Multiple binds and forbidden pleasures: Writing as poaching at French universities

Abstract

Our contribution aims at providing a return on experience by describing and theorizing the tactics we developed to poach time, space, and resources in order to write. A series of neoliberal measures in French higher education during the last 20 years shape the context, and have consequences for the political and material economies of scholarly writing. We use de Certeau's concept of poaching, because the strategies that our institutions deploy exert immense pressure on our ordinary scholarly life. Consequently, writing economies have to resort to poaching tactics. We present some of the devices and fixes we have developed in this regard in terms of our teaching, supervision, and research activities.

New Babel

“…Or do we subsume them under the "normal" theory, which is far too often grounded in US-UK cases? Four, French critical geographies, as well as other French critical sciences, face the harsh, external challenge of the dismantling of the welfare state and of the public sector, with the latter including the dismantling of universities over the last 20-plus years (Le Goix et al 2022). This fight requires a great deal of French critical geographers' energy and time, making them the target of violent attacks by an increasingly illiberal government (Bayart 2023).…”