{"id":2154,"date":"2016-03-30T14:34:57","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T22:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/?p=2154"},"modified":"2017-05-23T11:34:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T19:34:06","slug":"philosophers-without-infrastructure-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2016\/03\/30\/philosophers-without-infrastructure-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophers without infrastructure, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following up on my last post<\/a> (and indirectly on a couple of older<\/a> posts<\/a>), I came across an interesting interview extract that comments in a bit more detail on the lived experience of being a philosopher with practically no work infrastructure. Here’s a philosopher from Paris 8 commenting on his workspace:<\/p>\n

Professor: \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m giving you any scoop in saying that, on the material level, the Philosophy Department is the poorest one in the country. It\u2019s clear \u2014 it\u2019s very clear, even. When, for instance, young colleagues were arriving after I got here \u2014 at the moment I\u2019m thinking of Ren\u00e9e Duval who sent me a message asking, so, where was her office [Laughter] although she didn\u2019t have an office. And, you know, even at Paris 7, if you want to meet, I don\u2019t know, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gauthier, I say Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gauthier because we know each other pretty well, so, indeed, he will make an appointment with you in his office.\u201d<\/p>\n

A department secretary interrupts: \u201cStill, they don\u2019t have their own offices, they have a shared office for teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor: \u201cNon non non non non non non. Gauthier, he has an office, and there are other offices. At most, they\u2019re two to an office. Of course! No, here, it\u2019s on the edge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Secretary: \u201cYes, it\u2019s on the edge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor: \u201cYes, here, it\u2019s borderline scandalous. Meaning that, for example, we wouldn\u2019t have to be meeting here [in the staff office space].\u201d<\/p>\n

Secretary: \u201cMais non, I agree with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor: \u201cMais oui. And, well, there\u2019ll be an office, we would be in the office, indeed, we could both of us shut the door. So for example, the master\u2019s thesis exams happen here [in the staff office space].\u201d<\/p>\n

Me: \u201cReally, they\u2019re here?\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor: \u201cYes, it happens \u2014 and so people who show up, we can\u2019t prevent them, it\u2019s the office \u2014 where they turn in their homework, where they come for information, but, still, it\u2019s scandalous. The first year, when I came, throughout practically the whole first year, I spent the first twenty minutes of class with the students looking for a room. It\u2019s since been stabilized, but\u2014\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m struck by the descriptor “the poorest philosophy department in the country.” And by the massively comparative<\/em> nature of the moral order at work here. To be scandalous<\/em>, to be on the edge<\/em> (“\u00e0 la limite<\/em>“): these are, precisely, descriptions of a work environment that contrasts with what one has a right<\/em> to expect, or with what would be typical<\/em> of a workplace in one’s profession. The aspiration to a dignified workplace, then, is grounded in an epistemology of comparison. Normative in the most banal sense.<\/p>\n

What is more interesting, perhaps, is how moral comparison becomes strategic in some circumstances and not in others, how workplace norms are useful at certain times but inconvenient at others. It’s so typical of academic institutions to want to seem incomparable or sui generis<\/em> when they need to legitimate themselves, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

(N.B.: All the proper names in the interview are pseudonyms.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following up on my last post (and indirectly on a couple of older posts), I came across an interesting interview extract that comments in a bit more detail on the lived experience of being a philosopher with practically no work infrastructure. Here’s a philosopher from Paris 8 commenting on his workspace: Professor: \u201cI don\u2019t think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[488,753,497],"tags":[514,645,734],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154"}],"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=2154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2155,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions\/2155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}