Not-knowing-in-advance: Trying to think and see as if not doing a PhD.

Abstract

In this piece, the writer offers up a tentative exemplification of how reframing a thesis in terms of what it can do rather than what it is has the potential to generate a joyful-artful engagement with the PhD process and to engender a more response-able relationship with the world. By refusing to engage in the dis-abling processes prescribed by institutional expectations of doctoral study, the act of writing emerges as a powerful antidote to the constraints of the neoliberal, neurotypical, university. Exploring a mode of expression that intertwines text and image, the writer enacts Erin Manning’s philosophical projects of research-creation, artfulness and thought-in-motion.