Risking a Great Dithering: Changing the Story of Otherness through Revolt

Abstract

In this article we explore the ways in which ‘the story must change’, according to Donna Haraway (2016) . We utilize the in-between space between Haraway's suggestion that we are in a time of Great Dithering, of ‘ineffective and widespread anxiety’, and Julia Kristeva's (2014) notion of revolt, to argue for a shift in orientations towards cultural otherness in higher education. Using a philosophical method of inquiry, we examine our somatechnical experiences and revelations in higher education settings, in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque massacres of 15 March 2019. We address Haraway's warning and Kristeva's lament of a lack of revolt in contemporary society, through an argument for an onto-epistemological shift and increasing sense of comfort with the discomfort of the awkwardness of cultural otherness. The article presents an active framework for revolt, for questioning and re-questioning dominant educational concerns with cultural otherness, where dithering becomes a technique of revolt, for thinking and rethinking the somatechnical complexities of this day and those that followed.