Comments on: Impure Thought http://www.roughtheory.org/content/impure-thought/ theory in the rough Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:54:32 +1000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: N Pepperell http://www.roughtheory.org/content/impure-thought/comment-page-1/#comment-21613 N Pepperell Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:55:13 +0000 http://www.roughtheory.org/content/impure-thought/#comment-21613 Just a quick note that I'm out of battery power in the laptop, and will need to get back to you later!! Not neglecting you deliberately! Sorry... Just a quick note that I’m out of battery power in the laptop, and will need to get back to you later!! Not neglecting you deliberately! Sorry…

]]> By: WildlyParenthetical http://www.roughtheory.org/content/impure-thought/comment-page-1/#comment-21604 WildlyParenthetical Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:12:18 +0000 http://www.roughtheory.org/content/impure-thought/#comment-21604 You're absolutely on the money here, NP :-) I still remember a 'fairy tale' told by Nikki Sullivan at a conference I was at years and years ago now (I was an undergrad at the time), where she talked about herself 'the woman in black' and her two friends—the 'rather quiet woman with the capacity to shock' and the 'gray-haired woman with the well-developed sense of humour'. She discussed the way that the work that each of them did was indicative of our being singular plural: each could not be as they were without the other, and yet each was different to the other. They shared work and thoughts and ideas and laughter and too much coffee, and so their work was never lonely and isolated, but as you say 'a unique refraction of a shared experience that each can only partially and incompletely express.' The fact that her two friends were also presenting at the conference and that each paper was different and yet inextricably intertwined with the others only reinforced her point. I've been thinking about the incredible isolation of academic work lately. It's regularly the institution that is blamed for the atomisation of people in a workplace, and doubtless this is the case. I'm often surprised, though, by the way that recognition of this fact, along with the acknowledgement that academic work is *never* the product of a self-sufficient subject, often doesn't lead to folks feeling a little more developing strategies to resist that individualising. I know that this awareness is partially the result of being in the 'writing up' phase of the PhD, and needing to think about the future (the dreaded 'do I actually want to be in academia' thing). Maybe I'll write some more later, over at mine. But the lack of community—in the critical sense, people, not the totalising one—in academia is playing on my mind a lot lately. Do I want to be part of a setting that's so regularly unethical? You’re absolutely on the money here, NP :-) I still remember a ‘fairy tale’ told by Nikki Sullivan at a conference I was at years and years ago now (I was an undergrad at the time), where she talked about herself ‘the woman in black’ and her two friends—the ‘rather quiet woman with the capacity to shock’ and the ‘gray-haired woman with the well-developed sense of humour’. She discussed the way that the work that each of them did was indicative of our being singular plural: each could not be as they were without the other, and yet each was different to the other. They shared work and thoughts and ideas and laughter and too much coffee, and so their work was never lonely and isolated, but as you say ‘a unique refraction of a shared experience that each can only partially and incompletely express.’ The fact that her two friends were also presenting at the conference and that each paper was different and yet inextricably intertwined with the others only reinforced her point.

I’ve been thinking about the incredible isolation of academic work lately. It’s regularly the institution that is blamed for the atomisation of people in a workplace, and doubtless this is the case. I’m often surprised, though, by the way that recognition of this fact, along with the acknowledgement that academic work is *never* the product of a self-sufficient subject, often doesn’t lead to folks feeling a little more developing strategies to resist that individualising. I know that this awareness is partially the result of being in the ‘writing up’ phase of the PhD, and needing to think about the future (the dreaded ‘do I actually want to be in academia’ thing). Maybe I’ll write some more later, over at mine. But the lack of community—in the critical sense, people, not the totalising one—in academia is playing on my mind a lot lately. Do I want to be part of a setting that’s so regularly unethical?

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