From recalcitrance to rapprochement: Tinkering with a working-class academic bricolage of ‘critical empathy’

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Abstract

Previous work on working-class academics has highlighted recurring themes, such as micro-aggressions, imposter syndrome, liminality, exclusion, invisibility and habitus. These themes have been encapsulated in a number of metaphors, such as ‘the ghost’ and ‘the phantom-limb’, both of which connote absence, silence and marginalisation. Whilst these metaphors vividly describe the lived experiences of working-class academics, it is necessary to make room for a more positive space in which academics can construct alternative futures. It is necessary to develop a ‘politics of critical hope’. A politics of critical hope seeks to move beyond linear narratives of victimhood, anger and heroic narratives of overcoming. This conceptual paper develops a critical hope that interrogates and repurposes dominant epistemologies in order to foster a bricolage of reparative and empathetic truths. It gestures towards an intersectional politics of academic work, compelling us to recognise that empowerment/ disempowerment is highly complex and stratified in nature. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)522-534
JournalDiscourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
Volume44
Issue number4
Early online dateDec 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Citation

Poole, A. (2023). From recalcitrance to rapprochement: Tinkering with a working-class academic bricolage of ‘critical empathy’. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 44(4), 522-534. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2021.2021860

Keywords

  • Working-class academics
  • Social class
  • Bricolage
  • The bricoleur
  • Habitus
  • Intersectionality

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