Virtuous Inquiry as Resistance in the Anthropocene

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 50
  In Roundtable Session: Poststructuralism, Neoliberalism, and Education in the 21st Century

Abstract

I consider research as a strategy of refusal, intervention, and truth-telling amidst the Anthropocene. Here, inquiry extends from a refusal to be governed by the normalizing processes of the status quo. As Lazzarato (2015) notes, refusal is an “ethico-political” position that disrupts the knowledge imperative that dominates the higher education landscape. Refusal is an important element of a politics of experimentation (Lazzarato 2014) and aligns with Foucault’s (2011) analysis of the cynics. Inquiry-as-refusal takes the form of an intervention into the normative status quo, an act Foucault termed parrhesia (or truth-telling) that remains a necessary element of democracy. I thus argue that such practices take on new formation within the Anthropocene, and constitute virtuous citizenship, disrupting conventional governing practices.

Author

• Aaron M. Kuntz, The University of Alabama