Description
After the experience with distance learning during the pandemic of COVID19, the pressure for the offer of online courses at the universities has increased exponentially. In the case of International Relations, the coupled push to internationalize programs and to expand online reach presents us with the need to question what it means ‘to internationalize’ and what it means ‘to be present’, both of which are central notions to an ontological and to a pedagogical analysis of the International Relations as a discipline. We propose to follow up on previous research work and think of what it means to be 'present' in the classroom and in research interventions. We question the global economy of the digital architecture in which we operate, how it divides us into pieces of information and what the role is of pedagogical practice in challenging this form of digital existence. The paper also discusses the role of narratives as ways to promote contiguity, calling for qualified presence and conversations as key parts of methodological feminist research interventions. Finally, we look at how teaching can be permeated by constructions of alternative imaginaries in such ways as to guarantee presence in this construction. For all these reflections, we offer teaching and research examples that at once extend this contiguity in terms of a decompression of narrative arcs, that is, in defiance of the sometimes divisive and superficial engagement of digital times, and also question traditional notions of distance and borders by means of a radical openess to relationality.
