The panel was fantastic -- one of those conference panels where the papers just cohere and speak to one another so well that it feels that the panel itself has not just a purpose, but an argument and intervention to make.
-
-
Suddenly people who had spent years complaining about how there were no medieval jobs anymore because all the jobs were for race and cultural studies saw they could turn with the tide instead of fighting against it by claiming that the medieval was integral to understanding race.
Näytä tämä ketju -
People who had actively discouraged and frozen out their POC colleagues and students working on race were now claiming expertise in race--and in many cases STILL freezing out those same POC.
Näytä tämä ketju -
Many white medievalists realized they could attach themselves to POC and ride the coattails of POC accomplishments, claiming credit for their work, or more subtly and insidiously, building up a public identity as a progressive white person by association.
Näytä tämä ketju -
For every person who will think I'm being cynical and unfair, I can share a story (mine or someone else's) of how a white person who has built a career on race scholarship and/or activism has mistreated POC terribly.
Näytä tämä ketju -
I'm not saying that there aren't white ppl who are genuine in their intent to change the discipline for the better. But talking about individuals and talking about intent isn't useful when confronting systemic racism.
Näytä tämä ketju -
"Intent" as a concept isn't useful because it can't account for how we exist within structures that distort our perception of ourselves and others so that we may think we are acting in good faith when we are not.
Näytä tämä ketju -
The structure of academia itself is predicated on self-promotion in the guise of service to scholarship, ideas, truth. You sell your work and your work sells you, and that's how you get a job and pay your bills.
Näytä tämä ketju -
Working at a university press makes the translation between scholarship and capital really, explicitly clear. Not because any of us are ~evil, but because that's just the system we all live and work in.
Näytä tämä ketju -
But we've all observed how capitalism corrupts the operations of every industry: government, law, medicine, aviation, etc., etc. Why would we think that we in the neoliberal university are immune?
Näytä tämä ketju -
@zugenia has a brilliant formulation of race in the neoliberal university as "value added" rather than as a field of knowledge and expertise (thanks@slomuto for the link!): https://twitter.com/zugenia/status/981948160468770816 …. And that's exactly how white medieval studies at large has treated race.Näytä tämä ketju -
I don't really know what a concrete, workable way forward is. I think it's much harder to divest your activism and scholarship of self-interest than most would care to admit. That's true of POC, too.
Näytä tämä ketju -
How can we ignore how all the barriers of admission to the academy filter by privilege and constrain us to trade on proximity to whiteness to get ahead or even just survive?
Näytä tämä ketju -
But it's disheartening how many people refuse to acknowledge this is a problem, and refuse to even do the minimal work of self-reflection to consider that they (you, me, anyone!!) may, wittingly or not, be part of the problem.
Näytä tämä ketju
Keskustelun loppu
Uusi keskustelu -
Lataaminen näyttää kestävän hetken.
Twitter saattaa olla ruuhkautunut tai ongelma on muuten hetkellinen. Yritä uudelleen tai käy Twitterin tilasivulla saadaksesi lisätietoja.