Academe’s Ugly Feelings

When I teach graduate seminars, I outlaw the “piranha feed” process whereby the student with the most critical take on the assigned book wins, and anyone who praises it is dismissed as simple. I require students to engage each book on its own terms first, outlining the author’s aspirations and achievements before offering any critique. This approach has limited success. Grad students’ socialization exceeds the impact of any one seminar. Yet I find that students who are trained to be sharply critical first and foremost have trouble finishing their own projects. They are paralyzed by the vision of their own work on the table for the piranha feed.

The graduate seminar is one of the primal scenes for the development of academic affect, succeeded in turn by the conference paper and the job talk. In these later settings, newly minted scholars usually present their work defensively, reading a tightly edited script rather than talking to the living, breathing audience before them. They are then subjected to that first “this is really a comment more than a question.” The modes of attack in these “comments” differ by field. Henry Abelove, who taught in both the history and literature departments at Wesleyan University, once explained it to me: Social scientists and historians (a) are up against the trope of mastery, so the pointed question is about leaving out some crucial information (usually at the center of the questioner’s sub-subfield) — or, for historians, about a problem of periodization (this really began much earlier than you say). In (b) the literary humanities, the reigning trope is difficulty, with density of expression and the right references valued. The pointed question in this case is about quality of interpretation. The presenter can thus be (a) wrong or (b) unsophisticated. Sure, some questioners are generous! But there is nearly always that takedown moment that generates defensiveness, anxiety, and shame.

It’s not that academic affect is unique. Academics share with other kinds of writers — of fiction, general nonfiction, journalism — a tight ego/work link (you are what you write), competitive envy, and status obsession. They also share with most other workers a corporate capitalist workplace marked by steep hierarchies, undemocratic decision-making, stark economic inequality, and invidious distinctions of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship (including settler vs. Indigenous), and so on. So toxic affect is structured in ways not at all specific to universities and colleges.

But certain affective patterns are especially prominent in academic settings. Some are positive! Curiosity, collaboration, a quest for understanding. Many are not: anxiety leading to paralysis, isolation leading to depression, arrogance and contempt leading to withering condescension. There is a manufactured-scarcity economy of smartness that leaves many clamoring for the top, convinced that their only path forward is to denigrate the competition. Then there’s the narcissism …

One of the worst aspects of the academic-affective economy, for me, is the value placed on passive aggression. There is a serious penalty for directness among colleagues, and a reward for the dagger-in-the-back approach to conflict. This is in part just bourgeois manners, but it is hard-wired into academic systems. I know of a professor who is a master of passive-aggressive destruction. When a clerical worker crossed this professor, the worker was saddled with piles of unwanted tasks and put in an office across the hall from the department’s biggest harasser. When she cracked under pressure and was fired, the professor praised her in a department meeting as if they’d had nothing to do with it. Naturally, the professor rose quickly into an administrative post. By contrast, the academic workers I know who deal with conflict directly have been routinely punished, gossiped about, and shunned in a wide variety of official and unofficial ways.

I have my own set of ethical principles for navigating academic settings. One: I don’t say anything behind colleagues’ backs that I haven’t said directly to them. Two: I don’t denigrate faculty, staff, or students to new colleagues (who shouldn’t be pressured to take sides in ancient disputes). Three: I do not take my grudges out in professional settings. To be clear, I have plenty of grudges! But I support my enemies for events and rewards based on relevant criteria, and save the gossip for my personal friends. This is not what everyone does, of course. We all know colleagues who talk trash about their enemies to every new faculty member and incoming grad student.

Yet alongside the backbiting, I’ve seen amazingly positive affective displays in academic life. These are mostly scenes of solidarity — rallying for the graduate-student workers’ strike, supporting contingent faculty and staff unions, organizing for safety during the pandemic, and many other acts of individual and collective generosity. These actions demonstrate how we can respond to injustice, precarity, and general meanness in our workplaces — with cooperative solidarity, and even joy.

A version of this essay originally appeared in the author’s newsletter, “Commie Pinko Queer.”