Area
Early View
SPECIAL SECTION
Open Access

For diffident geographies and modest activisms: Questioning the ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE academy

John Horton, 

Corresponding Author

John Horton

Faculty of Education & Humanities, University of Northampton, Northampton, UK

Correspondence

John Horton

Email: [email protected]

Search for more papers by this author
First published: 28 January 2020
https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12610
Citations: 7

Abstract

This commentary interleaves autoethnographic reflections and qualitative data to develop two critical reflections on “gentleness” in contemporary spaces of academia and activism. First, somewhat autoethnographically, I question how normative styles of academic performance and self-presentation often lead us to efface and devalue gentleness, and be complicit in presenting ourselves and performing research in ways that are ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE. I argue that, consequently, all kinds of everyday academic awkwardnesses, worries, and anxieties have come to be positioned as non-normative personal-professional failings. Second, reflecting on research with young anti-austerity activists in England, I consider the unsettling, but often characteristic, presence of modesty, awkwardness, and self-doubt in spaces of activism. I argue that normative idealisations of “impact” within the contemporary academy can often lead us to value only those modes of social impact which are unabashedly substantial, muscular, large-scale, self-confident, and readily narratable as such. By contrast, I am often struck by the way that affirmative, transformative activisms are done and described in ways which are much more hesitant, self-doubtful, or modest than this: for example, through narratives of “just getting on,” “just coping,” or “just what we do.” Through these reflections I argue that an attunement to gentleness should permit greater appreciation of awkwardness, diffidence, shyness, modesty, and self-doubt in spaces of academia and activism. Moreover, I argue that these kinds of gentleness might form points of critique and solidarity within and against the ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE academy.

Abstract

This commentary uses autoethnographic reflections and qualitative data to question how normative styles of academic writing and self-presentation efface and devalue gentleness. It highlights the prevalence of awkwardness, worry, and anxiety in the academy and contrasts the gentle modesty, awkwardness, and self-doubt of young anti-austerity activists with the problematically muscular, self-confident kinds of “Impact” which are valorised in much academic research.

Questions

Do you ever feel like packing it all in, getting away from academia? Why is that?

1 INTRODUCTION

Finn and Jeffries's (this volume) editorial on “gentle geographies” calls for greater engagement with, and valuing of, “gentleness” in research and practice: i.e., “the act of limiting or moderating capacities to affect others in ways that could otherwise cause harm.” This commentary interleaves autoethnographic reflections and qualitative data to develop two critical reflections on this call for greater gentleness. First, somewhat autoethnographically, I question how normative styles of academic performance and self-presentation often lead us to efface gentleness, and perform our research and ourselves in ways that are ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE.1 Second, reflecting on research with young anti-austerity activists in England, I consider the unsettling, but often characteristic, presence of modesty, awkwardness, and self-doubt in spaces of activism. Through these reflections I argue that an attunement to gentleness should allow greater appreciation of awkwardness, diffidence, shyness, modesty, humility, and self-doubt in contemporary spaces of academia and activism. Moreover, I argue that these kinds of gentleness might form points of critique and solidarity within and against the ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE academy.

2 DIFFIDENCE, HUMILITY, AND HUMILIATION IN THE ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE ACADEMY

The call to act gently feels urgent and subversive precisely because “gentleness” stands for a range of experiences, capacities, and dispositions which can seem undervalued and underrepresented within many spaces of contemporary academia. Specifically, gentleness encourages an ethics of considerate, generous humility; it also constitutes a critique of spaces and practices characterised by an absence of gentle humility. Moreover, by extension, I argue that gentleness acknowledges and politicises humility as a manifestation of humiliation, awkwardness, vulnerability, anxiety, worry, uncertainty, marginalisation, self-doubt, and unease, not least by implying how these experiences are commonplace in, but overwhelmingly silenced by, many spaces of contemporary academia. As such, Finn and Jeffries's (2019) call for gentler geographies opens a space to reflect and act on multiple lines of critical work: from classic feminist critiques of normatively masculinist and otherwise exclusionary spaces of disciplinary Geography (Rose, 1993; Women and Geography Study Group [WGSG], 1997), to more recent calls to celebrate inclusive, caring, collegiate scholarly practices and foster more diverse, inclusive, anti-oppressive disciplines and institutions (Esson et al., 2017); and from longstanding critiques of (un)wellness in the neoliberal academy (Berg et al., 2016; Caretta et al., 2018; Horton & Tucker, 2014; Mullings et al., 2016) to attempts to openly articulate experiences of uncertainty (Gibson-Graham, 1994), “failure” (Harrowell et al., 2018), and “loserdom” (Harrison, 2015) therein.

