Postdoctoral Limbo, Holy Poverty, and Quantum Scholarship
I.
My two-year experience with postdoctoral limbo has been categorically thrilling and appalling, at once. Yet temporal limbo is relative to what one is processing—and one might escape, as opposed to eternal limbo (as described in Dante’s Divine Comedy).
Upon finishing a PhD at Deakin University, in Australia, in June 2014 (meaning formal submission), and having subsisted for almost three years on a generous International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, plus stipend and occasional paid teaching, I first escaped to Ljubljana, Slovenia, where I wrote my first postdoctoral fellowship applications: first for a US Fulbright Scholar Award (which failed); and then, one year later, for an EC Marie Skłodowska-Curie Independent Research Fellowship (which failed). What all of this convinced me of is that neoliberal academia and its penchant for measuring everything for its marketability now requires a vast deconstruction for classical and modern aspects of research in the Arts and Humanities to survive.
Upon returning to the US in late 2014, I then began writing the dozens upon dozens of applications one must endure to patch together an existence as humanist scholar today. These included innumerable teaching applications in design schools, all of which failed, and innumerable prestigious and semi-prestigious postdoctoral fellowships to study Intellectual Property Rights and the Moral Rights of Authors. Finally, after six months of writing applications, I then, in early 2015, seized upon an opportunity that had been parked since 2013 to develop a Fulbright Specialist Program project.
I headed back to Slovenia in March 2015 for a six-week series of lectures on research and publications’ strategies for scholars at the University of Ljubljana—co-sponsored by the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Arts, with support from the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory. At this same time, and six months after formally “graduating” from Deakin University, I had finished Book One of Knowledge, Spirit, Law—the “independent” postdoctoral project I had begun in Ljubljana as early as August 2014 while waiting for the external examination of my PhD to occur. The approval of the PhD occurred in September 2014, and the three years’ of intense, non-stop labor (two books published, two exhibitions curated, numerous conferences attended) produced the desired effect—a research PhD. I had carefully timed the 2014 examination to coincide with exiting Australia and setting up shop in Slovenia, giving up six months of scholarship and stipend in the bargain. I had also carefully listed serious scholars in the US, Europe, and Australia to make sure the dissertation was rigorously examined. I had half thought that the high-end examiners (at Harvard University and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna) would make the degree more valuable. The problem, as it turns out, is that the research PhD has been eclipsed by the professional PhD—the latter considered more valuable because of its direct links to the market ideology currently contaminating academia around the world.
What was to be, instead, was nearly two more years of writing from Limbo, including Book Two of Knowledge, Spirit, Law and more applications. I also became somewhat embedded—through Knowledge, Spirit, Law and the process of critiquing neoliberal academia—in an extended analysis of publishing and author rights as moral rights, a project that now extends over the horizon and into the future, with formal studies in Critical Legal Studies or Jurisprudence the desired outcome.
Thus, as of mid-2016 (the time of writing this narrative), and after nearly five years of laboring in the vineyards, the road leads to India, with a one-year Teaching Fellowship at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, based on the research and publications’ advisory that has developed out of Knowledge, Spirit, Law. This magical-realist, quantum process of near-endless applications in search of a few successful applications now also includes a one-month Research Fellowship in mid-2017 at Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, immediately following upon a Co-funded Research Residency in Venice, Italy, courtesy of the Giorgio Cini Foundation. Both of these short-term opportunities are miraculously positioned post-India to lead to the intended long-term study of Intellectual Property Rights and a defense of humanist scholarship against the diktat of Cognitive Capitalism.
II.
It is always hoped that failed applications lead to something else—something unseen (an alternative offer, a key connection, etc.). For example, in the case of the failed 2014 Fulbright Scholar application it led to the Fulbright Specialist Program project on academic IPR in 2015—with the same Slovene connections utilized in both applications. The quantum side of scholarship is definitively tied to confraternal effort, and this is one positive outcome of the so-called gig economy (or the so-called sharing economy) associated with post-capitalism. (Who knows whether or not the same people at the US Fulbright Program read both applications, rapidly approving the second, short-term version? As a result, as of mid-2016 a third application has been made, to the Fulbright Global Scholar program, to study academic publications’ ecosystems in three distinct locations, from Europe to Australasia, a search for endogenous factors hidden below the globalizing tendencies of the neoliberal appropriation and conquest of academic research.) Furthermore, in the case of an application for a paid research fellowship at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, that failed effort led to an offer of a co-funded research residency—a highly valued “consolation prize” that has been held in reserve for over a year. Thus, the consecutive Cini and BIH opportunities, as noted above, are now aligned like benevolent stars in the heavens for “post-India” 2017, and as transitional opportunities leading to Critical Legal Studies, via the hoped-for FGS option or otherwise. Yet the one-year teaching fellowship in India represents the path out of Limbo proper. Thus I am eternally grateful to my new Indian colleagues for providing this new beginning. Everything is fluid in the world of quantum scholarship—a particle a wave; and a wave a particle. . .
