From Dissemination to Devolution: Poetry as epistemic refusal and collective BEcoming in academia

This activity positions poetry as a radical, affective, and Indigenous method of inquiry that challenges Western epistemologies and the persistent separation of academic becoming from lived experience. It begins from the premise that knowledge production is not neutral, education is not neutral, and scholars themselves are not, and should not aspire to be, neutral if meaningful social and educational change is to occur (Smith, 2012; Tuck & Yang, 2012). In contrast to dominant academic regimes that prioritise productivity, audit cultures, and dissemination through metrics such as the REF, this activity argues that moments of crisis (local, global, political, and existential) demand that academia become a space for ethical reflection, confrontation, and collective reorientation toward what matters most: who we REALLY write for, and who is REALLY impacted by it.



Grounded in Indigenous epistemologies, post-qualitative inquiry, and decolonial educational thought, the activity centres lived experience, witnessing, emotion, and embodiment as valid and significant forms of knowledge (Kovach, 2009; Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). It explicitly resists the normalisation of epistemic disembodiment that characterises much of Western academic practice, instead conceptualising BEcoming in academia as relational, situated, and continually reshaped by what scholars live through and what they witness around them .This could be from institutional precarity and marginalisation to global crises such as genocide, displacement, and state violence. In doing so, the activity aligns with calls to reimagine education as an ethical and political practice rather than a neutral site of knowledge transmission (Freire, 1970; Andreotti, 2014).



Poetry is mobilised in this activity as a creative tool, as well as an epistemic intervention. Drawing on poetic inquiry, poetry is framed as a method that enables the articulation of experiences that are often unspeakable within conventional academic discourse (Faulkner, 2017; Prendergast, Leggo, & Sameshima, 2009). In particular, the activity builds on García-Meneses, Enciso Domínguez, and Chanez-Cortés’ (2023) concept of the schizo-affective poem as a form of epistemic rupture. Fragmented, multilingual, and emotionally charged poems disrupt the rationalist, sanitised norms of academic writing and expose the affective and institutional violences that structure neoliberal academia. Rage, grief, exhaustion, and refusal are treated not as methodological problems but as analytically productive forces (Ahmed, 2017).



The activity is structured in three interconnected phases. First, participants are introduced to the theoretical and ethical foundations underpinning the session, including Indigenous epistemologies, post-qualitative research and feminist pedagogy. This phase explicitly challenges assumptions of neutrality, distance, and linear academic BEcoming, situating knowledge production as relational and politically implicated. Second, the activity engages with selected examples of poetic scholarship and activist poetic inquiry, illustrating how poetry has been used to theorise precarity, identity, pedagogy, and resistance. These examples are presented not as templates to reproduce, but as provocations to think otherwise about method, voice, and legitimacy within educational research.



The third phase centres collective poetry-making and interactive reflection. Participants are invited to write poetry as a relational and ethical practice, with poems functioning simultaneously as data and outcome. This process foregrounds writing with rather than about, and opens space for collective solidarity across diverse academic positions and lived experiences. Guided reflection addresses ethical questions central to poetic inquiry: whose voices are amplified, how emotion is represented, and how knowledge can be produced without extraction or appropriation (Kovach, 2009; Tuck, 2009).



The activity situates itself as a movement from dissemination to devolution (Enciso Domínguez, 2026). Moving away from knowledge as product I argue the need to move towards knowledge as relational, accountable, and ethically situated. Participants may choose to continue their poetic practice independently. Ultimately, the activity invites participants to resist the separation of self and scholarship, to confront the violence's normalised within academia, and to reimagine educational research as a site of ethical refusal, collective care, and transformative BEcoming.

References

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.
Andreotti, V. (2014). Critical literacy: Theories and practices. Routledge.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2018). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Faulkner, S. L. (2019). Poetic inquiry: Craft, method and practice. Routledge.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). Continuum.
(Original work published 1968)
García-Meneses, L., Enciso Domínguez, M., & Chanez-Cortés, M. (2023). Schizo-affective poetry as methodological rupture: Writing rage, precarity, and resistance in neoliberal academia. Qualitative Research in Education, 12(2), 1–20.
Enciso Domínguez, M. (2026, January 10). Poetry: Disrupting the academic mind, bringing the affective teacher [Conference paper]. European Congress of Qualitative Research, Athens, Greece.
Kovach, M. (2021). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations, and contexts. University of Toronto press.
Prendergast, M., Leggo, C., & Sameshima, P. (2009). Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences. Brill.
Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). Zed Books.
Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–428.
Tuck, Eve and Yang, K. Wayne (2012) Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1 (1). pp. 1-40.
https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15