How to become an academic philosopher. Academic discourse as multileveled positioning practice

Abstract

In my contribution, I will present the power-knowledge approach to academic discourse. Drawing from poststructuralist and pragmatic developments in socialtheory, this model the practical challenge academic researchers have to meet in academic discourse: to secure a place in the social world of researchers. The researchers who participate in academic discourse typically need to straddle two types of positions: on the one hand they need to find their place among the many scientific communities, i.e. in the world of specialised knowledge. On theother hand, they need to be placed in a higher education institution with its status groups, hierarchies and bureaucratic rules, i.e. in the world of institutionalpower. If researchers want to occupy the most desirable positions in the academic field, they need to succeed in both worlds at the same time. Whilecareers, strategies and recipes can differ widely between researchers, researchers engage in academic discourse as an ongoing, publication-based positioningprocess in which symbolic positions (i.e. as a specialist of late antiquity) need to be gradually turned into institutional positions (i.e. as a Professor of AncientHistory).

Empirically, my contribution will draw from first results of our DISCONEX research group at CAL, Warwick and EHESS, Paris.