Episode 44: We Might Be Academics

We Might Be Tables

We're back! It has been a while (here's hoping we stop saying this as often as we do) since we released an episode, and this is one we've wanted to record for so long now. We started this podcast in 2020 after completing our first year in university. Unsettled and fatigued as we were, the world of academia enticed and captivated us in unimaginable ways. Chasing belongingness in an unfamiliar academic world meant adapting to it and becoming 'academics' without ever truly knowing what that meant, a process augmented by an unfiltered (perhaps naive) desire for knowledge. However, a lot has happened in the years that have passed - for one, we have graduated. The charm and glamour long gone, it only feels right to turn our eyes to academia as an institution and examine it for what it is, and what it promises it be. In this episode, we talk about where we started and where we're going, expectations and reality, academic jargon and "canonism", privilege, power, postcoloniality, hermeneutical injustice and self-reflexive negations.

Here is a list of references made in the discussion (feel free to point out anything we have missed!):

1) Like a Savarna, by Ravikant Kisana

2) Hermeneutical Injustice, by Miranda Fricker

3) Paolo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed

4) Walter Benjamin - Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

5) Chat Deni Maar Deli (for funsies)

We Might Be Tables now has a voice note feature! We'd love it if you left us a comment with your thoughts on the episode; click the link below to record a message.