I’ve been reading Dr. Lee Skallerup Bessette for several years now. She’s become famous enough to warrant an Inside Higher Ed blog and it’s there that she wrote about the dehumanization of adjuncts and zombies. (Okay, it was about the dehumanization of adjuncts and how zombies helped re-humanize her life. Maybe.)
I’ve written and presented about how the real power of “the digital†comes from being able to re-assert our humanity through this kind of intimate and informal contact with one another; simply sitting together (even virtually) and not doing much is a way to find our dignity, our humanity, in a system that works hard to dehumanize and decontexualize ourselves at every opportunity.
They also talked about people searching for dignity through their peers, and how this validation has turned us all into workaholics.
And there we have it… The real issue that I relate to these days. The workaholic, who is too afraid to not do too much because I realize my job is not very much more secure than it was on the non-tenure track, even though I’ve gotten publications and presentations.
I’m not dissing the problems of being an adjunct. I’ve been there.