Event Title

Publish(ed) and Perish(ing): Tenured (Out) in Music and Music Education

Start Date

31-5-2011 10:30 AM

End Date

31-5-2011 11:00 AM

Description

“We’re equals, aren’t we, double-oh seven?” M asks in a video made in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. As spoken by Judi Dench, the question is posed after a statement she knows to be inaccurate: “We’re equals. Aren’t we, double-oh seven?” M then deploys data to articulate how men and women are not equals in society, personally or professionally. Asking the question one last time, “Are we equals?” she concludes at the end of the video, “Until the answer is yes we must never stop asking.” With this presentation, I ask the question not in terms of equality, which is both impossible and undesirable, but in terms of actuality. Are we leaders? Leadership in any profession implies work that seeks to make difference, work interested in potentialities of change. Rather than prescribing or proscribing, excluding or silencing, leaders engage individuals and groups inside and outside of the profession to explore all aspects of its discourses and practices—with the feminist imperative to make it better, to make it a profession where dissensus is valued and space is created in which all may thrive. Are we tenure-ing?—anyone other than white men? Academic leadership is defined in terms of tenure, achieved primarily through publishing the right research in the right journals and the right books, all approved by the right reviewers and right editors. As leaders, we address in contingent and provisional ways ongoing concerns related to the “publish or perish” ultimatum and how it—in neo-Marxist terms, reifies; in post-structural terms, disciplines; and in critical feminist terms, legitimates specific parameters and paradigms of scholarly activities and so-called collegial relations—and when it is carried to its logical conclusion of denying tenure through vague and malleable criteria applied in secret and easily corrupted processes—how the ultimatum and abuses it supports then disrupt lives, damage and too often end careers, and impoverish the profession—and us within it. My purpose is Deleuzian (to incite perhaps one tiny revolution) and feminist (through an outrageous act for simple justice), as I enact potential uses of publishing and tenuring in music and music education that might do something-s, provoked by and addressed to lived experience in an ethics—as opposed to metaphysics—of presence; an ethics “in the presence of” (Stengers, 2005). Publishing and tenuring decisions exist in “a dangerous world” of irrational reason and false truths that renders them ethical only when we make them out of time as slowly as possible, hesitating in the presence of those who directly bear their consequences, which are always already material and real: actual. Addressing each other openly and publically, we engage compassion instead of contempt, respect instead of resentment, honour instead of humiliation, becoming leaders worthy of the very publishing and tenuring decisions we make. So. Are we leaders? Are we leading here? Hollaback.

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May 31st, 10:30 AM May 31st, 11:00 AM

Publish(ed) and Perish(ing): Tenured (Out) in Music and Music Education

“We’re equals, aren’t we, double-oh seven?” M asks in a video made in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. As spoken by Judi Dench, the question is posed after a statement she knows to be inaccurate: “We’re equals. Aren’t we, double-oh seven?” M then deploys data to articulate how men and women are not equals in society, personally or professionally. Asking the question one last time, “Are we equals?” she concludes at the end of the video, “Until the answer is yes we must never stop asking.” With this presentation, I ask the question not in terms of equality, which is both impossible and undesirable, but in terms of actuality. Are we leaders? Leadership in any profession implies work that seeks to make difference, work interested in potentialities of change. Rather than prescribing or proscribing, excluding or silencing, leaders engage individuals and groups inside and outside of the profession to explore all aspects of its discourses and practices—with the feminist imperative to make it better, to make it a profession where dissensus is valued and space is created in which all may thrive. Are we tenure-ing?—anyone other than white men? Academic leadership is defined in terms of tenure, achieved primarily through publishing the right research in the right journals and the right books, all approved by the right reviewers and right editors. As leaders, we address in contingent and provisional ways ongoing concerns related to the “publish or perish” ultimatum and how it—in neo-Marxist terms, reifies; in post-structural terms, disciplines; and in critical feminist terms, legitimates specific parameters and paradigms of scholarly activities and so-called collegial relations—and when it is carried to its logical conclusion of denying tenure through vague and malleable criteria applied in secret and easily corrupted processes—how the ultimatum and abuses it supports then disrupt lives, damage and too often end careers, and impoverish the profession—and us within it. My purpose is Deleuzian (to incite perhaps one tiny revolution) and feminist (through an outrageous act for simple justice), as I enact potential uses of publishing and tenuring in music and music education that might do something-s, provoked by and addressed to lived experience in an ethics—as opposed to metaphysics—of presence; an ethics “in the presence of” (Stengers, 2005). Publishing and tenuring decisions exist in “a dangerous world” of irrational reason and false truths that renders them ethical only when we make them out of time as slowly as possible, hesitating in the presence of those who directly bear their consequences, which are always already material and real: actual. Addressing each other openly and publically, we engage compassion instead of contempt, respect instead of resentment, honour instead of humiliation, becoming leaders worthy of the very publishing and tenuring decisions we make. So. Are we leaders? Are we leading here? Hollaback.