‘Be Here Now’: feminist futures as present

Abstract

Responding to bell hooks’ call to ‘Be Here Now’, I argue that paying close attention to the present enables us to render visible the ways in which we are implicated in systemic injustices. I explore how refusal is a promising frame through which to enact worlds that feminists want to live in, showing how everyday acts of refusal have the potential to bring alternative worlds into being. To make this argument, I identify four distinct modes of refusal that might serve to positively construct feminist futures in the now: 1) social and affiliative refusal, 2) embodied refusal, 3) slow refusal and 4) imaginative refusal. While these four forms are not an exhaustive account of the different forms of refusal, they are each powerful in the context of feminist futures, drawing on central concepts of feminist thought: care and relationships, situated knowledge and bodies, time as a feminist concern and the importance and value of wonder as central to feminist thought. I argue that in the context of patriarchal, capitalist and colonial systems, systems that serve the interests of few and dominate the majority, these modes of refusal serve to puncture the settled status quo, simultaneously offering a glimpse into feminist futures while enacting them in the present. I conclude by reiterating that feminist futures benefit from being closely attuned to our present, and that a politics of refusal might enable us to penetrate colonial, patriarchal and capitalist systems by reimagining and acting on alternative visions in the now.

Introduction

In her chapter ‘This is our life: teaching toward death’ (2003, pp. 165–174), bell hooks notes that as educators and scholars we often fail to ‘Be Here Now’ (ibid., p. 165). She states: ‘This vision of progress that is central to imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy is one that always places emphasis on the future—there is always a better moment than the moment that is, a better job, a better house, a better relationship’ (ibid., p. 166). Her writing stirs deep emotions in my thinking about ‘Feminist Futures’. While yearning for a just world underpinned by intersectional feminist values to ‘end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression’ (hooks, 2000, p. viii), I am attentive to how future-focused language has the potential to move us away from acting in the present.

Two decades ago, hooks diagnosed discontent in higher education as driven by societal and institutional norms that idealise and privilege ‘progress’ and ‘outcomes’ over ‘being’ and ‘values’. She characterises this problem of discontent as a feature, not a bug, of a system in which the means inevitably subvert the ends. Education, she says, is ‘seen as a stop on a journey with an endpoint that is always somewhere else … students are socialized via conventional pedagogy to believe that their own “now” is always inadequate and lacking’ (hooks, 2003, p. 166). Yet students are not alone in their discontent. As a feminist, educator, scholar and mother, I am impatient in my desire for a more just world. I feel acutely that ‘today’s frantic need to push toward deadlines, covering set amounts of material, allows very little room, if any, for silence, for free-flowing work. Most of us teach and are taught that it is only the future that really matters’ (ibid., p. 167). In this article, I am inspired by hooks to advocate for a feminist future that calls for us to

 Be

    Here

       Now.

I ask: when we are drawn to possibilities in the future, what do we lose sight of in the present? I argue that focusing on the present enables us to render visible the ways in which we are implicated in systemic injustices, as well as to draw attention to the actions we take that uphold or subvert the system. To make this argument, I explore how refusal might be a promising frame through which to enact worlds that feminists want to live in, showing how everyday acts of refusal have the potential to bring into being alternative worlds in the present. First, I conceptualise refusal, exploring its scholarly origins and noting its key features as detailed in the existing literature. I then make a case for thinking about everyday acts of refusal as a promising site for change, with a particular focus on how these everyday acts enable action in the present. Inspired by the politics of refusal, I identify four distinct modes of refusal that might serve to positively construct feminist futures in the now: 1) social and affiliative refusal, 2) embodied refusal, 3) slow refusal and 4) imaginative refusal. In making these distinctions, I argue that each form of refusal is attuned to long-standing feminist interventions—of care and relationships, situated knowledge and bodies, conceptions of time and the importance and value of wonder—and highlight how these modes of refusal might guide our thinking and actions in the present in the form of everyday actions. In presenting these four forms of refusal, my intention is not to adjudicate between them but to elucidate and sharpen our understanding of the different forms that refusal might take in support of feminist futures.

Following hooks, my examples for each mode of refusal focus on experiences in the academy, in particular teaching. Teaching is an often under-recognised site of political importance, shaping not only what we know but how we think, relate and act (Timperley and Schick, 2022, p. 118). Shifts in teaching theory and practice are critical in shaping future generations of students, scholars and citizens. Moreover, as Sara Ahmed (2021) shows, it is essential to detail acts of refusal in institutional life in order to advance systemic change. These illustrative examples seek to inform actions within academic institutions to enable feminist futures to be enacted in the present in these still patriarchal, colonial and capitalist structures. However, while these examples centre teaching and academic life, it is my contention that the four modes of refusal can—and should—inform actions across all aspects of our lives. I conclude the article by reiterating that feminist futures benefit from being closely attuned to our present, and that everyday acts of refusal might enable us to penetrate colonial, patriarchal and capitalist systems by reimagining and acting on alternative visions in the now. However, I also raise concerns about the accessibility of a politics of refusal, noting the different responses and outcomes of refusal for differently situated individuals and bodies.

