Contesting Neoliberalism Through Critical Pedagogy, Intersectional Reflexivity, and Personal Narrative: Queer Tales of Academia

Abstract

In this article, we use personal narrative to explore allies and alliance building between marginalized people working in and through higher education, with an eye toward interrogating the ways in which ideologies of neoliberalism work to maintain hierarchy through the legitimation of othering. Inspired by Conquergood (1985 Conquergood, D. 1985. “Performing as a moral act: Ethical dimensions of the ethnography of performance”. In Literature in Performance Vol. 5, 1–13. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), who calls scholars to engage in intimate conversation rather than distanced observation, we offer our embodied experiences as a way to use the personal to reflect on the cultural, social, and political. Our narratives often recount being out of place, moments of incongruence, or our marked otherness. Through the sharing of these narratives, we will demonstrate the possibility for ally building based in affective connections forged through shared queer consciousness, paying particular attention to the ways in which neoliberal ideologies, such as individualism and postracism, may advance and impede such alliances.