A Crisis of Identity: A Collage of Emerging Scholars in the Crucible of Academe

This collaborative autoethnography (CAE) is presented in the form of a collage, rendered as an assemblage of co-constructed autoethnographic reflections, juxtaposed with poems, illustrations, and multivocal analyses that draw on Butlerian performativity, queer temporalities, and interpretive disability studies. Identifying as ‘differently abled’, we explore how our respective cognitive impairments and shared situatedness as mature-aged, ex-professional, non-economically productive ‘students’ have informed our identity development within the neoliberal academe. Responding to Amy Kilgard’s call for further theorisation of the embodied activity of collage-making, we invite readers to engage in shared meaning-making as we explore the methodological intersection of disability, queer temporality, and identity precariousness.