The politics of refusal

The concept of refusal was originally developed in the field of anthropology as an idea within the subfield of resistance studies (Abu-Lughod, 1990; Brown, 1996; Seymour, 2006). Particular attention has been paid to its role in theorising ethnographic research in anthropology (Ortner, 1995; Simpson, 2014; McGranahan, 2016), while in feminist theory a politics of refusal has in recent years been fruitfully engaged in Black women’s theorising to highlight the positionality, contributions and projects of Black feminist scholars, and to show how a politics of refusal operates inside systems even as it rejects them (Karera, 2021). Bonnie Honig’s (2021) feminist theory of refusal, developed through an innovative re-reading of the fifth-century tragedy the Bacchae as a story of refusal, brings to the fore refusal’s transformational character.

In defining a politics of refusal, many scholars have grappled with the distinctions between refusal and resistance. Sherry Ortner’s (1995, p. 190) influential article on resistance illuminated what she identified as ‘the problem of ethnographic refusal’, arguing for an ethnographic approach to resistance studies that explores the internal politics of dominated groups and questions ‘the possibility of truthful portrayals of others (or Others) and the capacity of the subaltern to be heard’. She argued that ‘resistance’ is a useful, if ambiguous, category that is largely defined in opposition to domination and ‘highlights the presence and play of power in most forms of relationship and activity’ (ibid., pp. 174–175). This feature of resistance—highlighting power dynamics—is also a central feature of scholarly conceptions of refusal, though refusal’s relationship with power differs in a crucial way. While resistance tends to be depicted as an oppositional force—resistance against an entity, while still largely accepting the premise of that entity—refusal serves to challenge the very logic of what is being opposed: refusing the very terms of the entity being challenged.

This characterisation of refusal is most evident in Audra Simpson’s (2014) work, in which she develops the concept of refusal as a challenge to the terms of the structures that assume supremacy. While resistance acknowledges structures in order to resist them, Simpson’s politics of refusal offers the possibility of ignoring these structures altogether; she asks:

What happens when we refuse what all the (presumably) ‘sensible’ people perceive as good things? What does this refusal do to politics, to sense, to reason? When we add Indigenous peoples to this question, the assumptions and the histories that structure what is perceived to be ‘good’ (and utilitarian goods themselves) shift and stand in stark relief. The positions assumed by people who refuse ‘gifts’ may seem reasoned, sensible and in fact deeply correct. Indeed, from this perspective, we see that a good is not a good for everyone. (ibid., p. 1)

Developing the concept of refusal in the context of Kahnawà:ke Mohawk responses to claims of state sovereignty, Simpson (2007, p. 78; emphasis in original) argues that ethnography ‘can both refuse and also take up refusal in generative ways’. She notes that refusal operates as ‘a writing strategy and an analytic that stood outside the repetitive stance of resistance, which again overinscribed the state with its power to determine what mattered’ (Simpson, 2016, p. 329). Exploring the possibilities of refusal as both a method for writing ethnography and as a subject to be studied, Simpson (2007, p. 78) notices that ‘[i]n listening and shutting off the tape recorder, in situating each subject within their own shifting historical context of the present, these refusals speak volumes, because they tell us when to stop’. Refusal, in Simpson’s account, can therefore serve as both a method and a practice, inviting us to think about how we conduct our work (for example, what intellectual traditions we engage and value) and the actions we take (for example, how our activities uphold or refuse expectations, both within and outside the academy). Distinct from resistance, ‘refusal offers its own structure of apprehension that maintains and produces sociality through time, manifest in a political posture of acute awareness of the conditions of this production’ (Simpson, 2016, p. 329). Refusal is therefore not simply negative but has generative qualities—it is ‘an option for producing and maintaining alternative structures of thought, politics and traditions away from and in critical relationship to states’ (Simpson, 2017, p. 19).

Drawing on the legacy of resistance studies, and Simpson’s work in particular, Carole McGranahan (2016) identifies four key features of refusal. She says, first, that refusal is generative, as it should not be understood only as saying ‘no’ but also as ‘strategic … [and able to] illuminate limits and possibilities, especially but not only of the state and other institutions’ (ibid., p. 322). Second, she suggests that refusal is social and affiliative in its ability to create community. Third, she asserts that refusal is distinct from resistance in the way it fundamentally challenges institutions and structures, as it ‘reposit[s] the relationship as one configured altogether differently’ and fundamentally ‘challenges the presumption’ of the state (ibid., p. 323). Finally, she claims that refusal is predicated on ‘hope combine[d] with will’ in its rejection of what exists in favour of alternative futures (ibid.).

Other scholars have explored distinctive features of refusal, especially in relation to resistance. Elliott Prasse-Freeman (2022, p. 104) distinguishes between the two through depicting resistance as oppositional to dominant power structures, while refusal ‘marks the disavowals, rejections and manoeuvrings with and away from diffuse indirect forms of power’. He argues that ‘refusal acts as pre-emption, a rejection of the very premises that normalise domination’ (ibid., p. 113), echoing Simpson’s (2017, p. 23) depiction of refusal as a ‘hard no’ to living within terms determined by the oppressor. In the context of education, Michalinos Zembylas (2021, p. 954) explores the decolonial elements of refusal, arguing that it ‘marks a political ethos and praxis that denies, resists, reframes and redirects colonial and neoliberal logics, while asserting diverse sovereignties and lifeworlds’, using this to argue for attention to the ways that affect structures our engagements in and with the university. Notably, these descriptions of refusal are all inflected with action in the now—refusal is an active verb, prioritising action in the present rather than deferred strategy for the future.

