The Trauma of Academia: on Attempts of Idiorrhythmic Contextualization
Research Article
How to Cite
Rodionova M.M. The Trauma of Academia: on Attempts of Idiorrhythmic Contextualization. Interaction. Interview. Interpretation. 2022. Vol. 14. No. 4. P. 10-28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.19181/inter.2022.14.4.1 (in Russ.).
Abstract
The study focuses on three narratives as they unfold within the academy and contextualize academic trauma. The first examines the manifestations of the classical social science structural-agency dilemma in the university setting. The second reveals the mechanisms of balancing between the objectivity demanded of the academicians and their inherent subjectivity, in the suppression of which trauma is highlighted. The third theme, built around R. Barthes’ model of idiorrhythmia, offers a theoretical understanding of the academy as a social aggregate that attempts to harmonize individual and collective experience. The lines of argument are combined into a single theoretical model, focusing on different aspects of the manifestation of the same phenomenon — trauma. Trauma reveals itself in various aspects of academic life: in informal practices that contradict formal rules, in the demands for objectivity imposed on the social researcher under the conditions of their inalienable subjectivity, in the individualization of academic life while simultaneously attempting to universalize the experience of it. At the same time, the multiple contradictions of academic life prevent critical reflection on them. The study notes the advantages and drawbacks of the autoethnographic approach to overcoming these dilemmas in the situation of the academic’s reflection on their academic experience.
Keywords:
trauma, idiorrhythmia, critical inquiry of academia, objectivity and subjectivity in social sciences, idiorrhythmic conceptualization of academic life, violence
References
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Archer M.S. (2003) Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139087315
Austin A.E., McDaniels M. (2006) Preparing the Professoriate of the Future: Graduate Student Socialization for Faculty Roles. In: J.C. Smart (ed.) Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. Dordrecht: Springer. P. 397—456. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4512-3_8
Barthes R. (2016) Kak zhit' vmeste: romanicheskie simulyacii nekotoryh prostranstv povsednevnosti. Konspekty lekcij v Kollezh de Frans, 1976—1977 gg. [How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces]. Moscow: Ad Marginem Press. (In Russ.) EDN: ZCMUFZ
Barton-Bridges R. (2022) Beyond the Ivory Tower: A First-Person Exploration of Navigating the Intersections of Academia and Community. Greater Victoria: University of Victoria.
Batzer B. (2016) Healing Classrooms: Therapeutic Possibilities in Academic Writing. Composition Forum. P. 1—10.
Bourdieu P. (1988) Homo Academicus. Redwood: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu P. (1993) Sotsial'noye prostranstvo i simvolicheskaya vlast' [Social Space and Symbolic Power]. THESIS: Theory and History of Economic and Social Institutions and Systems. No. 2. P. 137—150. (In Russ.)
Brennan J., Magness P. (2019) Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190846282.001.0001
Brooks A. (1997) Academic women. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Daston L., Galison P. (2007) Ob’yektivnost’ [Objectivity]. Moscow: NLOBooks. (In Russ.)
De Haan W. (2008) Violence as an Essentially Contested Concept. Violence in Europe. New York: Springer. P. 27—40. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09705-3_3
Felman Sh., Laub D. (1993) Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. New York: Taylor & Francis. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.29-6108
Fotaki M. (2013) No Woman is Like a Man (in Academia): The Masculine Symbolic Order and the Unwanted Female Body. Organization Studies. Vol. 34. No. 9. P. 1251—1275. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0170840613483658
Fuller S. (1994) The Constitutively Social Character of Expertise. International Journal of Expert Systems. Vol. 7. No. 1. P. 51—64.
Fuller S. (2018) Sociologiya intellektual'noj zhizni. Kar'era uma vnutri i vne akademii. [The Sociology of Intellectual Life. The Career of the Mind in and around the Academy]. Moscow: Publishing House “Delo”. (In Russ.)
Giddens A. (2005) Ustroenie obschestva: ocherk teorii strukturacii (2-oe izdanie) [The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (2nd ed)]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Akademicheskij proekt”. (In Russ.) EDN: TNIRKP
Gil-Gómez E.M. (2017) Staging Women’s Lives in Academia: Gendered Life Stages in Language and Literature Workplaces. In: M.A. Massé, N. Bauer-Maglin (eds) Visibilities: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Search for a Disabled Identity That Fits. New York: SUNY Press. P. 189—202.
Gupta A. (2021) Emotions in Academic Writing/Care-Work in Academia: Notes Towards a Repositioning of Academic Labor in India (& Beyond). Academic Labor: Research and Artistry. Vol. 5. No. 1.
