[csaa-forum] Rebecca and the beach

[Greg Hainge]

as we're sharing....

this discussion has sent me back to a piece i was asked to write in 1999 for
my faculty's newsletter as 'the new blood' and, at that time, pretty much
the only new blood of the faculty. whilst a nice reminder of my salad days,
it is also a realisation, in light of this discussion thread, that nothing
really has changed in the last five years. and i think it is probably
because we invest so much of ourselves into our jobs and because we love so
many aspects of the privileged position we're in (i talk not of financial
privilege but of the privilege of being in a position where we can stimulate
thought) that we put up with some of the crap we are subjected to.

this however is an unenviable and somewhat perverse position to be in.

if i cast my mind back to when i was running two part-time tutoring jobs in
the uk and spending about 1/2 of what i earnt in petrol getting between the
jobs, i can remember very clearly a conversation i had with one of my former
lecturers / supervisors. i was wondering whether in fact i should take an
office job for a while, something that would pay the rent and allow me to
eat whilst i was waiting for an academic job to come along (there were very
few on the market when i finished my phd). this colleague advised me against
doing so saying that when eventually a job came up and i got to interview,
it would reflect very favourably on me to show that i had suffered to get
there.

at the time i took this simply as good advice, but it has stayed with me and
comes back to haunt me at times like the present. why? because even though i
have, after a fashion, 'made it', insofar as i am still doing the job, have
been promoted twice and am dutifully juggling the research / publishing,
teaching, supervision, administration and community service balls all at the
same time, i worry about the future. i worry that my future son or daughter
who currrently resides peacefully in my wife's tummy will not see me as much
as i would like, will be lulled to sleep by me reading an andrew benjamin
article out loud rather than peter bunny (i haven't even had time to find
out if that's a real book or not!), will spend weekends watching me marking
a pile of assignments and hoping that i finish in time to play for a while.
in a sense i've set into motion what i want to avoid already. my wife is due
on december 5th and i start a new job at uq on jan 3rd. so no nursery for
the baby to come home to.

once i'm up there, however, i am determined not to be like i fear i could
be. i am truly looking forward to having a wonderful new being give me a new
sense of perspective, to simply realising in a revelatory flash what is
really important at the end of the day. will that make me a worse academic?
given conversations with colleagues and some of the posts on this list, i
think that in a certain sense it will. how many stories have you heard of
failed marriages / relationships that are the result of overwork? or rather
a sense that a truly successful academic career is simply incompatible with
a functional life. i know of many. and of course one could say that this is
the case in any profession where you need to invest a lot of time and energy
into a job. i have family members in corporate positions who have similarly
shipwrecked various parts of their private life on the rocks of careerism.
but why i think it is so wrong for us to be doing this in the humanities is
precisely because we are supposed to be teaching students about the value of
things in life that are not driven purely by economic rationalism and
pragmatic imperatives. and yet we seem to be forgetting our humanity at
times because we have become slaves to economic rationalism and pragmatic
imperatives and allowed ourselves to be thus enslaved BECAUSE OF our
humanity, because we LOVE this malarky and think it important to keep doing
what we are doing even in adverse or possibly untenable conditions.

and yes this sounds like a moan, and yes i know that there are many worse
off than myself, but that still doesn't make it right.

so to my future son or daughter i promise to do my best to be a good daddy
and to put you first, even if that means becoming a bad academic (or perhaps
i should say slightly less good academic in case my future employers are
reading this and regretting their choice).

so although it's no consolation to starting colleagues such as rebecca to
know that really it doesn't get better and has been this way for, well, at
least since i started, perhaps just talking about this can help us turn the
tide a little? isn't that what our work is about really in the final
analysis after all? trying to think through a set of conditions or
propositions in all kinds of texts differently so that we can learn things
from them that might in some way make a difference in the world?

to follow, that original piece (although if you're still reading this far
i've taken too much of your time already, and for those of you thinking 'he
can't be that busy if he can write emails like this to a list', well, just
call this a first attempt at the kind of prioritisation i'm wanting to start
putting into practice) which, i guess, now seems to me like it should be
read not as a self-fulfilling prophecy but a warning, a plea that we think
about how not to end up in the future i predict.