While the paradigmatic account of refusal is one of actively rejecting the very premise of dominant systems (Simpson, 2007, 2014, 2017), refusal can also take place within hegemonic structures. Indeed, this may often be a necessity. As Prasse-Freeman (2022, p. 104) explains, ‘ostensibly refusing subjects must seek out engagements with authorities, must conjure into being publics that will observe their performances of refusal’ in order to have an effect. Zembylas (2022, p. 167) also argues that a ‘move toward refusal does not mean that it denies the necessity of, at various times, to engage with or appeal to liberal democratic principles; besides, it is unrealistic to ignore hegemonic institutions such as democracy’. Similarly, Bennett Collins and Ali Watson (2022, p. 383) tarry with these tensions in the politics of refusal, noting that refusal can involve working within settler institutions at the same time as refusing their logic. Therefore, while it may be appealing to consider refusal as fulsome denial of injustice or domination, it is also important to recognise the constraints that dominant structures place on those who refuse. To define refusal as only systemic and fulsome rejection of an entire system ignores the ways in which everyday acts of refusal might create change or the conditions for change within hegemonic systems. Indeed, Honig (2021, p. 3) goes so far as to suggest that refusal sometimes ‘betrays a deep attachment’ to the world, even in those moments when it seems to deeply reject it. Acts of refusal, she argues in the context of the Bacchae, signal the promise of a ‘more just world that is not yet’ (ibid.), pointing to the potent promise of refusal as a vital concept through which to reject power structures that oppress and exploit.

Everyday acts of refusal in the now

While refusal might appear to be ‘more brazen, oppositional and muscular’ (Prasse-Freeman, 2022, p. 113) than resistance, it can take the form of large or small gestures (Simpson, 2017, p. 21). Refusal may take the form of wholesale rejection of a system—as exemplified in Honig’s (2021, p. 22) account of the bacchants’ refusing to work—but theorists of refusal often locate it in everyday actions, with Simpson (2007, p. 73) noticing ‘how refusal worked in everyday encounters to enunciate repeatedly to ourselves and to outsiders that “this is who we are, this who you are, these are my rights”’. In responding to hooks’ (2000, p. viii) call to ‘end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression’, I argue that it is fruitful not only to think of refusal as grand gestures of rejection—represented in movements like the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group’s (contentious) call for political lesbianism—but also to consider the ways that everyday acts of refusal have the ability to challenge patriarchal, colonial and capitalist systems of domination. ¹

While refusal might fruitfully take the form of explicit, confronting or grand actions, these actions alone will not suffice to change structural conditions. Outright rejection of systems or logics can limit refusal’s appeal to those comfortable with radical politics (often manifesting in calls for ‘civility’; see Çıdam et al., 2020), while conspicuous acts of refusal can lead to countermovements (Meyer and Staggenborg, 1996) that foster reactive and negative responses. Spectacular moments of refusal can be effective at drawing attention to oppression or injustice, yet such movements also rely on relational and cultural shifts, often underpinned by everyday organising (Boyte, 2005). As such, while refusal may fruitfully take the form of spectacular or grand acts, it is also essential to enact refusal at a micro level in everyday interactions and settings in order to dismantle systems of domination. Moreover, I argue that everyday acts of refusal have the potential to prioritise the present—promoting action right now—without obviating the power and importance of strategic or grand acts of refusal.

In making this argument, I draw on Iris Marion Young’s (2011, p. 48; emphasis mine) work that calls attention to the ways that social structures are maintained by ‘many policies, both public and private, and the actions of thousands of individuals acting according to normal rules and accepted practices contribute to producing these circumstances’. Young’s account of structural injustice highlights how systemic injustices can be maintained by the majority of people accepting the status quo as legitimate and unremarkable as they go about their everyday lives. Her work shows that everyday actions serve to uphold unjust systems, even if individuals do not intend for them to do so. Similarly, Sara Ahmed (2003, p. 240) points to the relationship between ‘everyday attachments’ and political processes, arguing that ‘[i]f emotions are crucial to how subjects become invested in relations of power, then they are also crucial to how subject’s [sic] become invested in the project of dis-investing from power relations’. Recognising the ways that our individual, everyday actions contribute to upholding the status quo is one way in which we can assert our agency to challenge those, often subtle, assumptions about the way the world is and should be.

The importance of our everyday thoughts and actions in challenging injustice is also echoed in Navtej K. Purewal and Jennifer Ung Loh’s (2021, p. 1) work, where they argue for the importance of recognising and naming the ways in which feminist studies—and feminist thought by extension—‘remains mired in coloniality’. They advocate for feminists to ‘acknowledge our complicity and act by “knowing-being-doing” differently, listening to the margins and making space for feminist anti-colonial thinking’ (ibid., p. 9). Recognising the importance of thought as an agent of change, this call shows the power of everyday actions—naming, listening, making space—in altering our conditions. What Zembylas (2021, p. 964) calls ‘the micropolitical dimension through which knowledge production takes place at the university’ is a key site of potential, and potent, refusal.

