Contingency, Gender, and the Academic Table

Abstract

This essay examines the marginalization of contingent voices in the academy as it intersects with the gendered nature of such contingency. My claim is that the exclusion of contingent voices from full participation in our academic institutions ultimately functions to dampen important moral perspectives, disproportionately including (though certainly not limited to) those of women. Our institutions are thus impoverished by such structures and practices; when we marginalize contingent voices from our larger university systems of governance and discussion, we sideline the perspectives of many women, thus artificially distorting our view of reality. To redress the exclusion of contingent faculty from full participation in the academy is thus a foundational matter of justice and impinges importantly on the integrity and adequacy of the profession—that is, of the work in which academics engage. If universities are to fulfill the mission of promoting genuine learning and honestly advancing critical thinking, it is imperative and urgent to redress these problems. Here I suggest doing so both by actions taken in solidarity that improve the real well-being of contingent faculty and by challenging the often-rigid structures of academia that disadvantage contingent faculty and functionally devalue the perspectives they represent.