Work-Life Balance Fantasy Logics of Mothers Working in Community Colleges: A Glitch Methodology Using Intimate Inquiry and Aesthetic Mediation

This post-qualitative study explores work-life balance as a sustaining fantasy produced by neoliberal, patriarchal, productivity-driven systems and how this fantasy manifests affectively for mothers who work in community colleges. The study began by contextualizing the work-life balance fantasy within higher education as a gendered workscape. Using intimate inquiry (Laura, 2013) and aesthetic meditation as the primary approaches, the researcher engaged in conversations with participants about their experiences mothering and working in community colleges. The primary data sources were these conversations, participant artifacts, researcher self-reflection and artifacts, and a range of contemporary cultural texts including podcasts, poetry, television, social media posts and videos, and photography. Data were analyzed for gestures of affective attachment and inconvenience (Berlant, 2011, 2022) produced by work-life balance fantasy logics and were reimagined as glitches in the work-life balance fantasy. These glitches were used to create a series of scenes designed to explore the effect of participants and other working mothers as they negotiated the tensions of hope and fear, joy and loss experienced as crisis ordinariness (Berlant, 2011). The study also included the researcher’s reflections on her experiences working, mothering, and developing her study as a research-creation. The study makes the case for disrupting the logics of neoliberalism, patriarchy, and productivity culture by decentralizing the work-life balance fantasy and moving toward revalued sociality through intimacy and connection. The project also calls for more research using intimate inquiry, aesthetic mediation, and other post-qualitative approaches to explore work-life experiences of mothers in community colleges and other educational contexts.