7V o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | J o u r n a l I S S N : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 Abstract This paper offers a critical auto-ethnographic account about navigating entry into the academy as an emerging woman academic. In this paper, I reflect on the multiple intersecting positions I inhabit to draw attention to the tensions often experienced by black women in the academy. I also allude to tensions inherent in being a psychologist and an academic. The paper aims to bring to the fore the dynamics that perpetuate black women academics’ sense of non- belonging, voicelessness, and stagnation. Through my narrative, I critically discuss the concepts of time, space, temporality, emotion, and gender within the academic environment and how these elements intersect to shape experience. I make partial reference to feminist thought and critical psychology to drive the conversation about structural issues that persist within the academy that result in the feeling of dis-ease. I also argue that perhaps this dis-ease is the starting point for us to look at what is happening and move towards a radical or reimagined academy. Through this process, I recognised how I became violently silent and disillusioned but emerged hopeful that constant processes of confrontation such as this will eventually create a home for us By Nokulunga Shabalala | Peer Reviewed P E E R R E V I E W What Is Happening Here? An Auto-Ethnographic Account of an Emerging Woman Academic’s Entry into the Academy in South Africa 8 P E E R R E V I E W Introduction Research on the experiences of black women in higher education in South Af rica is not new. Many have written about how race and gender intersect to shape this experience and the extent to which black women academics feel at home or out of place in the academy (Khunou, 2019; Kiguwa, 2019; Maseti, 2018). This paper offers a critical auto-ethnographic account of my entry into the academy. I reflect on my positionality as an emerging academic and the intersects of race, age, gender, academic rank and my professional identity as a clinical psychologist. I reflect on feelings of self-doubt and anxiety, and I attempt to process what these feelings do. I also attempt to contextualise this by discussing the relentless demands of the job. These demands include research and the teaching and administrative responsibilities that are shouldered by academics (Bamberg et al., 2021). Bamberg et al. highlight how these demands are ‘non-negotiable and are intimately tied to individual career identities and a sense of self-worth’ (2021: 190). This seems to create a sense of competition and a never-ending race for survival (Bamberg et al., 2021). This critical auto-ethnography aims to unpack, through my story, some of the structural dynamics of academia, which have historically marginalised black women. It also interrogates how some day-to- day experiences of race and gender, compounded by stereotypical ideas of black women, create precariousness and anxiety (Kiguwa, 2019). So, this paper serves as a conf rontation of sorts. I know that I have to straddle a fine line when conf ronting dynamics that need to shift; this tentativeness regarding conf rontation is something we are taught to err on the side of in psychology training. Being too aggressive with conf rontation may evoke a defensive response in those who may not find resonance in my story. They may glaze over with boredom, tired of black people’s moaning (Eddo-Lodge, 2018). On the other hand, not conf ronting the status quo at all – remaining silent – is equally problematic and can lead to collusion. Collusion, in this instance, maintains the dis-ease as the marginalised person’s problem. Authors such as Griffin (2012), Khunou (2019) and Kiguwa (2019) call for resistance and speaking back. My inclination as a psychologist is to exercise caution in speaking up against particular discomforts; this may be where some of the tension lies. The Critical in Critical Auto-Ethnography (Holman Jones, 2016: 229) Critical auto-ethnography (CA) as an approach allows me to speak out against traditions of silence. This methodology brings to the fore the complicated and dialectical nature of lived experiences (Boylorn and Orbe, 2014; Parker, 2014). Offering my life in this way is an exposing process that presents my ‘messiness’ to be possibly scrutinised and criticised, but I hope that it is also understood (Todd, 2021). This form of inquiry falls within feminist and other emancipatory research approaches, where the idea is for one to be f ree to say the unsayable (Griff in, 2012). It also allows for a detailed description of an individualised experience and, by extension, opens up the possibility for assumptions to be made about the experiences of a particular group (Boylorn and Orbe, 2014; Gough, 2015; Shabalala, 2018). This kind of reflection on experience, as Parker (2014) highlights, is essential for qualitative inquiry in psychology. He further highlights that reflecting on experience is important because the academy constitutes a strange balance between secrecy and transparency (Parker, 2014). In other words, this paper attempts to draw attention to hidden affective experiences within the academy that are often experienced in a cycle of silence enforced by feelings of shame. This silence is often accompanied by the mandate of accountability embedded in the ‘audit culture’ of the neoliberal university (Parker, 2014). Baatjes et al. (2011: 139) argue that higher education in South Af rica (with its history of enforcing racial capitalism) now perpetuates a market-oriented, neoliberal ideology that ultimately reinforces inequality. I also draw on a number of theoretical