Entanglements With(in) the Review(er) Machine: How Can We (Re)View If We Are B(l)ind(ed)?

• In Event: 79.029 - Reading, Reviewing, Mentoring, and Writing Differently in Higher Education

Abstract

Our paper explores the b(l)ind (re)view process, specifically how reviews happen in the academic (neoliberal) machine. We trouble the concept blind review by revisiting the etymology of the two words “blind” and “review”. In doing so, new ideas and ways of thinking about reviewing are created. This paper seeks possibilities of doing blind review differently in higher education and foster transformative hope in our practices to and with each other.

By revisiting definitions and etymologies to find meaning and trouble meaning at the same time (authors, forthcoming), we expand our thinking and reviewing practices. We attend to Koro-Ljungberg (2016): “Methodologies are choices, often onto-epistemological and theoretical, and cannot be divorced from the values, beliefs, backgrounds, bodies, and affects of the researcher or the research context” (p. 79). All choices are subjective. The review(ing) process becomes entangled with these choices. None of us (i.e., author, editor, reviewer) are absent, as Kuntz (2015) describes, from ontological debates about the decisions we make and the impact of those decisions.

We argue the blind review disrupts the connection between author and reviewer, and assumes the only way to produce “good” research is to have a separation between author and reviewer where they are blind to one another. This creates a hierarchical binary that prioritizes responsibility to the procedures and the assumed objectivity of the blind review. In this way, blind review becomes a bind--a restraint, a quandary. Hence, b(l)ind.

This “objective” separation between author and reviewer is unthinkable. We are reminded that while bind can be restrictive and restraining and hindering, binding also ties us to one another, wraps us up together in this world--to re-establish the connection between author and reviewer. Rethinking b(l)ind (re)view can open a different responsibility--to that of the entanglement--where relationships take precedence. How might we open different possibilities of b(l)ind (re)view? We share our experiences as authors, reviewers, and editors in order to materialize possibilities of doing reviewing differently--in ways that embrace, center, and make transparent entanglements and relationships.

We acknowledge this paper is risky, vulnerable, and perhaps even dangerous as we are opening a conversation that calls out mechanisms of power and practices that reside behind a vale of perceived objectivity. We believe this work is necessary, and we begin with ourselves and the relationships we find ourselves in as reviewers and editors. By shifting practices in how we pick reviewers, directions we give reviewers, and fostering transparent partnerships we believe we are making small fissures in our fields/disciplines. We are committed to conversations and practices of ethical, justice oriented reviewing but acknowledge that colonialism builds and maintains the machine (Grande, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2014). The machine is always tugging at our ankles, tripping us up as we are trying to change how we live and do our work. We invite others to (re)think b(l)ind (re)viewing with us.

Authors

• Sarah B. Shear, The Pennsylvania State University - Altoona

• Rebecca C. Christ, Florida International University

• Candace Ross Kuby, University of Missouri - Columbia