Inspired by the politics of refusal articulated by Simpson and McGranahan, in particular, in the following section I identify four distinct modes of refusal that might serve to positively construct feminist futures in the now: 1) social and affiliative refusal, 2) embodied refusal, 3) slow refusal and 4) imaginative refusal. I argue that in the context of patriarchal, capitalist and colonial systems, systems that serve the interests of few and dominate the majority, these modes of refusal serve to puncture the settled status quo, simultaneously offering a glimpse into feminist futures while enacting them in the present. These modes of refusal draw from and extend beyond those identified in the existing literature, identifying key ways we might seek to manifest feminist futures in the now. In particular, my focus is on everyday expressions of these forms of refusal, showing how small actions serve to reject prevailing logics within hegemonic systems. These everyday acts both create alternative futures in the present, as well as creating space for further challenges—small or large—to dominant structures and ideologies. My examples for each form of refusal focus on everyday actions within academia, and teaching specifically, as sites of political importance where challenges to long-standing assumptions about the way the world is or should be can have ripple effects well beyond the classroom or institution, through inculcating in students and colleagues different understandings of the world and how we act in it (Timperley and Schick, 2022, p. 115).

Social and affiliative refusal

The dominance of Euromodern epistemology and ontology is reflected across the academy, structuring conditions of employment, the content and format of teaching and the methods and subjects of research. Central to the promise of the Euromodern project is the notion of individuals as rational, autonomous actors freely going about their personal projects. One central project of feminist theory has been to challenge the evidently flawed assumptions underlying this notion, with scholars pointing to the deeply relational requirements of humans as social beings (Mackenzie and Stoljar, 2000), and offering challenges to politics that at best overlook, if not outright ignore, the function of care (Tronto, 1996). Social and affiliative refusal (McGranahan, 2016) challenges the core logic of the neoliberal, patriarchal, colonial project by emphasising the importance of community, through enabling new communities to form or supporting those that already exist. While the Euromodern project prioritises—and often strategically employs—the notion of rational, autonomous individuals, social and affiliative refusal denies this logic. Social and affiliative refusal is emphatically relational, offering a fundamental rejection of dominant power structures and hegemonic narratives that privilege individuals over communities and relationships. It is not just resistant to the Euromodern project but opposes its very ontology.

Zembylas (2021) draws on social and affiliative refusal as a call to explore how differentially situated people might respond to issues of domination or injustice, in particular in colonial contexts. While those who are colonised might refuse to acknowledge assertions of state sovereignty (Simpson, 2014), those who benefit from colonial structures are required to engage in conscientisation about their complicity in settler structures (Zembylas, 2021, p. 960). Zembylas (ibid.) also points to this form of refusal as an effective strategy for addressing some of the solidarity issues that emerge from differently positioned peoples and groups, given that the focus is on refusal to ‘sustain complicity’. Social and affiliative refusal lends itself particularly well to action right now. Relationships are fundamental to our lives, so this form of refusal responds to hooks’ call to ‘Be Here Now’ in recognising that our relationships are infused with power relations and we have the capacity to respond to those relations in everyday interactions.

In my own settler-colonial context of Aotearoa New Zealand, social and affiliative refusal encourages the fulsome rejection of hegemonic narratives perpetuated within the university (and society more generally) that centre individuals as unique, rational and autonomous actors, working alone to develop their own personal projects in service of the University’s rankings objectives. Everyday acts of refusal in this setting include cultivating relationships with colleagues that are collaborative, care-filled and joyful to explicitly challenge the neoliberal academy. Based in feminist care ethics, these relationships serve as a mode of social and affiliative refusal that radically rejects capitalist, patriarchal and colonial systems. Through self-reflection and dialogue, such relationships prioritise connection over outcome, supporting a fundamentally different kind of academy. These relationships are nurtured through prioritising community and care and recognising each other as embodied individuals with interests and obligations outside the academy.

In practising social and affiliative refusal, for example, I seek out, wherever possible, a walk in the bush or local gardens to discuss ideas with colleagues, rather than sitting in a meeting room or office. We take it in turns to cook for each other when we meet at our homes, relishing the physical and spiritual nourishment that accompanies these carefully prepared meals. We also discuss matters beyond our academic work, seeing these conversations as intrinsic to our well-being and academic roles, rather than a deviation from the tasks at hand. We intentionally use the language of ‘friendship’ to identify these relationships, as a political refusal of the categories and labels applied to us and our relationship in a neoliberal workplace. These practices are deeply fulfilling in their recognition of each other as whole persons, and the joy we experience in the company of one another. As hooks (2003, p. 167) observes, we also notice that our capacity for creative thinking and ‘free flowing’ thought intensifies through these intentional practices that root us firmly in the present and in our friendship. Rejecting the image of the cerebral academic defined by their mind, these practices refuse the neoliberal academy and its focus on intellectual ‘outputs’ and measurable success. Our everyday refusals create and make visible—in small ways—the kind of academy we yearn for in the present.

