One thing I'm working on now with my therapist is to let good things be good and not downplay their sheer goodness. In 2009 I published two books, but one of them was (perhaps) not quite as brilliantly original and ground-breaking as the other. I tended to downplay that one, whereas if anyone else had written it, I would see it as a major achievement. I shouldn't really see it merely as the "second best book." This book contains articles I published in Dia-f****-critics and Hispanic Review, and Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, and defined an entire debate in my field. Remember that most academics get full professor for their second book, whereas these were my third and fourth books, since I published two before tenure.
Some academics feel guilty about doing research, apparently. Even though that was what they trained to do in Graduate School. Even though it was there prowess in research (at least in part) that got them the job they have. My Latin Americanist colleagues feel guilty about teaching literature, even though teaching literature is one of the most marvelous things anyone can do - a way of spreading the wealth, so to speak. If you really love literature, as I do, then it makes sense that teaching it would be an inherently valuable thing to do.
There are enough bad things in the world already, enough problems that any individual might have. If you turn good things into bad (or not so good) things, you are not doing anyone any favors. Certain kinds of guilt really do nobody any good. I'm quite certain a poor Latin American peasant derives absolutely no benefit from the guilt of a Latin American literature professor who is uneasy about teaching literature.
28 comments:
Exactly. Moreover, the poor Lat.Am. peasant would have a lot to say to a person who isn't appreciative of their own good fortune in having a great professorial position.
I keep thinking that this kind of guilt is nothing but a pose.
Well, I don't feel guilty about teaching literature but I had guilt about research inculcated in me at some point a few years after graduate school. Some of it was by academics, and some by a therapist I went to for help with the aftereffects of child abuse - something I'd always wanted to do.
The therapist, my parents, my first job at an elite SLAC, and my original colleagues where I am now, all had different reasons for feeling hurt that I would spend time on research rather than them. And my father, a fairly well known Hispanist, is upset that I have different views than he does, and am friends with some people he dislikes.
The main thing though was a book contract I never completed - because I didn't want it, didn't agree with the editors' ideas for it, had another project I really wanted to do. But this contract came down and, given how I was trained, you have to take all contracts you get because really, you don't deserve any. I just couldn't write what the editors wanted in the end, and I haven't fully forgiven myself for not doing it and also for taking so long to realize that I might be right about that mss., and also that I had the right to have something else I was more interested in.
Sounds like a bad therapist. I had one who told me that my work would not make me happy. My idea is that you draw happiness from where you can.
But the reason I feel guilty about research is, it is where you really define yourself and that is what I am interested in it for. But since I feel guilty about having autonomy, I feel guilty about research.
My father, who was very successful, always said the thing about publishing was you didn't publish what you thought, only what would fly. I am not interested in settling for that gestalt, and I feel guilty about wanting more out of life -- it is very greedy according to my upbringing.
So the guilt about research is about:
- guilt about having own ideas
- guilt about autonomy
- guilt about putting it above ministering to fractious students and colleagues
- guilt about having confidence in own work
And it came and comes from family and from some entities in the institutions where I've worked.
Re happinss - it's not a goal, it's a side effect.
Anyway, what I am working on now re the guilt is to put it aside, consider it alien.
That was how I always dealt with it before, but in therapy it had to be considered the "real you." That was very disabling and I reject it.
The way out of it and around it, I think, is to just keep on rejecting it. Like with calisthenics, become stronger and stronger.
... and new question, re the guilty Latin Americanists: that's John Beverley et al. Isn't that fashion passe now, or are there still people tied up in knots about it?
... I once saw someone else major and lefty give a talk at the MLA about how literature was irrelevant to immigrants and would intimidate them, we should only do "cultural studies" because it was more of the people or something like that. She got a lot of flack in the Q and A and this was a few years ago already.
... Or is this guilt about literature thing still current and I've just missed it?
Autonomy is one of the basic human needs. You might as well feel guilty about breathing.
I sincerely hope the anti-literature ethos has passed. I still do hear it from time to time, and not from extremely radical people either. These are people who do like literature but are made to feel guilty about it by the John Beverly crowd, I suppose.
Ha! I feel guilty about breathing, too! I'm not kidding! But this is from childhood, it's not about academia really, although for me they all sort of run together, I was born among terrified tenure track assistant professors and absorbed their fears along with learning to speak.
I feel guilty more legitimately about not coming through. And sad. I'm in one of those large teaching load places, and I don't have time/energy to come through with all the things I'd like to. So I feel guilty toward myself, toward the profession, things like that
But, as I realize by typing it out, this is a lot more in my control, and different from the gut wrenching guilt I feel about my parents and that shrink and some self serving colleagues, all of whom I supposedly "hurt" by having my own interests and not wanting to serve theirs first.