resources, namely critical psychology, Marxism and feminism. Holman Jones (2016) argues that theory and storytelling exist in a reciprocal relationship where one influences the other, and theory helps us think through and discuss our experiences. Similarly, Parker (2014: 251) argues the following: T H E T H I N K E R | J o u r n a l I S S N : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 9 When it is most tempting to go with what you know, with your immediate impression of what you are up against, it is most important to use theoretical f rameworks to interpret it. Then it is more important than ever to locate what is happening here, to you, in broader context, to conceptualise what is going on. The first attempt at this is stating upf ront that I, and by extension, this paper, take a political position with the understanding that a lot of what I choose to do and not do is constituted by this political position. In other words, a recognition that I can affect and be affected, especially in my capacity as an academic, an educator and a psychologist. One rationale for this is that despite the efforts towards transformation within higher education in South Af rica and seeing more black women within the academy, fewer black women occupy senior and management positions (Porter et al., 2020). There are also subtler inequalities that persist within the academy due to coloniality1 (Shabalala, 2019; Swartz et al., 2009). These inequalities also influence how we work and, more importantly, how we talk about our experiences within this context (Shabalala, 2019). Martin and Mirraboopa (2003) have equally argued that this form of reflexivity allows for the integrity of identity during the research process while decolonising Western research methodologies. As I previously alluded to, the multiple positions I occupy also require this political stance, particularly as a South Af rican psychologist. In psychology, for many years, the political has been treated as an addendum, or an add-on to psychology, which is problematic (Parker, 2014). Discovering Tensions Inherent in Occupying the Academy As a point of departure, I will discuss the idea of taking up space as an emerging black woman academic and the difficulty I have had in navigating this space. I will start off by telling a story of how things started in 2019. I entered academia in January of that year, and throughout the beginning of the first semester, I wondered if I had made the right decision. I often went back and forth struggling with my professional identity. I wondered if I could successfully balance being an academic and a clinician, as it has often felt that the two have been treated as separate streams of psychology. At that point, it felt like I did not belong in the intense environment that the academic space presents. The pace was also something I did not anticipate as a new academic. The number of outcomes to be met at a given time seemed unachievable. It felt like there was not enough time to settle into my new role and fully understand the space I was occupying. The symptoms of imposter syndrome – feelings of incompetence and thoughts of being ‘caught out’ – were increasingly present. Within the first few months in my new position, I was allocated a Master’s student to supervise for their minor dissertation. I was terrified because I had never supervised before, and I had not received the handbook to research supervision (if one ever existed). I tried to remember the type of feedback my research supervisor gave me during my Master’s and PhD, attempting to recreate that in the room, but I quickly remembered that I am not a distinguished professor. It was new territory; I had to reconcile that I had to develop a new skill and do it quickly because there was and still is no time for me to do otherwise. This made me very uncomfortable – the idea of learning as I go and virtually acquiring supervision skills by osmosis. Reflecting on the supervision process is not what I intend to focus on now, but through the supervision process (with me being the supervisor), I have had to endure most of the growing pains. V o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | J o u r n a l I S S N : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 As a point of departure, I will discuss the idea of taking up space as an emerging black woman academic and the difficulty I have had in navigating this space. ...I often went back and forth struggling with my professional identity. I wondered if I could successfully balance being an academic and a clinician P E E R R E V I E W 10 T H E T H I N K E R | J o u r n a l I S S N : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 The student and I worked together and submitted the research proposal for internal review, and the reviews were dismal. As an unsure academic and supervisor, I found it very difficult not to take the reviews personally. The shame I sat with felt almost tangible. Not only did it feel like a direct reflection of me being in the wrong space and/or perhaps at the wrong time. It also felt as if I did not have enough time to take it personally because I was responsible to my student, and it counted as a research output for the year. There were also limited opportunities (perhaps also of my own making) to express just how much I was struggling and the emotional toll this took on me. So, I enlisted support. One of my colleagues told me how they started running and likened it to the transition into academia in my quest for support and validation. They told me about how painful their first run was; they did not understand why people subjected themselves to such masochism. Eventually, they grew to enjoy it, and now running is a part of who they