3 MORE QUESTIONS

In particular, I find that the articulation of gentle geographies prompts – indeed, necessitates – an insistent questioning of many norms, habits, and preconditions of contemporary academic lives. In this spirit, this section presents five sets of questions as prompts for critical reflection. I would describe these questions as somewhat autoethnographic. They are plainly rooted in particularly located personal experiences. However, over several drafts and presentations, this section has shifted from a kind of autoethnographical confessional – narrating previously undisclosed moments of embarrassment, anxiety, shame, and diffidence as an academic2 – towards a more interrogative style. The following questions are from me, but no longer just about me.3 They are written from my own deeply felt experiences of diffidence and anxiety, but invite wider, collaborative questioning of how gentleness is effaced, and ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE identities are performed, within the contemporary academy. Underpinning these questions is a sense that collectively questioning and disclosing experiences of diffidence, humiliation, shame, and marginalisation can enable critique – and also solidarity, collegiality, and community – in hopes of gentler academic lives, institutions, and disciplines. Questions focus, respectively, on how ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE-ness is sustained and extended through normative styles of academic writing, speaking, conferencing, meeting, and fitting in.

  1. Writing ourselves

    … Do you ever look at your website profile or CV and not recognise yourself? Like, when you see all these impressive qualifications, achievements, and esteem indicators (cleverly narrated to highlight one's heroic productivity and bigtime economic competitiveness within the neoliberal academy, of course), do you really feel like that person? Or do you feel some kind of disconnect between the person in the CV and the person you feel like? Like you've somehow become alienated from the person you're meant to be? Does that make sense? Or maybe it's more of a nagging discomfort with status per se, or performances of careerist ambition? Do you feel that discomfort, but keep on writing yourself as powerful, competitive, and world-leading nevertheless? Do you just feel like you're never going to be one of those impressive, charismatic, eloquent, media-friendly scholars? (Even though your CV suggests that's what you are or should be?) Do you ever worry that we are so used to writing ourselves and our research in a particular way that we have lost the knack of writing our selves and our research in our own distinctive voice?…

  2. Speaking

    … Does public speaking still make you anxious, even after lots of practice? Do you ever think – or know, or physically feel in your body somehow – that, even though you have done lots of lectures or presentations, it is not really your métier and you still have the capacity to fail at it? Do you worry about it beforehand, and dwell on it afterwards? Like, even though you get positive feedback, and on some level you feel proud that you have worked really hard to get to this stage, you never feel like it has gone well? When you read Geoghegan (2015, unpaginated) saying, “for me, public-speaking will always involve a certain element of risk – an emotional and personal risk. The knot in my stomach. I used to think these feelings were bad. I’d avoid any occasion to speak in public, even in small meetings. I wouldn't risk it. I hated how it made me feel,” do you know that feeling, or something like it? And yet, do you find yourself constituting spaces which put others through precisely this kind of feeling? How might we create spaces that are inclusive and supportive for people who feel like that, where people shouldn't feel obliged to perform like some kind of TEDTalk superstar? …

  3. Conferencing

    … Do you find most academic conferences profoundly trying and anxiety-inducing? Like, you want to be there and you love hearing about new research, but there's an underlying anxiety that makes you wonder if it is worth the heartache? Like, you feel a long way from home? Like, everyone there seems super-confident and comfortable and you know you will never be one of those people? Don't you hate being the centre of attention? Does “networking” seem like an existential nightmare to you? Does it worry you that some people seem to love all that stuff? And the whole business of taking questions from the audience: how often have you seen something awkward, showboat-y, or borderline inappropriate happening in that context? (Maybe 30%–50% of the time?) Are there particular conference memories that make you wince? Maybe certain cities that are now indelibly associated with a tough conference experience? Do you feel pretty ill and unhappy after most big conferences too? …

