{"id":1230,"date":"2010-03-04T23:28:14","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T22:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/?p=1230"},"modified":"2019-09-05T02:55:03","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T00:55:03","slug":"testimonials-of-precarity-in-french-universities-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2010\/03\/04\/testimonials-of-precarity-in-french-universities-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Testimonials of precarity in French universities, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here we have a second testimonial of precarious life in French universities, one that comes not from a temporary worker but from a doctoral student struggling to finish her thesis. This one has to be filed under the genre of the public lament: a political genre which, it comes to mind in passing, deserves further cultural analysis. More specifically, this was an open letter sent to Minister P\u00e9cresse<\/a> by a parisian PhD candidate.<\/p>\n

Paris, February 22, 2010<\/p>\n

Madame Minister,<\/p>\n

I’ve decided to write to you to offer my personal testimony about the current conditions of doctoral students in France. It is exactly 10:30pm, and after a day of full-time work (to make ends meet), I’m starting the second part of my day, the part dedicated to my research work. In the fourth year of my dissertation, I should be putting real effort into writing up my thesis, but given the lack of time and resources, I’m just trying to keep these activities afloat. Some days, my will to continue emerges from my intrinsic interest in research; other days, I’m remotivated by the long years I’ve already spent on my work. And on other days still, I work double shifts because of the 552 euros I had to pay at the start of the academic year. In the end, on certain evenings like this, I find it hard to see the sense in this situation. I’ll sum things up: I had a good academic record, oriented towards professionalization (with publications, conference talks, fieldwork, teaching…), with encouraging results; but in spite of all this work, all this willpower spent, I don’t know how, materially speaking, I’m going to be able to finish my thesis.<\/p>\n

I’m from the silent majority that doesn’t have a research grant, that juggles between paid work and self-financed studies. I’m from the silent majority that has no real status: as a student and a worker at once, I get neither the advantages of workers nor the advantages of students (discounts and such…). I’m from the silent majority whose future opportunities look like a dense fog. This last sentiment is particularly strong among my colleagues in human sciences, in spite of the fact that, when it comes time for a debate on national identity or some other media polemic, people go straight to the researchers in human sciences \u2014 to historians, sociologists, anthropologists \u2014 to take the pulse of our society. I am one of these future PhDs in human sciences, I’m eight years into university studies and, when I find I can’t trade a job as a receptionist for a better job in administration somewhere, I find myself worrying about finding the nth next short-term contract \u2014 the idea of a paid vacation not yet being part of doctoral students’ vocabulary. We hear talk about billions of euros that the government is about to release for higher education and research. Me, I’d just like to know how to pay my bills and defend my thesis. That said, I don’t mean to draw an intentionally miserable picture of my situation. I made the choice to get involved in research, and I made it with conviction. I believe in my abilities and competences as a young researcher, and in those of many of my colleagues; I believe in the quality of francophone research and of its scientific results. I’m only wondering about what’s becoming of it. What is happening, Madame Minister, when ultimately the only option that presents itself to new French PhDs is to look abroad if they hope to make a living in their fields?<\/p>\n

I am not a renowned researcher or recognized specialist; I am only a doctoral student among many others; I am not up to date on the latest figures, statistics and predictions that your Ministry has available; I have nothing but a few figures I’ve discovered, my coping strategies, and a lack of visibility on the horizon. But I’ll keep going tomorrow, keep working on my research project somehow, not just so I can frame my diploma on the wall, nor even to open up new job opportunities. I’ll keep going tomorrow because I believe in my work. The one thing I deplore is simply that in France, the country of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, I find myself faced daily with the echo of Precarity. And in thanking you very sincerely for your attention, I hope you will accept, Madame Minister, this expression of my best regards.<\/p>\n

Klara Boyer-Rossol
\nPhD Candidate in History, University of Paris-VII<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m really not sure I’ve captured the prose style of the original, its peculiar mix of bluntly personal revelation with courteous formalities; and I worry that this blog is becoming more of a private translation laboratory than a useful resource. The more I translate, the more it feels like translation is a craft of its own demanding a long labor of apprenticeship. There’s no choice there, of course, but to keep doing it and see if things get better; though I do find that publishing, even here on this blog, is a good minimal guarantee of quality assurance. The thought of having a reader is a good motive for proofreading…<\/p>\n

Analytically speaking, I’m struck by the strong rhetoric of French national-scientific virtues that comes out in the last paragraph. It’s as if, as the conclusion of the letter drew near, it suddenly wasn’t enough to base a moral critique of the institution on the fact that it produces precarious, anxious, inefficient actors; and it suddenly became necessary to make a further appeal to apparent contradictions in national ideology. In other words the argument here isn’t just precarity is unlivable<\/em> but also that precarity is out of place in the revered French national image<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I guess I’m just much more cynical than this author, but I’m also struck here by the rhetoric of sincerity<\/em> (a term which also rhymes with “precarity,” by the way). In particular, I’m interested in the moment where the author says: I assure you, I actually do believe deeply in my work<\/em>. This reminds me a lot of the general conclusion drawn by the national report on precarity I wrote about a few weeks ago: there too the general contradiction was that many people believe that their precarious work is unlivable and yet they remain deeply committed to it<\/em>. Maybe one of these days I should find out what philosophy folks of my acquaintance are talking about in their incessant references to La Bo\u00e9tie’s “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here we have a second testimonial of precarious life in French universities, one that comes not from a temporary worker but from a doctoral student struggling to finish her thesis. This one has to be filed under the genre of the public lament: a political genre which, it comes to mind in passing, deserves further […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[488,493,500],"tags":[658],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2836,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions\/2836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}