Subjunctively Inhabiting the University

This essay analyzes ethnic and Gender, Women, Sexuality, Feminist, and Queer (GWSFQ) studies as they have been institutionalized – and have resisted institutionalization – within the neoliberal university. We show that these fields of study and areas of pedagogy have been marked as failures, in large part, because they have been charged with doing “diversity work” within institutions that simultaneously invoke diversity and inclusion while resisting the kinds of transformative institutional changes that challenge the upward redistribution of resources and allow subaltern knowledge production. This essay then considers new strategies for inhabitation in the neoliberal university within an era of white supremacist backlash, namely by exploring experimental and collective ways to move between the informal and formal in order to work toward social justice and avoid cooptation. The essay grounds this analysis of institutionalization with a close examination of the formation of the Race, Indigeneity, Gender and Sexuality Studies (RIGS) collective and initiative at the University of Minnesota. We then conclude by asking with what mood should we inhabit the university and theorize how acting subjunctively might allow ethnic and GWSFQ studies scholars to conduct transformative work and enact responsibility to each other, students, and the communities they value, even within a corporatized institution.