Dissident Daughters ? The Psychic Life of Academic Feminism

1. Dissident Daughters ? The Psychic Life of Academic Feminism Professor Valerie Hey http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer

2. 2. Sub-optimal Feminism Inside the Knowledge Factory • The Death of Critique - Bronwyn Davies • Killing Thinking – Mary Evans • Neo-liberal Cruelties – Rosalind Gill • Micro-politics & Disqualified Discourses – Louise Morley • Carelessness – Kathleen Lynch

3. 3. Foucault’s Hyper & pessimistic-activism 'My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper - and pessimistic – activism.I think that the ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger. (Foucault,1983)

4. 4. Serious Play As Judith Butler (1990:x) notes, ‘laughter in the face of serious categories is indispensable for feminism … without a doubt, feminism continues to require its own forms of serious play’.

5. 5. Tantalising Feminism As a bitterly funny commentary on the elitism of higher education, and the collusive ways in which we as academics are complicit in the competitive practices of research selectivity and as a defiant enactment of the politics of refusal – it was simply glorious! As individuals these are women academics who have made major contributions to the theoretical literature… but in breaking out of its theoretical conventions they used (and parodied) theory in ways that gave hope, certainly to me, and judging by the riotous applause, to most of the audience. This was certainly not the usual reaction of a group of academics at a BERA [British Educational Research Association] symposium. Why it was so important, I would argue, is that it connected theory and practice, and showed that we can act, and can defy the seemingly endless ways in which the practices of higher education seek to compartmentalise us and our students. Sue Clegg (2005:126) commenting on FAAB’s performance at BERA, 2003

6. What does it mean to be political? • Words productivity – alienated labour • Go-slow – Be Still & Know ? • Skrim-shanking – The Good Soldier Švejk