Doing Academics Outside the Academy

I received an email from the publishing house this morning, which is the cover and sample draft of the new book. The name of the book is "Shadows of Nationalism—Scholars, Populists and Minorities". Except that the cover design is a bit blunt, I am quite satisfied with the rest, especially the internal fonts and formats. Compared with the previous batch of books from this publishing house , a significant improvement has been made.

This is the second academic book I have published overseas, and it is also the second academic book I have published. The first is "The Rebirth of Liberalism and Political Virtue" published in 2020, which won a small prize earlier this year. It has been eight years since I started writing academic articles related to political reality. It is my luck to be able to gather two brainchildren in eight years. In terms of length, three-quarters of these articles have been published in academic journals and other public journals before the collection. This is no different from scholars in many colleges publishing their own collections, except that , the similarities between me and the scholars in the academy may not be much.

I also don't remember when I gave up the idea of ​​"doing academics in the academy", if I can say it, it was between 2013 and 2017.

At the beginning, it was Teacher Deng’s words:

"If you have a way of making a living outside of college, you don't necessarily have to go to college to get a job."

It was 2013, and I had been writing my doctoral dissertation at home in Shenzhen for nearly a year, and occasionally went to attend classes outside. There was a school that I tried to teach and asked me to go there after graduation, but considering that it is basically impossible for me to graduate within three or four years, I dare not take such a promise seriously. For my family, the most ideal is of course to go to Shenzhen University, which has a high income and is close to home. But at that time, I had no patience for the cumbersome job hunting process, and I didn’t even edit my resume properly. My teacher wanted to introduce me to work in his school, and when he saw my resume, he not only praised me for being a good-natured person.

Don't look at me being so inconsiderate, in fact, after 2009, I can no longer imagine myself living a life outside of college. At that time, I thought that I could go anywhere. It is good to find a good school in one step. It is also possible to accumulate slowly from an ordinary school and then return to a school with better academic resources. Professor Hao Yichun of our department is like that. I went to a secondary school in Guangzhou, and then returned to CUHK. The main reason why I am so obsessed with staying in the academy is that in the past five years, I have regarded "academics" as the most important part of my self-identity, and it is really hard to imagine what it would be like to be a non-academic self.

But even with this obsession, I could already see that the attractiveness of doing academic work in the academy was declining rapidly in some ways.

I'm not talking about income. In the past ten years, although the growth rate of the income of college teachers is somewhat different in different regions, it should be higher than other groups in society as a whole. What's more, for a Ph. What's wrong with getting married and having kids? This is probably the reason why many people are willing to continue in the academy.

The more fundamental problem lies in two. One is that I found that my temperament was really incompatible with the increasingly bureaucratic university system. My freedom-loving disposition has a lot to do with that era, the people around me, and what happened to me. I am not a lazy person, but only based on my career, preferences and sense of responsibility. But even if it is for the career, I will only be lazy if it is directly related to the career (such as searching for information and writing a thesis). For those instrumental parts (such as postgraduate entrance examinations, doctoral examinations, and job hunting), I usually Resign yourself to fate. In 2013, the administrativeization of colleges and universities was not particularly serious, but I can roughly see that a college teacher spends much more time on work-related matters than the outside world imagines, but in these hours, only Less than half are directly related to academics.

If this is a price that university teachers have to pay for efficiency, or "rationalization" as Weber said, then I might admit it, but I find it is not that simple. This increasingly sophisticated and complex university management system is likely to be a means to tame high-level intellectuals. It makes college teachers busy filling out forms, applying for projects, evaluating titles, running relationships, taking classes that they don’t know the meaning of, and writing articles that they don’t agree with their value, so as to kill their will and stop going Think about some realistic issues, "castrate" them spiritually, and turn them into a part of the system, so as to eliminate the threat of this group to the system.

My speculation may feel a bit like a conspiracy theory, but combined with some supporting policies and practices at the time, I think these speculations are not completely unfounded.

When the "Seven Don'ts" came out, I took a closer look at the content and found that once I implemented it, I probably wouldn't be able to do most of my research. society" and "civil rights"? I also began to worry, what would a society where even these words become sensitive words be like? Soon I will know the answer.

