Academic Homecoming. Stories from the Field

Abstract

Academics world-wide experience the daily consequences of the sell-out that neoliberal universities euphemistically frame as a combination of effectiveness, efficiency and excellence. In this contribution I use fiction, and in particular John Williams’ recently rediscovered novel Stoner, to illustrate how painfully tangible these effects become in daily academic practice. The Stoner book shows the imbroglio of an aspiring American literature professor, whose career is presented as a symbol of the increasing academic depreciation of knowledge and Bildung. I argue that the literary quality of Stoner and other ‘academic novels’ can better than any sociological study convey the detrimental consequences of the unhappy marriage of ignorance, measurability and accountability that reigns today’s universities. Sparked by an auto-ethnographic account of academic quality measurement I plea for maintaining what is still left of ‘academic passion’, hoping to prevent academia and its inhabitants from suffering the same tragic fate as many a protagonist in academic novels.