April 15, 2003
There is a great post over at Invisible Adjunct on academic labour. The description fits what is happening to the humanities in our corporate universities in Australia.
"A humanities Ph.D. takes many, many years to complete. The pursuit of this degree involves an enormous investment: not just financial (e.g., salary foregone) but mental, psychological and emotional. And entry and/or attempted entry into the profession places you in a peculiar situation, wherein you experience a strange combination of the conditions of both alienated and unalienated labour. The conditions of alienation are bleak enough, and they are real: low wages, unemployment, under- or sub-employment, genteel poverty, exploitatation, and ramen noodles."
All this is spot on. I did it this number. All up, I did it the best part of a decade making dam sure that I got the trade certificate. It was all or nothing. Break through or bust. It was back-breaking (soul destroying) torture though. Nearly broke my spirit. But it toughens you. Its all about character building.
So why do it? It is not rational activity in terms of the marketplace to deny yourself a modest middle class life. Who wants to live a life of genteel poverty? Why choose a path that leads to a dead need---no decent job?
Well, one reason is the promise of jobs that are never there--in the philosophy discipline in Australia just as much as in history discipline in Canada. But the jobs are not that great. Lots of teaching, poor work conditions, grumpy colleagues, a bit of research, low salaries, not much glamour and living in a ghetto. So it was not the job per se. A middle level bureaucrat is better off.
Another reason is the attraction of the life of the mind and being a scholar. Not its not wisdom. None ever talked about that. Its very seductive life the scholar who stands outside the sordid world of the market and politics. The universities spin it big time because that is, or was, their core business. You have the image in your mind of the independent thinker and explorer of ideas who lightens up the path for others.
What you actually get at the end of the process is a trade certificate. The Ph.D says you have certain skills and capacities associated with being able to think critically. The long process of training and education means that you have developed a certain sort of comportment, or certian way of being in the world.
Invisible Adjunct puts it this way:
"...if you have the passion and the interest to stick it out and finish the degree, you will probably also experience a kind of unalienated labour. You're not punching a time clock and putting in X number of hours to earn X number of dollars. No, no, you have your "work," and your work becomes an important part of who you are. You will develop and deeply internalize an identity as someone who does/as someone who is this work. You are your work, and your work is who you are."
You become a professional who thinks critically all the time, rather than just being a 9-5 teacher. It is a way of being in the world that is so much a part of who you are that it can no longer be shrugged off. You cannot back to the pre-philosophical life, as it were. The critical gaze is turned onto your love life, relationships and other aspects of everyday life.
If you leave the academy and work in politics then you are still continuing thinking critically about the world around it. You have to adapt it---into strategic political thinking about public issues---but its the same critical virtues at work. You are thinking about public issues rather than texts. When yopu read the texts --newspapers, electronic media government reports, media releases---you are deconstructing within a strategic political context.
The problem with the academy is that it has gone corporate and so it meets increased demand for its services through cheap, casual deskilled labor. Invisible Adjunct puts it this way:
"The use of adjunct faculty in higher education continues to grow as the number of people looking to further their education increases." This suggests an inevitable causal link: more students leads to increased reliance on adjunct faculty. But this leaves out an important part of the equation: more students plus lack of funding and decreased support for education leads to increased reliance on adjunct faculty."
And adjunct faculty means casual labor on a hourly basis. Its a bit like working in a ban or in a pub. Its all long way from the 'life of the mind' stuff. The life of the mind these days is more like the artist in the garrett holding down shit jobs to keep the writing going.
Of course the universities never say this. Nor do the various disciplines. But its true. Unless you take the other option of being a teacher getting the student numbers through. The life of the mind in the humanities is a road to poverty for all but the few who can catch the wave.
|
"Soul destroying" is exactly the term.
In my very first blog entry, I said "the black dog of depression is snarling at my feet." I guess I meant: I want my soul back.