Harrison K.L. (2021) Making Space for Grief in Academia // JAMA. Vol. 326. No. 8. P. 699—700. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2021.13539
Hessen S.I. (1923) Osnovy pedagogiki: Vvedeniye v prikladnuyu filosofiyu [Basics of pedagogy. Introduction to Applied Philosophy]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Shkola-Press”. (In Russ.)
Holton S.A. (1998) Mending The Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Bolton: Anker.
Imbusch P. (2003) The Concept of Violence. International Handbook of Violence Research. Dordrecht: Springer. P. 13—39. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-48039-3_2
Janoff-Bulman R., Frantz C.M. (1996) The Loss of Illusions: The Potent Legacy of Trauma. Journal of Loss & Trauma. Vol. 1. No. 2. P. 133—150. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1532502960
8412837
Joas H. (1996) The Creativity of Action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jones E. (2021) How to Learn Together, Apart. Critical Inquiry. Vol. 47. No. 2. P. 123—127.
Kaube J. (2016) Maks Veber: zhizn' na rubezhe epokh [Max Weber: Life at the Turn of Eras]. Moscow: Publishing House “Delo”. (In Russ.)
LaCapra D. (2001) Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lacarrière J. (1976) L’été grec: une Grèce quotidienne de 4 000 ans. Paris: Plon.
Luhmann N. (2007) «Chto proishodit?» i «Chto za etim kroetsya?». Dve sociologii i teoriya obschestva [“What Is the Case?” and “What Lies Behind It?” The Two Sociologies and The Theory of Society]. Sociologicheskoe obozrenie [Sociological Review]. Vol. 6. No. 3. P. 100—117. EDN: JWUSBT (In Russ.)
Michell D. (2018) Academia as Therapy. In: A.L. Black, S. Garvis Women Activating Agency in Academia. Routledge. P. 89—99. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315147451-9
Opstrup N., Pihl-Thingvad S. (2016) Stressing academia? Stress-as-offence-to-self at Danish universities. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management. Vol. 38. No. 1. P. 39—52. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2015.1126895
Petrovskaya E. (2012) Bezymyannyye soobshchestva [Unnamed communities]. Moscow: Falanster. (In Russ.) EDN: RDSPVP
Rosser S.V. (2004) The Science Glass Ceiling: Academic Women Scientist and the Struggle to Succeed. New York: Routledge, 2004. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203337752
Rothblum E.D. (1988) Leaving the Ivory Tower: Factors Contributing to Women’s Voluntary Resignation from Academia. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. P. 14—17. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3346465
Santner E. (1992) History beyond the Pleasure Principle: Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma. In: S. Friedländer (ed.) Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the Final Solution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Schmidt E.K., Langberg K. (2007) Academic Autonomy in a Rapidly Changing Higher Education Framework: Academia on the Procrustean Bed? European Education. Vol. 39. No. 4. P. 80—94. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/EUE1056-4934390406
Shen H. (2013) Inequality Quantified: Mind the Gender Gap. Nature. Vol. 495. No. 7439. P. 22—24. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/495022a
Teeuwen R. (2020) “The Dream of a Minimal Sociality: Roland Barthes” Skeptic Intensity. Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 37. No. 4. P. 119—134. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276416659695
Thomas M. (2018) Trauma, Harry Potter, and the Demented World of Academia. The Journal of Educational Thought. Vol. 51. No. 2. P. 184—203. DOI: https://doi.org/10.11575/jet.v51i
2.58452
Tönnies F. (2002) Obshchnost' i obshchestvo [Community and Society]. Saint Petersburg: Vladimir Dal'. (In Russ.)
Tunguz S. (2016) In the Eye of the Beholder: Emotional Labor in Academia Varies with Tenure and Gender. Studies in Higher Education. Vol. 41. No. 1. P. 3—20. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.914919
Valian V. (2009) Beyond Gender Schemas: Improving the Advancement of Women in Academia. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Vol. 20. No. 3. P. 198—213. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hyp.2005.0111
Van der Kolk B.A., Van der Hart O. (1991) The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma. American imago. Vol. 48. No. 4. P. 425—454.
Waddock S. (2015). Intellectual shamans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wagner A., Lynn Magnusson J. (2005) Neglected Realities: Exploring the Impact of Women’s Experiences of Violence on Learning in Sites of Higher Education. Gender and Education. Vol. 17. No. 4. P. 449—461. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250500145189
Weber M. (1990) Nauka kak prizvaniye i professiya [Science as a Vocation]. Izbrannyye proizvedeniya [Selected Works]. Transl. by German A.F. Filipova, P.P. Gaidenko. Moscow: Progress. (In Russ.)