  4. Meeting

    … Do you ever sit in important meetings and wonder what you are doing there? Do you wonder who are these people who unashamedly want to be in charge, centre stage, imposing their will? Where do they get their self-assurance, their well-groomed presence, their alpha assertiveness and belligerence? What's with all their hierarchies, sideward glances, well-cut suits, and decades-long enmities? Doesn't it make you thankful for colleagues who are supportive and collegiate and try to do things differently? Do you know lots of people who could make thoughtful, progressive, great, circumspect contributions, but who wouldn't feel able to speak up in a space like this? When you read Caretta et al. (2018, p. 261) saying “who can – and indeed wants to – play this game?,” do you understand what they mean (while finding yourself playing along yourself)? Don't you feel ground down by it all? By people seeking the trappings of status and power; by intense workloads; by endless neoliberal restructurings and efficiency measures; by a sense that life could be otherwise? …

  5. Fitting in

    … What things have you done to “fit in” as an academic? Do you feel that your identity, background, or personality make you ill-suited for – or fundamentally out-of-place within – academia? When you read about the gendered, classed, ableist, not-decolonised, heteronormative nature of the contemporary academy, do you know that, in an embodied, instinctual way? Perhaps, when you read Harrison (2015, p. 286) writing about having “a prey animal's intuition” you understand that on some gut level? Or, if you read Rose (in WGSG, 1992, p. 219) saying “this feeling of marginality is very strong, so strong it's physical. Even though I’ve been lecturing for nearly three years I still feel nauseous with nerves every time I travel to my college,” you recognise some equivalent visceral manifestation of your feelings of marginality? Don't you want to thank Gillian Rose for having the courage to write that in 1992? (I wonder if Gillian knows how important that was to some of us?) Moreover, do you find that your academic success and identity places you in an uneasy position in relation to your home, family, and community? (Like when, in different context, Hussain (2018, p. 3) describes feeling out-of-place and away-from-home everywhere: “a familiar feeling of loss, disorientation and emotional fragmentation”?) Like, you don't fit in there anymore but, all the same, you don't fit in in academia either? …

4 MODESTY IN SPACES OF YOUTH ACTIVISM

As a sixth line of questioning, I want to acknowledge, and think with, modesty. Specifically, I want to highlight modesty in activisms and – by extension – in “impacts.” Here I widen and further de-centre my somewhat-autoethnographic questioning to incorporate some voices of young anti-austerity activists in England (see: Horton, 2016). Reflecting on research with these activists, I have often been struck by the unsettling, but often characteristic, presence of modesty, awkwardness, and self-doubt in spaces of activism. I find that it is often the case that affirmative, transformative activisms are done and described in ways which are hesitant, self-effacing, and modest, by activists who are reluctant to take much credit for their actions. For example, in recent research projects in the English Midlands, I have worked with: young people campaigning to save a local community group from closure by a Local Authority, who described five years of imaginative activism and participatory community projects as “like ‘whatever,’ … look[ing] out for each other – just what we've always done … just sticking together”; and young people organising a programmatic campaign against regional funding cuts to youth services, who talked about their actions as “not much … just something we had to do … just to do our bit”; and young people campaigning to enhance accessibility for disabled students in educational settings who described their activism as “it just seemed like there was a problem and I tried to get it sorted, … simple as”; and young people who campaigned for and, against the odds, secured new spaces and services for young parents/carers in a “deprived” community who talked about what they did in terms of “just … getting on with it … we wanted to see that we weren't left with nothing, so we just got on with it.” Through many such encounters, I have been affected by the way in which transformative, resourceful, politicised actions are often downplayed by people who do them. As in the preceding quotes, these kinds of actions are often figured as not really worthy of academic attention or indeed the label “activism.” Rather, they are often described in terms of “just getting on” or “just coping” or “just what we do,” and I understand this recurring notion of “just” to denote a slightly evasive, slightly abashed disinclination on the part of participants to narrate their actions as a big deal.

