Between Brexit and Trump: Looking at the stain on the floor

This article asks how leaders emerge out of moments and movements of whiteness. It asks how we sit with, endure through, or protest against the new values that are created as we tumble into the interstices of this political space. This article, based on the author’s assumptions and imaginations about a postgraduate student’s silence in class discussion, explores possibilities of finding new modes of participation in class and therefore in democracy and in our globalized lives. Through thinking with Liang, a Chinese student in a university classroom in Scotland, this inquiry begins to articulate the implications of the current political landscape for the work done in the university. This article, in its original form, was presented at the European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in Leuven, Belgium, on February 2017 and was written in the aftermath of the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union.