https://decasia.org/academic_culture/2009/02/17/critical-pedagogy-and-the-undercommons/ critical anthropology of academic culture Tue, 05 May 2009 02:09:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.1 https://decasia.org/academic_culture/2009/02/17/critical-pedagogy-and-the-undercommons/#comment-980 Tue, 05 May 2009 02:09:53 +0000 http://decasia.org/academic_culture/?p=454#comment-980 hi Eli,
I missed this post before. I agree with John and the article, but as back when I first heard/read each I feel a sort of disconnect. As you know, my favorite parallel here is nursing. There is nothing radical per se about keeping people alive, making the dying comfortable, helping women give birth, etc. But those activities are none the less worthwhile. Ditto for teaching – I think if anything really matters in academic work it’s the teaching. Not as radical per se but as worthwhile. None of this is to say I buy into the blackmail of “your work really matters, give up your life…!” and so on (a similar think happens with nurses, actually), but rather that I find the choice of target a bit misplaced. To my mind, the idea that really needs demystifying is the idea that research and academic production other than teaching is often radical, and the thing that really needs restructuring is the role of research and non-teaching academic production. I think it’s no accident that the biggest names and highest paid folk are almost invariably researchers (second to deans and so on of course) rather than teachers. I also have a gut level feeling that the hierarchies around research and publishing go a long way in structuring and legitimating a lot of things about academic labor practices.
cheers,
Nate

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