Doing Academia Differently: Taking Care of Humans, Technologies and Environments in the Digital Age

Abstract

In this SoTL undertaking, we reflect on two of the most prominent issues of our time: new algorithmic ecologies and the ecological crisis. In particular, we are interested in what these mean for teaching, and teaching differently. To do so – and using the ‘Socratic method’, a dialogic technique of questioning and cooperative cross-examination that provokes critical thinking – we consider the refrains of death immanent to digitality and the Anthropocene, and how they affect not only subjective formation, but also knowledge production. Reflecting on these issues in our classrooms, for example the widespread disaffection prevalent in universities, aided by internet addiction, dopamine loops, the disintegration of societal rituals and bonds, and the looming ‘end of the world’ (at least as we know it), we consider the role of practices of care, drawing on the work of Stiegler, and Deleuze and Guattari. Our argument is that what is needed, against the intensified bureaucratisation and neoliberalisation of academic institutions, is careful experimentation for the production and circulation of healthier intensities that tend to and nurture life in the face of the refrains of death all around us.