Session: #354

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
6. Contested Pasts & Presents
Session format:
Round table (without formal abstracts, only list of confirmed discussants / session co-organisers to be provided)

Title & Content

Title:
AGE for a Slow Archaeology, or How to Survive in the Neo-liberal Fast Academia [AGE]
Content:
In 2009, the first official meeting of AGE (Age and Gender in Europe) took place in the shape of a much-needed round table to discuss gender and archaeology in Europe. Fourteen years later, it is time to meet again within this format to discuss a concern that is gaining momentum among both members and non-members of AGE: how to survive in an individualistic and self-accelerated neo-liberal academia that increasingly demands devoting life to work.
This concern is especially pertinent for feminist archaeologists. Feminist archaeology has made other pasts possible through incorporating historiographic silences into its research agenda; through acknowledging dynamics related to the creation, maintenance, and recreation of life; and highlighting social bonds, affective capacity, interdependence, cooperation and care as foregrounding social life. Such discourses about the past have opposed the neo-liberal patriarchal logic that ignores what is fundamental to human life. Is it possible to also oppose this rationale in the professional practice of the present? How can such a drive co-exist with working in institutions and programs of power-knowledge guided by antagonistic inner logics that sustain and recreate neo-liberal patriarchy?
The diagnosis is clear. Departing from it, we seek to discuss different strategies to navigate these structural discrepancies without being engulfed or politically deactivated by a fast academic culture of productivity that: a) rewards instant revenue, production and accumulation at whatever cost, and technology fetishization; b) permits power abuse and patriarchal violence; c) penalizes critical reflective thought that delivers results in the long-term. We seek therefore to discuss how to practice a de-growth slow feminist archaeology that decelerates archaeology (and science). Now that we have made other pasts possible, how can we make other academies feasible?
Several speakers from different countries and academic backgrounds will present their insights as an initial step in a general debate.
Keywords:
Slow Archaeology, Gender, Feminism, Fast Academia
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
AGE

Organisers

Main organiser:
Sandra Monton-Subias (Spain) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Bisserka Gaydarska (United Kingdom) 3
Affiliations:
1. ICREA
2. Pompeu Fabra University
3. University of Durham