These acts of refusal also resonate outside these specific relationships, exerting the power of ‘address’ infused throughout María Lugones’ work. Lugones’ concept of address, Monique Roelofs (2016, pp. 373, 372) argues, ‘sustains powerful parameters of social organization’ and is culturally imbricated across realms of art, friendship, science, education, domesticity and mourning; moreover, because address structures these parameters, it also has the potential to shift them. According to Roelofs (ibid., p. 381), Lugones outlines ‘a type of resistant agency that emerges from the collaborative interactions of heterogenously positioned social actors’, calling this ‘active subjectivity’. Relationships, structured by address, are open to contestation and refusal. Deliberately refusing the script of the aloof, rational academic serves to manifest feminist futures in the present, while also subtly shifting and prefiguring the possibility of vulnerable and caring interactions in the future. We are therefore outspoken about how we nurture our collegial friendships, encouraging younger scholars and students to see these activities as central to the work we collectively undertake.

Embodied refusal

In addition to thinking about refusal as a social and affiliative practice, I argue that it is productive to consider refusal as an embodied practice. There has been much criticism, particularly within feminist theory, of the ways in which knowledge is constructed as a narrow epistemological endeavour, located in and created by the rational mind with no regard for how our bodies shape what we know and how we act (Timperley, 2022). Dominant approaches within the academy still prioritise conceptions of the rational mind producing knowledge that is neutral, universal and authoritative and ‘unsullied by human passions, feelings, and emotions’ (Shapiro, 1998, p. 138). Yet, as Ahmed (2014, p. 171) compellingly asserts, ‘knowledge is bound up with what makes us sweat, shudder, tremble, all those feelings that are crucially felt on the bodily surface, the skin surface where we touch and are touched by the world’. Reason is not an activity of the mind separate from the body; instead, it is constituted through and by the body. Indeed, Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift (2013, p. 162) show that ‘[t]o ignore the affective, passionate element of reason is to delete much of what reason consists of’.

Given the central role of our bodies in determining what we know and how we act, refusal can be understood as not just relational, as detailed above, but also deeply embodied. Yet, despite the prevalence of critiques of Cartesian mind/body dualism, recognition of the body as vital to shaping our worlds is often still considered radical in large parts of the academy. Embodied refusal therefore seeks to refuse in at least two different ways. First, embodied refusal rejects Cartesian logic by asserting that bodies matter because ‘our minds are intimately shaped by the bodies they inhabit, and vice versa’ (Timperley, 2022, p. 111). This challenge is characterised as refusal not resistance because it does not oppose the settled logic of the rational mind—it dispenses with this logic entirely. Second, embodied refusal acts as physical, fleshy, tangible refusal. It therefore not only offers a radical alternative conceptualisation of knowledge—as an ontological rather than purely epistemological endeavour (Timperley and Schick, 2022)—but it also physically manifests this refusal through the presence and deliberate intrusion of bodies into places and spaces where the body has traditionally been ignored.

One way in which I have enacted embodied refusal has been to embrace vulnerability in academic settings—in the classroom, in conversations with colleagues and in my scholarship. My vulnerability serves as a rejection of the idea that academics are rational creatures whose bodies and emotions should not interfere with their work. This vulnerability brings into being an alternative mode of being an academic in the present through intentionally developing qualitatively different kinds of relationships and community than is usually the norm. For example, in a recent book chapter, I opened with an account of my breast cancer diagnosis and the tensions this presented for me as a young woman in academia. Beyond the shock of a cancer diagnosis at 35, the thought of publicly drawing students’ attention to my breasts was overwhelming and frightening, especially as a feminist theorist who knew the sanctions that women, especially young women, can face because of their sex. In sharing my diagnosis with my students and publicly writing about this experience, I deliberately refused the script of a neutral, rational academic whose most important asset was their mind, and instead shared my vulnerability to draw attention to my full embodied presence.

In addition to drawing attention to the influence of bodies in contexts where bodies are intentionally repressed through the myth of the Cartesian mind/body dualism, embodied refusal might also take the form of drawing attention to bodies that are subject to enduring domination within society, and within the feminist movement itself. A paradigmatic example of this is the marginalisation of women of colour in the MeToo movement (Onwuachi-Willig 2018; Williams 2021). This exclusion is also apparent in the academy, through the micromovements, gestures and words experienced by non-paradigmatic bodies going about their daily work. Ahmed (2012, p. 35), for instance, explores how ‘institutional spaces are shaped by the proximity of some bodies and not others: white bodies gather and create the impressions of coherence’, while hooks (1994, p. 135) speaks of how ‘as a black woman, I have always been acutely aware of the presence of my body in those [academic] settings … to see yourself always as a body in a system that has not become accustomed to your presence or your physicality’. In the settler-colonial context of Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori (Indigenous) academics and students remain seriously underrepresented in the academy (McAllister et al., 2019). Recent studies drawing attention to this are urgently framed by the question ‘Why isn’t my professor Māori?’ (ibid.). This question is framed as a politics of refusal, both in its direct challenge to existing inequalities and also in unsettling assumptions of academics as rational, neutral and disembodied, through drawing attention to how embodied experience shapes knowledge and institutions.

