ABSTRACT
J. Butler writes that the statement ‘we the people’ is “first and foremost a speech act”. Assembling a ‘we’ in critical qualitative inquiry is a performative – when we say ‘we,’ we seek to create an us, to, “bring about the social plurality” we name. Critical qualitative inquiry is, invested in assembling a ‘we.’ Although the university was censured by the American Association of University Professors for violating the principles of academic freedom, the firing of Salaita demonstrates the “insidious nature of the censorship” in the academy and beyond and underscores the importance of gathering together to speak in the wake of such injustices, large and small. Butler also reminds us that our ‘we’ – our assembly – is “already speaking before it utters any words”. It is already an enactment of a collective or popular ‘will,’ something quite apart from the way a “single and unified subject declares its will through vocalized proposition ‘I am’”.