are. Central to their story was the theme of academia being marked by a few bad reviews and rejections that one needs to breathe through and, eventually, find one’s pace. I started getting the sense that the ‘breathing through’ and the metabolising of the feelings that accompany these bad reviews had to be done in one’s own time and not discussed publicly. While I am aware of how young I am in academia, this has me thinking about the extent to which there is enough time to process things (both positive and negative) and ultimately find a comfortable pace at which to feel at home in the job (Luvalo, 2019; Maseti, 2018). There are, of course, multiple reasons why feeling at home or a sense of belonging seem like a point of conflict for a young black woman. One of these reasons relates directly to traditions embedded in coloniality and how that impedes the transformation agenda (Ratele, 2018; Shabalala, 2019). The other links back to the idea of the imposter I spoke of earlier or, put differently, the outsider-within position (Collins, 1986 as cited in Porter et al., 2020). This ‘inside but on the periphery’ position often necessitates that black women academics employ a number of coping strategies in order to stay strong, resilient and carry on (Porter et al., 2020). I unpack this rhetoric of a strong black woman and its ties to coloniality later. I will now turn back to the story to illustrate how the intersection of identity creates precariousness in me. While my assuming an academic position occurred in 2019, I have been married to academics for many years. This relationship started with my long journey through psychology and the years spent courting the field. At the tail-end of my PhD, I felt like I had successfully (albeit uncomfortably) navigated my studies and entered academia. What has left me feeling some ‘typ’a way’ (Shabalala, 2018) this time is that suddenly I am no longer 20-something, and I had no idea where the time had gone. I had focused almost exclusively on my relationship with academia, and, after graduating, my PhD was greeted with congratulations f rom my family. They were also sure to tell me that they were praying for me to now find a husband, get married, and have children – a reminder that career success for a woman is never really fulfilled unless it is matched by marriage and children. As Thabo Msibi (2011) has similarly noted, despite my family’s joy over completing the doctorate, they were worried, and I now had to be worried too. Another issue of time, space and pace had suddenly crept into my life as a young black woman academic: marriage, children, and a compatible partner; when are you? I felt a strong sense of f rustration because, in my mind, a 30-year-old man who is a qualified clinical psychologist, holds a PhD, and occupies an academic post is seen as promising within academia and society. As a woman with a similar profile, I am ‘overqualified and high-maintenance’, as the Catholic priest jokingly pointed out at my god-child’s baptism. In academia, for women, it is the feeling of needing to sacrifice one thing for the other – something I will come back to discuss. As the new year started in 2020, I thought the worst was behind me, and I could now better prepare for the year ahead of me. However, no amount of preparation could have alleviated the impact of what then followed. The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that COVID-19 infections had reached pandemic status (Landa, Zhou and Marongwe, 2021). The South Af rican government subsequently declared a national state of disaster under the Disaster Management Act of 2002, and a national lockdown was initiated (Landa, Zhou and Marongwe, 2021). This had consequences for teaching as we moved f rom P E E R R E V I E W contact learning (which was not permitted under the hard lockdown) to the online space. As a part- time clinician in private practice, it meant that I was also negotiating how to move my practice onto the online space. The lockdown period meant that I was restricted to my home for months. The lockdown meant that my home space was also my workspace, where I taught f rom, supervised f rom, saw patients f rom, and where I spent my 30th birthday alone. The period of March 2020 through to July 2020 was arguably the most difficult for me. It was the first real instance that the worry expressed by my loved ones became my worry, as the isolation (that I once thought I preferred) turned into loneliness. I realised how much I had been functioning in a silo only after this massive global pause was initiated. Time was a strange thing to negotiate; it stood still but moved at the same time – it felt like I had all the time in the world and none at the same time. And, unlike most colleagues, I did not have the interrupting sounds of pets, husbands or other proof of life in the background as I unmuted my mic during Microsoft Team meetings. As a result, some colleagues assumed that I had more time, and it seemed like my time was being taken for granted. This meant that I would be one of the people approached to provide relief or cover where others asked for relief. Managing my work and being collegial enough to cover others assumed that I had time in abundance. There was a heavy price to being conscientious, reliable and collegial because, at times, it felt exploitative. Concerns were raised about how people were balancing work demands, student needs and home life. Most of the time, it seemed to me that there was more of an awareness of people who had to balance having their children at home while having to attend to work every day; then there was the occasional, ‘Oh Lunga, you live alone, right? How have you been coping?’