Generation XYZABC


	It was only a few weeks ago that I discovered from the new Dean of the
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS) that I am the only Faculty
member under the age of 30. This knowledge both surprised, pleased and
worried me at the time, but the more I reflect on my unique status, the less
surprised I am by it.
	Having completed a BA(Hon) at the University of Nottingham, I stayed at
that institution to do an MA by research (in one year) and then a PhD (in 2
years 11 months) on Celine and D&G (the French thinkers Deleuze and
Guattari, not the designer Italian clothing brand). On reflection, my
frenzied quasi-obsessive work pattern during those four research intensive
years was probably not only of benefit to my application for the post of
Associate Lecturer in French at the University of Adelaide, but also
extremely good training for this post.
	After a short period of uncertainty and various part-time teaching posts
(including one on the FLIC [Foreign Languages for Industry and Commerce]
course at DMU [De Montfort University]) and much time spent on the stretch
of the M40 from Nottingham to Leicester, followed by an interval filled with
complications with DIMA (the Department of Immigration and Multicultural
Affairs) a propos of my visa (not in fact an acronym, although it could so
easily stand for Very Inconvenient Set of Applications), on February 25th,
1999, I finally hit the tarmac of Adelaide's International Airport running,
and I have not stopped since - a tactic I heartily recommend since it
enabled me to circumvent entirely the annoyance of jet lag. I started
teaching four days after arriving, and seem to have sustained a similar
breakneck pace in my first 9 months here.
	I have taught on and co-ordinated the courses French IA and IIA (as well as
teaching on the French I/IM/IIA CS [Cultural Studies] component),
participated in two other courses from the CESGL (Centre for European
Studies and General Linguistics), namely PLE (Power, Love and Evil) and the
Death of God (which, according to the pattern being established here
becomes, rather nicely, DOG), and served on the CESGL's Assessment
Committee. I have completed the ACUE teaching course and dutifully carried
out my SET evaluations. I have attempted to get my head around the concepts
of URG's (a rather nice onomatopoeic transcription of the sound I make when
I try too hard to comprehend exactly why I need lots of money to do my
research) and large ARC grants (which, it seems, truly are the ARC of the
covenant when it comes to inflating one's profile to pseudo-deific
proportions).
	I have applied for funding for the publication of my first book-length
manuscript from the RMC (Research Management Committee) of the FHSS and the
AAH (the Australian Academy for the Humanities and the phonetic
transcription of the sound of satisfied relief I will make if my application
is successful), given a paper at the ASFS (Australian Society for French
Studies) conference in Sydney, during which I was also elected ASFS
publications editor. I am also on the organising committee for the next ASFS
conference to be held in Adelaide at the same time as I am the secretary for
the 2001 AULLA XXXI Conference (Australasian Universities' Language and
Literature Association). I have continued in my position as Business
Administrator for the academic journal RMS (Renaissance and Modern Studies)
for which I also serve on the editorial board - and in this position I am
currently involved in a radical restructuring of the journal which may
(horror of horrors) leave us without an acronym. I have also become the
Australasian representative for the Societe d'Etudes Celiniennes (whose
acronym SEC, as the treasurer has commented to me on more than one occasion,
is an uncomfortable reminder that the society's funds are a sec), although I
have shamefully not yet found time to go and join the NTEU. I have also
filled many evenings in my capacity as co-organiser / presenter / MC of the
Philosophy Jammm sessions, for which there is not an acronym, perhaps
because they take place outside of the University.
	All of this is not intended merely as a (somewhat facetious) CV (there I go
again!), but to show why my position of dubious privilege in the FHSS's age
profile is perhaps not as unsurprising as it first seemed to me. In one way
it might be said that my position as the youngest Faculty member is not
actually all that anachronistic, for I am a product of these accelerated
postmodern (or, we might say, acronymistic) times. In another sense,
however, it is easy to understand why I am in this unique position. For the
modern day lecturer in this climate of increased workloads and never-ending
cutbacks needs to live in an accelerated state, a state for which the cult
of the acronym and the compressed syntax of E-mail communication are a
pre-requisite. If present employment practices remain roughly constant
during my lifetime, I will be in this accelerated state for 35+ years; who
in their right mind would rush through the privileged years of PG study - a
difficult yet luxurious period which, for most, will be the last opportunity
for a very long time fully to indulge their love of knowledge over an
extended period - for this? The answer to this question can only be "no one"
, for the modern day lecturer, I am convinced, is not a rational or sensible
being. We do this job because of a deep-rooted sense of its worth and a
belief in the ideals of education, because of a love of knowledge and a
commitment to the dissemination of knowledge, because of a passion that we
know to justify our existence. To justify these qualities in such a way that
they might provide a quantifiable rationale to satisfy the VC's goals for EB
(Enterprise Bargaining) and TLP's (Teaching and Leaning Plan, a PC exercise
in pretending that we are overflowing with TLC) is, especially in the
Humanities, an almost impossible task if this is to be done without slipping
into empty rhetoric and doublespeak. Rather than increase the number of
forms to be filled and numbers to be crunched by staff with already
excessive workloads, then, would it not be better to look for alternative
methods of appraisal that do not impinge upon our real raison d'etre as
education providers and researchers?
	What such alternative models might look like, I do not know. I am, after
all, only a level A. Maybe I'll leave the answer to my question until I am a
B.


Dr Greg Hainge, Senior Lecturer in French, Head of French Discipline,
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide SA 5005.
tel: (Int. + 61) (08) 8303 5659, fax: 8303 5241
http://www.geocities.com/ghainge/
                    ******
_Culture Theory and Critique_ Editorial Board.
                    ******
_Etudes Celiniennes_ Editorial Board
                    ******
Experimental Arts Foundation, Adelaide, Board Member
                    ******
Australian Society for French Studies Publications Editor
                    ******
Australia and NZ Representative of the Societe d'Etudes Celiniennes
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