Hey y’all,
Wow hey hi. Sup. Hey hi wow. Hey sup. Wow. Hey hi sup. Wow hey. Wow. Hi hey. Sup.
Okay, here’s a prose poem and a photo series. [CW: nudity, kinda, at the end] I mostly hope my piece becomes irrelevant in a week. But until then, here you go.
—KJ
***
the big so what
(It should go without saying that I—little old me—am I only voicing my own entirely personal, thoroughly off-the-clock opinions about the politics of refusing to work. So don’t get any funny ideas.)
I.
I am no longer surprised by how feckless academics often are. I was one, after all—and a historian no less, a profession perhaps least attuned to the sensation of acting in the moment. As people who pursue the life of the mind, academics too often confuse the gesture of action with an actual worthwhile deed. Behold the strongly-worded letter stuck in the op-ed slush pile; behold the “public event” held at the university library and attended by six people, five of whom departmental quasi-friends; behold the task force committee with a list of “urgent recommendations” for a semi-comatose dean; behold the numbered Twitter thread.
II.
Perhaps this is because there is a rather horrifying approach to time within academia. Or, rather, academics are governed by twin horrors. The first is the delusion that, because one isn’t in a nine-to-five setting, then there is all the time in the world to pursue one’s intellectual passion. I didn’t go to school for logic, but the flawed reasoning is something like: “Because I can work out of a coffeehouse three afternoons a week, I should treat every moment of leisure as though it is a potential and ultimately failed moment of labor.” The second is the dread that, if one is lucky enough to get the increasingly rare prize of a tenure-track job, the clock is ticking much faster than one ever imagined. Forget seven years; one is against the three-year clock of mid-tenure review, and between article revisions and book proposal drafts, one has to complete several endurance events at a sprinter’s pace, often on a salary that would embarrass most middle managers. One can—and must—work anywhere at anytime because all the hours in the week are never really enough. What is a weekend?
III.
An academic’s joy, then, is in convincing you their chronic migraines are indeed quite fun.
IV.
Obsession doesn’t make academics efficient, of course. Most academics also have to teach, which means these dueling neuroses are grafted onto a calendar which offers, at best, three weeks for unfettered research. Most of the year, an academic is publicly fretting about their syllabuses, crowdsourcing their syllabuses, reading for their syllabuses, or revising their syllabuses. This means that, for graduate seminars and most upper division courses, most syllabuses aren’t done until the fourth or fifth week of class, at which point academics turn their attention to syllabuses for the following term. The only respite academics find are through conferences—often unaccounted for in any syllabus despite several months’ advance notice for an accepted paper. The obsession is to be entirely prepared; the impulse is to endlessly revise. The syllabus exists in its own queer tense: “Wouldn’t it have been nice were this so?”
V.
The pandemic has not yet broken these neuroses and compulsions. Institutional power inhabits within us. We are infected already by the institution. The power of academia, much like any institution within capitalism, is in its resilience. This resilience rests on our ability to monitor and behave in accordance to those institutions. We become our own surveillance system. This is kinda what Foucault was getting at, even if he was mostly really writing about fisting. We become our own prisons, the principal’s leather strop, the Amazon Ring doorbell. We say a syllabus is not a contract, thinking we are beyond power dynamics. We arrange the classroom in a circle, say go ahead, turn in the paper late, no there are no exams, no just use my first name, imagining we do not carry the institutional power through the very act of saying I am the professor and you are the student. There are still final grades. A sub top is still a top.
VI.
Theory aside: it’s late July, and we have maybe three weeks until campuses ramp up for fall.
VII.
I wanted to say “typically ramp up” in that last sentence, but it has become clear that college administrators have a consuming obsession of their own: opening up campuses in some fashion despite the coronavirus raging unabated in many parts of this country. There’s even a database tracking what colleges and universities decide to do for the fall semester. Many schools listed in this database still plan on meeting in person, and the vast majority plan on having a model with some sort of in-person components. Some schools—including the major university in my city—have scheduled a switch to solely online teaching only after Thanksgiving, as if rampant viruses tend to chill for three months. It isn’t cynical to suspect that this is a way to ensure that students don’t defer an entire year, that they pay their full tuition bill and that contingency plans will only be enacted once the checks clear. It also isn’t cynical to believe that the onus of ensuring the school year starts smoothly has been unfairly placed on college teachers and staff—and by extension, that any blame for a less-than-ideal term will go their way.
VIII.
Imagine yourself nineteen again. Imagine being told you are allowed on campus—perhaps you are required to be on campus for the sake of your continued admission or whatever—but you mustn’t hang out with friends in your room, nor get out of the city for the weekend, nor use the dining hall or gym, nor suck off any townie trade you find on the apps. Brains don’t stop developing until our mid-twenties. Much like any age of majority, there is nothing physically magical about turning eighteen or twenty-one. You don’t wake up a brand-new women except juridically—and I’m not sure many people outside of academics can feel themselves juridically. Imagine being given a syllabus in which you are asked to meet in person some days, but not after certain dates, but online all the time in case of certain conditions, absent of which the midterm will still happen on week six. Imagine people with doctorates and vice president titles trying to convince you this is a great idea. Brains are usually good at spotting bullshit before our mid-twenties. Imagine a college president assuring you everything will be okay, now that your check has cleared, but in case anyone dies, you need to find a new home in twelve hours.
IX.
Sure, yes, I know you don’t like to teach online. Nobody likes to teach online. Nobody.
X.
What’s quite clear, then, is that there is little to be gained in face-to-face instruction right now that can be called a genuine relief from the pain in the ass of online instruction.
XI.
the meeting : an email :: this semester : a webinar.
XII.
