PEDAGOGY OF THE PICKET LINE 202: FOR LECTURERS NEW TO STRIKING. Lecturers sometimes write courses that they wish were available when they were students. I wish this course was on offer before I joined a picket line for the 1st time in 2018. @ucu @CambridgeUCU #UCUStrikesBack
The prerequisite thread for this thread is PEDAGOGY OF THE PICKET LINE 101: FOR STUDENTS NEW TO STRIKING. In that thread, I presented the picket line as physical + symbolic, as well as pedagogic + performative. What do these concepts mean for lecturers?
Let’s start with the physical + symbolic. This part should not be too hard. Get physical + be symbolic! A picket line cannot make visible the collective withdrawal of labour without picketers being visible collectively. Once you commit to striking, commit to picketing.
Some lecturers don't. They strike and then work on research rather than picket. I get it. Workloads are so excessive that research time can now feel like personal time. But researching either during personal time or striking time provides employers free labour.
Research that exceeds workweeks + strikes undermines colleagues who can’t work excessively, contributes to futures in which workloads never stop expanding, + places the burden of picketing on the most precariously employed staff + students. As I said, get physical + be symbolic!
How picketers make visible (+ audible) the collective withdrawal of labour on the picket line is contextual + personal. I suggest collectively striking an ambiguous tone, one that is positive/cheerful/fun + confrontational/antagonistic without being personal/harassing. EZ!
This ambiguous tone signals that crossing the picket line hurts the collective interests of those on both sides of it, and that it is never too late to join the picketers on the right side of history. 😂
If students have not read “PEDAGOGY OF THE PICKET LINE 101: FOR STUDENTS NEW TO STRIKING,” lecturers might find that students approach them to discuss their schoolwork or ask them to sign a form or write a letter of recommendation.
Remind these students you are striking + not being paid. It might pain u to refuse students since your job is to care for them. But u are not at your job. U are on the picket line. U can care for them there (by not working) because the picket line is pedagogic + performative!
How do you make the picket line pedagogic and performative? Well, when you teach, you turn students towards ideas that you think matter. What ideas matter to the collective interests of the picket line?
Radical thought that critiques interlocking systems of domination enlarges capacity for solidarity. So, perhaps start there! Yay!
How does one teach on the picket line? I suggest that u teach as if teaching is close to nothing because, after all, u are not working. Read poems or lectures that have already been written by someone else. Share the burden of teaching as if it is nothing across the picket line.
How does one make the picket line performative? The marketised university often fails to make space for collective future-minded intellectual labour because the marketed university is too busy exhausting individuals with individualised labour.
The picket line becomes performative when people on the picket line remind themselves that we are the marketised university marketising ourselves. Although asymmetries in power force this failed model on us, we become complicit as we advance our individual careers. Yuk.
Not working on the picket line provides a critical rupture from the individualised obsession of trying to get ahead in a marketised university that does not permit getting ahead. There is no better space than the picket line to think about re-collectivising the university.
With colleagues you do not get the chance to work with, make the picket line performative by discussing policies + practices for your department that might reduce casualisation + oppressive workloads, + close the gender and race pay gaps.
In this sense, the picket line is an opportunity for lecturers to experience a different way of being a lecturer at the university.
So, if you haven’t tried it yet, go hang out on a picket line lecturers. It is worth seeing what that experience teaches you about being a lecturer in and for the university. And don't forget to hang out with students on the picket line. That's your job. 😂
Again, special thanks to @arathings @GubernatorHomo Mark Carrigan @AnjaCessford @ayeshacamexam @ejtmaber @PamBurnard and others on the @CamEdFac picket line who have taught me this stuff!
