Transgressing the Academy

Abstract

University and organizational diversity statements suggest that diversifying the academy is a shared goal (e.g., American Sociological Association N.d.). However, women of color are often penalized for doing the very “diversity” work that is extolled as valuable (Ahmed 2012; García Peña 2022; Niemann, Gutiérrez y Muhs, and González 2020). These tensions allow the university to operate exactly as it is supposed to: maintaining generations of the dominant status quo and making the academy an untenable place for many women of color. Our discipline is no different; it is based on what Zakiya Luna and Whitney Pirtle (2021) call a “white masculinist sociology,” a sociology that “uphold[s] and maintain[s] white supremacy, imperialism, sexism and racism” (hooks 1994:29). How, then, can we move forward in ways that value transformative work? This is a particularly pressing question for sociology, which explicitly documents how systems of race, class, gender, and sexuality impact our life chances yet also routinely enacts violence by marginalizing and pushing out women of color. We argue that to address these underlying contradictions and enact and sustain substantive change, we need to transgress the academy. Here, we draw on bell hooks, who defines transgressing as the “movement against and beyond boundaries . . . [a] movement which makes education the practice of freedom” (hooks 1994:12). She calls on us to “share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students [and] . . . in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students” (hooks 1994:13). We extend her work beyond teaching to also address research and service and call upon our fellow academics to take on this mantle of transgression based on three foundational principles: care, humility, and dignity. In calling for scholars to transgress the academy, this essay joins long-standing calls for centering the research and theorization by and for scholars of color and people from marginalized communities (e.g., Ferguson 2004; Fillingim and Rucks-Ahidiana 2021; Hoang 2022; Itzigsohn and Brown 2020; Jacob 2018; Luna and Pirtle 2021; Morris 2015; Reyes and Johnson 2020), one that queers sociology by foregrounding relations of power and decentering Euro-American research by relying on multiple intellectual genealogies, including Black feminist thought, indigenous feminist thought, women of color feminisms, and queer of color critique (e.g., Moussawi and Vidal-Ortiz 2020; Shotton et al. 2018). We extend these calls by recognizing that transgressing the academy demands praxis across our personal and professional commitments. Institutions cannot change on their own, nor can we trust them too; we must demand change by making it together, not only through our labor but also through rest and divestment from our jobs (e.g., Hersey 2022). Transgressing the academy requires a commitment to abolition: the tearing down of standard practices of value and worth in the academy and the purposeful creation of new alternatives that center joy, love, and care (e.g., hooks 1999; Luna and Pirtle 2021; Reyes 2022a). We write these words because of the labor of our foremothers and 1174508 SREXXX10.1177/23326492231174508Sociology of Race and EthnicityFillingim et al. research-article2023