Willmott H. (1994) Management Education: Provocations to a debate. Management Learning. Vol. 25. No. 1. P. 105—136.
Žižek Sl. (2010) O nasilii [On Violence]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Yevropa”. (In Russ.) EDN: RCCKSZ
Acker S., Armenti C. (2004) Sleepless in Academia. Gender and Education. Vol. 16. No. 1. P. 3—24. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0954025032000170309
Alexander J.C. (2004) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof%3Aoso%2F9780195160840.003.0013
Archer M.S. (2003) Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139087315
Austin A.E., McDaniels M. (2006) Preparing the Professoriate of the Future: Graduate Student Socialization for Faculty Roles. In: J.C. Smart (ed.) Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. Dordrecht: Springer. P. 397—456. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4512-3_8
Barthes R. (2016) Kak zhit' vmeste: romanicheskie simulyacii nekotoryh prostranstv povsednevnosti. Konspekty lekcij v Kollezh de Frans, 1976—1977 gg. [How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces]. Moscow: Ad Marginem Press. (In Russ.) EDN: ZCMUFZ
Barton-Bridges R. (2022) Beyond the Ivory Tower: A First-Person Exploration of Navigating the Intersections of Academia and Community. Greater Victoria: University of Victoria.
Batzer B. (2016) Healing Classrooms: Therapeutic Possibilities in Academic Writing. Composition Forum. P. 1—10.
Bourdieu P. (1988) Homo Academicus. Redwood: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu P. (1993) Sotsial'noye prostranstvo i simvolicheskaya vlast' [Social Space and Symbolic Power]. THESIS: Theory and History of Economic and Social Institutions and Systems. No. 2. P. 137—150. (In Russ.)
Brennan J., Magness P. (2019) Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190846282.001.0001
Brooks A. (1997) Academic women. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Daston L., Galison P. (2007) Ob’yektivnost’ [Objectivity]. Moscow: NLOBooks. (In Russ.)
De Haan W. (2008) Violence as an Essentially Contested Concept. Violence in Europe. New York: Springer. P. 27—40. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09705-3_3
Felman Sh., Laub D. (1993) Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. New York: Taylor & Francis. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.29-6108
Fotaki M. (2013) No Woman is Like a Man (in Academia): The Masculine Symbolic Order and the Unwanted Female Body. Organization Studies. Vol. 34. No. 9. P. 1251—1275. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0170840613483658
Fuller S. (1994) The Constitutively Social Character of Expertise. International Journal of Expert Systems. Vol. 7. No. 1. P. 51—64.
Fuller S. (2018) Sociologiya intellektual'noj zhizni. Kar'era uma vnutri i vne akademii. [The Sociology of Intellectual Life. The Career of the Mind in and around the Academy]. Moscow: Publishing House “Delo”. (In Russ.)
Giddens A. (2005) Ustroenie obschestva: ocherk teorii strukturacii (2-oe izdanie) [The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (2nd ed)]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Akademicheskij proekt”. (In Russ.) EDN: TNIRKP
Gil-Gómez E.M. (2017) Staging Women’s Lives in Academia: Gendered Life Stages in Language and Literature Workplaces. In: M.A. Massé, N. Bauer-Maglin (eds) Visibilities: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Search for a Disabled Identity That Fits. New York: SUNY Press. P. 189—202.
Gupta A. (2021) Emotions in Academic Writing/Care-Work in Academia: Notes Towards a Repositioning of Academic Labor in India (& Beyond). Academic Labor: Research and Artistry. Vol. 5. No. 1.
Harrison K.L. (2021) Making Space for Grief in Academia // JAMA. Vol. 326. No. 8. P. 699—700. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2021.13539
Hessen S.I. (1923) Osnovy pedagogiki: Vvedeniye v prikladnuyu filosofiyu [Basics of pedagogy. Introduction to Applied Philosophy]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Shkola-Press”. (In Russ.)
Holton S.A. (1998) Mending The Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Bolton: Anker.
Imbusch P. (2003) The Concept of Violence. International Handbook of Violence Research. Dordrecht: Springer. P. 13—39. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-48039-3_2
Janoff-Bulman R., Frantz C.M. (1996) The Loss of Illusions: The Potent Legacy of Trauma. Journal of Loss & Trauma. Vol. 1. No. 2. P. 133—150. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1532502960
8412837
Joas H. (1996) The Creativity of Action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jones E. (2021) How to Learn Together, Apart. Critical Inquiry. Vol. 47. No. 2. P. 123—127.
