Becoming-teacher as (in)activist: Feeling and refusing the force of university policy

Abstract

University teaching is the target of intensified policy making. The policies’ purpose is sometimes to solve a specific problem but always to demonstrate the ‘quality’ of the institution. Policies also seek to normalise university teaching practices according to value-laden ideas of what those practices should be. Normalisation exacts a painful price: by necessity it produces the abnormal, the unethical, even the unspeakable. This paper explores the normalising force of teaching policies as they are plugged into the assemblage of a becoming-teacher and wonders about the possibilities for activism in relation to that force. In an open-ended process of clouded agency, the wilful human self of Becoming-TeacherBG struggles with and against new norms: if she is to stay recognisable as a good academic subject, she must negotiate with them. Yet, it’s not all up to her. Composed from complex alliances between teaching places and technologies, teaching (and taught) selves, teaching policies and curriculum materials, Becoming-TeacherBG is sometimes undone by the new norms and sometimes refuses them. This paper offers a ‘critical view from the body’ ( Haraway, 1988 : 859) with respect to university teaching policies in order to inspire conversation about the varied ground and nature of everyday academic activisms – including some that might look like a lack of activism – with the goal of encouraging them to flourish as spaces of freedom and refusal towards a better university. Such (in)activisms seek to change the business-as-usual of the university, usually at a micropolitical level, but they may also set larger changes in motion.