Abstract
In this article, we use the zombies as a metaphor for reforms in the Polish academy and a description of how neoliberalism works. According to the interpretation of the production of zombies as a critique of late capitalism, we want to show, by using an autoethnographic method, how subjectivity, relationships with others and the world are changing in the neoliberal regime. How do reforms attempt to transform subjectivity, and raise a new academic? Our co-autoethnography challenges the University of the (Un)Dead. We write together to show the experience of an insider (Oskar) and a quasi-outsider (former PhD student, Dominika). We are trying to show how nationalist authoritarianism emerges, at the same time, as part of the neoliberal regime. Our story is a record from the time of the apocalypse – an attempt to provoke. Let us trust the stories.
Darwinism inflects every aspect of this university (Lockford, 2017a: 363).
‘Neoliberal imperialism would be replaced by something more frightening and destructive’ (Apeldoorn and Graaff, 2012: 228)
Diary 2
Hello my friend. I cannot write letters to you. So I started this diary. Hope you read it one day. And I’ll be still alive. We survive because we have been taught – survival and not crying for life. Sometimes only a cracked glass. There was the time when we were young guys from a bar. We knew the text very well. Do you remember: ‘He alone made the thought concrete, crossing the first radioactive belt of isolation: interior isolation, the introverted separation between self and outside world’ (Vaneigem, 2001: 40). I don’t know why I’m quoting it. Maybe I’ve mentioned this text because today isolation from the world seems to be the only salvation. It was and it still is the salvation, I think. The illusion of salvation. You remember – We also fled to universities then, because they were free from neoliberalism. We hoped that we would find life there. And then we stopped quoting and reading some authors.
You wrote to me one day: ‘Neoliberalism is dead. Almost. Dig the grave!’ you said (Harman, 2009). It is over. In 2008. Now. Maybe tomorrow. But now and here – neoliberal zombies are around my home. In my kitchen and bathroom. I hear them all the time. My home? I’m not sure if it was my home at all. I had a dream about home. You know, a leftist dream from 1968. I used to use critical theory, philosophical critics to fight neoliberalism. Then I meet autoethnography,
3
critical qualitative inquiry that transforms society into a better place (Denzin, 2009, 2017a, 2017b, 2018, 2019). I had a dream. Did I?
But now, the new reform is coming – wave after wave, horde after horde. A new kind of zombie: faster, hungrier, and stronger – monstrous. More and more zombies are gathering in the yard around the house and swarming in the corridors (see Szwabowski, 2019).
I don’t know if I will survive. I don’t know what to do to survive.
Someone asked me: ‘How is this happening?’.
‘For whom?’ I answered. ‘And what is happening?’
Is it the end of dreams?
I know, we had dreams, both you and I, different dreams about what university is.
After you’ve got a job at the university you start to tell the same old story about the institution where folks dwell and they are only interested in Truth – that’s why we deserve and need privileges, special treatment. I was, still, more leftist. I read Marcuse and neoanarchism zines published by Debord and his group. I saw the university as an engagement in the transformation of the society to a better place. The university was a place full of activists who were interested in Justice – that’s why we deserve and need privileges, special treatment.
I was in a dream. Your place, my place – it was an imaginary thing.
I can read in an old book: ‘All universities worthy of the name have always been centres of social protest’ (Rorty, 1998: 82).
Words from dreams. According to this quote, our universities have never existed.
Not in our country. We knew it.
‘So, we need to create them’, you said one day.
Since 1989, academics have not gone to strike or staged other organized protests (Sowa, 2015). The first protest at a university after transformation was in 2018. The university supported neoliberal reforms in the country. An intellectual said on television that only losers, stupid and lazy people could not accept new rules. It was freedom, they said. It was freedom to be homeless, poor, unemployed – the neoliberals’ prayer for a prey.
The 2018 protests were minor. Only a few people tried to change the reform at the university. Only a few students and leftists. And nothing. The first rule for surviving a zombie apocalypse is to remain quiet.
I think, all this started when we gave up our hope. But do we have a choice? Maybe I am writing this diary to prove that I am not such a bad person. I am a victim in fact. We all are. I just want to survive.
