Decolonizing inclusion in performing academia: Trans‐inclusion as phronetic border thinking/doing praxis

Abstract

In this paper, inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa, we draw upon our embodied experiences as non‐white scholars from different parts of the South to examine our complicity and responsibility for inclusion in performing a Western, neoliberal, diversity‐oriented, globalizing academia such as the United States' Academy of Management. We refer to the dominating practice of inclusion as universalist inclusion (uni‐inclusion), where a hegemonic includer includes diverse subaltern others while blind to colonial differences. We argue that uni‐inclusion has a dark shadow that perpetuates a “you are with us or against us” sentiment of white male superiority and violence, even as it elides the deep connectedness of epistemic, bodily, and material practices in the praxis of performing academia. Drawing upon our embodied and enacted experiences of tenures at Academy of Management as borderland scholars with relational reflexivity, we propose phronetic border thinking/doing praxis for trans‐inclusion as a non‐essentialist possibility of decolonizing inclusion. We share our understanding of how we have enacted border thinking/doing praxis so that it may provide pointers to pluriversalizing academia. Trans‐inclusion is a neologism we suggest to indicate a liberating praxis for all in an era of decolonization and empire where diverse includers beyond self/other dehumanizing binarism engage within an ethics of caring and co‐existence.