And - now I'll stop hogging this thread and go to freakin' class. But, by that last comment I typed, I realized something - there's a double bind.
If I do what I need to do to come through for myself, my job, what I think I owe the profession, and so on, I am then betraying the family, the shrink, and some colleagues who did not *actually* have my best interests at heart.
So there's no way out of it - I'll feel bad either way. I might as well go back to thinking like a grownup. :-)
I'm not a therapist, but since you feel bad already, the thing to do is not worry about betraying a malpracticing therapist or an abusive family or jerky colleagues. Do what you have to do for yourself and do a good job for others. Allow the good things to be good and find a therapist who shares that philosophy.
Yes. But what I have my blog to rant and rave about is, I've tried to fix all of this with time management and it made it worse, because that wasn't the issue. I have felt pretty guilty about that, too!!!
My experience is that treating trauma as a time management problem just causes more trouble. It's something I've learned to be careful about in teaching, too: people who are having serious problems, even if only about intellectual issues like project design, often say their problem is time management -- and those whose problem *is* that are the ones who won't accept useful advice about it!!!
I prefer to talk about task management over time management. Time is kind of tricky to deal with, especially when there are other issues lurking behind. You can't just throw time at a problem when time is not the problem in the first place.
That's a very good point.
Apologies for hogging the thread --
I've been trying to figure out a better approach than "time" management for years and have come to a lot of realizations in just the last couple of weeks.
I also think there's a gendered aspect to all of this, although in saying so I am perhaps showing both my age and the influence of my region.
The thread is all yours. Say whatever you want.
Well, what I can formulate right now for the gendered aspect would be too rambling for a blog comment, I think.
But for me, a lot of what I think of as time management or task management is really nothing of the sort: the topics would be more like, how to stay confident in hostile workplaces, and other things like that. I hadn't realized as clearly before running into you at Undine's and now here, how true that is.
I was in a very hostile dept. for my first job and made some mistakes. I wish I could tell someone how to survive that kind of environment, but I didn't do such a good job myself.
For better or for worse, though, I was always supremely confident. My response to criticism was always to publish more. Doing well is always the best revenge.
Well, how to survive a workplace like that is to be in touch with people elsewhere every day. At two levels - people you are in touch with for research and not about other stuff at all, and people who know the type of weird situation you are in and will say yeah, that's crazy.
You also have to have a secret life. In my first job, where I was a target, I was also in an area where I had resources. In my second one, where there was just malaise, some sort of collective depression, I became a commuter and escaped the doldrums that way.
The gendered aspect of it is that institutionalized sexism still makes it easiest to gaslight women. And it's gaslighting, not out and out war, or criticism, that I've noticed to damage people. Watching for that and resisting it is the big key, I think.
And it's way too late but I learned a lot from thinking on this thread and Undine's, so thanks for the space. Two final thoughts:
In my case "guilt about research" is guilt about gender roles (I'm not supposed to like it, yet I do).
In general, I think a myth to be busted is that research is hard. Actually I don't think it's harder than the other parts of the job, and it's why we came in the first place (or at least why I did). But I think a lot of people get scared from this aura of doom about it - do or die - when really it's just part of who you are and what you are doing in life.
A fascinating thread. I understand completely where profacero is coming from in terms of guilt that is produced by the deeply ingrained idea of gender roles.
Every time when I would pick up a theory book or sit down to write, I'd hear a voice in my head telling me, "What a waste, what a waste!" The point the voice was making is that a woman shouldn't "waste" herself on such pursuits. So I totally know where this comes from.
(I've dealt with the voice since the n and it hasn't been back for a couple of years.)
Mujer que sabe latÃn, no tiene buen fin.
That's what the voice is saying. Once you translate it into those terms then you can see it's a ridiculous medieval prejudice.
I've actually never heard this before. :-)
It's quite well known. Rosario Castellanos used it for the title of a book: Mujer que sabe latÃn. It's also known in the longer form: "Mujer que sabe latÃn, no encuentra marido ni tiene buen fin."
"Doing well is always the best revenge."
-This is a very tweetable statement. It's also the kind of statement that can serve as an inspiration to very many people.
Castellanos, but also Virginia Woolf in _Three Guineas_, on the daughters of educated men.
Guilt about research: I love it, but I'd leave it for the sake of a better town.
That's the real sacrilege. "If you were serious, you'd sacrifice anything."
I answer: because I am serious, there are some things I will not sacrifice.
Post a Comment