Living Digiphrenia: A Scholarly Personal Narrative on Fractured Identity and Academic Care

• In Event: A Collective of Diverse Narrative Explorations: A Generative Space for Sharing Approaches to Storying, Identity, Equity, and Inquiry

Abstract

This Scholarly Personal Narrative explores fractured academic identity and presence in post-pandemic higher education. Through lived vignettes—presenting at two conferences simultaneously, coordinating chaotic online practicums, attending faculty meetings during chemotherapy—the narrative examines “digiphrenia,” the digitally induced condition of inhabiting multiple selves across platforms and roles. Drawing on SPN as methodology, the work weaves personal artifacts and reflective analysis to “unforget” the embodied histories of academic labor often erased in crisis. The story highlights an ethics of care grounded in narrative and argues that SPN offers a method for imagining more humane futures of teaching, mentoring, and digital higher education. Rather than restoring coherence, it embraces visible seams as maps for sustaining presence and integrating fractured academic selves.

Author

• Suzanne L. Porath, Kansas State University