Adjuncting like it’s 1955

I recently finished Michael Barber’s scrupulously researched biography of Alfred Schutz, “The Participating Citizen”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0791461416/qid=1130017375/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1728795-4172847?v=glance&s=books&n=507846. One of my favorite parts of the books involves Maurice Natanson’s correspondence with Schutz as he attempts to find a job shortly after finishing his dissertation. In the course of a two-year job search Natanson applied for five hundred positions before landing a position at the University of Houston in 1952. Natanson’s anecdotes of teaching ministers in training in Texas after years of immersion in emigre German philosophy in lower Manhattan demonstrates that the ‘liberal academy’ and ‘conservative Christian values’ have been in conflict for more than just the past couple of years:

I mentioned something in one of my classes about the _problem_ of immortality and one of the students said, “Do you mean the _fact_ of immortality?” When I suggested that philosophy does not begin by presupposing the dogmas of religion, a sudden chill spread over the class and people drew back as if I were going to lure them into a life of dishonor.

Natanson also notes that “When the head of the philosophy department mentioned the existence of “higher criticism”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Criticism of the Bible, a minister in his class hurled his briefcase at the teacher, rushed to his desk, and screamed ‘You son of a bitch, I’m going to stomp you through the floor.'” and that when he mentioned Darwin in one of his classes “one student became hysterical and screamed again and again, ‘Prove the earth is that old! Prove it! Go ahead and prove it!'”.

I have never had experiences like this in my classes before, but Natanson’s reflection on the financial position of the adjunct is one with which I am all too familiar:

I have entered at long last a euphoric state: I no longer have any financial worries! My situation is by now so clearly disastrous that bills and financial demands make no impression on me at all. In fact, I have entered what might be termed the “aesthetic” of finance: my interest in bills and monetary letters is with respect to the quality of prining, the type of paper, the various systems of book-keeping, the different creditors used, etc. I am like the financier who has been wiped out on the market and then continues to watch the ticker tape machine, losti n fascination of the intricate machinery that announces disaster. As both Father Divine and William Saroyan used to say: “Peace, it’s wonderful.”

Rex

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His book Leviathans at The Gold Mine has been published by Duke University Press. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org

One thought on “Adjuncting like it’s 1955

Comments are closed.