Freed from the constraints of
chasing a tenure track job
that would have required me
To be a solo author
stand out, stand on top, be #1
white supremacy culture.
Instead, I forge collaboratively
Walking together instead of alone or apart
Writing with rather than
Writing about
Studying together instead of
Studying “them".
I am freed of the alienation of
Performing Objectivity.
Instead I can be
matchmaker
note-taker
noise-maker.
I sit on the floor,
kick off my shoes,
chime in.
Inhibited not because I am waiting for
the Others to speak.
But because I want to make space, make room.
Be hospitable.
The writing is also freed.
I don’t have to write it up in a
“scholarly publication”.
Peer reviewed by other academics and not the "Others."
No.
I am so over that.
My labor should support something trying to do otherwise.
Pushing the grain.
What is the social contract of researchers?
We must be in the world. Of the world.
Stay authentic. To what is needed in the world. And what I can humanly muster.
Now I carve time. From a full-time job that pays the bills.
To enter collaborations I truly love that nourish and fill me up.
Not “collaborations” for EU and US funding.
We meet in our in-between times. It’s never enough.
But it’s always enough
To energize us. Exhaust us with all the possibilities
If only we had more
time,
capital,
clarity.
But maybe, it’s because we are in the in-betweens that
It is so rewarding.
Life is
always moving
alive
a gushing waterfall
unexpected thunderstorms
a bottomless pothole.
So there will never be a perfect time
For a perfect collaboration
For a perfect knowledge output
Give up on perfect.
Just embrace the possibilities.
For now...
an experiment
is all we can strive for.
Angela Okune, "Experimenting from/in the in-betweens", contributed by Angela Okune, Research Data Share, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 9 April 2025, accessed 15 April 2025. http://577871.pcaf9.group/content/experimenting-fromin-betweens
Critical Commentary
I share a poem I quickly drafted on Nov. 29th, the day after our Nov. 28th event with the RDS Collective. I could still feel the "buzz" physically and emotionally from the high energy event that we had facilitated the day before. I was reflecting on the difference with the event at McMillan that Leo and I had facilitated in 2019 as part of my PhD and realized that I felt like I could participate more fully this time because I wasn't supposed to perform the "PhD Researcher" role. This time around, I could just be thoroughly engaged as myself. Hence the line: "I am freed of the alienation of Performing Objectivity." Of course, this also relates to my dissertation as well where I developed the idea of "postcolonial objectivity." The poem flowed out of me (literally, I just started typing and in 20 minutes it was out of me) based on the recognition that had I become a tenure-track professor in an academic job, I don't think I could be part of such a research collective with my so-called interlocutors (because of incentive structures for junior academics who need to produce single-authored, sole recognition type of work).