PROFESSION
The reason I do not like being a professor is that it is not like being an intellectual, it is like being a high school teacher, a social worker, a librarian, a secretary, a mother, a sorority girl, an IT person, and a government employee. I saw this in my first week of professordom and wanted to quit and retrain. I was living near a large city at the time, and it was a good place to do that. But followed the common advice to “give things a chance.”
In jobs better than the permanent ones I have had, it is much easier to minimize, refuse, deflect, or avoid the low level focus where I feel so claustrophobic. But believe me when I tell you that try though I may – and I am very optimistic and very good at trying – to keep my sights on the true reasons for being here, I have never been able to do this except in fits and starts except in a R-1 or R-2 department – not a service department at an R-1 institution – or in a town with enough intellectual and artistic outlets, or other universities, to make up for what my own institution did not offer.
Even then, I was never really satisfied because I was always fast. I think quickly and in academia we do not. I always liked lively, bright, original people and in academia we do not have them – or if we do, we stamp them out.
FAMILY
At the end of my fourth year of professordom I saw that I was going to make tenure and noticed that I was really not interested in it any more. I had become a professor because I wanted to be a person and in my family, it had always appeared to me that to be a tenured or obviously tenurable academic in an acceptable field was the way to do this. Once you had proved yourself in that way, or so I had learned (it was not a lesson intentionally or consciously taught), you could respect yourself. Then you could start thinking about what you would like to do with your life.
I started thinking about Ph.D. programs the minute I heard of them, when I was three. Thirty years later I saw tenure coming around the bend in a very reliable car, and I was satisfied. “I have done it,” I said. I became obsessed with career plans I knew I “should” not carry out. I would fight them back and sit at my table repeating: “No. I want what I have. I really want it. I do. I will. I do.”
That is one version of the story – much more goes into it, including the destruction of Reeducation, which happened around the same time as I saw tenure coming around the bend; the absolute horror on the part of family and friends at the idea that I would consider leaving something safe; the terrible guilt I felt upon discovering that I had scared these people or questioned any of their illusions; the fact that I have never had a real academic job that in any way resembled the ones I would like to have; the additional fact that all of the jobs I have had have required major commutes if one wanted to live in or see any form of actual civilization. I do not know what I would think of this career if I had ever been allowed to practice it at a higher level, or in a more interesting place. I might never have doubted it at all.
PLANNING
While in theory I might want and like the right academic job, my main feeling in the ones I have had – and this is my twentieth year – is that I want to go. It has always been hard to settle down because what I am really thinking about is what I would like to major in, what kind of training program I might enroll in, what kinds of different skills resumes I can write, what sorts of really interesting, challenging jobs there are in which different cities.
The result of clearing Reeducation away from myself is making this more acute. The better I feel, the more acute the feeling gets. It is very difficult to resist the desire to put the house on the market, sell my belongings, pack the car, get onto the Santa Monica Freeway (yes, I-10 is the East-West interstate in Louisiana) and ride out with the windows down.
The real West begins after El Paso and once I get there, out of the Old Dominion at last, I always feel free. And in El Paso there is a freeway interchange with a green sign I really like. It says: “Los Angeles – straight ahead. México, D.F. – left.” Every time I have passed through I have had very good reasons to continue on, straight ahead to the ocean. But I would like sometime to head west from here and turn left when I get to that green sign – not as part of a planned vacation, but as a career and life move. It could be on purpose or on impulse. I do not think it matters.
ON MAKING DO
The other insight I keep having on these matters is that I like to do things – or at least, I like to always have at least one thing which I do – without reservations. But in U.S. and white culture generally, it seems that sacrifice for its own sake and without object, reservations, limitation, resignation, and finding virtue in simply “making do” are the order of the day. I have no idea whether I am right about this, but it is the impression I have.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Profbwoman commented on an earlier version of this post – quoting a portion of it that is now in this version – so I quote her comment here:
Me:
The reason I do not like being a professor is that it is not like being an intellectual, it is like being a high school teacher, a social worker, a librarian, a secretary, a mother, a sorority girl, an IT person, and a government employee. I saw this in my first week of professordom and wanted to quit and retrain – I was living near a large city at the time, and it was a good place to do that – but followed the common advice to “give things a chance.”
Profbwoman:
“Wow. That is exactly how I felt in the beginning & let me tell you being on sabbatical is not helping change my mind. It is a weird thing how academics encourage their students to finish even as they hate their jobs, then seasoned scholars encourage juniors to suck it up even as they hate their jobs, and so on. Someone has to have the common sense to stop it. I tell my students the truth about what they will have to do to be successful in academe and then ask them to think long and hard about whether they are capable and willing to do so. (Note – of course there are lots of people who love their jobs, or love them enough to keep doing them, I am just thinking of all the disgruntled people paving the way for new generations of disgruntled people in order to justify their own choices instead of telling the truth in order to help other people make better ones.)”
