The Story Maker: Reflexive Resistance to the Performative University

This article suggests a story making framework for reflexive resistance to the performative university. The performative university is defined as a capitalization of space and time. This capitalization is caught using Foucault’s notion of the dispositive. Story making is developed from Hannah Arendt’s work in combination with fragments from the works of Benjamin, Butler, Bakhtin and Sandoval. We argue that a story maker is grounded in concrete socio-material relations. She cannot be located in fixed positions but moves through both academic and societal landscapes in order to change them. The story maker is framework for developing reflexive resistance to the performative university. Two kinds are developed. The first kind corresponds to thinking and is a reflexive relationship to oneself. These practices are targeted towards setting people free from the torture and torment of the performative university and explore and activate the loving, creative, passionate, artful and uncontrollable elements of their activities. The second kind of reflexive resistance corresponds to action and refers to the activism that emerges when come together for a cause larger than itself. This kind of story making transcends institutional, organizational and regional boundaries and mobilizes affordances across fixed time lines and spaces.