I now know why people often find it so instructive (among other less superlative qualities) to attend academic conferences. The recent one at Brit Uni, on Early Modern Stuff and Things, gave me a great deal to think about, and not only in terms of the field or the content of the papers presented.
One of the wonderful things about this conference — which reflects a wonderful thing about Brit Uni’s early modern bits — is that it was genuinely interdisciplinary. Historians and literary scholars, comparativists and… nationalists?, chattering productively and incorporating each other’s domains to give the wee neophyte spectator (yours truly) a real sense of scope, of what breaking down disciplinary boundaries can actually produce. I listened to whole historical papers without ever realizing they were presented by historians, so literary were their reading practices; I was astonished by the archival footwork and periodized story-telling accomplished by papers on verse forms. One gets the sense that academic study of this period is, at long last, and slowly, slowly, slowly, shedding its disciplinary corsets and moving toward what Timothy Burke, sundry at the Valve, and others have been flippantly calling “everything studies.”
In spite of this slow-gathering momentum, which seems to facilitate expansion out of disciplinary hidey-holes and into a broader collective effort at grasping “the past,” what it is and what it means, there remain some aspects of academic behavior that are very puzzling to an idealistic wee mouse. Now, I’ve done enough careful listening (thanks, Petri Dish faculty, for imparting knowledge you didn’t know you were imparting — in the words of Stephen Sondheim, children will listen), blog-reading, sardonic-academic-novel-reading, and attended enough talks to know that certain phenomena I observed at this conference are not unique to it.
I am totally freaked out by the persistence of academics’ tendency toward individualism and narcissism. I can’t possibly be the only one. Reader, I know it sounds so naïve, so eager-young-studenty, but this thing we are engaged in, this Scholarship, this Academy, is it not, well… that is, isn’t it a collective effort? Are we not, in the end, when the bureaucratic hoops of fire have been jumped through, the markets negotiated, and the administrative kinks worked out or put to bed, all working together to seek understanding of, a language to describe, a way of interpreting the worlds we inhabit? I think we are — and yes, god damn it, I include myself in this. I may be wee, I may be inexperienced, I may be in all things a neophyte, but I may also have something to bring to the table — and even if I don’t, I am an apprentice to this trade and you, Professor X, can’t survive, can’t perpetuate yourself, without me.
Self-defenses aside, I continue to be bowled over by the vigor with which academics guard their terrain, guard it as their personal property. I understand that work is precious, that if one loves her own ideas she is not to be faulted for it, if another feels he needs to defend his own agenda against the inevitable onslaught of oblivion, then defend it he must. However, a few points.
1. It is not an indignity to cite — copiously, if appropriate — the work of those who have gone before and paved the road for you, even if their particular area is not exactly parallel to yours. (“Everyone knows that…” is not a legitimate citation, by the way. It is true, however, that most or all of your audience is familiar with the source of your methods/theoretical foundation/purpose/etc, and you embarrass yourself by not acknowledging that source.) Kudos to Grandmotherly Big Name for presenting a genuinely collaborative paper.
2. Neither is it illegitimate to present a paper that asks genuine questions, which genuinely seek answers and are not merely grand statements in disguise (thanks to a Hilarious Historianess for presenting just this sort of paper last week). You do well, not ill, by your own work if you openly ask for comment on one bit or another of your paper or project — the most successful paper sessions I attended last week contained a good bit of this; the least successful ones were composed of ideology polemically presented, masquerading as thoughtful papers. Ironically, students and junior sorts are the worst offenders in this regard.
3. Do not be perplexed by me, or by any other neophyte you may encounter. Do not give us the “Well isn’t that cute” look, nor the “What are you doing here?” look, nor the “And just how do you know that?” look. We are the next generation, and we are trying to learn from you. You are teachers, whether you like it or not, and you are just as much so at the tea break between paper sessions as you are in a classroom. We try not to be in your way, and we will do our best not to make you go beyond the call of duty. But say hello, why not? If you and we are both sitting alone, why not join us, just once, just once remove the burden of socio-professional awkwardness from our shoulders. You are secure in your positions, we are not. You will not be damaged by being seen to take a youngling, however briefly, under your wing, to put her at ease with inane chatter regarding the quality of the tea. If we do something stupid, feel free to smack us down, put us in our places — but be direct about it. Don’t just pretend we don’t exist, and when we insist on existing, don’t be so obviously put out by it. Please. Oh, and should we actually do something intelligent? Should we — just hypothetically — ask the thoughtful question that gets the otherwise dead discussion finally rolling? Please, please try not to look quite so astonished.
4. Oh, and if you really are only here to present your paper? At least make the gesture of attending, say, one other session. To do otherwise is rude.
I have more to say about the issue of collaboration in the academy, but those were the bugbears of this past conference — which, by all accounts, was a much friendlier, cosier, more comfortable one than most. I witnessed almost no open antagonism, no one to my knowledge fell asleep at any inappropriate time, nor were there to be found (undue) drunkenness or lasciviousness. Nearly everyone admitted having learned a great deal, and seemed actually to mean it. Nevertheless: what is up with the narcissism?
