Of Masks and Masquerades: Performing the Collegial Dance

In the aftermath of the age of multiculturalism, pluralism, and postmodern celebrations of plenitude, we are now, it seems, once more faced by a growing anxiety about "otherness" that has been spurred by a nationalistic rhetoric which concentrates our attention primarily on issues of security and coerces us into adopting all manners of defensive postures. Within academia, and especially in many small liberal arts colleges today, such posturings take the form of a pervasive rhetoric of collegiality which often covers over the anxiety generated by the current climate of global political unrest. In academic cultures, such as those of departments, programs and committees, this rhetoric comes to employ certain formulaic axioms, like the phrase, "we are all one big happy family." In situations of potential disagreements between un-likeminded colleagues, such axioms can function in insidious and undermining ways, intervening at crucial points of the dialogue to equate difference of opinion with atomization and conformity with collegiality.

The axiom of the happy departmental or institutional family replicates the national political dictum that is often supported by the media—such a dictum tells us that we might differ in our opinions, but when it comes down to it, we will all rally around the same grand narratives, such as that of "fidelity" to a department or institution, or "patriotism" to the nation. At both levels, the national and the institutional, such an agenda ensures that established paternalistic laws are not disturbed and that the inferiors of the family carry on their assigned functions in circumscribed spaces, diligently and efficiently producing non-threatening and pre-approved discourses of alterity which re-enforce the center's control.

Many small liberal arts colleges are currently experiencing the effects of a national malaise which forces a sizeable part of the citizenry to choose between a liberal left-wing agenda that has traditionally included a show of solidarity with the marginalized other, and an anxiety about "otherness" generated by the current climate in the nation, a reflection of recent global events. For instance, at an institution where I was employed in recent years, the theme for the annual National Colloquium, in the aftermath of September 11, was called "The Search for Security in an Age of Anxiety" and all colloquium events were linked to issues of national security and personal safety. The rhetorical question posed by this title is, of course, a question of identification: "whose anxiety?" It is a question that must force us to locate and identify that odd place where academics find themselves at this juncture of American history. In a sense, the moment feels something like a culmination of a long drama.

It is a drama in which we have all been given our parts at the outset, a script, as it were, to perform. Dramatic irony has been especially sharpened for those academics who are based in traditional "Great Books" programs but hold positions that are described as non-western or third wordlist, or in any other way "left-identified" (such as black world studies, or queer theory). Such "left-identified" positions that are used to fill up existing lacuna at the margin often end up investing a person/space with expectations of a certain alterity. The new hire then must live up to these expectations by embodying an otherness that is already, in many ways, pre-determined. In such situations, the term "collegiality" becomes a particularly loaded one, offering very little potential for dissent and almost no possibility for an escape from the circumscription and institutionalization of difference. In what follows, I want to take a brief look at why, in many liberal arts institutions, such a definition of collegiality has become institutionalized.

Two dictionary definitions of the word "collegial" offer us the following possibilities: i. characterized by the collective responsibility shared by each of the colleagues (Random); and ii. power shared equally between colleagues (Encarta). But both of these concepts of "collective responsibility" and "equal power" seem to get displaced by an unequal power system where responsibilities are allocated, power is delegated, and collegiality comes to imply an absence of conflict for the sake of...