Musings on becoming the ghost in the machine: writing into practice subversive academic relations towards care

ABSTRACT In I, Robot the phrase ‘ghosts in the machine’ referred to the unexpected possibility of artificial intelligence evolving past its original intended purpose. In this paper, we use the metaphor to conjure the possibility of us all evolving past those originally intended purposes, uses, and limitations set for us within colonialist academic institutions imbued with white supremacist logics. We call on each other to exceed those limitations, igniting possibilities otherwise by triggering spectral, subversive mis-repeats that agitate a domino-effect disruption of those billions of academic machines that for too long have been left on automatic status quo.