Description
This paper explores refusal as wellbeing as a response to permacrisis. We use permacrisis to mean the compounded impacts of multiple “unprecedented” events, including multiple genocides, climate crises and cost-of-living crises. University departments and academia more broadly are not immune to the impacts of the permacrisis, and have contributed to, and reproduced the conditions that lead to permacrisis. This is done via investment portfolios or working with funding bodies that include fossil fuels and arms manufacturers. It is further demonstrated in the continuing neoliberal agenda in higher education. Throughout the article we discuss the wellbeing of educators and students, and how refusal, slow scholarship and investing in longer term collective wellbeing, act against the forced immediacy of crises. Refusal is a political choice, which means we must consider who gets to refuse, what and how. Refusal can be generative, giving time and space to create new structures and responses to permacrisis. We conclude by offering some recommendations on how to enact refusal.
