ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we wish to reflect on our experience as predoctoral students within Colectivo DARTS (Discourse and Analysis/Action for Resistance and Social Transformation), an autonomous experiment that seeks radicality in critical research through the collectivization of the processes and moments to which we are subjected in the academic world. In telling the story of our experience, we will explain how our “failures” to live up to the original mission of the collective provided insights into what it means to be a “critical” scholar working both within and against the Academic Industrial Complex. Our discussion centers on three main shifts that define the transformation of our collective project: 1) a shift in our attention toward academic precarity as a result of the material conditions constraining our intention to form an ambitious collective research/action project; 2) the change in direction of our critical gaze from “outward” to “inward” ; and 3) taking praxis, rather than theory, as our starting point for the performance of critical thought. By examining these three shifts, we hope to contribute to this volume by rethinking the limitations of critical theory and practice in academia while advocating the need for collective initiatives aimed at surviving and resisting academic environments, their cannons, and productive constraints. We share our story to engage and imagine the possibilities that may be found in critical praxis as the collectivization of knowledge reproduction together with mutual care.
