Affective Ambiguities and Incompatible Value Frameworks: Sustaining Collaborations Within and beyond Neoliberal Academia

Abstract

In this article, the authors mobilize the concept of affective ambiguity in order to explore the epistemological and structural incompatibilities that collaboration implies in the context of the highly asymmetrical relationships of power within and beyond neoliberal academia. They show that collaborations between university-based anthropologists at different stages of their careers and the groups and communities they seek to collaborate with are governed by mutually contradictory value frameworks. These value frameworks are shaped by the structural inequalities of these constellations and by diverging temporalities, socialities, and expectations that tend to make such collaborations unsustainable. Drawing on their own involvement in Kollektiv Polylog, a collective of refugee women, lecturers, former students, and activists in and beyond Berlin that are working together in the context of various publication, teaching, and video projects, the authors highlight the affective, temporal, and material resources that all actors need to invest in order to make collaboration productive.