For me, these kinds of modest activisms (just getting on, quietly organising, tenaciously getting stuff done, wanting little fuss or fanfare) raise many questions about the very particular ways in which “impact” is currently idealised and rewarded in the contemporary academy. As many critics have argued (Evans, 2016; Pain et al., 2011), mechanisms such as the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF), Research Council “pathways to impact,” and HEI marketing of institutional impacts have constituted a valorisation of impacts which are unabashedly substantial, visible, muscular, large-scale, auditable, heroic, and readily narratable as such.4 In many contexts, academics are led to aspire to modes of research impact which are unashamedly iconic and self-confident, and assuredly a big deal (again, we might say, ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE). Certainly, I worry that I have been caught up in, and complicit in perpetuating, this imagining of impact (not least via narrations of impact in funding proposals, end-of-project reports, REF impact statements, promotion applications, and institutional strategies), just as I am complicit in many other modes of ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE-ness critiqued in this paper. I argue that the current normative valorisation of heroic “impact” within the neoliberal academy is thrown into stark relief by encounters with modest activists – people “just getting on,” “just coping,” or “just doing what they do.” We might question: how do we account for the dissonance between heroic performances of academic impact and modest activist practices? What might it tell us if, for example, we find ourselves much more moved, impressed, and inspired by a few teenagers trying to keep a community centre open that the supposedly grandiose, compellingly narrated impacts of our own large-scale research projects? As Askins (2015) asks, how might more academic researchers learn from, or work with, the often modest tenacity of careful, progressive activisms in practice? What difference would it make if more academic researchers acted more modestly, or envisioned impact in a gentler, more modest way? And how might we keep faith in the sometimes messy/contingent/quiet work of acting affirmatively in research, despite normative discourses of ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE impact (Askins & Blazek, 2017; Pottinger, 2017)?

5 MORE QUESTIONS

First, did you answer yes to many of the questions laid out in this commentary? Do you ever feel like packing it all in, getting away from academia? If so, why do you carry on? What drives us? What keeps us going, despite the many challenges which characterise the contemporary academy? Hopefully you can identify something which keeps you going, caring, and hoping?

Second, why does it feel rather countercultural and subversive to talk about gentleness in the contemporary academy (even though “the academy” comprises lots of fundamentally nice, thoughtful, gentle people)?5 How is it that all kinds of gentleness – humility, vulnerabilities, anxieties, uncertainties, diffidence, modesty – go unsaid in many front-stage written and performed spaces of the academy? Can we please recognise that they are axiomatic, everyday parts of academic life and not non-normative personal-professional failings? Indeed, can we please talk more about how experiences of awkwardness and anxiety map onto persistent forms of marginality constituted by the still gendered, classed, ableist, not-decolonised, heteronormative academy?6

Third, can we please think, individually and collectively, about how ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE-ness is perpetuated (in normative styles of academic writing, speaking, conferencing, meeting, and “impact,” and elsewhere), and how our practices (myself included) contribute to the discomfort of others? Must we habitually slip (almost against our will?) into performative, self-presentational styles which suggest we are flawless, effective, powerful, bigtime, impactful, rational, certain, heroic, self-assuredly eloquent, upwardly mobile people? How, ultimately, might we foster more modes of academic practice which work with gentleness, or more spaces of academia which permit diffidence, self-doubt, vulnerabilities, and modesty?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to Matt Finn, Jayne Jeffries, two anonymous referees, and participants at the Gentle Geographies workshop at Newcastle University in September 2016 for such supportive engagements with this paper. I also want to thank and recommend the Twitter feed of Fergus the Geocat (@fergusgeocat).

