Drift and Desire: Defamiliarizing Academic Subjectivities

• In Event: Methodological Explorations in Rhythm and Motion

Abstract

We are fractured across online academic communities: ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and Google Scholar. Caught up in the web of counting systems, we find ourselves seeking the “good life” of academia. In response to the refrains of desire and resistance of the good life, in this paper we seek an affirmative orientation to algorithmic academic identities - an orientation to reimagine and proliferate possibilities of self and other versions of the good life. We seek to understand how we might lean into the non-zero probabilities the algorithms offer, innovating points of entry guided by multiple theorists and philosophers. We ask, how do we live the good life while enmeshed in these systems? What other refrains can we attend to?

Authors

• Maureen Alice Flint, University of Georgia

• Susan Ophelia Cannon, Mercer University