This country has always been a place of survival: difficult, arduous, with several jobs, with debts and without hope (Szymaniak, 2018; Woś, 2017). We became zombies – reduced to consumption, working without spirit and living without dreams. At the same time, furious zombies were shouting with hatred in the streets. The left was erased from the government and the streets. And soon, these rabid zombies took over the media, government and public institutions.
Angry zombies warned and defended against hordes of foreign zombies who want to destroy us and our country (cf. Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski, 2018).
In a world of existential hopelessness and social death, the Party 5 emerged as a saviour. And so, it started to fight the virus of neoliberalism. And so, we found out that what makes us zombies and prevents us from living normally is sexual minorities, immigrants, Muslims, feminists, Marxists (Bobako, 2018; Cap, 2018; Grzebalska and Petrő, 2018; Karolczuk and Graff 2018; Mikulak, 2019; Puchała, 2020) – all these bacteria, such as women’s rights, LGBT rights and everything that hinders the saving power of nationalism, tradition and the Catholic Church, must be destroyed.
In my dream, I saw hordes of zombies coming to get me, because I create zombies.
I see that the university is a place ruled by professors (Kwiek, 2015, 2017). They define the academic subject. It is their voice that is heard. The rest are there to listen. It is the professors who have the power to define, decide, open doors and close them. They and the politicians.
Whispers in the hallway, bedroom, and in kitchen. Whispers:
‘It is an apocalypse. We have to stop the reform. What is good for them is not good for us. 6 We are not workers. We are not zombies – we are aristocrats (see Szwabowski2014, 2016). Look at my certificate. Does it matter? Or doesn’t it?’
‘Now, what matters are publications in highly ranked journals. If you work hard enough, you have nothing to worry about. Only loafers will be eradicated. Some losers. No need to care about it,’ someone said before the meltdown. I was doubtful. This reminded me of neoliberal statements I heard about employees. And I was a worker before I got my job at the university. I thought I was bullet-proof. The neoliberal ideology could not harm me. I was a damn trade unionist. Solidarity with the poor and so on.
Was I?
A few friends were very happy. The new reform will establish new relationships. No more feudalism, no more local mandarins.
We will kill all old fat professors who do not speak English, who do not write enough – and there will be a place for us. We will take over the university, bro.”
They danced on the basement floor.
No more suffering! No more bullying. We take them all!
I wanted to say that it was wrong. But I remembered how some professors treated young researchers. Kill them all!
As I dance and scream along with them, I can feel the rage running through my veins. A foretaste of pleasure, a foretaste of fresh meat between my teeth. A strange joy when those who are unable to compete, too weak to survive, are annihilated. As if it was fulfilment. Except it is not the dance of my dreams. Even though aristocrats are eaten.
I am not immune. I am infected. There is rage inside me, a wild scream, a desire to tear to shreds all those fat, self-satisfied professors who have had nothing to do for a long time. And since I got a job at university, I have been working constantly, knocking off publication after publication. And so, they keep making me understand that I do not have the right to speak out. And there are hierarchies that are not based on work. I do not understand what a real university is.
I feel as if those who were deprived of their right to speak out before contributed to the dissolution of the academic community. But have I ever experienced it other than as humiliation?
Community. Family. We are the family. We protect ourselves and destroy anyone who is not with us. I have to be loyal if I want to survive. The second rule to survive the zombie apocalypse is to be loyal to your group.
I am learning it. Do not trust a stranger. And, in fact, trust no one. Today, after it has happened, I do not know even who is and who is not a zombie.
‘Everyone’s turns’ (Morgan in
I put my head down and I work hard. I hope I survive.
We work. ‘Staring into the depths of their own arse’ (Żulczyk, 2019: 327).
Maybe it’s because of fear. Fear of terrorists, immigrants, homosexuals and genderists. Fear of losing national values. Fear of being unable to pay an installment. Fear of homelessness. Fear of unemployment. Fear of people. Fear of life. I don’t know why we do not protest, why we do not fight for our rights. ‘Please be quiet because someone else may hear?’, my friends told me. ‘Zombies are everywhere, you know.’
‘We need cameras, you know. It is about safety.’
I agree. I need one too. I am not a terrorist. I do not have anything to hide. I am not a zombie, of course.
