Theoria

Yesterday, in this comment, in reference to my lack of desire to publish for fear of imposing second-rate scholarship on the rest of the world in a culture which demands constant publication, I suggested that my lack of desire could be reasonably accounted for on relatively reasonable grounds: graduate students aren’t paid to publish research. Those who are paid, are usually paid in the form of scholarships which have the purpose of getting the student through the programme without taking on extra work – specifically teaching, but I don’t think it can be reasonably limited to that. Otherwise, graduate students who are paid, are paid to teach. Once again, they aren’t being paid to publish research. Either way, students who get money for free (scholarships) and students who get money for work (teaching) are not being paid to publish research.

Yet, I read on The Valve, that “pre-professionalization” standards in the humanites (which I’m not in, but as someone who does social and political theory, I’m closer to them than many of my peers in the social sciences) suggest that those seeking tenure track jobs have published two articles and have taught (note: not T.A.ed) ten courses.

Over the past few days, my unfunded peers at my institution have been madly completing their near compulsory applications to the two main funding bodies: the provincial Ontario Graduate Scholarships programme and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council doctoral scholarships programmes. (For what it is worth, my own programme is funded through the Canadian Graduate Scholarship run by SSHRC; the second year of my M.A. was also funded under the same programme. While OGS is reputed as “easier” to win – 2000 awards for graduate students in Ontario alone – I’ve never even been shortlisted, wait listed or won one of them. I have, however, applied to the much more competitive SSHRC programmes twice and won both times.)

Anyway, this is building up to my own anxieties again: a popular student (not so popular with me, however) in the programme, possibly in her fifth year of doctoral study, hasn’t yet completed her comprehensive exams. She has, however, to the best of my knowledge, published. I imagine it wasn’t of particularly high quality. The issue, however, is why I am so anxious about my own work: yesterday, this same colleague of mine sent an email to the grad student listserve saying, to the effect, “I never understood the difference between ‘post-structuralism’ and ‘post-modernism.’ I came across this article and thought that many of you would have the same problem.” There was a time when I would have replied with a nasty comment – such as the time someone sent a link to a New York Times article about a new prison program in California or something with the comment, “It sounds Foucauldian” – but, after I had a run in with the student in question last year and she said something to the effect of, “Yeah, I’m interested in love and sex. Everyone uses Foucault; I use Giddens.” She wanted to sound subversive and edgy. I said, “Giddens is a hack.” She was visibly wounded by the comment.

All the same, I found her presumption – because I have trouble understanding this, you must as well – moderately offensive, especially considering, during the Giddens/Foucault fiasco, she referred to herself as both a “post-structuralist” and someone interested in “postmodern” sexuality. She has no problem publishing. And her work is likely what makes me cringe when I look at the table of contents for each new issue of any given journal.

Perhaps the problem is me: people in the academy tend to conflate “meritocracy” and “democracy” while I tend to conflate “meritocracy” and “aristocracy.” The former position is the one that leads to the pervasive belief that “everyone has a right to an opinion” and that “everyone has the right to take up as much time as they want expressing that opinion” and “you can’t tell me I’m wrong because it is my opinion and I can’t be wrong about my own opinions.” In other words, it is thoroughly nihilist and relativist in the most dangerous and damaging way. I’d like to think that my position, the latter position, results in “the best” being rewarded, but this clearly isn’t the case. The meaning of “the best” here, like anywhere else, is a result of winning battles. And, given that I’ve more or less stopped fighting battles, I cannot possibly win. Perhaps now I understand why Nietzsche tended to equate belief in the truth with slave morality: I’ve lost and it angers me. They may have won, but I know what is right. For every opinion they have, I can counter it with the truth.

But, maybe, I’m a disciplinary warrior and just refuse to see it. I expect her to understand the difference between “post-structuralism” and “post-modernism,” the recent history of the uses of the terms, the refusal of those associated with the term to adopt them as their own, and so on. That is, I seem to believe that this is a basic set of knowledge someone in a sociology doctoral programme should have, but clearly does not. Of course, others might suggest that I fail at sociology and as a sociologist because I don’t know how to “design a research project,” how to “select a sample,” and how to do multiple regressions.