ABSTRACT Hélène Cixous delicately reminds us that doors perform a material and affective liminality between what is and what might be, and questions the reason and rhyme of doors as ways in and out of spaces which denote passage and movement; and as structures which separate, connect, and demarcate entanglements of being, becoming and belonging on the inside or out. In this paper, we take up Cixous’ thinking around doors to explore literal and metaphorical accounts of the material, embodied and affective liminality of doorways and doors within the context of higher education. Cixous concept of “Écriture feminine” places experience before language, and privileges non-linear, cyclical writing that evades the discourse that regulates phallogocentrism. With this in mind, this paper is a meta-fictional feminist adaptation of Franz Kafka’s parable ‘Before the Law’ from his novelThe Trial. This approach draws upon our own experiences, as well as qualitative interviews with other academic women across Australia to explore the ways that opening and closing doors speak to issues of agency and transparency, inequality and discrimination, pedagogy and politics in academia, as well as the need for a renewed feminist commitment to connectedness and solidarity in a highly competitive and critical neoliberal work environment.

中文翻译：

---

在门前：讲述女性学者包容的物质、情感和伦理维度

摘要 Hélène Cixous 巧妙地提醒我们，门在现实和可能之间表现出物质和情感的界限，并质疑门作为进出空间的方式的原因和韵律，表示通道和运动；并且作为分离、连接和划分内部或外部存在、生成和归属的纠缠的结构。在这篇论文中，我们利用 Cixous 对门的思考，探索高等教育背景下门道和门的材料、体现和情感限制的字面和隐喻性描述。“女性书写”的 Cixous 概念将经验置于语言之前，并优先考虑非线性、循环的写作，从而避开调节阳具中心主义的话语。考虑到这一点，这篇论文是对弗朗茨·卡夫卡的小说《审判》中的寓言“法律之前”的元小说女权主义改编。这种方法借鉴了我们自己的经验，以及对澳大利亚其他学术界女性的定性访谈，以探索打开和关闭大门的方式，涉及代理和透明度、不平等和歧视、学术界的教学法和政治，以及在竞争激烈且批判性强的新自由主义工作环境中，需要重新做出女权主义对联系和团结的承诺。