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Accepted Paper:
We say it's love. In fact it's unwaged work
Letizia Bonanno
What's pushing us to keep on engaging with precarious and often unwaged academic work? Is it love for knowledge or, rather, the individual pursuit for power and prestige which, as such, undermines any possible forms of solidarity?
Paper long abstract:
We, early career scholars, face multiple forms of precarity deriving from hyper- and inter-institutional mobility as well as from an increasing casualisation of work. Not least, from the dramatic shrinking of the academic job market. Much of the work we do in academia is unwaged: we’ve to write grants and job applications while dealing with many invisible administrative tasks attached to teaching duties.
Yet, we continue to comply with the demands of academic institutions, abiding by the neoliberal imperative of flexibility. Flexibility is now synonymous with precarity.
Yet, we trick ourselves and say we do it for the sake of love. Love for what? Love for knowledge, a love of philosophical nature a là Badiou, which is political and aims at reshaping power relations? Or do we do it for another kind of love? That love which looks more like an individual pursuit of power and prestige and, as such, undermines any possible forms of solidarity? We keep on doing unwaged academic work; we know it is exploitative. Yet it grants us some status. And possibly hope?