On Labor, Embodiment, and Debt in the Academy

Abstract

This reflection is an essay—in the etymologically rooted sense of a “try”—that grapples with the deteriorating effects of the neoliberal university, in its current state of extreme precarity, on the bodies of (young) faculty of color. Mobilizing autobiography, poetry, and (non)fiction to think through questions of embodiment, I will focus on academic labor and its often injurious dimensions.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Sarah Brophy for her invitation to meditate on the theme of this special issue. I also want to thank the 2016–2017 organizing committee for the Women and Gender Studies Institute Research Seminar at the University of Toronto for their generous invitation to present an earlier version of this reflection—the interdisciplinary spirit of this forum raised questions that I continue to think through. Further thanks go to Rita Wong and Cissi Fu at Emily Carr University for inviting me to speak in their “lunch-crunch” conversations on critical race pedagogy in the university: my conversations with the students there inspired me to push on with my writing. I owe debts to too many to list here. To my friends in Rexdale; Vancouver; Hong Kong; Hamilton; Toronto; Kingston, Ontario; Kingston, Jamaica; Halifax; Guelph; New York City; Austin, Texas; Berlin; Accra; London; and Brampton, thank you: I continue to grow in your debt.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.