Democratic Ontologies of Knowledge: Importance Should Be a Given and My Ethical Task Is to Intensify It

Abstract

In this paper, I interrogate ethical and political implications of autoethnography as activism and way of academic life. I indirectly ask, what might democratic ontologies of knowledge produce in Higher Education. I focus on a – more than – refusing to be hemmed – wild – Denzinian performance of autoethnographical writing, the theory of liminality of Victor Turner and the speculative philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari. Liminal moments involve breach, crisis, redress, reintegration, or schism, and is here offered as instances of critical pedagogies in action. And, as I see this, moments of intensities of importance making epistemic authoritarianism in HE visible and painfully affective, keeping me curious, calling me to arms. I write with a teacher trainer mystory on a backcloth of a goal-oriented PISA-infused western liberal mass-educational system and welfare state focussed on participation and autonomy. What do we think education can do?