Kaube J. (2016) Maks Veber: zhizn' na rubezhe epokh [Max Weber: Life at the Turn of Eras]. Moscow: Publishing House “Delo”. (In Russ.)
LaCapra D. (2001) Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lacarrière J. (1976) L’été grec: une Grèce quotidienne de 4 000 ans. Paris: Plon.
Luhmann N. (2007) «Chto proishodit?» i «Chto za etim kroetsya?». Dve sociologii i teoriya obschestva [“What Is the Case?” and “What Lies Behind It?” The Two Sociologies and The Theory of Society]. Sociologicheskoe obozrenie [Sociological Review]. Vol. 6. No. 3. P. 100—117. EDN: JWUSBT (In Russ.)
Michell D. (2018) Academia as Therapy. In: A.L. Black, S. Garvis Women Activating Agency in Academia. Routledge. P. 89—99. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315147451-9
Opstrup N., Pihl-Thingvad S. (2016) Stressing academia? Stress-as-offence-to-self at Danish universities. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management. Vol. 38. No. 1. P. 39—52. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2015.1126895
Petrovskaya E. (2012) Bezymyannyye soobshchestva [Unnamed communities]. Moscow: Falanster. (In Russ.) EDN: RDSPVP
Rosser S.V. (2004) The Science Glass Ceiling: Academic Women Scientist and the Struggle to Succeed. New York: Routledge, 2004. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203337752
Rothblum E.D. (1988) Leaving the Ivory Tower: Factors Contributing to Women’s Voluntary Resignation from Academia. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. P. 14—17. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3346465
Santner E. (1992) History beyond the Pleasure Principle: Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma. In: S. Friedländer (ed.) Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the Final Solution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Schmidt E.K., Langberg K. (2007) Academic Autonomy in a Rapidly Changing Higher Education Framework: Academia on the Procrustean Bed? European Education. Vol. 39. No. 4. P. 80—94. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/EUE1056-4934390406
Shen H. (2013) Inequality Quantified: Mind the Gender Gap. Nature. Vol. 495. No. 7439. P. 22—24. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/495022a
Teeuwen R. (2020) “The Dream of a Minimal Sociality: Roland Barthes” Skeptic Intensity. Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 37. No. 4. P. 119—134. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276416659695
Thomas M. (2018) Trauma, Harry Potter, and the Demented World of Academia. The Journal of Educational Thought. Vol. 51. No. 2. P. 184—203. DOI: https://doi.org/10.11575/jet.v51i
2.58452
Tönnies F. (2002) Obshchnost' i obshchestvo [Community and Society]. Saint Petersburg: Vladimir Dal'. (In Russ.)
Tunguz S. (2016) In the Eye of the Beholder: Emotional Labor in Academia Varies with Tenure and Gender. Studies in Higher Education. Vol. 41. No. 1. P. 3—20. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.914919
Valian V. (2009) Beyond Gender Schemas: Improving the Advancement of Women in Academia. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Vol. 20. No. 3. P. 198—213. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hyp.2005.0111
Van der Kolk B.A., Van der Hart O. (1991) The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma. American imago. Vol. 48. No. 4. P. 425—454.
Waddock S. (2015). Intellectual shamans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wagner A., Lynn Magnusson J. (2005) Neglected Realities: Exploring the Impact of Women’s Experiences of Violence on Learning in Sites of Higher Education. Gender and Education. Vol. 17. No. 4. P. 449—461. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250500145189
Weber M. (1990) Nauka kak prizvaniye i professiya [Science as a Vocation]. Izbrannyye proizvedeniya [Selected Works]. Transl. by German A.F. Filipova, P.P. Gaidenko. Moscow: Progress. (In Russ.)
Willmott H. (1994) Management Education: Provocations to a debate. Management Learning. Vol. 25. No. 1. P. 105—136.
Žižek Sl. (2010) O nasilii [On Violence]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Yevropa”. (In Russ.) EDN: RCCKSZ
Article
Received: 20.10.2022
Accepted: 24.12.2022
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Rodionova, M. M. (2022). The Trauma of Academia: on Attempts of Idiorrhythmic Contextualization. Interaction. Interview. Interpretation, 14(4), 10-28. https://doi.org/10.19181/inter.2022.14.4.1
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