. There were also moments of being expected to sit in meetings over weekends (which drew my attention to being contracted to fulfil work responsibilities over weekends), which embodies the masculine ‘ideal academic’ and the idea of constant availability (Ivancheva, Lynch and Keating, 2019). The rationale was that these pressing meetings that had to take place on weekends resulted f rom the COVID situation we found ourselves in (which is very accurate), but on the other hand, perhaps all COVID has done is to highlight problematic cultures or traditions that already existed (Ratele, 2018). When I spoke up about the inability to find time and space to think and therefore write (in other words, be productive) because of these expectations, one senior academic responded, ‘Why didn’t you say no?’. I do not recall having much of a response, but, in retrospect, I imagine feeling, as I often do now, that I had very limited choice. There are a few things I want to reflect on here. The first being the position of precariousness that I mentioned earlier – a nervous condition – which is ultimately always the condition of native or black people, especially women (Sartre, 1961). Ivancheva, Lynch and Keating (2019) discuss two types of precarity in academia: labour-led and care-led precarity, and that both forms of precarity demand a sacrifice. Negotiating this new space as an emerging woman academic sometimes leads me to an existential crossroad where there seems to be pressure to choose one extreme. On the one hand, I may choose to pursue visibility through research rankings and publications and spend all my time doing that while my biological clock ticks away. In this manner, embracing the more masculine ideal. On the other hand, I may choose to forego visibility, actively contributing to knowledge, and getting promoted for a semblance of balance and ‘life goals’ for less financial gain and the possibility of being stuck in the trenches of heavy teaching loads (Ivancheva, Lynch and Keating, 2019). This conflict creates in me (a black body; a woman) a ‘neurosis introduced and maintained by [coloniality] with [my] consent’ (Sartre, 1961: liv). What sometimes feels worse is that it seems that one has to be violently silent about these decisions and temporal changes within the academy, which causes alienation and competition (Pillay, 2016). And in some ways, it’s the same silence that then implicitly validates these archaic processes. The other reflection relates to the ‘strong black woman’ trope and how that interacts with violent silence. I want to do this by going back to the question posed by my senior, ‘Why didn’t you say no?’. In the first instance, the question presumes that I am complicit in the creation of my suffering, and this nervous condition is of my making. In retrospect, the 11V o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | J o u r n a l I S S N : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 P E E R R E V I E W 12 answer is, ‘it just seems natural, and you just carry on’, as the protagonist, Nyasha, explains in Nervous Conditions (Dangaremba, 1988: 119). Parker (2014) argues that ‘carrying on’ is perhaps a way to protect and convince oneself that things are as they ‘ought to be’. To further unpack this, the carrying on may also be linked to the notion of a strong black woman who is thick-skinned and does what needs to be done, irrespective of the consequences to herself. Consider the following quote f rom the American series, ‘Harlem’ (2020: lines 2–7): In comparison to white femininity, which is valued for beauty, vulnerability, and maternal softness. Black women have been valued for their labor, both literally and figuratively. A strong black woman suppresses her emotions, never letting anyone see her sweat… being labelled a strong black woman is a rite of passage. She is resilient, independent, and capable. But what if she isn’t? The problematic nature of this idea, Dayo (2021) argues, is that it tends to deprive black women of vulnerability and forces them into a stoicism that can be read as them being without emotion (Kiguwa, 2019). Thus, they can be relied upon to carry on as the labour force but not necessarily move up in rank. Them creating noise or speaking of dissatisfaction may lead to the labelling of them as emotional or angry (Dayo, 2021), which limits their productivity and thus progression. My inability to say no and not being able to question certain things is connected to not wanting to be labelled as angry or bitter, and thus I remain silent. This experience may also be compounded by functioning in a system that pushes productivity over recognition of personhood (Richards, Mapumulo and Swartz, 2018), one that is riddled with unf reedoms and has yet to radically transform itself through reimagination (Ratele, 2018; Wilson-Strydom, 2018). This brings me back to the discussion of the academy. There are two aspects that I want to draw attention to. The first is the affective experience of the academy and the politics of time and how these function within the neoliberal space. Chronopolitics, Temporality and Affect in Academia In this section, I focus on the politics of time, or what Felt (2017) terms ‘chronopolitics’. I further reflect on the temporal structures that influence experience. I then briefly touch on the idea of time as a commodity and its impact. Time is considered neutral; however, the moment we start asking questions about pace and whose time matters within the academy, it lends itself to how time is political (or chronopolitics) and issues of temporality within the academy (Shahjahan, 2019). Felt defines chronopolitics as ‘the politics of time governing academic knowledge generation, epistemic entities, and academic lives and careers’ (2017: 