MLA members are easily recognized, like NASCAR Dads. On my way to Philadelphia, I spotted a couple in the Grand Rapids airport, then several more in Detroit. By the time I arrived on Market Street, between Loew’s and the Marriott, it was an MLA Mardi Gras, with ID-badge lanyards instead of beads.
Apart from the well-known sumptuary regulations requiring that conference-goers dress primarily in black, white, navy, and gray, there were no obvious fashion trends on parade this year. No spiky shoes; no spiky hair. There were even fewer Foucault-clones: The glasses were less teeny; the heads less shaved. Depending on the panel -- and not just ones hosted by the Radical Caucus -- one could almost detect a proletarian feeling, given the number of blue jeans and old sweaters.
Even so, something about MLA people seems dour, almost hostile, to strangers, even though we are members of the same profession. Without a formal introduction, it’s hard to make contact with people; they avoid eye contact and do not return smiles, although both are readily available -- if carefully calibrated -- once you are revealed as someone of importance (i.e., someone with a job at a good school, notable publications, or -- at the bottom of pecking order -- media connections).
One trick for appearing to rank higher in the system is to stride around, head held high, talking loudly on your cell phone. It’s even better to walk out, huffily, in the middle of a panel discussion, muttering something about your time being wasted. Be sure to slam the door behind you, but not before people can hear you cackling with derision.
For the most part, the MLA is a gerontocracy, thanks to the end of mandatory retirement and the dearth of new tenure-track positions. Some senior scholars might as well wear powdered wigs and embroidered silk, and be carried about in gilded sedan chairs, while the hordes of adjuncts lie along the edges of the conference rooms, covered with filth and vermin, begging to teach for scraps of food.
If you want some evidence of this, just look at the advertisement for Higher Ed Jobs on page 2,219 of your program. It features an image of what I assume is a tenured professor who is about to interview you, the job candidate. Only the interviewer looks like an androgynous vampire who seems positively lascivious in his (or her) desire to meet the fresh, young (tasty?) job candidate. If I was directed to this person’s table in the MLA’s interview area, I would run screaming from the room.
Come to think of it, it’s the perfect representation of academe today, short of my old favorite, Saturn Devouring His Son by Goya.
I almost regret that the MLA convention will no longer be held between Christmas and New Year’s, since it will limit opportunities for allusions to Dickens’ novels: Ebenezer Scrooge, Gradgrind, and all that. Plus, I will no longer be able to retreat to my office on Christmas when the house is full of relatives and jollity, posing as the perfect martyr to academic duty. And early January -- when the conference will now be held -- is traditionally a time of resolutions and austerity (and the hope of fresh starts), perfectly in keeping with spirit of MLA, which I will continue to haunt, each year, dressed, perhaps, like the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
(Photo of Donald Austen and puppeteer Rob Tygner’s Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come at muppet.wikia.com)
