Academic Dreams and Nightmares

As I mulled over the film Examined Life I suddenly remembered a dream that I had had the night before. In my dream I woke up to find that my mouth, my upper lip and chin had changed into that of a man’s! I had a dark sand-paper 5 o’clock shadow, and as I looked into the mirror I didn’t know if I should try to rub it away with one of those “as seen on TV rub-away hair removers” … and I wondered too if I was the last one to notice that my mouth had changed. Why am I telling you this? I’m telling you this because I think I was (subconsciously) already asking the question that sprang to my mind after reflecting on Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor’s segment of Examined Life. My question is who has a voice in the academy?

Butler and Taylor’s segment invoked the strongest reaction for me. It bothered me that Butler was speaking about bodies and abilities from a (comparatively) privileged position. It bothered me that she kept steering the conversation towards gender, which she chooses to perform in a certain way, while Taylor’s point about bodies dealt specifically with abilities, about which she does not have the same luxury of performative choice. Why did this matter of choice bother me so much? After some thought I realized that I could identify more with Taylor than with Butler. Although I am not physically impaired like Taylor is, I have struggled all of my life with being a physically small person. This may seem un-important, but I have noticed that in group conversations, at customer service counters, and in classrooms discussions that smaller people are often dismissed more easily, interrupted more frequently, and are given less attention than other taller, louder, bigger, or male peers.

I think that this observation has important ramifications on many levels of the academy, including teaching. As we know, charisma plays an important role in teaching (along with expertise, empathy, and communication skills). But who has charisma? A friend of mine in the sociology department here recently published an article that argues that charisma is not something inherent in a speaker, but rather it is something that is given to him (or her) by an audience. This leads me to wonder what role our physical size, our height, the loudness of our voice, or our gender plays when an audience decides whether or not the speaker’s ideas are valid, or whether or not that voice should be valued. I think that this decision is (unfortunately) not always a rational one. Think about it. How many times have you been at a party where some loud-mouthed idiot dominates the conversation? Or a classroom where a teacher or student thinks that shouting an opinion somehow makes it more valid? Why does everybody listen to him (or her)? Is it reason or instinct that decides what voices are heard, and who we attribute charisma to?

My uncle (a 78-year-old retired psychology professor) likes to joke about how, as soon as he got his PhD, everybody treated him differently. Everybody listened to him. Everybody thought he had something important to say. But he also has a loud voice. He’s a big guy. His joke makes me wonder if my voice will magically change once I get my PhD.