rejection

It stings. For a good while it stings. Last week in the space of 24 hours I got two rejections for the same book project. The first one dispensed with any sentimentality and in two sentences said no. The second one was slightly more apologetic, offered a somewhat complimentary note on the interest value of the topic and suggested other publishers who might have the capacity to accommodate the book. Now I wonder how I could have been so naive, so childish in my expectations. My original pitch was so flawed, so amateurish in so many ways. I missed an opportunity.

Talking to a more seasoned, astute and connected Professor this morning, he confirmed what had started to dawn on me: I was too connected and attached to my project and my articulation of the project that I was unable to tailor my 'message' for the intended audience. Not a journal editor, but a publisher interested in whether or not this project would be financially viable. So I made this elaborate academic article, but failed to say, in plain, accessible English what the book was about and why people would be interested in buying it. In my wildest dreams I never thought I would think, let alone say - 'I'd prefer to write this for a journal editor'. I feel out of my depth doing a marketing pitch without the comfort and support of my carefully crafted academic argument.

Nevermind, I live to see another day and draft another book proposal.

This collection offers a view into the everyday classroom realities of SA university lecturers teaching first years. Their reflective accounts show how they attempt to improve their teaching practices and respond to the diverse academic needs of their students.

This is the two-liner I'm currently contemplating for a proposal that only wants a 40 word description of the book. Interested?

on being a black woman academic in South Africa

This is a reluctant account of how I've experienced academia in South Africa as a black woman. In the last two or three years in the wake of the #Rhodesmustfall and #FEESMUSTFALL student protests and calls for the decolonisation of the curriculum, of the university, of alles, much as been said about the black experience of academia in South Africa. I've stood on the sidelines, feeling inept and ill-equipped to respond, to contribute to the debate and discussion. I worried that I lacked the necessary or appropriate theoretical or conceptual languages of description most of the other commentators were using and that my 'story' wouldn't line up perfectly with the kind of narratives getting the most traction. The main theme of most of these narratives is that academia is a negative and toxic place for black academics and that most universities, but especially the previously liberal white institutions, make it almost impossible for black staff to reach the same levels of achievement as their white peers or that when black academics do succeed, it comes huge personal costs. While, I'm not going to dismiss the validity of this particular narrative or the experiences of individuals that might have lead to the construction of this perspective of being a black academic in SA, I think some refinement and nuance could expand the narrative and reaffirm the variation of experience. Thus while this theme might be rather prominent in our current discourse, it is but a narrative; not the only one.

What's academia like - according to Lynn

Academia is not an open, inclusive and welcoming professional environment. Rarely will you be greeted at the gates with warm, open arms by colleagues keen to offer you all the support and development opportunities you need to become the very best sociologists, physicists, historian, economists, educationalist you can be. The progression up the ladder of success is clearly demarcated and carefully policed; then further tainted with visible and invisible hierarchies of status and privileged conferred on certain institutions, departments, individual scholars. So that your hard earned PhD might not be bestowed with the same quality or legitimacy, as those of your colleagues. Then it is unlikely that your hand be held by an experienced, seasoned and gentle scholar as you attempt to 'break' into the publication world, affirming all your ideas and writing attempts and ready to offer sage advice and a shoulder to cry on when the article you pissed blood to write, is unceremoniously rejected. Also nobody will be at hand to walk you through the indecipherable and many times incomprehensible application processes for study, research or sabbatical leave or conference funding. You will find lots of networks, cliques and cabals that advance their own interests and privilege. These are defined on the basis of discipline, sub-discipline, race, gender, or any other delimiter, arbitrary or not. So just like in high school, but unlike high school, the stakes here can make or break your research career. Similarly, it is assumed that if you have a Masters or PhD, you can teach, develop a curriculum and understand and implement the necessary pedagogic strategies deemed crucial to enhance your students' learning. Again don't expect that anyone will show you the ropes.

Academia is a highly performative environment where the object of display and performance is your individual cognitive and intellectual ability - all your worth is locked down in your capacity to display and prove your knowledge and intelligence associated with your discipline. Furthermore, the manner of this display and how you represent your intellectual worth is governed by particular norms and conventions very often linked to language use specific to your discipline or sub-discipline. So it’s not enough to know, you also need to know and master how to express what you know. If you are keen to move up the ladder of success within the academy you have to show excellence in teaching and scholarship. However, in most university sectors, both locally and internationally, research trumps teaching. So in order to build your research profile and publish you will have to, especially in your early career, do most of your research and publication writing after hours, because most of your 'work hours' will be spent servicing your teaching and administrative obligations.

Unfortunately, the discrimination, prejudice, racism, sexism, ageism and meanness that pervades our society isn't blocked at the university gates. Instead it finds fertile ground and is accentuated in a professional environment built on the mostly subjective evaluation of intellectual acumen; with the one's doing the evaluation imbued with all the power. Add to the mix a healthy component of mean, egotistical people who come in all the race, gender and class shapes and sizes, and you have a setting for a perfect storm.

