F*cking Capitalism. Welcome to my new post-academic life.
Friday was my last day of work in academia. It sucks. But it is also great.
A little over a year ago.
It was 3.30am. I woke naturally, checking my phone for reassurance that I hadn’t slept too long - though I did not set an alarm. I rolled into my husband’s back, running my hand over his body gently, so I wouldn’t wake him. I inhaled his scent gratefully, but also regretfully. It was time to get up.
Taking a deep breath I walked purposefully to the kitchen, hit the kettle and readied half a cup of soy milk for the stove-top rooibos-based chai that would keep me going until breakfast. No caffeine, overstimulation was not my friend. Ten minutes of meditation later, I hit play on the Calm app’s focus music and picked up the work where I had left it last night. Checking sources. Reading material I’d missed earlier. Replacing thousands of drafted words with tighter, more targeted, more grounded history.
When my beloved awoke, he popped his head in for a kiss and then proceeded to make breakfast. By the time I sat to poached eggs, four hours of productive work were completed. I’d likely do another twelve before bed.
This was my routine, for months. For a work-ethic addict like me, it was heaven. But it was also hell. I was getting too old for this - or maybe this was not how life should be, even for one’s passion?
I wanted more to life. So, when I submitted my manuscript, I promised myself, my beloved, the universe, that I would never do anything like it again.
I took some time off, but never really recovered. I asked a mentor to help me set new boundaries, built a plan based on my ‘values’ with the Employer Assistance Program counsellors and kept a list of ‘no’ to review with reinforcing relief.
Since Covid, we were trying to reduce our reliance on income and supplement it by investing in the household economy - growing food, making things ourselves rather than earning money to buy them. I wrote about this for Griffith Review - see it here.
My contribution to this effort declined with the 16 hour work days. Even when the book was done, I entered recovery mode (and then teaching). I was too tired for much else.
By July, the unexplained vomiting that began at the peak of my efforts was returning with alarming frequency. My beloved was getting scared. So was I.
This week. Everything Changes.
Sure, maybe it was not the best university in the world, but I loved my job.
I loved teaching and had a cluster of new students with exciting projects I was about to supervise. My colleagues were without a doubt the best of any in the world. And I got to write history for a living.
But this week, that is gone. I wrote about this for Overland (great publication, subscribe if you can), describing the ways universities have been overtaken by the logic of managerialism and what that now meant at my university and for my job - check out that piece here.
For years I’d been writing about the problem of management in universities. The day my job was slated for ‘disestablishment’, I’d also published a new book, Virtue Capitalists, that described pretty much this (and much more), in relation to all of the white-collar professions.
Now that system had come for me.
It was tragic, really. But. Well, ok, so I also hated that job. Not the work, obviously. I loved that. And frankly, I was good at it and doing everything right. They had just promoted me, for goodness sake.
But it was killing me. The system was relentless, the demands ever-escalating, the surveillance now. Well, you’d swear the forms to check on our work were now the purpose of the institution, not the teaching or reasearch.
It was not, however, all their fault. I am a junkie. Not drugs (though no judgement for other kinds of addiction). I am addicted to what more than a century ago the famous sociologist Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic.
I am far from alone. Academia was designed for people with my kind of addiction.
Still, I’d made a promise. So when they came for all the history jobs in my institution, I put my hand up to leave voluntarily (with a payout, for which I am grateful).
As a colleague reminded me, the first chapter of the classic Australian novel Such is Life by the man who used the pen name Joseph Furphy is entitled ‘Unemployed at Last!’
With tears streaming down my face, I punched the air. Unemployed at Last!
I don’t know what is to come, but it will certainly involve writing history and commentary, maybe organizing reading or writing groups on the history and present of capitalism.
This is my substack, where I will do that. I hope you will join me. It is early days, but I am thinking of doing a once-a-week column. You can (probably) expect:
Fucking Capitalism this week - commentary on stuff going on and how history helps us understand it
Re-investing in the Household Economy - my garden, kombucha recipes, other everyday ways of telling capitalism to fuck off*.
*Before you @ me…I know this won’t work. Collective action is the only path to real change. But literally nourishing activity is also important. There will be more to say as we go.Capitalism in literature - what I’m reading about capitalism and history this week, links to anything I’ve published.
Upcoming events - if there are any.
The first event is my Sydney book launch, 21st November 5pm at the University of Sydney Western Tower, hosted and MC’d (with all my gratitude) by Professor Michael McDonnell and launched by Professor Emerita Raewyn Connell. If you want to come, please register by following the links athttps://twitter.com/hannahforsyth/status/1717779151946657914