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September 17, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Flavia
Your conference sounds lovely, and I’m so glad that your first (?) experience of the form was so generally positive.
It is not an indignity to cite — copiously, if appropriate — the work of those who have gone before and paved the road for you, even if their particular area is not exactly parallel to yours. . . . most or all of your audience is familiar with the source of your methods/theoretical foundation/purpose/etc, and you embarrass yourself by not acknowledging that source.
I know nothing about the paper(s) you’re describing, so I’ll assume that they were genuinely and egregiously remiss in not acknowledging prior scholarship. But generally it’s not appropriate to cite other work “copiously” in a 20-minute conference paper, and there’s definitely a species of paper (often written by graduate students) that does this to excess, spending so long establishing who said what and whatever else, and in what tradition the paper presenter is following, that whatever might be new in the presenter’s work is almost undetectable. An acknowledgement of one’s debts is usually appropriate. But when most people in the audience already know whence certain ideas come (that is, when there’s no pretense of passing off certain theories, terms, discoveries as one’s own–or no likelihood that one would be seen as doing so), there’s a lot that simply doesn’t need to be said. Those things can be relegated to the footnotes in the published version.
You’ll get no quarrel from me about academic egos, however, or the rudeness of those who can’t be bothered to talk to anyone even slightly junior to themselves.
September 17, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Neophyte
Thanks, Flavia — and I’m definitely familiar with the over-citation format, too. What I meant was more the kind of thing that manages to say “I’m endebted to the work of X, Y, and Z in this area,” the gesture that gives shape to a conversation that the paper will then dive into headlong.
I can’t quite get at what I mean by “collaboration,” but I like work that gives a sense that it comes from somewhere, and participates in a broader conversation. Call it, perhaps, participatory if not collaborative, then — a paper that can swiftly situate itself, draw a map of its environs, is more cogent and, frankly, more interesting than is one that wants to think it came out of a void. The difference is only a few words, a few seconds, but it’s huge — it’s the difference between acknowledging that a field is a field, and that that field is composed of people constantly writing and talking, and pretending that each scholar is an autonomous entity operating in a sealed cell somewhere.
September 17, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Crispinella
You are secure in your positions, we are not.
Ah, but do they feel secure?
My experience as a grad. student (also in the UK) was that lots of the senior people were very gracious and friendly. The worst for patronising and vaguely hostile behaviour were usually the post-PhD-but-not-yet-fully-established types – people who weren’t sure enough of their own status to be gracious and instead seemed to feel that younger scholars were some kind of threat. Their behaviour was fuelled less by narcissism and more by uncertainty. (I’m not saying this is always the case, mind, but for some people I’m pretty sure it was.)
Love the blog, by the way – have a great time at Brit Uni!
September 17, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Neophyte
Hi, Crispinella — welcome, and thanks!
But isn’t that just another form of narcissism? Grasping at one’s own desire for legitimacy at the cost of productive exchanges with others? All I’m getting at here is that the obstacles to exchange — the medium, after all, through which all scholarship, whether it admits it or not, is produced — are illusory and easily disregarded. Funny, as you note, how the least established scholars are frequently the most difficult to deal with. There are of course structural realities that produce this dynamic — the very real need to establish one’s own presence, the stress of having to do so, in the case of a conference, in very little time and in as few words as possible. The irony of insecurity, however, is that letting go of it is often the surest way to appear more at ease, more confident, more settled and less afraid, and thus more competent, successful, impressive.
I’m an avowed narcissist myself, so I shouldn’t be throwing stones. And yet.
September 17, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Nabil
That’s interesting. When I first started applying to intellectual history programs, and looking at the work the professors I wanted to study with had recently put out in journals, I was horrified. Everything was so snide. It was like a fucking gang war, just everyone taking shots at each other. And I was strolling right onto the battlefield. In this kind of situation, I suppose you usually want to seek protection by becoming one or another side’s intellectual “bitch.” But I wasn’t interested in subordinating myself to someone’s agenda, and there was no rational way to choose sides, since I did not care at all about the beef that Professor X had with Professor Y. The truth is too subtle to inspire these kinds of passions – so that must not have been what was at stake.
I’ve always thought of academic inquiry as depending on a stepping aside from the dictates of power. As Nietzsche says, it’s about suspending instinctual judgments. In this regard, academia should differ from other professions. But the more I find out, the clearer it seems that academia is another kind of struggle for power. In fact, it’s a more brutal one, due to the scarcity and uncertainty of the rewards.
September 17, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Neophyte
Nabil, the wonderful thing about you is that one can always rely on you to be so wholly yourself. I cannot believe that you actually referred to Nietszche. (What, by the way, does Unabgeschlossenheit even mean?)