For the last fucking time, I know you don’t like to teach online courses. I know. I didn’t either.
XIII.
But you do also realize that this complaint is itself a distraction, right? The question of whether or not you enjoy teaching online—whether you find the drudgery of remote teaching more or less enjoyable than the drudgery of in-person instruction—is itself a diversion from the fact that you are likely being asked to show up for a job that is profoundly unsafe. And, I’d wager, in preparing for multiple possible outcomes, anywhere from total mask compliance and speedy vaccine development to utter social annihilation, you are being asked to do extra work for no extra pay—or even the threat of a pay cut. How much extra are you getting paid to switch to and from and to and from and to and from online courses? How much extra are you getting paid to plan for several contingencies, up to and including your own death? How much extra do you get paid when you die?
XIV.
What do you owe the university? What do you owe an institution? What do you owe a campus? A multi-million dollar athletics budget? Parking services? The library Starbucks? What do you owe a school that wants you to walk into a pandemic with safety gear that would be struck from Starship Troopers for being too outrageous? What do you owe millions of elementary and secondary school teachers and staff who have a lot less leverage than you, who may need someone with more social capital—and yes, privilege—to put themselves on the line first? What do you owe to fellow workers, especially those whose labor on campus you acknowledge as genuinely demanding labor, who administrators commend for their “bravery and commitment” but refuse to give them a raise? What do you owe the rest of your college town? To whom are you beholden? Are we beholden to institutions or to each other? To whom do you belong? Are we viral or something beyond the verge of life? Are we ours? Are we our own?
XV.
There is another question: What can the academy be outside of higher education? There are, quite simply, no jobs. More charitably: there is nowhere near as many jobs within educational institutions as there are academics trained by these institutions in order to become experts who would mainly operate within said institutions. Where jobs do exist, it’s often in temporary or piecemeal contracts, for which credentialism and prestige jockeying has enabled colleges and universities to pay specialists with doctorates two thousand dollars per course, without benefits, let alone a parking permit. I earned my PhD the year after this chart ends. I joined 1065 other people in receiving a doctorate in history that year. As you can see, there weren’t 1066 academic jobs, or even 600. There were, however, thousands of others just like me—some of whom probably even better than me at what I did. The life of the mind doesn’t take care of my student loans. You know who got a fellowship this year at Notre Dame? Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg could not win a primary. Pete Buttigieg is the son of two Notre Dame academics. Pete Buttigieg will be tasked to study political trust. Pete Buttigieg rigged bread prices in Canada. Puete Buttigieg speaks thirty-eight words of Norwegian and I was supposed to get wet. Less charitably: Buttigieg seems like a psychotic robot top who has also never given a rimjob. What is worth saving about this? What is the virus? What good is a book report on trust?
XVI.
What seems necessary—what seems laughably obviously obnoxiously necessary—is for academics to refuse to die, if not for their own sake then for the sake of other teachers and school employees. A few weeks ago, I saw a tweet from an academic at an Ivy League institution, in which he “supported” a national faculty strike in solidarity with another school in which masks were not yet mandated “should it come to that.” A well-deep belly laugh bellowed out: Should it come to that? Should? Who do you think organizes a strike? Should? Do you suppose they come fully formed from father’s skull? Do you suppose you find them in the store, pret a porter protest? Should? Do you suppose everyone suddenly wakes up at the same time on the same day and play sings, “You know, enough is enough is enough!” Should? Who do you think has to assert the right not to die? What does supporting a strike look like except to actually strike? Should?
XVII:
It’s not hard. You get Signal. You stay on Signal. You get a phone tree so you can move everyone to Signal. You designate a loose hierarchy of command, even if you are a purely horizontal anti-authority type. You get commitments. You get double commitments. You make sure everyone knows what “No work” means. You hold the line. You don’t fucking clock in until demands are met. We know what those demands are. You make sure everyone else does, too, including the press and the administration and even that jackass in your department. You make clear that line-crossers and scabs are shit. You hold the fucking line. You don’t clock in. You refuse to die.
XVIII.
And another question: What, if anything, is worth saving about academia? Answer me. Quickly.
XIX.
I don’t think I’m projecting any ill will here. I don’t harbor post-apocalyptic fantasies. I don’t get joy out of the idea of former colleagues’ misery. I don’t get off on that anymore. I thoroughly don’t care about what, if anything, I am missing out on by not being soaked in flop-sweat as I rush toward an academic book contract and start another playdate masquerading as an online journal in order to satisfy mid-tenure review. I’m fine. The bills are paid, the food is fresh, the sex is great: I’m fine.
XX.
But I do wonder what academics think is next—if they think there is even going to be a next—if they don’t stand up against clear aims to destroy them. If academics find themselves politically and socially useful, then they need to act in ways that are indeed politically and socially useful. The reaction to bureaucracy doesn’t need to be an eye roll and Facebook grousing. The response to shitheaded plans doesn’t need to be grudging acceptance. The idea that you need to risk death for any of this—for anything you teach, for neo-brutalist architecture, for a bucktoothed mascot—is absurd. Point to the thing on campus that is worth dying for. Point to the sentence in your monograph that is worth dying for. Point to the week in your syllabus that is worth dying for. Point to the university vice president worth dying for. Point to the state legislator worth dying for. Tell me what isn’t the big so what. Tell me what good it does to stand on your own neck. Tell me something. Should. Tell me. Who do you owe. Tell me. Are we ours. Quickly. Tell me. Quickly.
___
white faggots hit me up white faggots bore me
pt 1
pt 2
Oh hey there. Going to go back to my home now. Please leave some apple scraps please. Maybe also share my stuff if you like it. Okay that’s all for now. See you soon.
xoxo -kj