One of administrators said: ‘So, we need a permanent control. We record your every move and check your every action. We have to do this. If we change our policy, and approach to management, we will avoid death. Death will not get us. Believe us. We know what we’re doing’.
Regulations. Control. Surveillance. No place to hide. But why do I want to hide? I feel angry. I do not trust them. I think they bring death to us.
The administration says: ‘You have to publish a lot and work hard, so… Write reports!’
And so I write about what I did last year. And I write what I will do next year. I write different versions for different people. Every time I change the formatting. Four versions of the same document. And I still have to fill in digital bases.
If you want go to the conference, you have to write letters to several people. You have to ask them for permission. And, of course, it is not the end of your paper work. It just the beginning.
A memo from the administration: Be international. I know that after the apocalypse, it is difficult to move around the world. I know there are no funds for trips. But maybe you have some savings. Be international. International networks can help us survive.
Death will not miss us. Here, where I am, it is safe. There, it is not. Never go out there. I can see former students with eyes full of broken dreams. It is a privilege to be here, even when they take pills every day to function. Even when sleep does not come, when you are caught by breathlessness, because the spectre of a sudden, unexpected death is still present, it is a privilege to be here. Yet my eyes are like those of former students, doctoral students who wander around the walls, hoping to be let in.
I’m sitting in my room. I can hear the dead scraping and scratching at the door. They are restless today. I browse newspapers. I make cuttings and put them into collages. I feel nothing but nausea. I am too weak to survive. Newspapers draw pictures of a dark future. There will be no work, there will be no university. There will be pain, suffering and political submission. At the same time, newspapers describe us as loafers, fools, nasty parasites (see Dobrołowicz, 2013). They’ve done it before. We were the last bastion of communism.
Maybe they’re right. Who am I? I publish in a Polish journal. I don’t have a lot of international connections. The administration tells me my job is worth nothing. That I am worth nothing. Under the new reform, all my work is waste paper. It is a waste of trees.
I am so tired. I cannot sleep. I cannot do anything. The undead are too close.
I found a notebook in the basement, in the PhD students’ room. I read and recorded a part of it. You can see that it’s not only me who suffers. I am here. I am one of them. They were always close. I have been listening to them for years. Naively, I thought that they were far enough from me. I was sure that I would never be infected. I thought that it was impossible. I was too strong, too tough. ‘I am going to do my job and everything will be fine’, I thought. Oh, how stupid I was. It was always my problem. I mistook facts for dreams and imagination. I tried to exist in some way. I was living in a romantic dream. It was not beautiful, as it was the Polish romanticism type, but it was exciting. Meanwhile, they were closer and closer to me. However, I was blind. I lived a life full of conversations and books, and I believed in the sense of our research. I believed that we could live our lives in spite of the new rules. We believed that points and grants would be good for us, and that we did not have to care about them. They would be a sign of our passion. I was sure, that we did not have to strive to survive. When the time had come, everything would have been in our hands. We were so naive. For the first time I felt I was in the right place.
‘Trade unions,’ he says.
Right. Trade unions. I shrug my shoulders. People sitting with us in the room say:
‘It is for the losers.’
‘They care only about themselves.’
‘Is it more dangerous to be a trade unionist. Look what the Death King does. He fired them. For a community supported by the authorities, a trade union activist is a “redundant and unnecessary” person for this environment’ (W Solidarności, 2019).
‘So what we can do?’
‘Just survive.’
Gossip. Nobody knows how many zombies are coming toward us and when their wave will hit us. I can hear ongoing discussions on what to do and what strategies to adopt. They all seem useless. Someone says we are doomed. At night, several people left the house looking for a safer shelter.
I will survive. I work hard. And, deep inside of me I can feel that a new regime may save me. I can write and publish a lot in respectable Polish journals. I published in international journals too. I have to prove my worth, I have to adjust. I have to become a real, international, academic. Not the local waste paper maker that I was.
I do not know what it means to be a university man. I do not know how to play myself. I just want to survive. I want to disappear, hide somewhere.
The corridor is secure and safe, so they say. I pass an old lady. She whispers: ‘Be careful. They don’t like it when someone publishes too much. You may have an accident during patrol.’