I agree. And yes – the one time I had a sabbatical, it did not help either – although research trips do! (Actually, the fact that research trips do help, a lot, is the reason I have stayed so confused. I go on research trips, or go on visiting gigs to R-1 departments [not just R-1 institutions] and I perk up totally.)
My God. I remember writing this and it was torturous (and tortuous). And it is work to read. And yet it is so clear what it is about: my theme, abuse – whose symptom is the idea that if you attain a state of perfect subjection, and show that you are able to torture your own self as well as any torturer can, then you will finally be released.
It is still hard to believe I have been through that, and more than once, but I have *every* symptom of it.
***
I was thinking about that theme earlier today in relation to something else. Note: it is *key* that the abuser convince you that the perpetrator is someone else. This ties you closer to them as your protector, divides you from people you might otherwise see as friendly, isolates you, and also confuses and weakens you. But *of course* the idea is that you should not be able to see your oppressor … then you might resist!
I find it interesting the way that the whole bourgeois system works. We are psychologically blackmailed not to reveal what we know. We are told that to have had the experiences we have had reveals us as emotionally labile, prone to derangement or inappropropriate perceptions and so on. And the people that advise us not to acknowledge what we know are our liberal “guardians”. They are, of course, advising us thus in terms of our best interests. To say what we know renders us “hysterical” in the eyes of others.
Ultimately, however, so what?
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I subscribed. And yes – those who want us not to know what we know are our liberal guardians. That is indeed how the bourgeois system functions to limit people, to keep them from seeing that there is anything outside that system.
Thanks, profacero, for directing me to this thread in your comments on my blog. I’m digesting, digesting, digesting. Really appreciating every sentence.
I subscribed. And yes – those who want us not to know what we know are our liberal guardians. That is indeed how the bourgeois system functions to limit people, to keep them from seeing that there is anything outside that system.
Hope you enjoy a taste of Australian politics as we head towards the Federal election in two weeks time.
Yeah, interesting how the liberals function as society’s ideological police, reinforcing the values of the dominant order — although they do not seem to mean to or to have any idea that this is how they are actually functioning. Yet their instincts (in the Nietzschean sense) are absolutely wired towards this goal.
Scratchy – yes. (And/but what *are* instincts in the Nietzchean sense?)
Kiita – I was more depressed when I wrote this than I am now – noticeably so, it is shocking! It was before I figured out how to do my book, which is what is now entertaining me. And yet as I drove over to the Other University Library yesterday I found myself scheming again about alternative careers, even so.
Instincts in the Nietzschean sense are the unconscious political and social goals you have, which come to fruition through your interactions with others in the world.
So, for instance, there are certain types of christians who seek an agenda of domination according to Nietzsche. They don’t even know it themselves, but in everything they do, they undermine those who are different from them and promote anything that represents their own ideal to them. Unconscious instincts.
I think that it is one way of looking at liberals. They are not all the same of course, but various of them have similar cultural instincts. These would have come about through long training to accept certain deprivations as inherent to “reality” (although actually only the pragmatic features of reality). So, once having internalised this liberal “reality” they then feel justified (and even driven) to impose same upon others.
But it is all at an unconscious level. They do it without being aware that they are imposing their own restrictive “reality” upon others.
Gracias!!! What a useful concept!!!
It is a very useful concept. Actually I find it most useful in terms of self-understanding.
For instance, there is a western cultural instinct in my view. (This goes somewhat beyond Nietzsche, for me to say so.)
This instinct relates to personal and psychological space, which the Westerner has certain implicit views about. For a Westerner, “losing face” (either their own or someone else’s) doesn’t matter. What they are interested in is “choices”. This leads to a rather odd attitude of intrusiveness in relation to other people’s personal space (which is codified in terms of superiority and inferiority — a superior can dominate an inferior by intruding on their personal space in various ways). At the same time, the average Westerner does not perceive that causing another person to lose face is a public relations disaster for them, personally (or corporately, etc.) They just don’t see it. So they undermine their own position in the eyes of others even (and especially) as they seek to dominate. And so it goes. This kind of crude barbarism of intruding on to someone’s space is very much part of Western culture and it informs its sadomasochistic aspects.
And this aspect of Western culture I choose to separate myself from.
Intrusion upon space is one of the ways people negotiate power in the West. As is making other people lose face. One can afford to lose face but one has to be in control of that in some way, I perceive through a glass, darkly.
Oh, I must have only seen it done very badly then. Or with a great deal of presumption that has the opposite to the intended effect.
For instance:
Someone invades my personal space and I think, “asshole. This is not how somebody I would respect behaves. Minus ten points.”
Somebody does it again, and I think, “Hmmm, sucker. I’m going to subtly undermine you now. You won’t see it coming, but the environment you’re in is not your friend.”
