Becoming Acrobat, Becoming Academic: An Affective, Autoethnographic Inquiry Into Collective Practices of Knowing and Becoming

Abstract

This article mobilizes a Spinozo–Deleuzian understanding of affect to articulate connections between embodied sensation and academic thinking, connections which surfaced during my ethnographic and autoethnographic research as a circus performer. I argue against reifying differences between the production of knowledge and of movement, suggesting we explore similarities in the conditions of their emergence including reflection, multiplicity, and responsiveness to repetition. In so doing, I challenge hegemonic ideas about who belongs in the body of an academic; inviting us to better understand our “less-rational” and more collective selves in becoming purveyors of academic knowledge.

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