Critical spaces: processes of othering in British Institutions of Higher Education

• Main Author: Phiri, Aretha
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/60741; http://www.jfsonline.org/issue7-8/articles/phiri/

Global recession and the economic crisis have affected contemporary British society in predictable ways. But this age of austerity has also unveiled the continued sinister machinations of whiteness. While not necessarily homogeneous, austerity rhetoric, as it is currently conventionally deployed, works to perpetuate white masculinist privilege and further entrenches the normative value of whiteness, while simultaneously masking and marginalizing those ethnic minority populations traditionally othered from mainstream sociopolitical discourse. More specifically, recent austerity measures adversely affect the situation of women and the future of feminist theory and practice in British higher education. This paper investigates and problematizes the deployment of austerity discourse within higher learning for its perpetuation of the normativity and hegemony of a masculinist whiteness, which further disadvantages (white) women and disrupts the practice of feminism(s) in academia.