I recorded from the notebook: Nightmare of disillusionment came relentlessly. Our university group experienced a shock. Our professor, my promoter, went to hospital. She was unconscious. We were terrified, but we tried to believe that everything would be fine. Reality was put aside again. My life turned to waiting, waiting for messages from the hospital, waiting for her to awake. I felt sick; words stuck in my throat. I was speechless. I have never believed in coaching, so I could not ‘think positive’. However, I tried to fight. I opened a bottle of wine and gulped. I was writing and it was fluid. I tried so hard not to drown. I am sure, it all looks familiar when words float like the stream of alcohol, put like a cocaine line… I know and you, my reader, you know it too, don’t you? All of us know, the academic society knows, but we do not like to talk about it. At this time, I was as if in a trance. I tried so hard to write my PhD thesis, I thought the professor would wake up. I wanted her to be pleased with me. Meanwhile, I tried not to break down. I was bemused, but my eyesight was sharp at the same time. I realized the truth about my family, my mother. She was using my pain, my distress against me. She was like a predator who attacks, when it scents blood. She had replaced all my strength with melancholy and sorrow. I knew I had to do something about it, to escape and to rescue myself, but I didn’t have enough strength. I gazed into the abyss and romantic literature. I said to myself ‘later’, but I knew that there was no excuse for her. However, I could always find some excuses. It’s unnecessary, but maybe it is easier than facing the truth, or pulling back the veil of illusion? It is the only way when we love our enemy. And the professor woke up. I felt as though I saw the sun again. Oh, it seemed so trivial. I couldn’t control my emotions, my mental composure and my life were like other people’s. What about you, my dear reader? You also do not want to be yet another case like those described in psychiatric and psychological textbooks. We want to be unique, but if we catch the common cold, does our personality cease to be special? But darkness followed and fell on me. She died unexpectedly because of someone else’s mistake. I plunged into mourning. At the funeral I hid behind dark sunglasses. My family taught me to hide emotions, to suppress them no matter what. So I always run away and when I do not feel well, I hide. I am terrified when someone can see me in a bad shape. Tears leaked from behind the glasses. Tears were grey and black. Mascara or make up, it is one of our masks. Just like the clothes we wear, and our posture and manner. We are polite, but not happy. We smile. I do not remember when I learned to smile and laugh for real. It was probably at school. When I was six, my cousin needed a photo of a happy child. I didn’t know how to smile. I used to make a strange grimace only.
I talk about the reform with my friend. We are in a basement. ‘You are a “gray scientist”. 7 But you do not want to admit it’.
‘I just want clear rules for survival,’ I answer. ‘I want rules independent of the whim of administrators and superiors. This state of emergency must end.’
He looks at me and says: ‘The state of emergency has just begun and it will not end until you believe in life.’ He nods, blinks and then vanishes into thin air.
I am alone in the dark. There are zombies above me. Around me. A deep darkness full of the undead. I hide underground in a tomb. The air is musty and smells like a dead body. I am looking for academic guerrillas. Where are they? I know, it was a rumour that troops killed them all because they had become zombies. But I do not believe it. I roam corridors for a moment in search of subversive communities. I can hear someone fighting upstairs. Zombies have broken into one of the rooms. I hide in the wet darkness and wait.
Now, it is very dangerous. Everyone may be suspected. Everyone may be a zombie. Fear rules because nothing looks familiar. I don’t know what has happened to the guerillas. Some say they have gone crazy and killed each other. I hope nobody knows about my connections with them. I’m trying to be quiet. I’m cautious. I sleep with a hammer under the pillow. I don’t know how you are doing my friend. I write it all down as if we were not going to see each other ever again.
The Commissioner appeared. He was called by the Death King to save us from destruction.
‘I am the representative of the Death King. Like the Death King, he is the representative of the Minister. All three of us are representatives of the power. The only just, and salutary power.’ He said, ‘We are saviours’.
He said that they had to clean this mess. No more democracy. No more freedom. The freedom and democracy bring us the zombies’ apocalypse. Some of the academics agree.
‘A horde of zombies doesn’t have to come. They will starve us anyway,’ one of the assistants shouts (see Sahajdak, 2017).
I saw people smiling pityingly. Some of them will starve and some will not.
