Can we do this together? Exploring the transformative potential of care for academic work, labor, and life

Through a reflective account of our own experiences as early career academics, we explore the nuanced ways in which care materializes and is embodied in the micro-relations and mundane practices that constitute academic life. By emphasizing the affective dimension of an ethic of care, we bring the destabilizing and unsettling promise of affect to bear on our understanding of care and, in turn, highlight care’s transformative potential. We show how care, when mobilized by affect, manifests in ambiguous and at times contradictory ways, which leaves us asking whether care can be a straightforward and unproblematic antidote to feelings of dissatisfaction with neoliberal institutions. Yet, at the same time, we speculate that care holds rich potential to problematize the structural norms and demands that organize our academic (work) lives, and to offer new and different ways of living instead.