    ENDNOTES

    • 1 The capitalised figuring of ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE is intended to caricature the way in which too many people come to perform an amplified, capitalised, emboldened, maximalised, assertive, LOOK-AT-ME version of themselves and their successes, status, research, and impacts within the neoliberal academy. It is no coincidence that this appears annoying, unnecessary, and intrusive in the text. Through this commentary, I have used ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE as a placeholder to consider gentleness's other (which, ultimately, I see as ways of being which are effectively or intentionally thoughtless, self-serving, alpha, elitist, rude, unkind, overbearing, ruthless, vindictive, divisive, exclusionary, or oppressive).
    • 2 Like the meltdown I had in front of 200 people at a large North American conference; or the tiredness I feel when modulating my thick regional accent in professional settings; or the shame attached to becoming an “eternal student,” where I grew up; or the Committee colleague who has erroneously called me “Phil” for years (I am too embarrassed to correct him); or that time I was escorted off a university campus by a security guard who didn't believe I was a visiting professor; etc. I can see the funny side, most of the time.
    • 3 A note on my intentions and process in writing the following somewhat-autoethnographic questions. I used a loose, quick, single-take mode of autoethnographic writing: I found this useful in registering experiences and instances which are often (literally or figuratively) edited-out in academic writing. And I have found the questioning style productive in allowing readers/audiences to extend, unsettle, or respond to the paper via their own positionalities and experiences. That said, in hindsight, I have some reservations about submitting this paper. First, writing autoethnographically like this can sometimes produce quite immoderate, ranty, absolutist prose (ironically, not very gentle). When writing, it felt good to address academic anxieties and angers quite directly; but already, to me, the paper has started to feel a bit like cringeworthy juvenilia, lacking in nuance, and I am worried that I might unwittingly cause offence. So now I am overcompensating by adding in footnotes, disclaimers, apologias, and caveats. I don't know: it is a bit of a mess if I am honest. Second, despite the questioning style, autoethnographic reflection on the contemporary academy can, unwittingly, produce quite self-absorbed, self-centred accounts which present the author as virtuous victim. I have tried to make my own complicities in constituting ANYYTHING-BUT-GENTLENESS apparent, but I worry that this is not totally successful. Third, I have found it productive (even quite enjoyable, fun, invigorating) to voice, query, and play-with some quite dark feelings in this paper. This runs the risk of suggesting that I am permanently furious and embittered, which is not the case. As I discuss in conclusion, the paper's sometimes dark tone should not be read as a dismissal of the very positive, supportive, caring, energising communities of colleagues within the discipline of Human Geography.
    • 4 As an example of the kind of apologia discussed in footnote 2, I feel I want to jump in here to clarify that this critique of normative notions of impact is not at all meant as a dig at the diligent, good faith work of senior disciplinary colleagues involved in, for example, REF evaluation panels. It is intended more as a wider invitation to consider how many of us (myself very much included) perpetuate a valorisation of grand, narratable, capital-I Impacts in our research.
    • 5 Although this paper dwells on some quite dark feelings and experiences I do want to give thanks for the many supportive, inspirational, modest, gentle people that abound in the discipline of Human Geography. I feel very fortunate to work in this context … and yet, those dark feelings and experiences do exist. Ultimately, then, a key concern of this paper is how spaces and situations of the contemporary academy can often be so generative of anxieties, sorrows, awkwardnesses, enmities, and angers (including childlike tears, rages, and feelings of injustice: see Horton, 2020; Turner, 2020) despite the preponderance of so many lovely, gentle colleagues. For me, the paper's darker feelings are less to do with disciplinary Human Geography per se, and much more to do with the day-to-day grind and sorrows of working in academic workplaces going through painful restructurings and austerities, while perpetuating particular ideals of marketisation, performativity, and impact.
    • 6 This is not to set up an over-simple “us versus them” dichotomy, with gentler, virtuous, marginalised colleagues set against normatively-centred “baddies” who are unselfconsciously ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE. Nor is it to suggest that this “us versus them” maps neatly onto “marginalised versus normative” academic identities (for example, I am surely not alone in having encountered gentle, supportive, super-kind encouragement from ostensibly “formidable,” “high-powered” senior colleagues, but perturbing ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE-ness from colleagues with whom I expected to have more in common). Rather, I want to question how our actions and participation in ANYTHING-BUT-GENTLE-ness (myself definitely included) contribute to the discomfort and exclusion of colleagues, and how those discomforts and exclusions may intersect with persistent inequities of power–status–identity within the academy.