not the motorcycle diaries

I’ve had a number of conversations about ‘academia’ lately. These conversations have mostly centred on the linkages between academia and activism, the relative value of academic work (e.g. teaching, writing, research, public commentary), and the counter-hegemonic potential of universities (e.g. whether or not universities can increase the diversity of voices heard in the public sphere, the number of people who get a tertiary education and the opportunity to enhance their quality of life - basically whether or not universities are the bullshit ivory towers that the grumpy old men in our lives think they are).

I think we generally agreed that if universities have any such potential it is either (a) very limited in most institutions and especially mine and (b) rapidly eroding, where it does exist (e.g. how many universities still have Access & Equity Units? how many ever did?). I think this is true for obvious governmental/political reasons, but I also think that there is a lot that academics themselves can do towards this in the day-to-day approach to their work.

Just the other day I was in a lecturer’s office and we were going over some work together. The door was open and I was chatting a lot and giggling (we were working on some boring form that requires many jokes about bureacracy and many irrelevant asides to be uttered in order to stop yourself from setting said form on fire). When I left the office to collect some printing, the lecturer from the office next door walked past me in the corridor and gave me the most venomous look I’ve experienced since that unfortunate private property vandalism incident of early 2004. Later I was told that this lecturer had commented on how much I was giggling and that she thought I was being too frivolous and not taking my PhD research seriously enough, and that the lecturer I was working with should pull me into line a bit.

I think these sorts of reactions (which I have come up against more than once before) come from a highly counter-productive attitude of preciousness. The implicit and explicit power that is attributed to academics on the hierarchy of status in our society is often fiercely guarded. The sense that academic work is being not taken seriously is highly threatening to those for whom this power is important. I think some academics guard their power more fiercely than others, especially those who haven’t seen much of life outside the walls of a university and therefore might not have many other sources of personal legitimation.

I connect The Giggling Incident to other stuff I have observed, like competitively cutting each other down at conferences and the general propagation of the view that academic work should be unendingly serious, and definitely not to be laughed at or visibly enjoyed. The same applies to the pressure on post-grads to start CV-building from the minute they begin their PhD, as well as the distinct sense I get from many of my superiors that writing a thesis has to be, primarily, a hideous, isolating, unsupported slog (in order to ‘prove yourself’ amongst the rest of the masochists, I guess!).

In universities, we can’t hope to achieve any of the noble things that I mention above if we can’t re-examine our values, the way we treat people, and our health as individuals - and all of this is, Nelson or no Nelson, very much within our control at the current juncture.