Friendships on the Stage: Co-writing Feminist Theatrical Accounts

We, as friends, feminists, and Early Career Academics, explore the complex interplay between friendships and the Neoliberal University through an experimental genre blending text: a collaborative performance combining duoethnographic theater, poetry and artistic-academic writings. We offer intimate, embodied insights on friendships - between academics, between academics and non-academics, and between writers and readers. Our work exposes the ambiguity of friendships in the Neoliberal University. Friendship as affective relations without a predefined time frame and purpose is depicted as a danger to be contained, reflecting the denial of relationality in knowledge production. An instrumental framing of friendship is promoted and sustains the normative control of workers and the exploitation of care. Despite these challenges, critical, careful friendships are indispensable for academics to navigate the Neoliberal University's physical and mental consequences. To resist collectively and prefigure alternatives, i.e. for the Caring University to emerge, we need to push the boundaries of friendships.