Insert Lynn - a black woman academic

• I've worked in higher education for more than twenty years, doing many different things. I started to lecture just over 15 years ago, but I only started to self-identify as an academic about 10 years ago when I started to engage and participate in the scholarly debates and dissemination of knowledge associated with my disciplinary field.
• I've only ever worked at a historically black institution (although now it’s part of a merged institution).
• The only position I was even held back from was for a more senior coordinating role. Even though I was more qualified (I was the only lecturer with a Masters degree) and had more experience than my colleagues, my black male boss at the time didnt think I was suitable. I was the only female working on the programme and the position was awarded to my male colleague.
• A request for conference funding was once turned down by my black male boss. I decided to pay for the conference myself.
• I was removed from my teaching allocation on a course by my black male boss, because I was deemed to be too critical of the curriculum content and pedagogic approaches used. He also refused to appoint me as course leader even though I was the only female PhD lecturer in the department, and the course I was teaching on was in my specialist area. I had to 'report' to a junior female member of staff who had a contract position.
• Male colleagues of all hues and persuasions have thought it ok to comment randomly on my appearance, clothes, weight, marital status, or disregard my title in communiques while paying careful attention to correctly apply the all important, prefix signifiers of rank, when referring to all the other male recipients.
• I have been referred to as a 'token black' by black female colleagues, who seemingly feel I'm not suitably qualified to work in my current domain, even though they don’t have any experience in the said domain.
• I have encountered black male colleagues who fail to acknowledge both my qualifications and reporting role, and constantly defer to my white male boss, even when I'm at the same meeting.
• I've seen how white research networks operate and how access to these networks are carefully controlled. Membership is bestowed to only the most suitable black academics. When you say no, you worry for your reputation and career progression.
• Friendships, authentic collegial and intellectual engagements are possible across race, class, gender and age divides. It’s hard to find, but I've flourished as an academic from the many genuine and supportive relationships I've managed to develop at my own university and with colleagues in my region and internationally. These relationships jump happily cross whatever  race, gender, class, age, cultural 'barrier' put in its way.

MPhil, UCT 2007

So what is it like to be a black woman in academia in South Africa? It depends really - on where you work, who you work with and who you work for. All these variables along with who you are as a person will coalesce and determine what it means for you. It’s a tough space, generally, and there are personal and structural factors that either compound and exacerbate that toughness or smooth it over. 

For me being an academic is almost a constant struggle against all that I am, because who I am is in so many ways at odd with the norms, conventions and predispositions of academia. The academy and its many people, unfortunately, have a low tolerance for difference – so if you don’t look, sound, behave, think or share the same values as those who have the power to define the norms and conventions – then you are more likely to have a difficult time. And often time the structures inherent in the institutional fabric will allow those in power to exercise their power in harmful ways. I’ve been on the receiving end of this kind of power (and meanness) held by both white and black men and women. In spite of this I've been moderately successful, I believe because I have, in part, being able to harness social capital gained from going to a white university and then completing my PhD in the UK. But I also have a particular personality - 'I don't take kak from kabouters' - and if I want something I find a way, legally and ethically, to get it. And I 'graf''. I do the work. Some of the challenges I face are linked to my race, ethnicity and gender, others reference the cultural capital I either possess or don’t (manifested in how I sound when I talk or my writing style). Luckily for me, these challenges, have been only that - challenges, that I constantly have to work at and navigate around. And I’ve found support in the most unlikely places and so have avoided those perfect storm conditions, that can make your life as an academic truly toxic and negative. 

This is a reluctant and incomplete account of being a black woman academic in South Africa - heavily inflected by time and place. I've tried to make sense of my own experiences and how it 'fits' into other narratives and discourses circulating at the moment. Hopefully, my story doesn't deny the other stories being told, but builds out just how discrimination and power manifests within the university. 

academic writing: a view from the sidelines

I'm on the sidelines as I watch other people write. Before I had only ever observed and reflected on my own experiences of trying to be an academic writer, as much of this blog bears testament to. I thought, naively, that my own struggles with academic writing would prepare me and allow me to be the supportive, encouraging and understanding 'coach', very optimistic and enthusiastically cheering from the sidelines. I thought I would understand and would comprehend.

This is what I brought along to my sidelined observations: Academic writing is difficult, in the beginning, especially, you think you can write but the reviewers often say you can't. Understanding and applying the 'conventions' and stylistic norms that will allow your writing to be recognised as legitimate is not as easy as 'copying' the forms and styles used by your favourite author. Sometimes doing this, simply signals now 'wrong' you got it. Writers, and especially novice writers, struggle with the huge psychological burden of knowing they don't 'come' with what they think are the necessary or expected linguistic repertoires or fluent and extensive vocabularies. And many times these very resources, especially when they are not recognised or (mis)recognised, mark these writers as 'outsiders' and becomes the source of a vicious and crippling circle of shame and fear associated with academic writing. Reviewer feedback is overwhelming, especially when its not filled with overt praise and affirmation. Its very hard to unbundle your personal and emotional investment in an argument, a sentence, a paragraph, an idea from commentary that suggests, someone else doesn't actually understand or get what you are saying.

From my own writing experiences and trying to mediate all the factors listed above as they play out in my own journey as a somewhat reluctant and self-conscious academic writer, I know that it always takes way longer to write a sentence, a paragraph, an article than you anticipate. You have to work through the reviewer comments carefully and try to see beyond your attachments. You have to seek out feedback and opportunities to talk and talk and talk some more about your work, your writing. And you have to continue to write - you have to put an immense amount of effort, energy, commitment into that act and work through all the freaking demons, weighing you down and distorting your own sense of yourself as a writer.

I'm reminded of the old adage about being a good, effective teacher: You have to grasp the limitations of your own experiences of being taught. As a teacher merely repeating what you saw your old teachers do can frequently leave you on the back foot. Even if you experienced really good teaching - simply emulating your past teachers, without trying to critically interrogate the usefulness or suitability of their practices - can severely limit your own teaching practices and your growth as a teacher. This lesson, is ringing true for me now. I'm finding that my own ongoing journey (very ongoing) as an academic writer has not equipped me as well as I would have hoped, to really understand, let alone support, others on this very same journey.