Working with Text(-ures) in Academia: Be Fast, Even While Standing Still!

Abstract

This chapter takes elements from a wool-felting sequence in a Norwegian master’s program as a starting point. We explore variations of moving fast and slow into sequences of felting, reading and writing. Our previous work with toddler pedagogy acts as inspirational forces when working to counteract the dominating discourses promoting teleology and economic efficiency in higher education. By orienting ourselves towards ‘the minor’ (Manning, The minor gesture. Duke University Press, Durham/London, 2016) in reading/writing practices, we experiment with any occurring speculative proposition that emerge in the midst of the reading/writing processes, as such propositions seem to present unforeseeable potentialities. We plug into Deleuze and Guattari’s (Rhizome. On the line. Semi(o)texte, New York, 1983) paradoxical notion of being fast, even while standing still. The text may be read as an ongoing inaugural, in a Derridean sense (2009).