Where did that old thing about “the fights are so vicious because there’s so little to fight about” come from?
Anyway, I don’t think I’m with you on “stepping away from” the operations of power and instinctual judgments — I don’t think it’s possible. But I do, emphatically, think it’s important at least to acknowledge them, and to do so openly, and honestly. Certeau’s question: “Where are you speaking from?” You must know the answer to it, or at least seek it. The next step, which is stickier, is saying it out loud.
I’m sure I will give myself ample room to stick my foot in my mouth on all of these things (that’s what youthful idealism is for, after all), but I also hope I’ll have the sense to try to live up to the ideal of integrity I’m slowly building in my mind.
September 17, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Hannah
I spent three years in one of the bitchiest and backstabbingest university departments, at least amongst my friends, and I have a slight love for the sheer gleeful nature of the gossip spread around. My ex-supervisor is thinking of leaving because a) the focus of the department doesn’t quite fit her way of academic thinking and b) because the political vitriol was just too much to bear. She’s a terse and snappy sort of person, either hated or loved, but she cannot abide the polite veneer of all her faculty interaction, and would rather they all just snarked openly at each other.
Part of me – the awkward passive-agressive side – is terrified by all of this. I’m not built for such existences. But the other side of me is revelling in getting to discover more departmental politics in a new place. I rather think that this lack of cooperation and consultation comes from a deep sense of not being secure in your job and position in the academy. Humans use power to show their place, and I have found that unfortunately a lot of academics do it because they feel they have so little. Most obvious, I suppose, in the over-bearing meanness to undergraduates in some cases.
(Oh, and jealous jealous jealous.)
September 18, 2007 at 12:13 am
Flavia
One of my favorite comments about academic turf wars–the original source of which is probably lost in the mists of time–is that the reason the fights in academia are so vicious is because there’s so little at stake.
September 21, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Nabil
I think this comment may have gotten shredded, so I’m re-posting it:
Haha. I explain what Unabgeschlossenheit means in the first entry of my blog: it means something like “unresolved openness.” I’m reading Twilight of the Idols right now and his passage on what it means to learn and to see really struck me, just because it’s so out of line with the stereotype of Nietzsche.
“Learning to see – accustoming the eye to calmness, to patience, to letting things come up to it; postponing judgment, learning to go around and grasp each individual case from all sides. That is the first preliminary schooling for spirituality: not to react at once to a stimulus, but to gain control of all the inhibiting, excluding instincts. Learning to see, as I understand it, is almost what, unphilosophically speaking, is called a strong will: the essential feature is precisely not to “will” – to be able to suspend decision. All un-spirituality, all vulgar commonness, depend on the inability to resist a stimulus…as a learner, one will have become altogether slow, mistrustful, recalcitrant.”
Not to be a know-it-all, but I had a feeling I would encounter objections to the claim that inquiry is about stepping away from power. I don’t think we can do it completely. But academic discourse clearly requires more than just stating your interests and prejudices openly. It requires questioning and challenging them. Why? It wouldn’t do to show up in an academic forum and say, “I’m here to represent the interests of ExxonMobil.” It’s a complicated and interesting question. I think the act of reasoning is a lot like Nietzsche describes it: becoming aware of your instincts and not acting on them right away; letting other processes guide your actions. What processes? What do we do in that space opened up between stimulus and response? That’s the tough question. Hesitation is another acquired habit of the academic.
Otherwise, what do you consider the point of all this to be?
September 26, 2007 at 10:53 am
tired of whining
Giving a paper is a tiring enterprise in every regard, even for experienced scholars. Please excuse us, graduate students, if we are not available to respond immediately and fully to your every whim. This is not tiny SLAC anymore, and we are not obligated to cater to you because you paid tuition.
September 26, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Neophyte
First, let me say that I do wish I had taken a slightly milder tone in this post (as I so often wish I’d taken a milder tone in most situations) — but that I do not rescind any of the actual content, if tone and content may be separated.
Next, let me say thank you, Tired, for taking time out of your incredibly busy, stressful, important schedule to come all the way over here to demonstrate exactly the kind of narcissistic, self-involved behavior that I believe to be the most frustrating aspect of the academic world! And to do so anonymously demonstrates a great deal of class, I must say.
Now that that’s out of my system, I would like to note that I have not asked to have whims catered to. I have asked for simple politeness, and for the implementation of that extremely radical act known as “participating in a community.” Presenting a paper is not an individual enterprise — it is an act through which the presenter engages with her colleagues, with the work that has come before hers, and — here is the part that I have urged we remember — with her “inferiors” on the academic ladder. I am sorry if you would prefer an existence devoid of conversation with anyone younger than yourself, but that’s not how this culture functions. It just plain isn’t. The academy is a collective that refuses to act like one, and it drives me — and I’m note alone in this — completely nuts.
It is precisely because it sounds insane to suggest that grad students be treated as people with brains that it is important to keep saying it.