Somebody does it again, and I begin the process of undermining, as if I had been given a commandment from a god.
They are my enemy without a doubt.
Actually I don’t understand how this mode of domination works for anyone at all. How do they manage to be successful with it in the long term? Isn’t it a very short term approach to getting what you want?
For it to work, the approach has to rely upon a reaction mingled with respect. But this is where it overestimates itself perpetually. What if the person they seek to dominate had a positive attitude towards the other up until the point that the other sought to dominate them?
Westerners usually have the cause and effect in reverse because they presume that the way to get respect is to dominate. But what if respect was given freely UP UNTIL the point of domination?
“Westerners usually have the cause and effect in reverse because they presume that the way to get respect is to dominate. But what if respect was given freely UP UNTIL the point of domination?”
Sentence 1: true. Sentence 2: they wouldn’t understand.
It’s a very short term approach unless you also have institutional power. Then you use it to enforce that … if you do not have the actual personal power to get natural respect.
It is definitely a strategy of the weak.
This is where I diagnose that Western thought patterns have become corrupted. Always, always, there’s the use of force without trying other methods: diplomacy, persuasion, seduction, etc.
But then you have the additional complication that those who use methods of force do not feel inclined to believe that they are doing so. They think that they are just pontificating on behalf of “reason”, which they feel that others have left in the lurch — whereas they alone have constant access to it all the time. So they really cannot see (and choose not to see) their constant recourse to dominance and submission dynamics all the time. They just think the other person isn’t being “reasonable” enough to see things their way.
(This, by the way, another calling card of the right.)
“But then you have the additional complication that those who use methods of force do not feel inclined to believe that they are doing so.”
This is the most maddening part of it. And yes, it is a calling card of the right.
Dominance and submission everywhere! I did not notice this nearly as much when I lived out by the Pacific, but East of the Rockies (in the U.S.) it is very clear. I would say it was a feature of plantation society except that it appears also to be a cultural feature of the Northeast. (This is my subjective impression of things, of course.)
What I don’t understand is those who submit to this kind of treatment as if it really had their own best interests at heart.
I’ve been thinking very much of late about the Perth newsreader who threw herself off a cliff-face, rather than face the alienation she felt in Sydney. Now Mike and I, I am ashamed to say, used to make somewhat sarcastic remarks about this reader. We used to say that she always produced the emotion on cue that she was expected to, in relation to the news story she was telling. She moved very quickly from emotions of grief, to emotions of joy, to …whatever was required by the story. She was “too nice”. And then she started to change a little, and there were flashes of something else. At one point I thought I detected something like a snarl — something you might see on your sparring partner in the ring. And this was much more interesting to me, and I began to respect her. Actually, there was one story, recently, she told, which was undeniably tragic. It was like the freak death of several family members who went out to try to save their children from drowning, or something. As she turned to face the camera after the newsreal, I could see by the flash in her eye that something real was going on in her mind. It was as if normal everyday newsreading had suddenly become high art — a scene from opera, with the heroine actually performing the emotions of the event. So that was strange and interesting — the new insight into life she conveyed. Her transformation.
And then she died. And everyone thought she had been perfectly happy and bubbly up to that point, because she had been “the genuine article” as a newsreader — living for her work and channelling the correct emotions.
And I thought, “Well if she was unhappy, couldn’t she have just said no to whatever was making her this way? If she wanted to go back to Perth, perhaps she could have stood up for herself, no matter what it costed her — as long as the price was not life itself?”
So, it’s strange, the people who use force against others, but also the people who use force against themselves — and do not seem to know that they are doing so. Those who live to please are also using significant social force against themselves. It’s the whole superego thing.
And blessed are those who are able to make their superegos tiny.
The superego is the thing – she had lost her space of liberty and that is why she had to throw herself off the cliff, she felt she had already died. The pain of that can be rough.
Yeah — and unfortunately (for my sins) I have been channelling her feelings about all of this. I believe I do understand them somehow.
Thoreau in WALDEN:
(9) “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden1a.html
and E.A. Robinson, “Richard Corey:”
WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
http://www.bartleby.com/104/45.html
Wow! You know and this is why I think that Marechera was right on about his approach in life. You don’t need all the recognition or money or power in order to be spiritually wealthy. Unfortunately Marechera needed just enough — but didn’t get even that.
Well, I’ve been cleaning up my Marechera speech for my talk on Friday. I may have to whittle it down a bit more, for a twenty minute talk.
Oh good – a talk on Friday! (In 20 minutes I can only read 7 double spaced pages – and only then if I do not deviate at all from my text.)
Yeah, it could be a problem because I have nearly 8– 1.5 spaced. But I think I could just get in under the wire. Maybe. I’m going to time it next time to find out.