coldhearted scientist وداد

I

I had not read Alejo Carpentier’s The Lost Steps in a long time, but now I am reading it to teach it and it is a brilliant riot. All doubting professors should read it, I decree, because its first section is about getting lost in a profession and a marriage. The character, a composer, has taken a job composing music for documentary films – alienated work which makes it impossible for him to listen to, much less write symphonies. He has done this in part so as to help support his wife, an actress, start her career.

As the novel opens, however, she has been playing the same role every night for five years, because she is under contract to it, and this has prevented her from really starting her career. Since they are both stuck professionally – although the decisions they made were made in good faith, in an effort to establish themselves and support each other, and were the best decisions they were in a position to make at the time they made them – the characters are also stuck personally, and their marriage is failing.

When I read this as a student, I got it – and got the many other references in the novel, too – but I got it at an intellectual level. I did not emit the laugh of bitter, yet amused recognition I am emitting now.

II

One problem I have always had in the academic-industrial complex is that one cannot pursue one’s interests due to the problem of startup time. In graduate school if one explored in a course for the first half of the quarter, one would not have time to do the research and writing necessary to produce a publishable or nearly publishable seminar paper. I did not get to write the dissertation I wanted to because my department was concerned about the problem of startup time.

I remember saying: wait! this will be the field that defines me on the job market and through tenure at least, and hearing back: nonsense, that does not matter, it is arrogant of you to think it does, you do not know you will even get a job and the immediate problem is, we need to produce degrees. (Ah the production of units.)

Later the problem of startup time only deepened. I would really like to take a year and only read, no out of field classes to teach, no pressure to write, just read and take notes in an organized way as I did for my Ph.D. exam, which was one of the very most genuinely academic experiences I have had. Productivity precludes that, and I find this counterproductive. It is a situation which has been besting me and which I must find a way to conquer.

I wrote that sometime last semester and it seemed to me at the time a profound realization. Rereading it now I note that this is one of the things sabbaticals, back when those were a regular event, were intended for. Now, if we get them, they are strictly so that we can finish a research product, and I am grateful that they still exist for that.

But there is something deeper to it, in my case at least. Because of the problem of startup time, I never started in graduate school, or as an assistant professor, to work on anything I would have called my work. I did not know that people did, except for those who had been Designated Stars since birth. I thought one worked on one’s assignments, or on what one was allowed to work on, and kept one’s thoughts to oneself.  This was an error I am only beginning to rectify now.

III

“By the tone of my voice, you can tell I’m a scholar,” said Queen Latifah, and the way you can tell I am a professor is that I like to read scholarly articles, including articles in fields and disciplines that are not my own. Part of reading for pleasure is reading academic texts one will never cite, texts which have nothing to do with anything one expects to write. I want to read Hilario Ascasubi for pleasure.

Axé.