Entangled with the past in Norwegian academia

Abstract

This article explores entanglements of matter, space, and temporalities in shaping academic subjectivities in Norwegian higher education. Drawing on conversations with foreign women working at a major university, I explore the forces (re)producing what matters in academia, creating assumptions of who can be a real academic. Leaning on Karen Barad’s (Citation2010, Citation2017a, Citation2019) hauntology and Walter Mignolo’s (Citation2011) queering of temporality, this study elucidates how foreign women academics are entangled with the past through gendered and racialised hauntings and more-than-human discursive materialities, such as linear temporality and ideals of progress. Illustrating ways in which Othering are still enacted in the world of academia, I argue the necessity of rethinking institutions of higher education as spaces where westernised and patriarchal geopolitics of knowledge are reproduced. This study carries out a decolonial delinking of linear temporality towards the recognition of pluriversal experiences of now-time, expanding geopolitics of knowledge in Norwegian academia.