Podcasting as a recreational scholarship praxis

The exclusionary nature of academic philosophy has been well-documented (Tremain 2017 and 2024, Donald 2024). Not only do disabled and otherwise marginalised philosophers find it difficult to enter the field, but the combination of the current neoliberal structures of the university and the hegemonic nature of disciplinary norms are pushing out those of us who have made it past the threshold (Dotson 2012). However, philosophy of disability, using disability as method, allows us to trouble concepts such as competence and epistemic authority in ways that challenge how we pursue research and to whom our scholarship is accountable. In this paper, I argue for the necessity to practise diverse types of scholarship to resist these disempowering structures; specifically, I propose podcasting as a type of recreational scholarship, that is, a scholarly praxis that nourishes instead of depleting by embracing playfulness as a methodology. Cripping academic work through the medium of podcasting allows us to understand the liberatory possibilities of crip authorship for the discipline of philosophy and beyond. Through the lens of Maria Lugones’ concept of playfulness and of C. Thi Nguyen’s framework of striving play, I show how podcasting can be a recreational scholarship praxis.