Vi, de neutrale : Skitser til udfordring af akademisk førstehed
(2017)- Abstract
- Over the past few years a Ph.D. student has occupied the academic command centre and sketched a number of renovations in order to change the university’s ongoing work to broaden the recruitment of students from homes with no study habit. The point of departure of the renovations is to direct attention to the terms and structures that people with backgrounds different than the academic norm are supposed to become a part of. Rather than focusing on how ‘they’ adapt to ‘our’ way of doing things, these investigations tries to get a closer look at what this ‘Us’ imply and how that reproduces excluding structures. The ambition is to shift the focus from ‘the Others’ to ‘the Firsts’ – from exclusion to inclusion and this concept (firstness as... (More)
- Over the past few years a Ph.D. student has occupied the academic command centre and sketched a number of renovations in order to change the university’s ongoing work to broaden the recruitment of students from homes with no study habit. The point of departure of the renovations is to direct attention to the terms and structures that people with backgrounds different than the academic norm are supposed to become a part of. Rather than focusing on how ‘they’ adapt to ‘our’ way of doing things, these investigations tries to get a closer look at what this ‘Us’ imply and how that reproduces excluding structures. The ambition is to shift the focus from ‘the Others’ to ‘the Firsts’ – from exclusion to inclusion and this concept (firstness as opposed to otherness) is put forward as a prism to co-think key elements in critical theories of normative subjectification: the understanding of hegemony from masculinity studies, the idea of normativity from (objectless) ‘queer’ (and crip) studies and the idea of unmarkedness and invisibility which is key in critical whiteness studies.
The body of research on which the renovations are based is composed of 22 interviews with senior tenured academics with family backgrounds with at least one parent holding a Ph.D and three months of fieldwork from two different university institutions with a relatively high percentage of employees reporting being brought up in academic homes. The question that is scrutinized is how a subjectification framed by academic firstness is experienced and how it is lived and demonstrated within Swedish universities. In order to investigate this, haunting, joykilling and flirtatious methodologies are brought into action creating a methodology that is ’serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious’ (Sontag 1964) and aims to find new ways to go about ‘academicness’.
The study’s main contribution is reflections around the participant’s extensive, yet unmarked efforts to position themselves as neutral and ordinary. At the center of this positioning is a longing for scientific neutrality, demonstrated in a strong belief in the justice of the meritocratic system, that blind peer reviews protect against discrimination, and that the individual subject perceives its academic accomplishments as unaffected by external factors such as gender, age, background, ethnicity etc. These efforts are read as expressions of an ideology of blindness which is based on a logic in which only that which is within someone’s sight ‘exists’ and can be acted upon. Alternative comprehensions, views and experiences are disqualified by their invisibility to the normative position and as a consequence the idea of neutrality can be generalized which makes the academic system of neutrality auto-reproducing and self-perpetuating. (Less) - Abstract (Swedish)
- Under de senaste åren har en doktorand ockuperat den akademiska ledningscentralen och skisserat ett antal renoveringar med mål att förändra premisserna för arbetet med breddad rekrytering av studenter från studieovana hem. Utgångpunkten för renoveringarna är att rikta blicken mot de villkor och strukturer, som ’de studieovana’ möter och istället för att fokusera på hur ’De’ ska anpassas till ’Oss’, försöka titta närmre på, vad detta ’Oss’ implicerar och hur det reproducerar exkluderande strukturer. Det handlar alltså om att skifta fokus från ’de Andra’ till ’de Första’ – från exkludering till inkludering. Försthet-begreppet erbjuds i undersökningen som prism för att samtänka centrala element i en normativitetskritisk subjektiveringsanalys:... (More)
- Under de senaste åren har en doktorand ockuperat den akademiska ledningscentralen och skisserat ett antal renoveringar med mål att förändra premisserna för arbetet med breddad rekrytering av studenter från studieovana hem. Utgångpunkten för renoveringarna är att rikta blicken mot de villkor och strukturer, som ’de studieovana’ möter och istället för att fokusera på hur ’De’ ska anpassas till ’Oss’, försöka titta närmre på, vad detta ’Oss’ implicerar och hur det reproducerar exkluderande strukturer. Det handlar alltså om att skifta fokus från ’de Andra’ till ’de Första’ – från exkludering till inkludering. Försthet-begreppet erbjuds i undersökningen som prism för att samtänka centrala element i en normativitetskritisk subjektiveringsanalys: hegemoniförståelsen från maskulinitetsforskningen, normativitetstanken från (objektlösa) ’queer’- (och crip-)studier, samt idéerna om omärkthet och osynlighet som är centrala i kritiska vithetsstudier.
Renoveringarna skisseras utifrån ett material baserat på dels 22 intervjuer med seniora fastanställda akademiker som alla är uppväxta i familjer med minst en disputerad förälder, dels deltagande observationer på två institutioner med en hög andel anställda med studievan bakgrund vid två olika universitet i Sverige. Frågan som undersöks är vad en subjektivering som färgas av studievan försthet innebär och hur den utspelar den sig i svensk akademia. Detta undersöks med en såväl glädjedödande, spökaktiga och flirtande metodiske strategier utifrån en ambition om att vara ’serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious’ (Sontag 1964) och som ett försök på att hitta nya vägar för vetenskapsutveckling och -förmedling.