First, PhD holders. Those who were not too nice, too obedient, and who criticized the authority. Both at the university and in the state. Those who promote godless, totalitarian Marxism, anti-Polish genderism, or other ideas smuggled from abroad in order to destroy Polish tradition.
I know, I know, it is not my university, and never will be. Today we had a Christmas party at the university. I was not invited. None of my room mates was invited. The authorities and university are beyond us. I have a feeling that I am here illegally. Temporarily. Although, I keep hearing that reforms are designed for young people. Only the young will survive the apocalypse. We need young people; they speak into microphones. Scientific achievements count. And still decisions are made by people without achievements; survival strategies are created by people who do not know global trends in science. The aristocracy are dancing on the top floors. They are laughing. There are no young academics there. There are no zombies there. There are only zombies.
I stay in a room with other young researchers. I read a notebook: I still do not remember what I was doing during the few weeks after the funeral. I forgot those days for good. Probably those days are hidden somewhere deep in my mind. My PhD thesis lay fallow, forgotten and useless. Days went by, I woke up from my long, dark dream. The university said, ‘It is your new promoter’. I barely knew him, but our cooperation was successful. I had nothing to accuse him of, except that he has one (but a huge) disadvantage – he is a he not a she. At that time, I couldn’t hear their voices. Probably I would not feel the touch of their hands and the bite of their teeth either. I focused on writing my PhD thesis and ask my promoter if I stood a chance of getting a position at the university after that. Maybe I did not feel them because I was like them? Maybe I was not like them, but I was so close, and the difference between me and them was very little, almost imperceptible? I felt dead. I was walking dead. My life went on filled with writing, dinking, taking pills for the meaning of life and cutting off my family bonds. For the first time in my life, I realized that all my life I had been overwhelmed by a load that was too difficult to lift. I did clean up in my life. My motivation came from words once told me by a professor. Professor D. said, ‘You are the best student I ever had’. I imagined her to be alive and I didn’t want to disappoint her. I wonder if all these things are really a part of my academic life. What do you think, my reader? Are you bored with my memories? Was my private life a part of my academic life? I think so. Not only did my private life affect the performance of my work on the PhD thesis and other papers. It gave me a new insight into literature. When I read poems or novels about melancholy, I tried to figure out how close the issue was to the author. Was the author a melancholic or did he suffer because of the romantic convention? I tried to guess and I wondered if I was right. We express ourselves in our books and articles, and I believe in it. We are hiding, but we are present. We write and express ourselves. Our life experiences affect everything we write or read. We are a part of our interpretation. The scientific vocabulary has a live author who filters his/her academic knowledge through himself/herself. Moreover, our private life affects creative possibilities. It is so obvious. Meanwhile, I found out I had spent my money for the research. My university’s earmarked subsidy for PhD students, which I had received and had no chance to spend. It happened when I remembered the higher education act. It was the fault of the act. It was one of my awakenings. I was so busy, so concentrated on my research work, on They say university life means being a zombie. They say … The lucky ones who got there. They talk as if they were relishing how hard it is for them, how much they have to swallow pills and fight for survival. They sigh as they feel the life burning out and evaporating from them through all the pores of the body. They piss me off. I want to go to university so much. After all, there are only zombies everywhere. Far from the products of their work, tired and overworked employees who dream that one day they will buy a flat on a mortgage in a communist block of flats. This is what the Polish dream of a typical member of the middle class looks like: a second-hand car imported from Germany (usually because it was scrap metal there, and in our case it is quite nice and our neighbour envies us), a two-room apartment in a block of flats built under the previous regime, when these blocks of flats were built to last 30 years, to solve the housing problem. Thirty years later, they are still standing and no one mentions that their shelf life expired a long time ago. They will be standing there until they fall fucking down and bury all this crap in the form of Ikea furniture (as if a luxury for us), a TV bought on installments, like the stereo system. And the residents of these blocks of flats may be happy that their death was quick and painless, and that they do not have to go to work in the morning. Why am I dreaming of university? Because there is crap everywhere, but at least there is something at university … Zombies that hang around on the threshold of self-awareness. A bit of, though momentary, joy, a flower in the dustbin. A zombie at the university knows it is a flower, that it has at least a moment to analyse it, experience it and then describe it. Zombies outside the university do not have this comfort. And the salary at the university is not the worst, considering (certainly) Polish conditions. One can support oneself and a cat, not necessarily using the cheapest litter. I know I am going to be working fucking crazy my whole life and I will not achieve anything, so at least I want some moments of fun.