Slow refusal

At the outset of this article, I drew on bell hooks’ (2003) urge to ‘Be Here Now’ as a caution to what might be lost when focusing on the future instead of the present. Here I return to her words in thinking about how refusal of chronological time and its attachment to progress might destabilise oppressive systems. I conceptualise this as ‘slow’ refusal.

Chronological time is characterised as linear, unidirectional and orientated by commitment to ‘progress’. It is recognisable in modern societies as a systematic need for growth, resulting in the promotion of a ‘secular athleticism’ that highlights the value of a productive lifestyle, in which individuals celebrate overcoming obstacles with the aim of ‘getting things done’ (Gregg, 2016, p. 113). As well as being tied to individual success and societal progress, chronological time is often linked to commodification, encapsulated by the phrase ‘time is money’ (Snyder, 2016, p. 29). This sense of time as chronological and embedded with capitalist conceptions of progress and success is familiar in academia, from the scheduling of daily activities to broader conceptions of career progression.

Slow refusal works against the fast-paced consumption model of society and education. It sensitises us to ‘being here now’, directing our attention to the present and challenging the assumption of chronological time as ‘progress’. This call to embrace slowing down is not a novel one; challenges to capitalist conceptions of time in the neoliberal academy have been explored in recent years through advocacy for slow scholarship and slow pedagogy (O’Neill, 2014; Berg and Seeber, 2016; Collett et al., 2018), which focus on quality, attentiveness and care rather than quantity, efficiency and outputs. Slow refusal illuminates these appeals through explicitly rejecting the way that chronological time works to uphold systems of domination and oppression, attuning individuals to how we structure our time and conceive of success. Recognising conceptions of time as political, slow refusal seeks to sensitise us to our complicity in capitalist, colonial and patriarchal systems through our acceptance of how we structure and value our time, thus enabling us to orientate ourselves towards liberatory projects of non-domination.

In her feminist theory of refusal, Honig (2021) draws attention to the importance of time as a feature of the feminist practice of inoperativity, detailing how the women in the Bacchae refuse work and sex/gender conventions when they leave the city of Thebes. A notable feature of their move involves a temporal adjustment: on Cithaeron ‘the simple act of sleeping there, and the enjoyment of relaxation, are radical’ and there is a ‘distinctive plenty’ to ‘slow food and slow time’ (ibid., pp. 25, 27). In the context of Cithaeron, slowing down is itself an act of refusal, one that made ‘alternatives imaginable’ (ibid., p. 43). In the context of the academy, however, slowing down is not unproblematic. The slow scholarship movement has been rightfully challenged for privileging the privileged. The status quo benefits those already in power and slowing down can have the effect of sustaining those systems for longer, as well as prioritising individual over collective actions. While the slow scholarship movement claims to be concerned with challenging structures of power and inequality through time (Mountz et al., 2015), on an individual level the effects of slow scholarship have classed and gendered dimensions (Mendick, 2014). While slow refusal might seek to open up alternative ways of conceiving of education and academic activities, those in permanent or tenured positions are likely more able to enact slow refusal with fewer sanctions or detriment to their personal position.

Slow refusal may have negative repercussions at an individual level, especially in the context of slow scholarship, but enacted as a collective response it has the potential to create a future that is not structured around capitalist imperatives and norms. One way in which slow refusal might be employed in less individually damaging ways is through refusing to engage in dominant narratives about the goals of education. In designing my courses, I start with the question ‘What does it mean for my students and me to be here, in this place together, at this moment?’. I draw on pedagogies that explicitly direct attention towards the unknowability and uncertainty of knowledge, to articulate a vision of learning that refuses to meet the ends of neoliberal, patriarchal, colonial education orientated towards the future that directs students to think that ‘everything they learn in the classroom is mere raw material for something they will produce later on in life’ (hooks, 2003, p. 166). From our first meeting, I deliberately unsettle the distinction between myself as ‘expert’ and students as passive learners, asking students to bring their expertise to our collective discussions and fostering a sense of us learning alongside each other. I express my own uncertainty about the themes and materials we are studying and ask students to contribute to designing the course and facilitating discussion through, for example, collectively generating key course themes and designing activities for students to actively contribute to our course materials through identifying and sharing relevant contemporary materials—poems, news stories, art works, interviews, Instagram and TikTok posts—that illuminate the theories we are studying.

Drawing on diverse materials and perspectives enables me to enact a ‘plurilogue design’, as described by Fabiane Ramos and Laura Roberts (2021, p. 37), that seeks to develop a ‘non-hierarchical relationship of knowledge creation’. This approach is based in slow pedagogy, which emphasises collective, generative, specific-to-the-moment learning rather than the speedy, efficient, outcome-focused knowledge transmission model. Ramos and Roberts (ibid.) articulate this ethos in their call for ‘wonder as feminist pedagogy’, encouraging students to revel in critical, curious reflection and embodied engagement rather than focusing on simply attaining a grade for a job or the future. They suggest that generating a disposition of wonder breaks away from the ‘possessive learning’ (ibid., p. 38) that characterises much of higher education, and instead draws attention to embracing the understanding that learning is never final and is always ‘in the process of becoming’ (ibid., p. 41). While not emphasised as such in their article, this notion of wonder as pedagogy has a clear temporal dimension—wondering at the world requires reflective, quality, unhurried time.

