here. But when I studied a module in another School I felt like… I had to go back to the old theorists. Kant and people like that…I wasn’t confident enough to bring the writers who had spoken to me back into what I was writing.' 

The findings here suggest uneven practice across disciplines and School, alongside practical gaps in both time and knowledge required to elicit meaningful change.

Discussion

The evidence provided in this evaluation suggests that, whilst the initial impact of the local Why is My Curriculum White? project was limited, there is a good understanding of decolonisation issues within the centre. However, despite respondents generally feeling they have a good understanding, this has not been translated into significant action. As four of the original NUS recommendations (NUS, 2016) relate to curriculum design and content, and only one quarter of respondents reported curriculum change, it could be argued the campaign’s success was limited in terms of effect on the curriculum within the Centre. It is therefore worth examining more closely the way in which decolonisation is generally framed in the language used by respondents. The term ‘diversity’ recurs frequently and this term is, in itself problematic. Ahmed (2017) suggests that it reflects a process of ‘institutionalised polishing’; whereby it ‘replaces other more unacceptable terms that make people feel threatened.’ (2017, p.101). The positivity of the term is ‘shiny’ and prevents the necessity for actual work to be done. Further to this, Patel (2016) suggests that diversity as a ‘binaristic statement or goal’ is ‘woefully inadequate for a project of decolonization (p.93). Decolonisation must instead attend to the dismantling of material structures and practices; and action must be meaningful. The centre's Equality Lead drew a distinction between ‘decolonialising’ and ‘decolonising’ which is helpful here:

'…to be decolonial or post-colonial, is to problematize… but decolonialise is the new term. Being able to actively [my emphasis] find new forms of knowledge.'

It could be suggested that future activity is centred around action as well as reflection and examination of the colonised nature of our work. Taking this further, I want to introduce Applebaum’s (2016) concept of ‘response-ability.’ This idea takes us forward as agents for change who are able to enact transformation within their own embodied and embedded entities. A significant proportion of respondents in support (rather than direct teaching) roles felt that they unable to instigate change due to their lack of influence over the curriculum. A wider understanding of curriculum being more than just the syllabus may help staff to recognise the impact of their practice in terms of other activities such as induction, advice and guidance, admissions and academic support.

Participants also mentioned the significance of material influences, such as posters, mugs and badges in terms of awareness raising and sustainability. Where campaigns are student-led, it is difficult to have one figurehead as campaign leaders will necessarily move on (through graduation); the nature of the NUS as a campaigning organisation also suggests that different issues will be prioritised according to the nature of its leadership and student voice at a particular point in time. 

What is heartening is the desire for more knowledge and understanding of the decolonisation agenda; there is a sense of a conversation beginning and an appetite to continue the work through further discussion and action. However, in discussing the findings of this evaluation it is important to note the absence of a number of voices; what were the thoughts and experiences of those who did not respond?

Conclusion 

Despite the limitations in scope of this evaluation, the ‘reterratorialising’ nature of colonialism within the academy, and my own complex position as a researcher, this study has revealed a number of interesting findings in relation to the success and sustainability of Why is my Curriculum White? as a campaign. It is clear that, despite good understandings of decolonialisation issues, curriculum change in relation to WIMCW has been inconsistent within the university school at the centre of this study. Where change did occur, it was largely framed around the diversification of reading lists and materials. However, there is will and enthusiasm to learn and reflect across the Centre. I have been asked to make recommendations to the Centre in the spirit of affirmatory praxis, and these will focus on the following issues: 

- How to make a shift from ‘decolonising’ to ‘decolonialising’; and thus build emphasis on action in addition to doing the important work of problematizing curriculum issues 

- The importance of investing in sustainable, material reminders of the campaign messages 

- Allocation of meaningful time for reflection and discussion, particularly of areas in which colonisation is present but less debated, such as the science disciplines 

- A wider understanding of ‘curriculum’ and who is able to influence its development. 

In doing this work we need to also be wary of conflating this project with other social justice interventions. As Tuck and Yang (2012) suggest, we should not ‘domesticate’ decolonisation, nor use it as a metaphor. The term itself and the associating work can be subsumed into the system (‘reterratorialised’ in Deleuzian terms) so problematization of the concept should be an ongoing project. 

This study has also called into question the sustainability of campaigns led by students who are not permanently represented in the workings of an organisation. It is therefore heartening to see the university in question establishing a working group comprised of academic leads, tutors and student representatives. As the group held its first meeting mid-way through this evaluation project it is too early to tell whether its work will relate in any way to the recommendations in this study but its progress will be followed closely. 

Patel (2016, p.95) states that ‘While we cannot map the future, we can map possible futurities and do so with a reckoning of the past trajectories that give shape to the present realities.’ We must continue to ‘breath life’ into the curriculum for fairness, parity and the joy of re-imagining what it means to be human in the world today; and this is our responsibility of academics in positions of privilege. To close with the words of the centre's Equality Lead: 

'We need to keep talking about it, so it doesn’t go away. From the students’ point of view, we need to consider…what’s the impact on them, of not continuing to ask these questions?'

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