‘Working on a rocky shore’: Micro-moments of positive affect in academic work

Abstract

Neoliberal ideologies, marketization and performative regimes associated with recent reforms in universities have exerted considerable pressure on academic working conditions and subjects in recent years. While analysing these pressures is important, it is also productive to consider the ways in which academics engage in moments of resistance by mobilising resources beyond those of critique. This paper therefore focuses on joy and positive affect in the everyday moments of academic life. It utilises the feminist methodology of collective biography to explore ways of making the restricted spaces of our working day more expansive and finding within them unexpected openings for joy. Our analysis of the stories included in this paper traces the mercurial and ambiguous affective atmospheres of academic work. We suggest that joy is founded upon connections with others, that it arises in different academic spaces and that it can lead to revised knowing of ourselves. We argue that the glimpses of joy evident in this paper provoke affective attunement within the everyday, sensitizing us to other fragments of joy and providing strategies to strengthen that resistance.

Grim tales: Meetings, matterings and moments of silencing and frustration in everyday academic life

“…Although we also found fleeting moments of joy (Gannon et al 2019), meetings figured heavily in our memories and were suffused with negative affectgrim tales of power, subjugation and complicity. Details of/from meetings were recalled, remembered, and reviewed as we pondered, alone and together, the vital work meetings did in governing our minds and bodies.…”

Between activism and academia: zine-making as a feminist response to COVID-19

“…The neoliberal university is fast-paced, demanding and hierarchical (Gannon et al 2019;Mountz et al 2015), and it is concerned with measuring the productivity of individuals that work within it, meaning that it is designed to allow certain workers to succeed and others to fail. Within this framework, the neoliberal subject remains unnamed, and it is void of identity, meaning that it reflects the successful and is therefore white, male, middle-class, heterosexual and able-bodied.…”

Kids in the Library

“…Despite a growing field and accompanying body of literature in happiness studies (Ahmed, 2008(Ahmed, , 2010, works on happiness in the workplace --particularly moments of joy --tend to focus on self-actualization, economics, and productivity, or specific fields such as social work and teaching. Joy in academia, as a whole, remains theoretical and is situated primarily in feminist approaches, such as exploring emotion and affect in geography (Ahmed, 2010;Gannon et al, 2019;Kern, Hawkins, Al-Hindi, & Moss, 2014); geography, in this case, referring to the body as a site of discourse, such as identity or labor. The lack of meaningful empirical research is likely due to constraints on data collection, which relies heavily on self-reporting by participants (Ahmed, 2010, in addition to conceit of what is seen as "real" academic work (Ahmed, 2010;Kern et al, 2014).…”

“…Ahmed 2010argues happiness requires affect, intentionality, and evaluation. Finding micro-moments of joy requires us to set aside coping mechanisms of cynicism and detachment, which are created in response to the pressures to perform in the university (Ahmed, 2010;Kern et al, 2014), and ask us to apply creativity in our everyday mundane responsibilities (Gannon et al, 2019;Kern et al, 2014;Sherman & Shavit, 2018). In other words, happiness requires workers to enact both intention and pursuit.…”