Alternatives in the academe: Swimming with absurd flippers

Abstract

This viewpoint reflects on challenges that emerge when we who did not construct academic practices—and whom academic practices were not constructed for—strap on the absurd flippers and prepare to dive into the deep of the academe. Challenging the preferring of emotion-drained forms of expression within the academe, this text attempts to employ alternative writing methodologies while asking: What can academia encapsulate today? Do spaces for ‘Otherness’ exist, and are we employing our Otherness to bring forth changes? These questions are held up against the neoliberalization of universities and the feminist response emerging through ‘slow scholarship’. The text proposes that current neoliberalization of universities intensify masculinist practices and needs challenging. However, slow scholarship efforts are flawed for attempting to dismantle neolibealizing processes with the tools of neoliberalism itself.