When is it OK to exit an abusive workplace situation? How do we find relief when academia and those who work within it – especially and including feminists – hurt us so much, but we are compelled to stay to make it better for those who have been historically excluded?
This second essay in our Special Series on “restorative and reparative conversations” continues the painfully necessary discussions about the politics and policing of knowledge production in the academy. In this conversation, Laura Castrillón-Guerrero, Adriana Rudling, and Maja Davidović take us on an intimate journey into their lives as academics and practitioners, showing how mentors and supervisors are often those who use and abuse their powers over their students and mentees, including through plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty. The authors show the intricate and feminized ways in which knowledge is produced, and how the credit often goes to more well-known senior colleagues. However, they also write together as feminist praxis, as they care for each other in ways that are curative and help to repair the tremendous distrust that has resulted from what other academics have done to them.
The authors leave us with the critical questions that opened our editorial, but also others. For example, how do we trace and account for the real labor behind published work? How might we respond when formal complaints made to human resources (HR) are met with “self-care” suggestions such as mindfulness and exercise? What happens when we forget to celebrate our work, or when joy feels unattainable or laced with guilt? We should engage with such questions with trusted others, so that we, too, can experience healing and restorative conversations that show us that we have a right to be here and to do our work.
The Conversations section is an innovative intervention by IFJP which aims to offer space and opportunity to make strong theoretical and practical contributions to feminist debates that do not necessarily take standard academic forms. It may include interviews with prominent or early-career scholars, practitioners, and activists; narratives and short stories; photo essays, artistic pieces, and poetry; film readings; conference reports; and other “non-traditional” modes of scholarly writing.
Interested authors should submit their articles via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rfjp. Please also upload a biographical note and five keywords. Make sure to edit it thoroughly for language and clarity, format it to correspond to the Taylor & Francis guidelines, and identify it as a submission for the Conversations section.
For further information, please refer to the journal’s FAQ page at: https://www.ifjpglobal.org/submit-to-us/#anchor_conversations_shortcut.
Inquiries should be directed to both Conversations Editors.