not the motorcycle diaries

Those of you who find my usual positivity somewhat nauseating might enjoy what I’m about to say (it’s partly in an effort to live up to Paul Kingsnorth, whose recent hilarious and incisive post about Live8 I am quite jealous of, as it shows nothing of the mental gymnastics that I suffer over the nature of this event. Speaking of, I like the sound of this in terms of a more appropriate response from the rich world). Anyway, here goes.

There appears to be a recurring phenomenon at academic conferences on the east coast, at least at the ones which I’ve been attending. Basically this guy (let’s call him Egbert Meyers-Whyte III, because that’s probably his real name) and all his pals turn up to said conferences and exercise what is by now a trick that is very familiar to me, having now seen them perform it at no less than 4 conferences in the last 10 months. I’m talking about Egbert in particular, who appears to be the leader of the pack. Though actually, it’s all applicable to the lot of them. Anyway, Egbert comes along dressed in leather and patches, sporting a big hardcover notebook and a stupid haircut. He sits in the front row, directly in front of the speakers. The whole time that they are talking he takes notes right in their face, shakes his head, tut-tuts and whispers to his posse. Then when it’s question time he delivers a monologue about how inferior that paper was and how it shows no radical potential, is an un-revolutionary (and therefore incorrect) use of theory, contradicts this-or-that autonomous Marxist philosopher, et cetera. His pals all snigger in agreement and usually deliver a similar monologue if the chair unwittingly picks them to ask a question.

This scenario is exactly what happened at the conference I was at last week, only this time one of their posse was on the panel that I attended. Generally speaking, she was talking about gender and race and power and using a couple of literary out-takes to do this. There was little difference between her and the other two speakers (i.e. they were all good papers, they all used theory to succinctly and provocatively discuss certain aspects of the contemporary political landscape, they all delivered them solidly). But the pal didn’t get any blisteringly waffly criticism, instead Egbert got up (after hassling one of the other panel members at length in his usual fashion) and started his “question” with the words “Now what I think is so exciting about X’s paper is ….” and went on to talk about how important it is to radically disrupt gender norms in academic discourse. I’m all for said disruption, but I certainly don’t need to be told (and am far from being further convinced) about how exciting and necessary this is by a clown-man who uses classically patriarchal ways of participating in said discourse: the threatening postures, the imposition of his body, the airs of entitlement and authority, the use of words and arguments that have absolutely no purpose apart from self-aggrandisement. Furthermore, any shred of respect I might have had for Egbert’s powers of intellectual discernment and theoretical rigour were suckered away by this display of unbelievable selectiveness (affinity groups are thicker than water?).

Usually I just write these people off as entertaining unfortunates whose only real impact on conferences is to waste everybody’s time (and occasionally provoke some useful thinking, though on terms which undermine said usefulness). But this (fourth) time has prompted me to consider that Something Has Got To Be Done about it. The fact that nothing *does* ever seem to be done about this sort of behaviour is a reminder that we academic types can get far too worked up about being too prescriptive and not imposing universal norms (see aforementioned mental gymnastics). Of course, in so doing, we can further entrench domination on ye olde patriarchal/generally hegemonic terms.

Therefore, next time I see Egbert and pals at a conference I intend to blow spitballs at them from across the room. Unless anyone has got any better ideas.