Feeling Academic; Academic Feelings
samsnewsletter.doc is a collection of thoughts about feelings and feelings about thoughts. The newsletter is free, but I’d be honored if you shared it with a friend or two. Enjoy!
Before starting grad school, I would often fantasize about being an academic. I imagined myself stuck deep in the stacks of an old library reading hundred-year-old books that have that intoxicating musty smell you can only get from library books. I would be reading important books while writing my own important books to add to important scholarship being done on important topics. To be a scholar, I supposed, was to be important.
I’m halfway through my master’s program in religious studies, and my experience has been significantly different than the fantasy I just described. I haven’t stepped foot in a classroom, 90 percent of the reading I’ve done has been on a computer, and I can’t remember the last time I smelled that brilliant old book smell. Some of these things will change as the pandemic decreases and we return to in-person classes, but I’ve come to realize there’s a larger issue with my fantasy that I’m not sure will ever be fixed by the lack of a pandemic: I’m not going to feel like my fantasy of an academic. A scholar. One who is important.
Part of my introduction into this program has been the realization of how large The Academy looms at UChicago as well as that of many others. Academic institutions, especially the “prestigious” ones, are part of a system that feeds off the fantasies of the Important Scholar. It is one of their best marketing strategies. They sell a feeling that is impossible to realize. It’s a form of what Lauren Berlant calls “Cruel Optimism”— an attachment to a fantasy that cannot and will not ever come to fruition. There are certainly scholars doing important work, and I believe the things I’m studying can make a difference in the world. The difference is that it does not feel the way I expected it to. And when I talk to my classmates and professors, they note the same gap between the feeling of fantasy and the feeling of reality.
Maybe this sounds cynical so far, but the true feeling of doing this work is not all bad. In some ways, I really like thinking through conceptual problems. It feels a bit like taking apart a Lego set and then putting it back together in a different form. But there are also dangerous elements to this kind of “always be critical” mentality present within the academy. Bruno Latour, a French philosopher, noted once that there wasn’t much of a difference between conspiracy theorists and academics. Both are trained to constantly question details and facts. As we’ve seen in the past year with conspiracy theories such as QAnon and COVID denial, questioning everything has consequences that can be the cause of great violence and death. In an interview, Latour noted, “I think we were so happy to develop all this critique because we were so sure of the authority of science. And that the authority of science would be shared because there was a common world.” But there’s been a continual disruption of this “common world” that has been growing, especially in the past few years. This is why it might feel to you sometimes like it’s nearly impossible to nail down what the “facts” are in conversation with someone you disagree with. Instead, Latour notes that “facts remain robust only when they are supported by a common culture, by institutions that can be trusted, by a more or less decent public life, by more or less reliable media.” For me, “robust” facts feel like a distant fantasy in our world today. In these moments, critique feels more like digging a hole to nowhere rather than doing some profound and productive work.
So in some ways I imagine we are all feeling something similar to these academic feelings. It is a constant game of tug-of-war of feeling absolutely certain and passionate about a set of ideas you ascribe to while simultaneously feeling completely unsure of anything at all. It’s both feeling so excited about a job promotion while also feeling uneasy about the continual participation in a company that might not always represent your values. It’s enjoying the convenience of Amazon Prime delivery before recognizing how horribly they treat their employees. It’s recycling with the intention to save the Earth before realizing how little recycling actually gets recycled. These feelings are not something we can escape because they are part of the atmosphere in which we live. And the more we call it out, name it, point to it, the more we recognize it and feel the weight of it all around us. We are all becoming skeptics of our surroundings, inquisitors of our own lives. It is a good and important work because it is the work that recognizes systemic racism, patriarchy, exploitative capitalism, and the violence of colonialism. But it can oftentimes feel overwhelming, and it absolutely steals away the fantasies of our youth of what it might feel like to be academic, artistic, successful, etc. This is not a bad thing, by the way. But that doesn’t make it less painful.
At the risk of sounding naive, I want to offer a final thought on how I cope with the continual waves of skepticism, inquiry, and realization. I think there is room for what Christian Wiman calls a “poetics of belief” to serve as the balm to the weariness of this moment. Wiman suggests that, in the midst of the constant interrogation of facts and the material, there needs to be a space for belief:
Does the decay of belief among educated people in the West precede the decay of language used to define and explore belief, or do we find the fire of belief fading in us only because the words are sodden with overuse and imprecision, and will not burn? We need a poetics of belief, a language capacious enough to include a mystery that, ultimately, defeats it, and sufficiently intimate and inclusive to serve not only as individual expression but as communal need.”
While it is absolutely important to stay educated, to research the tough questions, it seems we risk our wellbeing if we give up on a language of belief and wonder at the world around us. If we dig the continuous hole to nowhere as I described earlier, we will talk and think our ways into nothingness. But if we choose to do this work because we believe a better world is possible, even in the bleakest moments, we might find some hope. In this way, we can hold both skepticism and wonder together. One last Wiman quote:
You can’t spend your whole life questioning whether language can represent reality. At some point you have to believe that the inadequacies of the words you use will be transcended by the faith with which you use them. You have to believe that poetry has some reach into reality itself, or you have to go silent.
There is a much deeper belief latent within me that animates my work, and it is not the fantasy of sitting in a library as a self-important scholar. Rather, my belief is that we can build a better world if we understand what’s broken. While my language for this set of beliefs is a bit flimsy right now, I know it’s there. It’s something I hope to cultivate more, and I think it’s something that collectively needs cultivating as well. In a small way, this newsletter is a place I hope to try and cultivate a poetics of belief while taking seriously the rigor of skepticism. I hope you’ll stick around to think with me through some of these academic feelings.
Sources:
Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science by Ava Kofman in The New York Times Magazine
My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman
The Weekly Syllabus
Every week I’ll be sharing a few books, articles, tweets, other newsletters, etc. that I have found recently compelling. The only rhyme, reason, or criteria for why I choose these is because I can’t stop thinking about them.
Welcome to the Covid Influencer - I’m recently fascinated by the power of young adult white women on Instagram who are religious. This is a fascinating look into one influencer duo. I also love this newsletter and highly recommend. So much so that I’m also going to suggest—
Towards a Unified Theory of Peloton - This is Anne’s most recent newsletter, and man is it good. Celebrity is an ever-changing category, and the Peloton team seems to be at the forefront right now.
The Music Industry SUCKS… I Think - I just discovered Kenya and she is a revelation. I’ve never been so engaged in a 24-minute YouTube video and I’m not sure she breathes in this video?
I Grew Up Afraid. Lil Nas X's 'Montero' Is The Lesson I Needed - I know, I know, I’m late to the party on this conversation. But this article is so good that I think it’s worth a revisit on the topic.
“Ziwe” Is Trapped in an Interminable Dance with Whiteness - I found “Ziwe” quite an uncomfortable watch, which is the point. I certainly recommend the show, and then I recommend reading this after.
See you all next week!
- Sam