I was listening to radio coverage of the COVID-19 inquiry yesterday and it was remarkable to hear suddenly revealed sentiments by people who were secretly expressing their horror at the incompetence or cruelty of the people they were working with or under whilst Britain tried to mobilize an effective social response to the pandemic. The radio commentator quipped that academics everywhere are reconsidering their use of whatsapp. But I think there’s another opportunity here.
I was struck by the symmetries between that dysfunction which has been revealed over the past decade within the government and health service and my experience of working in higher education. As I’ve drifted into executive leadership in various professional roles I’ve been, with increasing frequency, confronted by policy design that causes oppression to others. When we discuss these things, the group consensus is often, “yes, we all agree it’s not great, but right now it’s too costly to be seen as noncompliant or it’s simply impossible to make changes here so I need to save my energy for another fight later” In some cases I’d expected disagreement, but instead I found some form of fear, apathy or tactics of non-confrontation. By extension, our organisations, especially in non-profit sector, are often saturated by a culture of excessive compliance. This is so pronounced that our organisational risk aversion can even result in the phenomenon of over-compliance (see the “Tickell report” for more on this).
It’s worth noting how this posture can arise from a variety of contexts as I’ve already hinted above. Some people may be deploying compliance as a tactic of resistance, e.g. choosing battles strategically or trying to stay under the radar where hostile opposition is imagined. In other cases, this can be a result of a firm belief in incremental progress (a small-c conservative value with which I’m very familiar). Or, in some cases, there may be a sense by a person that I’m too tired and traumatized to fight anymore, so I’m just keeping my head down as I need to be able to buy groceries and pay for my mortgage.
My research in ethics tends to focus on analysis of the genealogy of contemporary moral philosophy inasmuch as it conveys symmetries and dissymmetries with the 20th century. And what I’ve found is that as we survey the various forms of violence which were mobilized decisively in that age of technological and economic progress, we can see that in many cases evil arose from fear, apathy and tactics designed to avoid confrontation. It is particularly striking to observe the ways that national socialism in Germany and other fascist movements around Europe were cultivated in Universities through the introduction of small incremental policies designed to create a “hostile environment,” for “weird” folk like me, enhance fear of non-compliance, and magnify the sense of risk hovering at the gates. I’ve also observed that right alongside cultures of compliance, there were adjacent outlier movements which sought to capture idea of non-compliance as a specifically fascist ideal, situating it within the very movements that we might seek to resist, and perhaps magnifying the “everyday” discomfort with this form of action.
About four years ago, I was looking at statistics around representation in my own scholarly discipline and feeling righteous and enraged that more hadn’t been done. And as I began to look around at who I might cast blame upon for this situation, it dawned on me that in spite of my continuing awareness of my own precarity, I now occupied the elite category. In some ways, there were almost no elite categories above me in my organisation. Grappling with this led me to make a decision that when I am confronted by a policy or phenomenon that causes violence and harm to others and I cannot identify someone with more power than me who is active in confronting it, I will make it my problem.
I’ve started in some quite modest ways. People who know me well will appreciate that I am not a “fast mover”. Nevertheless, even the work of asking questions and observing problems has made my life more and not less difficult. I’ve been accused of bullying or of defiance and subversive intentions. Some former collaborators quietly disappeared, and others began to more frequently resist even ordinary requests. I’ve been accused of laziness. And I’ve done a lot of apologizing. I’ve been confronted with the quite intense levels of anxiety that flood in when you stop seeking shelter.
Reflecting on this all this weekend, it felt like it might be time to report on what I’ve learned and what’s next. Here are six conclusions I’ve arrived at:
This work may not be safe to undertake for many people: I do not underestimate the ways that colleagues, especially when they are navigating some form of un-concealable difference, precarity, or vulnerability, might find this kind of work exposes them to forms of surveillance, control, anxiety and fear that are too much to navigate. I know many people are actively seeking employment in other sectors and places (but also discovering that this form of experience is more widespread than they had anticipated).
You need friends: One of the most crucial things has been the formation of mutual aid networks, in some cases formed by friends who recognised the need to create a safe space for others. It’s crucial to have people to speak to about the things you discover, register your concern, and test out whether your reactions are warranted. In some cases, it’s a matter of friends telling you to slow down, work strategically, and helping you to expand your network in strategic ways. But I think as the narratives around resilience become more intense, it’s important to observe that the formation of support networks really isn’t enough. We need to find the energy and develop the skill to speak truthfully in places where it will be uncomfortable.
Conflict is not abuse: But people will often think it is. This phrase comes from Sarah Schulman’s book, “Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair” (with a h/t to Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s “Elite Capture” for directing me to it). You will frequently experience contexts where other people will find the mere presence of overt disagreement and the initiation of conflict as abusive. Sometimes this will lead to disengagement. In other cases you may find yourself unexpectedly suffering sanction or surveillance as a “subversive” agent, for daring to express disagreement or frustration, especially if it is outside of an expressly interpersonal space.
Less antagonism… we’re not enemies: I’ve learned here from Chantal Mouffe, who foregrounds the work of “agonism” as a contrast to “antagonism”. I’d describe the former as “disagreement which is sustained for the sake of some mutual work”. Far too often people assume that you are trying to be antagonistic because they conflate conflict with abuse. And to be fair, many of our movements of resistance do veer towards antagonism far too often and forget the work of organising needs to be maximally inclusive (because of rage, oppression, or learning yet to be done). For me, this means that, at least in terms of how we procedurally approach our organisations, there are no enemies. If we organise our work around simple binaries of “good person” and “bad person,” “workers” and “management” it’s really quite hard to engage in the work of agonism. There isn’t always good faith in working with specific individuals, but the concept here is that we’re striving to develop social infrastructure where disagreement can be heard and changes approached as a form of discursive activity.
Sometimes we need to work on the margins and in the undercommons: I’m grateful to scholar and activist Nick Anim for directing me to Vincent W. Lloyd’s book, “Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination.” Lloyd is unflinching in his diagnosis of modern universities, concluding that they may have become spaces where political deliberation and justice is simply impossible. Pressing for matters of justice and equality can seem quite hopeless in cultures of compliance, so Lloyd observes – drawing on the wisdom of Black activists in the USA in the 20th century – that we may need to create (tuition-free, nonhierarchical) spaces which are adjacent to the University so that we can begin to engage in these kinds of conversations. Just like there may be insurmountable barriers to conversations about repair and reform within our institutions, so too, these kinds of truthful conversations about justice and equity I am suggesting here may simply be impossible, the enclosure of our intellectual spaces may be too complete.
We are inexperienced: Finally, and perhaps most of all, I’ve learned that doing the work is hard. Especially in mainstream spaces, we have long since discarded and lost access to generational knowledge which might inform mature forms of mutual aid and agonism. I have gotten things wrong, emphasised my point too strenuously, underestimated the vulnerability of others, and caused unnecessary discomfort for collaborators. I’ve also learned so much about the unexpected challenges that wait in store for us when we start to form communities of collective support and deliberation. Our internal arguments with allies can be far more rancorous and draining, and we need to be prepared to proactively pace ourselves and care for one another as we learn. This learning is a mutual process, which requires some level of self-disclosure and vulnerability.