In my classes I also emphasise the ways in which we engage with each other as a challenge to the efficiency of the still dominant content-transmission model. We collectively discuss the process of learning as a core part of our engagement with the material and I invite students to think critically about our relationship with the knowledges we are engaging and how we choose to engage them. In a settler-colonial context, this means recognising that our learning is shaped by the land on which we reside (L.B. Simpson, 2014, p. 7), as well as the ways in which European concepts and structures dominate our intellectual and physical landscape. As part of this relational exploration, I share with students that much of my life and education has been directed towards the future, but that that future always seems to recede as each milestone is achieved—I find myself perpetually looking forward to the next milestone. Enacting slow refusal is the unpicking of this teleological logic of progress, even if not always successfully. In actively expressing my joy in the present and in my students’ presence, I stress that the time we spend together is precious: these moments are what constitutes life itself. Not only is this approach an important refusal of dominant Euromodern conceptions of time but, in my experience, it is also contagious. Giving voice to finding joy and fulfilment in the present is often reflected in how students reorientate themselves to the course and their learning, speaking to the powerful appeal of slow refusal.

Imaginative refusal

McGranahan (2016, p. 323) argues that refusal is hopeful and wilful, stating that ‘[h]ope combines with will to refuse authorized anticipations, thus moving away from the probable into the possible’. She connects these attributes with refusal’s capacity to be transformative and generative, and ‘the possibility of acting to spark change’ (ibid.). Zembylas (2021, p. 962) also highlights this conceptualisation of refusal to focus on its positive attributes, noting that ‘it is crucial for educators and students in higher education to imagine alternative ways to feel and hope that are not stuck in default negative connotations of refusal’. Like McGranahan and Zembylas, I am drawn to the concept of refusal as a generative one, but suggest that envisioning it as imaginative more fully captures the features of being hopeful and wilful in service of its transformational properties. hooks (2010, p. 61) asserts that ‘[i]magination is one of the most powerful modes of resistance that oppressed and exploited folks can and do use’, and I argue that portraying refusal as imaginative draws attention to its power as a force against domination. While imagination can be a future-focused activity that draws attention to what might be, or an active rewriting of the past (as exemplified by Saidiya Hartman’s [2019] critical fabulation), it also has the ability to alter perceptions in the now, through challenging the certainty and inevitability of the status quo. To help conceptualise this form of imaginative refusal, I look to the concept of wonder, explored by theorists Sara Ahmed and Iris Marion Young, as a critical—though not exclusive—element of imagination that can be used to change perceptions in the present through everyday actions.

Ahmed (2003, p. 250) argues that wonder is central to feminist theory, saying that it ‘is what energizes the very hope of transformation, the very will to politics’. She describes how her early experiences with feminism were ‘bound up with wonder, with engendering a sense of surprise about how it is that the world has come to take the shape that it has’ (ibid.). In her account, emotional engagement—specifically that conceptualised as wonder—is central to understanding action. Individuals’ emotional investments might encourage them to uphold the status quo, but equally might be the source of critique or resistance (ibid., p. 240). Similarly, Young (1997, p. 357) highlights the potential of wonder as a practice of non-domination; quoting Luce Irigaray’s insistence that wonder ‘does not try to seize, possess, or reduce this object, but leaves it subjective, still free’, she argues enables openness towards others and oneself, resulting in new insights and increased understanding across difference. Therefore, while Ahmed focuses on the promise of wonder for transformation and action through emotional engagement, Young is attentive to its ethos of reflexivity that moves action away from domination and oppression.

But Young (ibid.) also recognises that wonder has its dangers, including the potential for exoticising others or as a ‘kind of prurient curiosity’ that ‘convert[s] the openness of wonder into a dominative desire to know and master the other person’. Bonnie Mann (2018, p. 54, quoting Sara Ahmed) also raises questions about uncritical acceptance of Irigaray’s sense of wonder, suggesting that its promise of happiness fails to acknowledge the ways in which it is also linked to ‘feelings of pain, anger or rage’. Yet Ahmed and Young both recognise the potential for wonder to yield transformation. This may take the form of transformation in perspective, where what once was ‘ordinary’ becomes unfamiliar; in Ahmed’s (2014, p. 179, emphasis added) words, ‘wonder allows us to see the surfaces of the world as made’, while Young (1997, p. 358) speaks of a disposition towards wonder as leading to ‘enlarged thought’. This transformation may (perhaps should) result in action, whereby a change in perspective leads to ‘something more creative, something that responds to the world with joy and care’ (Ahmed, 2014, p. 179). I draw from these thinkers an understanding of wonder as an ethos of openness, curiosity and non-domination, which together can provide the basis for imaginative refusal, while also recognising the possibility for wonder to be exploitative or poorly executed.