There are other means to tame high-level intellectuals, such as constantly belittling them, destroying their self-esteem, and making them feel inferior, and these authorities have basically done it. I forgot when it started to stigmatize and crusade against "public intellectuals" on the Internet, calling them "Xinu", "traitors", "American lackeys" and so on (as for "National Hate Party", "Eight Thousand" and "500,000 Walking", that will be several years later), their accounts were also bombed one by one, and there was no room for retaliation. Later, when this trend evolved, Gu Yan Mu Chan pointed at the noses of intellectuals and cursed: "You are the weak point of this country."

At that time, I was hesitating and observing the changes in the situation, but I didn't seriously look for any jobs in colleges and universities. My enthusiasm for academics has not diminished, but this enthusiasm has become increasingly irrelevant to those contents that are easy to publish in domestic academic journals. At the beginning of 2014, I went to Hong Kong to participate in the "Li Dian Salon" by Zhou Baosong, and listened to Liu Qing's lecture on "Liberalism in the Chinese Context". In the middle of the year, I also participated in the academic conference "Left Liberalism and China" , I became the reviewer of Mr. Qian Yongxiang, which is more exciting than the Chinese Analytical Philosophy Conference I attended in October 2011.

After the meeting, Mr. Zhou Baosong was not particularly satisfied with the report of The Paper. He knew that I was good at writing interesting academic discussions (probably because of the "Li Dian Salon"), so he agreed to let me write about this meeting, so With that article "The "Advance" and "Retreat" of Liberalism", many people's understanding of left-wing liberalism and that conference came from that article.

In 2015, I also got another opportunity, which was the establishment of End Media. Zou Sicong was working as an editor at the time, and he said, I know you have many unique views on real politics, why don't you write them out?

I have a lot of unique views on realpolitik? I really don't know this. I have a lot of unique views on political philosophy, but those written can not be published. Under his persuasive guidance, I combined my observations over the past few years with the analysis of other trends of thought and my own research on political philosophy, and wrote a completely different article. Zou Sicong said, yes, you just write like this, and if you have any topics you want to write in the future, you can communicate with me. After the communication, you can let go and write.

I haven't counted how many articles have been published on the terminal over the years. These articles brought me some income, but it was still a long way from being able to make a living from it, and they also caused me some trouble, because the end was becoming more and more dangerous in the eyes of the authorities. But I am grateful to Sicong and Duan, because it is of great significance to me to develop this category of writing. To be honest, writing in this category does not meet the standard of "value neutrality" for academics, let alone the requirement for a clear separation of "academics" and "politics", but I do not define them as simple Commentary on current affairs, because in almost every article, I do not discuss it purely at the empirical level, but draw it between concepts and experience, and introduce theoretical issues. For some people, this kind of writing is intolerable because it creates cognitive confusion for their classification, and I have been criticized a lot for it. But now, in my opinion, scholars use academics to intervene in politics, or use political concepts as their own academic problem awareness, or turn some of their own research into another level of "talking about things" is not An unacceptable thing.

It's not that I can't write things in a purely academic style, such as "Clearing the Poison of Enlightenment-Liu Xiaofeng's Anti-Egalitarianism", "Depoliticization" Political Theory-Wang Hui's Left-Wing Stand and "Nationalism"", and "Between Dialectics and Existentialism—Cultural Politics of Zhang Xudong", but such things, even if they meet the formal requirements of academic academics, are still unlikely to be published in the mainland, so they were finally published in Taiwan. On "Thoughts".

Academically, I have always been grateful to Mr. Qian Yongxiang, not only because he wrote the preface for my first book. In the second half of 2017, Mr. Qian and Brother Yizhong contacted me and asked if I could write an article about Isaiah Berlin for Thought, and if I could go to Taiwan to hold an academic conference at the end of the year. Teachers Zhou Lian and Lin Meng also went to the mainland. According to the same specifications as other scholars, they arranged a hotel for me, reimbursed my round-trip air tickets, and paid for my participation in the conference. To be honest, even if I had to bear the board, lodging and air tickets, I would still go because of my desire for the academic community at the time, but they treated me well, which made me feel great respect.

Most importantly, I needed something to prove that I was still in academia even though I wasn't in the academy. Seeing this, some people may say, you just haven't read it. If you really dismiss the academy system so much, you don't need these things at all. In fact, if one really wants to do academics for a long time, it is impossible to do without such things, because academics are not built behind closed doors, not only academic output, but also academic communities and academic exchanges. It is not called academic output by just writing something and posting it on the official account, nor is it called an academic community by randomly chatting about Western philosophy in a WeChat group. Both of these preset certain thresholds, although these thresholds do not have to be Accredited by the academy system.

