ABSTRACT
Drawing on Judith Butler’s work on the ethical-political subject, accountability, vulnerability, and the assembly, this chapter advances current debates on performative critical scholarship. We do so by reflecting on accounts of our heterogeneous praxis as diversity scholars from the research collective SEIN. We specifically plead for re-conceptualizing critical performativity as a collective performance carried out in every-day practices in the multiple relations of accountability towards different fora, such as societal stakeholders, students, and the academic community, rather than privileging an individualized academic subject’s performativity in relation to managers. We further argue that performing ourselves as part of a collective enables us to transcend some of the vulnerabilities that emerge through these multiple relations of accountability. We can more forcefully mobilize for social change, (micro-)challenge the field of power, and push the norms that make us intelligible. This increases our ability to make our own and others’ lives more livable.
