Performing Critical Work: The Challenges of Emancipatory Scholarship in the Academic Marketplace

Critical scholarship in the social sciences usually focuses on the social sphere outside of the academy. However, for higher education researchers, critical research is often undertaken within and for the academy, which in turn may endanger one's career if the dominant power structures are threatened. How might we enact and perform critical research within the academy when the academy itself is our focus? In this piece, we script our dramaturgical relationship with critical theories, to question the meaning of these paradigms in our own work and in our field (of education) as well as to explore the potentials of and limits to the use of critical theories and paradigms that may move beyond critical.