Later, I did develop my own writing method that can guarantee academic quality: Before deciding on a topic, I would communicate with some academic friends. This communication is not as rigid as the communication between the author and the editor, but rather Flexible, can be carried out in any atmosphere in any occasion. After finishing writing, I will also send it to some teachers and friends to help me do "peer review" (peer review). Compared with the peer review of blind selection, I can choose some people who I can trust academically. For example, in the previous article about Zhang Xudong, I found three Hegel experts, one Schmidt expert, and some others. Teachers and friends who are more familiar with left-wing academic ideas came to review the manuscript for me, and four or five of them gave quite pertinent opinions, and another helped me to consult several German versions of "Principles of Legal Philosophy" to confirm my understanding of it. understanding of certain sentences. The advantage of this is that these teachers and friends are basically still teaching in the college (mostly overseas), so their opinions can keep me from becoming "too wild". The downside is that they are all people I know personally, so there may be some bias towards what I write.

There is a prerequisite for doing these things, and it may be more important than the details mentioned above, that is, to ensure that you have a stable source of income. Some people think that I do academic writing full-time and earn a living from manuscript fees. This is a very big misunderstanding. It is already extremely difficult to make a living on manuscript fees in this day and age, and for someone like me who has been "declared to die by society", it is even more idiotic. Since my books can only be published overseas, why do I think there are magazines in China that would dare to publish my articles? In addition to reading books and writing articles these years, my life is not much different from that of ordinary migrant workers in Shenzhen. The difference is that after 2019, I will no longer be able to get a part-time job. I can only rely on the resources I accumulated before to engage in freelance work. Fortunately, my life is not successful. question. I work diligently for ten months a year, and only have two months of summer vacation to read some books and write some articles intensively. Without these two months, my life would be bleak, but without those ten months Well, my life as an academic outside the academy probably won't last long.

Brother Santu published a paper in an overseas academic journal in the second half of last year, saying that the Chinese academic circle is deeply trapped in the dual dilemma of "academic dependence" on the British and American academic circles and the cognitive barrier caused by the authoritarian system in the country. By the way, the Western academia is hacked: they occupy the position of the academic center, and they do not need to do in-depth research on countries that are on the edge of academia, but rely on some "academic brokers" to understand these countries, so they have The power to choose who can become such an "academic broker" also has the power to choose how to present their country to Western academic circles. [1] According to Brother Santu's pen, this academic broker between Chinese and Western left-wing scholars is undoubtedly Wang Hui. And David Harvey, of course, is one of these Western leftists who enjoy great power and do not know themselves.

This is of course a systemic injustice, and a systemic injustice on a global scale. In this, some Western left-wing scholars who claim to represent justice have a secret conspiracy with the system of authoritarian countries. On the one hand, they are unwilling to attack the political systems of non-Western countries in order to avoid criticism of "Western-centrism" or "neo-colonialism." On the other hand, they are willing to present the "diversity" of Western academia They support scholars from non-Western countries. However, most of the scholars they support are scholars with similar academic interests. In China, they are also the so-called "New Leftists". These are all mentioned in Brother Santu's paper.

The global systemic injustice caused by the Western academic left is also reflected in their serious ignorance of Chinese politics and their potential repression of Chinese liberal scholars. Because of these academics' distaste for globalized capitalism (on which, ironically, they themselves are at the top of the food chain in the globalized academic market), they are hostile to countries challenging the West. Have an unrealistic liking for the blatant evil that exists in these countries, or worse, see them as an integral part of their own "culture" that people of other cultures have no right to interfere with. Due to the influence of Chinese New Leftists like Wang Hui, some Western left-wing scholars also believe that the current Chinese regime has inherited the orthodoxy of the Chinese Revolution in the 20th century, and the Chinese Revolution in the 20th century is comparable to the French Revolution and the Russian October Revolution. Related to this is that these leftists in Western academies do not have much sympathy for Chinese liberal scholars. They regard the latter as the spokesperson of "neoliberalism" in China. For those liberal scholars who have been suppressed by the regime, They also rarely offer moral support or academic networking opportunities. They would rather be brothers and sisters with those powerful "new leftists" in China than to take a second look at liberal scholars outside the system who have been excluded and oppressed. This is really a great irony for their left-wing stance.

