Cultivating Praxis: On The Convergence of Our Distinctive Post-Critical Narratives (Who Are We?)

In this chapter we offer an account of who we are, that is, our infancy and how we progressed academically over many years. We specifically focus on our narratives in and about critical praxis and as to why it is safe to refer to us as poststructuralists. If not, at least, aspiring ones. Put differently, in this chapter we assert our voices as critical beings who perpetually endeavour to improve on our democratic practices in the context of university education. We argue that university education ought to be a critical praxis on the grounds that such a form of education has an intellectual and public responsibility. We begin this book by focussing on who we are. Of course, we are not oblivious that telling others who we are might have some inclination to not entirely revealing things about ourselves. However, if we do not present ourselves in particular ways, it makes the task of those who endeavour to engage with our thoughts somewhat an impossibility because letting others know who we are is tantamount to telling them something about themselves. Considering that this is a book about higher education under consideration again, what we reveal about ourselves is connected to our understanding and situatedness within the realm of higher education. And, because we are telling others about ourselves in relation to our critical praxis, it means that we present our conceptions of such actions in an understandable and say, critical way. Our practices are critical but, as we argue for throughout the book, they (practices) teeter on the edge of going beyond the critical. That is, we are post-critical agents who reveal ourselves in relation to our moments of post-criticality. Simply put, we align ourselves with the methodological concerns of poststructuralists who are beings of a specific kind and of any or whatever kind.