what was amazing was the involvement of the students, while in once they had the urge to only nod, in the other evaluation people were more active.
yet again i am cryptic.
let's go back to the basics. everything started on last sunday, gisella called on my bullshit about oppression (based on my lord of the rings analysis), and then i had to really conceptualize.
the temporary employment of the science workers is the basis of the class struggle.
PhD students and postdocs are the workforce of the professors and directors of institutes who are more involved in delegating work, administrative efforts and fund finding.
i first enunciate the problem with the analysis that is the directors do not directly own the means of production, but the access to the means production. computing facilities, high quality data, access to collaborators and most importantly the credibility embedded inside the community or the specific "highly regarded" institute.
before i become highly relativist and holistic, i just say that the increase of huge project demands the employment of the low level scientists to do the fordist production line type of work like coding data analysis pipeline, building instruments and varying the physical parameters of a code for specific problems.
this industrious productive nature alienates the majority of the young researchers from physics and/or astronomy. whom work with the desire that one day they will be professors and good scientists, and the only reason they are disillusioned with their work is that they are not smart enough they are not hard working enough. post-docs/proletariat live with the dream that one day they will become professor/bourgeois themselves.
the simple statistics show that there is not enough permanent position for each post-doc. hence we move with the mobility scheme (again one of the aims of the bologna process) from one job to the other, so that the our bosses can tap into the competitive international market of educated workforce. and we "the educated" don't even have the collective bargaining rights of a common factory worker, because science is such a fucking individualist/competitive enterprise. the nature should be investigated via collaboration, not by competition. that's why our papers are publicly accessible, unlike the patents of the pharmaceutical companies.
the point was, is and will be raised that as the educated class of the society with relatively high wages we can not be oppressed. i will make a loop argument, pointing out the comment i face everytime i propose change:
"our director cannot change anything because it is university rule."
"the university cannot do anything because it is national policy."
"the ministry cannot do anything because it is a european policy."
this kind of empathizing with the position of power really pisses me off. especially if it is argued to curb the action for demanding the rights, no matter how trivial this may look to "the hunger of manual laborers."
i will rather prefer if freire finishes instead of me by the pedagogy of the oppressed:
"The “fear of freedom” which afflicts the oppressed, a fear which may equally well lead them to desire the role of oppressor or bind them to the role of oppressed, should be examined. One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription.
(...)
"The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion."
-Paul Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 1
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