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Healey-Benson, Felicity 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4191-2164 and Johnson, Michael R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8405-5620
(2026)
Guardians of the Lifeworld: Phenomenological Dwelling and Resistance in an Age of Acceleration.
Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Networked Learning, 15.
pp. 1-11.
doi:10.54337/nlc.v15.10957
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16228 Healey-Benson, F and Johnson, M (2026) Guardians of the Lifeworld.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 4.0. Download (4MB) | Preview |
Abstract
This paper draws on hermeneutic phenomenology and Marvel Entertainment's Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG) to explore scholarly resistance in an age of AI acceleration. As large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) increasingly mediate academic knowledge work, we argue that the relational, embodied, and ethical dimensions of thinking together are at risk of erasure. Automating aspects of scholarship impoverishes what remains essentially human in the practice of inquiry: the hesitation, the slow labour of reading, the trust that forms through genuine collaborative presence. Drawing on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Stiegler, and van Manen, we frame GenAI as a pharmakon: simultaneously remedy and poison, accelerating output whilst hollowing out the conditions under which meaning slowly forms. Rather than offering critique through conventional argument, we employ figuration and imaginative redescription as phenomenological method, treating the GotG characters as what van Manen calls insight cultivators. Fan wikis, narrative arcs, and repeated viewing are engaged not as empirical data but as sources within the wider lifeworld through which figuration circulates and meaning is collaboratively shaped. Each Guardian illuminates a different fragile condition of scholarly practice. Star-Lord guards coherence amid fragmentation and loss; Gamora guards the possibility of ethical care within compromised systems; Rocket and Nebula foreground the difference between survival and healing; Groot and Mantis illuminate quieter, embodied forms of knowing; and Drax exposes the cost of rushing to clarity before meaning has settled. Four short fragments drawn from lived experience in contemporary academic life give texture to these tensions: the disappeared voice, the stillness that registers as absence, the question that was automated away, and the speed that erases process. Together, they are offered as a methodological provocation and a call to protect the conditions under which genuine thinking remains possible
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Article Type: | Article |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Phenomenology; Hope; Generative Artificial Intelligence; Large Language Models; Insight Cultivators; Postdigital; Digital scholarship, Scholarship; Technology; Pharmakon; Collaboration; Guardians of the Galaxy; Fandom; Higher education; Education in times of crisis |
| Related URLs: | |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) L Education > L Education (General) |
| Divisions: | Schools and Research Institutes > School of Business, Computing and Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Felicity Healey-Benson |
| Date Deposited: | 11 May 2026 12:52 |
| Last Modified: | 11 May 2026 13:15 |
| URI: | https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/16228 |
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