Speculations on force and form: resisting the neurotypical in the neoliberal university

Abstract

Can reframing a thesis in terms of what it can do rather than what it is generate a joyful-artful engagement with the PhD process and engender a more response-able relationship with the world? In this tentative exemplification of the speculative potential of force and form, the very act of writing emerges as a powerful antidote to constraints of the neoliberal university. Exploring writing as immanent doing, Erin Manning’s philosophical projects of research-creation, artfulness and thought in motion find expression through the ordinary, the everyday and the mundane. By refusing to engage in the dis-abling constraints prescribed by institutional expectations of doctoral study, the writing process takes on a liveliness, a jouissance, that has the potential to transcend and transform. In a process of reimagining who and what is valued beyond the normative and the neurotypical, the thesis works to trouble and challenge the colonial structures that continue to exclude and silence.