Wayward scholarship

Several weeks ago, a professor posed this question to visiting speakers: Is there radical potential in the university?

The speakers, both professors with progressive bents, seemed to believe there was.  I, young cynic that I am, am not so sure.  And I grow increasingly convinced that there is not.  This is not just in light of the recent horrifying budget cuts applied to our College of Arts and Sciences, upon which so many scholars of more well-endowed universities have pontificated, although that is a pretty good reason to cement my doubt.  The divestment of public, state and government funds to public higher education is a message that comes through loud and clear - you're on your own, sweetheart.

We are on our own.  I want to address here that sense of on-our-ownness, specifically in the context of graduate life, specifically graduate life that is not adhering to what graduate life is 'supposed' to be.

First, let me state plainly what graduate life is like in all its tragic glory.  We all know graduate life, regardless of politics, is one where we are indeed on our own.  And being on our own isn't pretty.  It involves spending days indoors in your pajamas without bathing (what's the point?) frantically skimming piles of books and writing about what you just 'read.'  It involves either a lot of coffee, a lot of sugar, a lot of alcohol, or a lot of pot, depending on who you are; for some, graduate life involves a religious devotion to all four.  It involves watching a lot of bad television programs or reading a lot of terrible manga and vainly justifying it under the guise of ethnography and content-analysis.  It involves spontaneous eruptions into tears and woeful pity parties that devolve into more sugar and bad television to distract yourself from the fact that accomplishing anything will require more time alone in your pajamas frantically reading and writing about what you read.  When not working all the other jobs required to make rent, it's like the life of a depressed, well-to-do housewife, without necessarily being depressed or well-to-do or married or even having much of a house.

There is an element to graduate student isolation that makes me wonder whether I am a little crazy.  Really, something has to be wrong with us to willingly sign up for this.

Such isolation is built into the system.  Any semblance of community is a thinly veiled strategy for personal advancement.  We are encouraged to collaborate...insofar as it is better for our individual CVs ("Sure, I'd love to barely tolerate you for the next 18 months while we try to get a publication out of a topic we are both only superficially interested in!").  We are encouraged to go to social gatherings...insofar far as it a way to network for future employment ("You are so hilarious, Professor Famous!  I bet it would be a riot working for your semi-famous friends at Prestigious University!").   Like Kirsch's distinction, you realize soon enough in painful ways that, even if you are friendly with everyone in your department, you sure ain't friends.  You can meet with folks and ask for feedback all you want, but in the end you still have to write your papers on your own.

No matter what, trekking through graduate school is always ultimately up to you.  And the bar that is set (publish! present! publish! be awesome at everything! publish again! beat out 400 applicants who are just like you for the one reputable job in your field!) is not one the majority of us will ever meet.

Now, I assure you I was prepared for this.  I knew the muck I was getting myself into, but you see, that didn't bother me.  I wasn't going to be a traditional scholar, so why worry?  My greatest fault has been that I actually thought I could scrape through unaffected.  Although I steeled myself early on to not fall for what I was 'supposed' to be, by golly, I have been constantly reminded of what a powerful, seductive force the ideal type scholar is to be reckoned with.  It is impossible to focus on what is real and good and meaningful when immersed in an institution that is breeding you to be something else entirely.  To not be what it is expecting of you - and there are no other alternatives - is to be a failed scholar.  It is very difficult to hold on to why is is you are here when confronted with such a conclusion.

Failure, of course, is determined by how we measure success.  I realize I am not necessarily a failed scholar.  I do think I am a wayward one.  But to be a wayward scholar requires a strength that I'm not entirely sure I possess.  It is not a romantic path.  Being a wayward scholar means being the angry person who keeps making everyone talk about unpleasant topics like structures and hegemony.   It means challenging people who by all definitions you don't have much of a right to challenge.  It means spoiling fun times because you cannot turn off your sociological mindfulness.  It means the lines between what you study and what you live are completed and utterly blurred.  It means really, actually, genuinely believing that the point is not to study the world, but to change it.

It means...well, very often being on your own.

It's not that I have hopes for finding radical potential anywhere else.  An organizer recently told my partner that there are two possible paths: you either are lucky enough to find a financially sustainable means of organizing for social justice (and these jobs are few and far between, and hardly financially sustainable), or you find a job that pays the bills and devote the rest of your time and energy to social justice, maybe even shifting the structure of your pay-the-bills field along the way.  Most of us will have to content ourselves with the latter, as there isn't much radical potential in any institutional complex, whether it be higher education, non-profits, or the corporate sphere.

Wayward scholarship doesn't have to mean isolation, but let's not kid ourselves.  We do have to account for it as a very possible and likely side effect.  Such isolation, however, may not last forever - social justice communities take a long time to build.  Our home will not be built and ready for us to move in wherever we plop down.  We must build it ourselves, stone by stone, until at last we realize there is finally a roof over our heads.  That is the point - we are trying to build our homes.  We are trying, as my partner says, to build a world in which we can be whole.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no radical potential in the university.  No indeed.  The radical potential lies within ourselves, and we must always fight to keep it from being killed off entirely.