An example of imaginative refusal in the classroom can be found in Sheila Lintott and Lissa Skitolsky’s (2016) pedagogical orientation and strategy of ‘decentring playfulness’. In their courses, they draw students’ attention to the structure of academia by explicitly challenging hegemonic discourse and arguing for being ‘playful’ as a way of undermining notions of expertise and settled knowledge. Drawing on the work of Lugones (quoted in ibid., p. 448), they encourage playfulness through being open ‘to surprise … to being a fool … to self-construction of reconstruction and to construction or reconstruction of the “worlds” we inhabit playfully’. Modelling and generating an open disposition enables critical questioning of the way things are, with playfulness doing important work in lessening the stigma of being wrong—being open to ‘playing the fool’ creates possibilities for moving away from dominant and oppressive structures in the act of refusing the script of students as experts-in-training working towards ‘mastery’ of their subject.

This call for playfulness is echoed in Emily Beausoleil’s (2021) work, in which she details how comedy and humour can be used as an ‘oblique’ form of listening that enables individuals to encounter and address difficult questions of social justice without reflexively putting up defences that stymie further dialogue or action. Her work focuses in particular on settler-colonial contexts, where structural advantage is often invisible to dominant groups. Instead of confronting these weighty issues head on with socially advantaged groups, she explores alternative strategies for grappling with sensitive topics, in particular focusing on the power of humour to defuse potentially challenging subjects while still holding these issues up for scrutiny (Beausoleil, 2022). Both Lintott and Skitolsky’s and Beausoleil’s strategies draw on a sense of wonder—openness, curiosity and non-domination—to refuse dominant epistemologies (Lintott and Skitolsky) or structures (Beausoleil). These examples also highlight how imaginative refusal can be enacted in small, everyday actions to manifest feminist futures in the now.

Conclusion

María Lugones (2010, p. 747) argues that ‘feminism … goes beyond oppression by providing materials that enable women to understand their situation without succumbing to it’. In this article, I have explored the concept of refusal to theorise the ways in which everyday acts of feminist refusal have power to disrupt patriarchal, neoliberal and colonial systems in the now. To make this argument, I explored the literature that situates the politics of refusal as distinct from resistance, predominantly in its fulsome rejection of the logic of dominant systems rather than as resistance to them, as well as accounts showing that refusal can operate within hegemonic systems. Refusal can operate as grand or mundane actions, and I highlight the promise of everyday acts of refusal for developing feminist futures in the present, without rejecting the potential value of grand acts of refusal for paradigmatic shifts. I delineate four different forms of refusal, both drawing from and extending concepts in the existing literature, in order to bring into focus different features and locations of refusal that can be employed specifically in the now: 1) social and affiliative refusal, 2) embodied refusal, 3) slow refusal and 4) imaginative refusal. While these four forms are not intended as an exhaustive account of the various modes of refusal, I argue that they are each particularly powerful in the context of feminist futures because they draw on central concepts of feminist thought: social and affiliative refusal centres care and relationships; embodied refusal recognises situated knowledge and bodies; slow refusal identifies time as an essential feminist concern; and imaginative refusal draws attention to the importance and value of wonder in feminist thought and action.

In writing this article, I reflected deeply on my privilege and sincere pleasure in ‘being here now’ and having the opportunity to engage with feminist ideas and read work that resonated with and extended my ideas about what is means to be and act like a feminist in the service of feminist futures. In particular, I grappled with difficult questions about whether refusal is the appropriate means through which to advocate for achieving feminist futures by paying attention to the present. Refusal’s characterisation as an outright rejection of systems or logics can limit its appeal to those comfortable with radical politics. Simultaneously, those seeking to employ refusal within systems may be rightly challenged on the basis that everyday acts of refusal lack potency and are not a true reflection of refusal’s radical logic. As Suzanne Persard (2021, pp. 23–24) notes, there is a risk that strategies of refusal produce ‘the rhetorical effect of self-righteous radicality’. In reflecting on my arguments, I remain uncertain whether my examples of refusal are authentic and genuine enough to deserve the characterisation of ‘refusal’, especially given my complicity in systems of oppression. As a non-Indigenous scholar living on Indigenous land in Aotearoa New Zealand, I benefit from colonial systems that are built to serve my interests. In the context of these deeply entrenched, unequal and unjust systems, it could be argued that nothing but radical action is sufficient. Yet there is value in focusing on the everyday not only because, as Young (2011) argues, it is through these everyday actions that systemic injustices are upheld and perpetuated, but because everyday actions can often sidle in unnoticed and gain a subtle foothold that can allow for progress and open up space for grander, more transformative leaps in understanding and action. While everyday actions may individually seem underwhelming, collectively they have the potential to enact deep shifts in the academy and beyond. Yet it is also important to recognise that though refusal can be taken up by differently positioned subjects, those more closely aligned with privilege by virtue of their gender, sexuality, race, class or bodies are less likely to be sanctioned for their refusal—even (perhaps especially) everyday acts. Therefore, while refusal is a promising concept for upholding bell hooks’ call to ‘Be Here Now’, tarrying further in these complexities is an important task for engaging in a politics of refusal in the aid of feminist futures.