Academic Ego, Part 1: The Sources
My next series of blogs is for editors of academic and scholarly books. A couple of years ago an editor friend asked me how I can abide working with academic authors. Aside from having been one myself, I've had some experience on the editorial side, and so this is my answer. My aim was to explore issues relating to the academic ego while providing some insight for editors and their editorial enterprises. I would love to hear from editors and authors on the matter. What follows is a previously unpublished article, copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka 2007, all rights reserved.The Academic Ego: The Sources
People who write academic and scholarly books and textbooks in higher education live for what they know and what they think they know. Underlying (and in many cases unconscious) assumptions are that 1) greater knowledge naturally results in intellectual superiority to others (in the abstract), and 2) one can never know too much. A corollary is the much-loved phrase coined by Francis Bacon in 1597: “Knowledge is power.” In the abstract that power is irresistible as the source of all human achievements of note—mastery of fire, harnessing of atom, programming of chip, and so on. Devotion to knowledge as power often predisposes authors to communicate in the abstract, however, as they cast ideas into unformed seas. One consequence is that academic editors everywhere must struggle with abstractions in expository narrative and must strive for concretization.
The classic academic assumptions also establish the defining conditions of intellectual arrogance, which even the most humble of scholars necessarily harbors, for as a mental enterprise the intellectual life is driven by it. Expository writing betrays this substrate of intellectual arrogance in surprisingly detectable ways, such as use of first-person pronouns, omniscient authorial voice, grandiose oral rhythms, obscurantism, love of jargon and irony and (sometimes) salacious humor, heavily seeded disclaimers, and paucity of source citations, along with the claim (stated or implied), “But, I AM the source!” Other giveaways are signature expressions, such as “Indeed,” “Of course,” “Certainly,” “Obviously,” “Perhaps,” “In fact,” “It goes without saying,” “All other factors being equal,” and the like. Good textbook manuscript editors purge these expressions, which, however, in scholarly works may lend charm.
Litmus aside, intellectual arrogance—along with positivist or idealist values of truth seeking (or beauty or perfection seeking), as well as mercenary values of fame building—drives the enterprise of scholarship. Cumulative knowledge becomes, acknowledged or not, the intellectual’s principal source not only of power but also of ownership, pride, and competitive advantage. Knowledge becomes capital, information and expertise its currency. This is intellectual property in every sense of the term. Editors everywhere will attest to the strength of ownership issues in academic and higher education publishing. These issues most often surface when authors are asked to revise in response to market analyses, reviewer comments, or editorial suggestions (as in, “Who’s book is this anyway?”). In this context, academic ego often spills over from chafing under editorial direction to maddening disputes among coauthors.
Academics acquire their intellectual property over a long time, at great financial and personal expense, amid strong competition in high-risk contexts, and usually in milieus that do not make it easy or convenient for them to be successful. An average of ten years separates a B.A. from a Ph.D. in anthropology, for example, and an anthropologist’s professional career usually is not considered to be officially underway without Ph.D. in hand. Subsequent career barriers, including institutional policies and departmental politics, significantly affect job placements, work assignments, publishing opportunities, promotions, and tenure. These conditions select for intellectual arrogance as an adaptation for survival. Thus, knowledge and expertise must be marshaled, tested, branded, guarded (perhaps jealously), and leveraged, and the provenance and distribution of intellectual achievements must be carefully controlled.
Labels: academic authors and editors, Academic ego, intellectual arrogance
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