Accounts of Participation in a Higher Education Research Group: Between Academic Pimping and Academic Mobbing?

• In Event: Academic Mobbing in Higher Education Internationally: Pursuing a Spiritual Center Amid an Injurious Void

Abstract

My objective with this text is to question and analyze what is stimulated, aspired, and the subjectivities produced in academic relationships developed while participating in a public university research group in Brazil. Universities can be understood as machines that produce ways of feeling, working modes of existence and/or lifestyles, a process that Deleuze (1992) calls subjectivation. I use autoethnographic narratives and vignettes. Several questions guide this journey: Who participates in the research group? What clues do we get about the aspirations of the participants? What does the group’s modus operandi stimulate? What are the images of academic success and academic behavior that are built as normal? What subjectivities are stimulated? Competition. More candidates rejected than accepted. Bi-monthly meetings. Monthly. Weekly. Discussion of academic texts. Discussion of research proposals. Aspirants must conform. I must follow the leaders. I want to follow the leaders. I want to be a leader. What do I want to research? How do I get to want what I want to research and write about? Who does the supervisor want? What theme does s/he prefer? Can I research what I want? Do I have to please my (future) supervisor? There is a line. You have to take the line and be patient. Are all selected students already known? How can I bet on someone I do not know? You have to deserve it! I have to deserve it! Am I contributing to the group? Will I be seen as someone who deserves it? Who will work for me? Who will write for me? Who will put me as co-author in the texts? You were not selected. I was not selected. You can come to my group. Come to my group. My group. Consolation prize. How is the selection process made anyway? I want to be a successful academic. Successful academic. Successful. What if they do not choose me? This text puts some lived and experienced phenomena related to participation in a research group on the spotlight in order to stimulate reflections about what we do, aspire, and produce in Academia.

Author

• Igor Vinicius Lima Valentim, University of Lisbon