In the article, Brother Santu mentioned that one of the important conditions for obtaining the qualification of a broker is to be able to overcome the "language barrier". For example, Wang Hui's English is indeed much better than other domestic scholars who have not studied abroad. However, from my point of view, identities inside and outside the system are also an obstacle. According to my limited experience in international academic exchanges, overseas academic activities and academic publications still have requirements for the background of scholars, and some even require these scholars to work in academic institutions. I can understand the requirements for background, but it is required that scholars must work in academic institutions in order to publish academic articles and attend academic conferences, which means that these overseas academic institutions and academic platforms are more willing, even only willing to work with Scholars in a part of the domestic academic system exchange, and those Chinese scholars who have academic research capabilities but are excluded from the system due to political and ideological reasons also find it difficult to obtain opportunities to continue their academic lives from overseas academic circles.

This is not only the dilemma of doing academics outside the academy, but also the dilemma of doing academics inside the academy, because no one can guarantee that they can stay in the academy forever. In the past ten years, there have been two main trends in the liberal arts in the academy, one is standardization, and the other is politicization. The effect of standardization is difficult to evaluate. I used to think that it was generally good, but now I am not sure, but politicization, For the scholars in the academy, the effect must be mostly negative. Take my field of political philosophy as an example. It goes without saying that the study of liberal political philosophy has been suppressed in the academy these years. The problem is that the academic activity and output of nationalism are far from what they were ten years ago. It's obvious. Ten years ago, a group of scholars dared to come up with an "Oxford Consensus", and Liu Xiaofeng dared to put forward the "Father of the Nation Theory" at the risk of the world, but now no one dares to do so. Of course, some liberal arts fields, such as history and sociology, have indeed made a lot of progress in recent years, but this is not so much because they are not so relevant to politics. masked by usefulness. Once the trend of politicization develops to the extreme, there may be a large number of scholars fleeing from the academy at that time.

Is it a sad situation to do academics outside the academy? Not so in my own case. As far as I know, "The Creation of Public Culture from the Three Waves of Criticism of #MeToo" has been cited by at least two English academic papers, "Clearing the Poison of Enlightenment" has been cited by another article in "Thoughts", "Depolitics "The Politics of Liberalization" was used as a reference by an English academic paper, and the editor of an English academic journal asked me to translate it into English. The book "The Rebirth of Liberalism and Political Virtue" was also cited by a Chinese paper and A doctoral dissertation quoted it. After "Between Dialectics and Existentialism" came out, a group of young scholars at home and abroad who were interested in this dissertation (doing PhD overseas, or teaching in China, and I have no personal acquaintances) also wrote for it. There was an online seminar and I was invited to it. Of course, for scholars of my age, these may not be worth mentioning, but for a scholar outside the academy, this is already a great encouragement, after all, they will not bring them any academic benefits by citing my papers. other benefits.

Some people may think that because I am not in the academy, I need to spend more effort to maintain those academic connections and "resources", this is also a misunderstanding. At least for me, I don't spend much time on it, or if I need to spend a lot of time maintaining relationships to get my articles published, then I may not be interested. I am already extremely disgusted with the atmosphere of domestic academic journals that spend money or rely on connections to publish. If I jump into another sauce tank like this after I go out, what is the point of my going out? In fact, most of the articles I publish are drafts requested by the other party. Only those articles that I want to write and are sure of their publication value, I will have the cheek to contact the editor for publication.

I know that some people of my age have become PhD supervisors, department chairs or deans, and some have published countless papers in top international academic journals (let’s forget about domestic ones, which I really don’t envy), or overseas. Famous schools have already obtained tenure track, I can't compare them, and there is no need to compare them. Everyone has their own "fate", and this "fate" is your origin, character and circumstances. You can only grasp every opportunity that appears in front of you on this basis. I have nothing to complain about my life, because it has given me the greatest gift, which is an inexhaustible passion for thinking and writing. As for everything else, let it be distributed at will.

[1] Lin, Y. (2022). “Brokered Dependency, Authoritarian Malepistemization, and Spectacularized Postcoloniality: Reflections on Chinese Academia,” American Behavioral Scientist.