Vad som framkommer i undersökningen är att deltagarna utför ett omfattande men o(be)märkt akademiskt positioneringsarbete. Navet i detta arbete utgörs av en längtan efter (vetenskaplig) neutralitet konkretiserad i en stark tro på det meritokratiska systemets rättvisa, på dubbelblind förhandsgranskning som garanti mot diskriminering liksom av en uppfattning om att själv vara opåverkad av ”yttre faktorer” (såsom kön, ålder, bakgrund, racialisering etc.) i sitt akademiska arbete. Detta läsas som uttryck för en blindhetsideologi, som bygger på en logik om att enbart det, som ryms inom någons synfält ’finns’ och behöver ageras på. Alternativa uppfattningar/upplevelser/synvinklar diskvalificeras genom deras osynlighet för det studievana subjektet. Därmed upprätthålls den neutrala berättelsens generaliserbarhet och den görs till den måttstock som alla bedöms efter. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/47cd8c39-6961-4cb6-abab-22c2aadbf70e
- author
- Brade, Lovise Haj LU
- supervisor
- opponent
-
- Professor Nina Lykke, University of Linköping
- organization
- alternative title
- We the non-subjective : Sketches to challenge academic firstness
- Vi, dom neutrala
- publishing date
- 2017
- type
- Thesis
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- akademin, breddad rekrytering, försthet, normkritik, studievana, cap-etnografi, spöken, academia, student recruitment, firstness, study-habit, cap-entography, ghosts, normcritical
- pages
- 357 pages
- publisher
- Lund University
- defense location
- Kulturen auditorium, Tegnérsplatsen 6, Lund
- defense date
- 2017-05-05 13:15:00
- ISBN
- 978-91-7753-210-1
- 978-91-7753-211-8
- language
- Danish
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 47cd8c39-6961-4cb6-abab-22c2aadbf70e
- date added to LUP
- 2017-03-29 14:05:21
- date last changed
- 2021-02-25 13:48:09
@phdthesis{47cd8c39-6961-4cb6-abab-22c2aadbf70e,
abstract = {{Over the past few years a Ph.D. student has occupied the academic command centre and sketched a number of renovations in order to change the university’s ongoing work to broaden the recruitment of students from homes with no study habit. The point of departure of the renovations is to direct attention to the terms and structures that people with backgrounds different than the academic norm are supposed to become a part of. Rather than focusing on how ‘they’ adapt to ‘our’ way of doing things, these investigations tries to get a closer look at what this ‘Us’ imply and how that reproduces excluding structures. The ambition is to shift the focus from ‘the Others’ to ‘the Firsts’ – from exclusion to inclusion and this concept (firstness as opposed to otherness) is put forward as a prism to co-think key elements in critical theories of normative subjectification: the understanding of hegemony from masculinity studies, the idea of normativity from (objectless) ‘queer’ (and crip) studies and the idea of unmarkedness and invisibility which is key in critical whiteness studies.<br/>The body of research on which the renovations are based is composed of 22 interviews with senior tenured academics with family backgrounds with at least one parent holding a Ph.D and three months of fieldwork from two different university institutions with a relatively high percentage of employees reporting being brought up in academic homes. The question that is scrutinized is how a subjectification framed by academic firstness is experienced and how it is lived and demonstrated within Swedish universities. In order to investigate this, haunting, joykilling and flirtatious methodologies are brought into action creating a methodology that is ’serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious’ (Sontag 1964) and aims to find new ways to go about ‘academicness’. <br/>The study’s main contribution is reflections around the participant’s extensive, yet unmarked efforts to position themselves as neutral and ordinary. At the center of this positioning is a longing for scientific neutrality, demonstrated in a strong belief in the justice of the meritocratic system, that blind peer reviews protect against discrimination, and that the individual subject perceives its academic accomplishments as unaffected by external factors such as gender, age, background, ethnicity etc. These efforts are read as expressions of an ideology of blindness which is based on a logic in which only that which is within someone’s sight ‘exists’ and can be acted upon. Alternative comprehensions, views and experiences are disqualified by their invisibility to the normative position and as a consequence the idea of neutrality can be generalized which makes the academic system of neutrality auto-reproducing and self-perpetuating.}},
author = {{Brade, Lovise Haj}},
isbn = {{978-91-7753-210-1}},
keywords = {{akademin; breddad rekrytering; försthet; normkritik; studievana; cap-etnografi; spöken; academia; student recruitment; firstness; study-habit; cap-entography; ghosts; normcritical}},
language = {{dan}},
publisher = {{Lund University}},
school = {{Lund University}},
title = {{Vi, de neutrale : Skitser til udfordring af akademisk førstehed}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/50695842/Vi_de_neutrale_Lovise_Haj_Brade_revideret_version_2018.pdf}},
year = {{2017}},
}