For my upcoming sabbatical I got out of the gate flying. I’m still Department Chair and I’m teaching until the end of June but it feels like the sabbatical already started. I’m working on two articles that I’ve been wanting to write for a long time:
1. One is going to be on Chirbes’ diaries. I’m eager to write something where the word neoliberalism will not be mentioned or hinted at. Which I hope I’ll manage to do.
2. Another one is on the construction of neoliberal subjecthood in a book by Cristina Fallarás. So I won’t be completely bereft of opportunities to mention neoliberalism.
Both articles already have takers even though I haven’t written either one yet. Back when I was in my first year on the tenure track, we were revising the publication expectations for my department, I suggested that Full Professors should be expected to publish more than early-career academics. The colleagues who were Full Professors laughed me off, saying that it is just as hard to publish as a Full Professor. I had nothing but assumptions to support my point of view so I lost that argument.
Of course, now that I am a Full Professor, I know that I was absolutely right. It is enormously easier to publish. Even the most antisocial and curmudgeonly person becomes known after 20 years in the profession. People know the kind of stuff I write because they had many opportunities to read it. I still go through the blind peer review but I always have a bunch of people interested in publishing whatever I produce before it even materializes.
After I’m done with these two pieces, there will be one on the ecstasy of a neoliberal subject.
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