July 28, 2016
Ahmedabad, India
Postdoctoral Limbo, Holy Poverty, and Quantum Scholarship
I.
My two-year experience with postdoctoral limbo has been categorically thrilling and appalling, at once. Yet temporal limbo is relative to what one is processing—and one might escape, as opposed to eternal limbo (as described in Dante’s Divine Comedy).
Upon finishing a PhD at Deakin University, in Australia, in June 2014 (meaning formal submission), and having subsisted for almost three years on a generous International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, plus stipend and occasional paid teaching, I first escaped to Ljubljana, Slovenia, where I wrote my first postdoctoral fellowship applications: first for a US Fulbright Scholar Award (which failed); and then, one year later, for an EC Marie Skłodowska-Curie Independent Research Fellowship (which failed). What all of this convinced me of is that neoliberal academia and its penchant for measuring everything for its marketability now requires a vast deconstruction for classical and modern aspects of research in the Arts and Humanities to survive.
Upon returning to the US in late 2014, I then began writing the dozens upon dozens of applications one must endure to patch together an existence as humanist scholar today. These included innumerable teaching applications in design schools, all of which failed, and innumerable prestigious and semi-prestigious postdoctoral fellowships to study Intellectual Property Rights and the Moral Rights of Authors. Finally, after six months of writing applications, I then, in early 2015, seized upon an opportunity that had been parked since 2013 to develop a Fulbright Specialist Program project.
I headed back to Slovenia in March 2015 for a six-week series of lectures on research and publications’ strategies for scholars at the University of Ljubljana—co-sponsored by the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Arts, with support from the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory. At this same time, and six months after formally “graduating” from Deakin University, I had finished Book One of Knowledge, Spirit, Law—the “independent” postdoctoral project I had begun in Ljubljana as early as August 2014 while waiting for the external examination of my PhD to occur. The approval of the PhD occurred in September 2014, and the three years’ of intense, non-stop labor (two books published, two exhibitions curated, numerous conferences attended) produced the desired effect—a research PhD. I had carefully timed the 2014 examination to coincide with exiting Australia and setting up shop in Slovenia, giving up six months of scholarship and stipend in the bargain. I had also carefully listed serious scholars in the US, Europe, and Australia to make sure the dissertation was rigorously examined. I had half thought that the high-end examiners (at Harvard University and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna) would make the degree more valuable. The problem, as it turns out, is that the research PhD has been eclipsed by the professional PhD—the latter considered more valuable because of its direct links to the market ideology currently contaminating academia around the world.
What was to be, instead, was nearly two more years of writing from Limbo, including Book Two of Knowledge, Spirit, Law and more applications. I also became somewhat embedded—through Knowledge, Spirit, Law and the process of critiquing neoliberal academia—in an extended analysis of publishing and author rights as moral rights, a project that now extends over the horizon and into the future, with formal studies in Critical Legal Studies or Jurisprudence the desired outcome.
Thus, as of mid-2016 (the time of writing this narrative), and after nearly five years of laboring in the vineyards, the road leads to India, with a one-year Teaching Fellowship at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, based on the research and publications’ advisory that has developed out of Knowledge, Spirit, Law. This magical-realist, quantum process of near-endless applications in search of a few successful applications now also includes a one-month Research Fellowship in mid-2017 at Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, immediately following upon a Co-funded Research Residency in Venice, Italy, courtesy of the Giorgio Cini Foundation. Both of these short-term opportunities are miraculously positioned post-India to lead to the intended long-term study of Intellectual Property Rights and a defense of humanist scholarship against the diktat of Cognitive Capitalism.
II.
It is always hoped that failed applications lead to something else—something unseen (an alternative offer, a key connection, etc.). For example, in the case of the failed 2014 Fulbright Scholar application it led to the Fulbright Specialist Program project on academic IPR in 2015—with the same Slovene connections utilized in both applications. The quantum side of scholarship is definitively tied to confraternal effort, and this is one positive outcome of the so-called gig economy (or the so-called sharing economy) associated with post-capitalism. (Who knows whether or not the same people at the US Fulbright Program read both applications, rapidly approving the second, short-term version? As a result, as of mid-2016 a third application has been made, to the Fulbright Global Scholar program, to study academic publications’ ecosystems in three distinct locations, from Europe to Australasia, a search for endogenous factors hidden below the globalizing tendencies of the neoliberal appropriation and conquest of academic research.) Furthermore, in the case of an application for a paid research fellowship at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, that failed effort led to an offer of a co-funded research residency—a highly valued “consolation prize” that has been held in reserve for over a year. Thus, the consecutive Cini and BIH opportunities, as noted above, are now aligned like benevolent stars in the heavens for “post-India” 2017, and as transitional opportunities leading to Critical Legal Studies, via the hoped-for FGS option or otherwise. Yet the one-year teaching fellowship in India represents the path out of Limbo proper. Thus I am eternally grateful to my new Indian colleagues for providing this new beginning. Everything is fluid in the world of quantum scholarship—a particle a wave; and a wave a particle. . .
July 28, 2016
Ahmedabad, India
Discussion