Doing And Undoing Leadership In Higher Education: The Performativities Of Women Leaders

This work problematizes the status quo of leadership in higher education by disrupting the normalization of leadership discourse. Judith Butler's feminist poststructural theory of performativity is used alongside poststructural theories of power and discourse to critique conventional notions of leadership in order to open up understandings of leadership that are broader and more inclusive. Using qualitative data and a thinking with theory methodology for analysis, this study exposes the historical, structural, and discursive conditions of higher education, which subject women leaders to power and discourse and narrow the possibilities for their subjectivities. Feminist poststructural theory enables the examination of the ways in which women use agency to do and undo leadership through performative acts of resistance and compliance in order to loosen up rigid subject positions. This theoretical undoing of leadership in higher education opens leadership up to new meanings and doings, thus enabling a discussion of the possibilities for the redoing of leadership.