Finally back on Tumblr! Having moved on from a very stressful first teaching semester, I am now ready to take on the issue of academic precarity.
Academic precarity can be defined as a state of continuous vulnerability; for Neff (2016) it is “the year-to-year or class-to-class, underpaid and overworked employment status most teachers (or professors!) now have to struggle with while seeking tenure.” Emerging precarious regimes of work in schools and universities are no doubt related to the increasing flexibilization of labor and neoliberalization that characterize other sectors (e.g. the severe budget cuts to funding and the increasing adoption of entrepreneurial, “globally competitive” models within them). Â
For me, academic precarity is a life characterized by not knowing what would happen next in academia. Would I be summoned to the principal’s office this week because I made my students listen to revolutionary songs? Is my co-faculty angry at me again or does she just have a weird face today? Should I cry upon receiving my pay check this month? Will I get renewed next semester?
In fact, much of my life in Centro Escolar University was spent in a spiral involving fascist colleagues, a repressive administration, and poor but deserving students hounded by exorbitant fees and soaring tuition rates. Add a very measly wage on top of all that, and you have a recipe for academic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). What makes it even more dehumanizing is realizing just how pervasive this academic PTSD and anxiety is, that it is not unique, but is actually the lived reality of countless others as well.
Allegra Laboratory (2016) argues that the anxieties developed from academic work also exceed precarious forms of labor and can be regarded as the “precarization of existence". Teachers find it increasingly difficult to achieve a work-life balance and often see themselves compromising their personal, family and social life. We have largely embodied the logic of no time to slow down, and as the market clearly imposes a no-rest policy for academics, we have no choice but to resist. It is no longer just publish or perish for our lot, but resist or perish.
It is therefore an imperative for academics to start a discussion on academic precarity, and also how we, as academics, reproduce precarity - and not just our own, but of others as well. This also means addressing the many manifestations of academic precarity: from low teaching salaries, opposing the neoliberal attacks to education, to demanding the junking of K-12.Â
Neff, A. (2016, Nov 8). On Academic Precarity.
Allegra Laboratory (n.d.), Retrieved Jan 17, 2018, from http://allegralaboratory.com/unravelling-academic-precarity-universitycrisis/
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