What’s in a name?
Posted on | July 13, 2005 |
I think the difficulties expressed in my previous, now deleted post can be understood on another level, one that I have discussed before with a fellow post-doc fellow. That is, the ambiguous status of the unpublished academic. If like me you are an early career researcher without a first book and maybe just a handful of articles floating around, you have very little chance to be taken seriously as an interlocutor. In typical work settings like conferences the skills you trade off are collegial and social - at worst, sycophantic - because you need to prove to superiors that you are worth their time, or in the case of employers that you are going to be a worthwhile investment (and not a threat, but that’s a whole other post). Yet this it at a time when you haven’t had the chance to establish yourself as having an identifiable angle on the world. In some ways it’s understandable that people might perceive me as time-passing company first, and a researcher second. But this is probably the most motivating factor for me to write my book now. I’m so sick of being treated as a name or a face or a remembered conference comrade rather than a scholar. Ideally I wish my name could invoke something like respectable and rigorous thinking and writing, not just a semi-recalled forwarded email. So if I’m in hiding a bit in the next little while, it could be because I’m working on some new qualities.
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4 Responses to “What’s in a name?”
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July 15th, 2005 @ 4:23 pm
Just on the deleted post, Mel, I’d been meaning to leave a comment. You can delete this one if you like after reading. I wanted to say that having worked in a university environment myself, it’s workplace sexual harrassment and ought to be dealt with according to the same protocols as in any other workplace. Academics can’t get away with blurring boundaries inappropriately just because they’re famous scholars or whatever. I’d suggest you make it clear to the person that the attention is unwanted, keep diary notes of the behaviours and retain any emails, and if it persists, discuss it with yr immediate supervisor in the first instance, and the university equity office and/or the union if you get no satisfaction.
Women in universities have, and deserve to enjoy, the same rights and protections as women in any workplace.
July 15th, 2005 @ 9:41 pm
mel,
I am going to tackle some semi-related issues in my talk at USyd on the 22. I will hopefully put a more-finished version online at some stage. The crucial distinction between postgrads (and maybe early career academic to some extent) and other staff at universities is that we do not fit into the nice categories of ‘academic’ or ‘general’ staff. (See the online 1998 DEST discussion paper “General and Academic Work: Are They Different?”)
I shall argue that the postgrad experience has to be understood in terms of being an ‘excess’ of labour - what Marx called a ‘reserve army of labour’. Such a reserve army is functional for capital - dragging particular groups - like married women - in and out of production as it needs it, and also because it reduces the organisational capacity of unions. However, most postgrads are on scholarships so economic shock of sessional or short-contract ebb of employment is softened somewhat. From the response I have received so far from my email to the CSAA list it seems as if this is the case.
Hmmm, from what you are saying it appears that, to a certain extent, even though you work as an _academic_ (80% research, 20% teaching, yes?), you have not made the complete social transistion along the continuum of undergrad student - postgrad - postdoc - academic. Perhaps this institutionalised continuum of the early career academic needs some engagement? Does it work?
I am coming from a more structural or organisational perspective than the question of ’status’ to try to avoid the economic paradigm of academia (ie worth, investment, risk) rather than the educational/training. But I would really like to hear more about being a worthwhile investment and not a threat, because I am going to have to soon market myself as a valuable commodity/resource. Yes, universities simply cannot afford to not have me.
sigh…
July 21st, 2005 @ 9:58 pm
the postdoc is really just the reserve army of academia expanding before out eyes. there was a time when you needed an ma/ms to be a professor, then you needed a ph.d., now you need post-doc experience, what is next? i see my colleagues go off to post-docs now, one to the u.k., one to u.v.a. and one to philadelphia… and i wonder whether this is a positive step for their careers. will this bring them into the professoriate, which is their seeming goal? or is what is happening is just the creation of the reserve army of capitalism, in which by having removed the students from their situatedness at university, they, and their professors, are now less tied emotionally to their future goals and accomplishments. are postdocs also functioning to provide emotional distance? which then aids the creation of the reserve army?
July 25th, 2005 @ 1:10 pm
oh what rubbish jeremy. its a way to get some money to pay the bills that isn’t paid at $12.50 an hour like my retail job. bloody ‘reserve army of academia’, shit, talk about conspiracy theorist.