Originally posted on The Precariat & The Professor:
Talking with Jill yesterday about disappointment and the post-ac hustle, I was reminded of Kate Ragon’s chapter for The Precariat & The Professor, “Pleasure & Paradoxes of Organizing in the Corporate University.” We come to academia for a variety of reasons, but so many of us arrived…
“Bien regarder, je crois que ça s’apprend.” –Emmanuelle Riva in Hiroshima mon amour. “Change comes first at the societal level, not at the level of the individual. You work to change society, change the relations of production, and this work changes you.” My Marxist boyfriend said this one day in Berkeley during Reagan’s second presidential … More On change
It is said you cannot psychoanalyze yourself but I am forced to do it as I have found it to be the best available option. That is why I have this weblog. There were two breakthroughs this week. It is a breakthrough when you find a simple answer. The first was actually one I had … More A terrible beauty
I know people say procrastination is perfectionism but I don’t know how in the world they came up with this idea. I know perfectionists and they don’t procrastinate, they’re just meticulous and over-critical, over-fussy. I first “procrastinated” twice in graduate school, when I had paper ideas that were not actually viable. Studying on quarters there … More A rough draft (response to Jonathan)
I did not know, and do not want to know, and my father was always kind to his workers, who did not need to unionize. This kind of statement, especially from an adult in this day and age, is not a sweet excuse but actually a refusal to look at reality and to change it. … More On defenses of the Confederacy and Jim Crow
Having a bad day today. Maybe the hangover from being denied tenure by the right-wing stooge John Silber, the then president of Boston University, in 1981 still stings. Since those dark days, I have always had some hope in the university, recognizing that it was an important site of struggle and filled with contradictions. I … More Henry Giroux Today
Why did you not ask for advice and information? Because I already knew that my father would not answer such questions. From this I had learned that answers would not be forthcoming from anyone. Axé.
The book seems dated now, but I did not pay enough attention when it came out in 2003, although I read the reviews. It is about how the for-profit ethos has crept into universities. I do not know whether I knew enough then to understand the book as I do now. I learned a very … More Steal this university!
I would not frame the discussion in terms of success and failure, instructions for success, but I think this post gets closer to a useful discussion of how to do an academic job than do most in the genre. The activities it discusses are, of course, the ones that interest me and also interested me … More Pour penser
I was saying things about academia, how I dislike it because it requires you to renounce the things you love most about it. That is about working at institutions that work against your programs, of course, and I won’t say this is not a real problem, and that it is not highly irritating. But “renouncing … More On giving up what you love most
