ABSTRACT
So, as you are holding this (e-)book in your hands or eyes, you might still be wondering how an introductory book on critical methods could possibly offer a break from the regular routine of institutionalized higher education. How, if at all, could you use it and what you could do with it, should you decide to respond to the above call to ponder the stakes of knowledge making? You are an essential contributor to this endeavour: our starting point is that we – readers and writers, as well as teachers and learners – all have equal stakes and capacities in re-imagining and re-making world politics and the modern university. We see our interactions with you and each other as a sequence of opportunities to learn and unlearn; to make, undo and remake ‘sense’, to share stories and weave new ones, to play together, to display, play up and affirm potential in how we can inhabit what surrounds us otherwise. Parts of our dialogue are proposed as a carefully planned and nurtured trajectory of chapters and interactive features – there is so much that we would like you to see, read, explore and engage with. This has already begun through the medium of words but a lot of our exchanges may well unfold through the many silences that thread through and engulf language as we know it and work with it, in silence, when nothing is said, when no one is reading or writing. It is in these quiet life worlds, we suspect, where some of the most radical life forms may grow. It is in the motion of being pulled and staying put and being in motion at the same time that we find the world/self in disarray (Barry, 2008, pp. 106–110).
