Teaching and writing in the slipstream: aphorisms of precarity

Having recently completed my first decade in China's Normal System, in this Point of Departure (PoD) I explore precarity in higher education teaching using four tools: slipstream, fugia hacia adelante, exophony, and autoethnography. This is an exploration in the form of a structured performance of precarities that I witness in my praxis, e.g., geopolitical, emotional, and health. I illustrate the potential of humanities-infused social science writing to translate emotions and experiences around precarity that are 'in the room' in higher education teaching (Rohrer, J. 2018. 'It's in the room': Reinvigorating feminist pedagogy, contesting neoliberalism, and trumping post-truth populism. Teaching in Higher Education 23, no. 5: 576-92). In a think-piece style epilogue, I propose that perhaps our best teacher is precarity itself and our best teaching is done in precarity.