54). Chronopolitics and the Neoliberal Academy Berg and Seeber (2016) highlight that the nature of academic work, while flexible, is never really finished: they argue that the flexible nature of our hours is a definite privilege, but also caution that this could easily translate into us working all the time. Over the past year, what has occupied my mind is whether I had measurable things to show for the time spent. I felt I needed to show that the department made a good decision in hiring me and that I was productive. More recently, I have felt a different conflict with time – one that is associated with my exhaustion. Towards the end of 2021, I experienced extreme fatigue and burnout, but this conflict came when I had to sit with my manager during the final performance appraisal for the year. As my manager, she was privy to just how much I was teaching and how much effort I had put into the professional training programme. She I focus on the politics of time, or what Felt (2017) terms ‘chronopolitics’. I further reflect on the temporal structures that influence experience. I then briefly touch on the idea of time as a commodity and its impact. Time is considered neutral; however, the moment we start asking questions about pace and whose time matters within the academy, it lends itself to how time is political (or chronopolitics) and issues of temporality within the academy T H E T H I N K E R | J o u r n a l I S S N : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 P E E R R E V I E W 13 had also often reflected to me that she recognised how much work I was putting in during the time that ought to have been down-time. The unfortunate position she seemed to be put in was, on the one hand, empathically understanding and responding to my exhaustion, while on the other needing to drive the promotion agenda and emphasise the need for me to spend more time on what counts as productivity – or doing the emotional dirty work, as Parker (2014: 261) puts it. My performance review showed that I had failed to meet a particular key performance indicator, which is producing a publication, which meant that I had underperformed despite my exhaustion and exceeding in other areas. This further brewed resentment in me as emails circulated showing how people were publishing, and it reminded me of the colloquial saying ‘we have the same 24 hours’, but do we? The further consequence of my lack of ‘real’ productivity meant that there are particular incentives that I continue to miss out on. The academy has become a place for neoliberal capitalist endeavours that promote competition, in this instance in single-authored publications – as illustrated by the Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) subsidy system for publications (Tomaselli, 2018). These ways of incentivising academics place a higher value on individual work than collaborative thinking, writing, and teaching. The effects of such a system are that, to academics, particularly emerging academics, these goals can appear unattainable and thus continue to serve to make us feel that we do not belong, or render us alienated. This job demands a particular skill set – teaching, curriculum development, supervision, and writing for publication. These skills did not necessarily form part of my formal education and professional training, hence my feeling of not belonging and being overwhelmed when I was assigned my first supervisee. Nevertheless, despite my feeling ill- equipped, I had to navigate the responsibilities because that is the job. This process of navigation draws attention to temporality and the academy. Shahjahan (2020) refers to temporality as the ways in which we process and make meaning of everyday changes. These changes can be physical, biological, or emotional (Isaacs, 2020). Part of the discussion then becomes one of how (if at all) we respond to temporal changes within the academy, and questioning whether the time to do so exists. These changes cannot necessarily be separated f rom inherent structural and power dynamics. As such, we cannot separate time, politics, and power issues. Shahjahan (2020) discusses how issues of power manifest within the academy by looking at the connection between it and everyday affective states. He argues that looking at such a connection allows us to delve deeper into ‘the micropolitics of power operating in the “psychic life”’ of working within higher education (2020: 786). These micropolitics lead to the tendency to self-monitor, compare and compete (Shahjahan, 2020). The other consequence is the feeling of alienation. It also seems like time does a weird shapeshifting and is affected by politics to become a commodity in the neoliberal university. As such, it becomes an important resource that can be competed for. An example of this may be how things like buying out teaching (for casual workers to offer some teaching relief) are negotiated. Senior, mainly professor level, academics can buy this teaching out to focus on research because they usually hold substantial research grants to do so. Feelings of being stuck, despondent and anxious then result for me, as on the one hand, I am desperate to get to that point where I can buy time, but it often feels like I do not have the time to collect incentives to do so. Understanding Affect and Its Politics: Am I Just Being Emotional? I now do a quick turn to emotions and affect. This may be an important exercise because my agenda with this paper is to conceptualise why I do what I do (the personal) and engage with the questions, ‘what is going on?’ and ‘what do my emotions do?’ (the political). Moreover, where they – the personal and political – come into contact; a process of becoming, according to Massumi (1995). Ott (2017) highlights that affect scholarship is vast and that defining the term ‘affect’ has somewhat been contentious (see Massumi, 1995; Tomkins, 2008; Wetherall, 2012). Therefore, I adopt the perspective of affect as practice (Wetherall, 2012) as it allows for the critical investigation into and conceptualisation of the unsayable, as Canham (2017) notes. He further highlights the argument that affect is not pre- personal or pre-political (see Hemmings, 2005). This links to Ahmed’s (2014) approach to studying and V o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | J o u r n a l I S S N : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 P E E R R E V I E W 14 understanding affect as a movement that mediates everyday life. In this paper I have reflected on my positionality and the intersecting realities of race, gender, and age that pull together and shape my not feeling at home within the academy (Luvalo, 2019; Maseti, 2018). I have also argued that my positionality and feeling a sense of precariousness within the academy have perpetuated a neurosis or nervous condition in me. As I describe these affective shifts within me, I am also cognisant of Canham’s (2017) cautioning against using terms that pathologise the black affective experience. While I have consciously used neurosis to describe most of my emotional experience, I accept Canham’s (2017) cautioning, as black emotionality is often the site of becoming or mobilising change. For example, Canham (2017) argues that black rage is agency, and whether one decides to expel or harbour it, it is daily work against racial and gendered inf ringements in order to survive. While rage can be destructive, it is necessary to embody for the purposes of resistance and transformation. This work is also often tiring, disheartening and slow (Canham, 2017), bringing to life Biko’s (1979) argument about transformation being a slow process. It takes an emotional toll, but the alternative, ‘deep acting’, is not ideal either. It results in the death of identity, which ultimately happens in and benefits the neoliberal academy (Parker, 2014). Deep acting would mean carrying on – not asking questions and not expressing my discomfort and many other complex feelings I tend to sit with. This process eats away at my identity, especially because the neoliberal academy praises and promotes the masculine, white supremacist ideal, which is not me. Concluding Thoughts: Have I Said Too Much? I’m careful not to go too far, trying not to offend. Is this self-protection or ‘double consciousness’? (Bishop, 2021: 369) Much like my other work, I always find wrapping things up nicely difficult, especially given the complexity of what I am trying to engage in. It is complicated and political, and I am very scared that I will offend, so one does tend to be careful not to go too far or rock the boat. What started as reflections on what I was feeling in 2019 when I entered academia has evolved into a deep dive into investigating what is happening in the academy in South Af rica through my personal experience. As usual, it is never my intention to essentialise experience, but I also do not think it is fair nor useful to reduce the experience to just a ‘me thing’. A problem that just needs to be taken to therapy, and all will be well. While that may also be accurate – the need for therapy that is – I am not interested in inhabiting a false consciousness that often protects many of our colleagues f rom feeling these affective shifts (Parker, 2014). Despite the very strong words I have had for describing the academy and my experience of discomfort and dis-ease, I hope that the academy becomes a place I can call home for many years to come. I do plan to grow and get promoted. I also recognise the naivety with which I entered the academy. Having seen women who look like me – some referenced in this paper – who had made it, I thought to myself, ‘black girl, it is possible!’. However, somewhere down the line, I thought, ‘not for me, clearly!’. I thought I was doing something wrong. This brought about panic and arresting helplessness – bouts of depression in some instances. I thought I had to process all this emotion on my own and be sure to bite my tongue (Griffin, 2012) until I started writing and putting what I was feeling on paper. This reflective process made me acutely aware of the politics entrenched in academia, and I could start separating what was my responsibility to hold and what was not. Through this critical auto-ethnography, I also found the f reedom to2 start being and discovering my professional identity within academia – the f reedom to reimagine. However, this is my process. Much still needs to be done. The academy, in many ways, reflects greater socio- political realities, which is why it is political, despite its attempts at moving away f rom them. The difficulty, as I have tried to show in this paper, and as Ratele (2015) argues, is that the academy’s structure does not allow for ‘deep transformation’. This is especially true when there seems to be a continuous focus on merely ‘bringing the poor, blacks, women, queers, and disabled’ without a reimagining of what an inclusive academy can look like beyond transformation by numbers (Ratele, 2015). If misrecognition and unf reedoms persist as a result of coloniality, then some of the issues highlighted in this paper will T H E T H I N K E R | J o u r n a l I S S N : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 P E E R R E V I E W 15 persist. How do we create an environment that has a focus on humility (Kiguwa, 2019) for academics and, ultimately, the students? What is going on? What do we need to remedy? Do we know? 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