A lyrical reflection on the culture of fear in academia
You don’t want to be intimidated
you don’t want to be ruled by your fear
you don’t want to give up
on your sense of justice.
You engage with a logic
that destroys the creativity
and spurns the vibrancy
of many years of daily endeavours
by cutting them into little pieces
and mercilessly categorising
and counting each of them.
You engage with a logic
that dismisses the human complexity
that disregards the courage
needed to understand the world
a little bit better
and a little bit different
than it was understood before you.
You have to abide by a logic
that does not want to see
let alone value
the emotional labor
needed for guiding students
towards the big
never answerable questions.
You have to tolerate
that “working conditions”
never appear on any form.
But if you do not play this game
you fear to give in to the fear
to accept structural injustice
to end up shrinking into yourself.
You think you play by the rules,
but you learn that no one knows the rules
if a certain form of power
has taken over.
This power
forges its own arbitrariness.
It is creative.
It invents ever more and ever new
dependencies.
It feeds on institutionalised insecurity
and on vagueness.
People want to recognise people.
Power only wants to recognise itself.
Under its influence
human beings being human
trying to signal
support and reliability
saying “you are okay”
and “we want to help you”
appear increasingly helpless.
The power that rules is relentless
it does not condone such attempts
it resolutely narrows the room for decency
it purposefully disorients everyone
pulling away the ground beneath the feet
of those who try their best
while they are caught in the web.
This power
does not empower anyone.
It is a faceless force
created and sustained
by an intensifying hierarchy.
It enjoys everyone’s fear
and everyone’s helplessness
because it is constantly made stronger
by both.
Something is written on the wall
in invisible letters.
“Be careful what you do now,
because we have our methods.”