More and more hostile. Stranger and stranger.
In the evening, I meet ‘gray academics’. ‘You see,’ they say, ‘we’ve been telling you this. We are labourers. We have to fag away and we have nothing to say. We have to get rid of them. We have to gain power. We have been silent for too long. And where have these local professors led us? Nowhere. They’re waiting for retirement. They always survive. You, me – not.’
‘They are dead wearing a rotten miniver! You have to kill them all. All the undead that deprive us of our life opportunities.’
‘Bash ’em, slash ’em, bust ’em, and burn ’em’ (Schaefer and Engler, 2014).
‘They can no longer rule at the university’.
‘We cannot give the gaffers 8 any room and influence. They have to be excluded.’
‘Executed!’
‘Think, which side you’re on. You’d better be with us. We need to protect one another. No one cares about us.’
I’m torn. On the one hand, they talk about objective and fair criteria. They know the pain. They know the systems broke people’s careers. On the other hand, there is so much violence, hostility and adoration of strength, and contempt for the weak in their words.
‘Think about it: clear criteria, justice, the West, new ideas, progress, freshness, muscle strength, health, and beauty.’
Today I met the Death King. He said that my work is crap. ‘I won’t give a dime for your quasi-research. Autoethnography … is it a joke? Get out of my face you little prick’. The Death Queen was smiling. ‘You should become a writer,’ she laughed. ‘But I bring you a lot of points.’
I tried to say something but the door slammed shut. I went back to the room. I heard muttering of zombies from behind the wall.
I am not safe here. Even with my international publications. And you know, the Death King was here before the zombies’ invasion.
Maybe the ‘grey academics’ were right.
I cannot sleep. My friend cannot either. He cries: ‘I don’t think I’ll survive. They will get me. I’m telling you, man’.
‘Who are they?’ I asked.
‘You know, you know. You know well. They’ve ruled this house before. And all those fucking zombies … those zombies are coming for us,’ he almost shouted.
One of my colleagues whispered to me: ‘I found access to global resources. You know, this entry is illegal. But what can you do? You can’t survive without it.’ I knew. It took me one day to write an application for a research grant. ‘You want too much money for books. I don’t think you’ve read them, so how do you know what they say about the topic? Maybe such a research has already been conducted. Your application is rejected,’ the reviewer wrote. And my method… Is it a method? The positivist approach is the best methodology.
‘These reforms are the extermination of humanists,’ someone said. ‘And the destruction of the Polish local university’ (see Chutorański and Szwabowski, 2018; Kubinowski, 2010).
I am torn. My auto-ethnographic desire to make writing dangerous, a kind of weapon against neoliberalism, and to create a counterculture within academia, and my desire to be a serious researcher who builds his reputation through publications. The dilemma: life or survival. Because life seems like death.
The Death King spoke through the loudspeakers all the time. Before, during and after the apocalypse. ‘We need structures, laws that will guarantee an increase of inequalities in science! Only international publications with the Impact Factor matter! Science is a ruthless competition! Surveillance is salvation!’
I asked how many publications the Death King had. People were laughing at me. The King is the king. The Death King himself said that I should kneel and shut my fucking mouth up. I have to open it when he talks to me. Still on my knees.
They are here. ‘They surround us every day. You’ve seen them. The soulless. The emotionless. The expressionless. The damned. The walking dead wander corporate hallways, with hollow eyes full of lifeless dreams’ (Herrmann, 2014: 336).
I see zombies. In the mirror.
I read in the notebook: I finished my PhD. I got good reviews. At the same time I was falling into uncertainty. I was waiting for information about the prospective job at the university. For me, it was ‘to be or not to be’. I did not believe that there was any life outside the university. Honestly, I still don’t. But I was out. Changes at the university and the new order, and the new organization of the staff following the new Higher Education Act took all chances away for getting a position at the university that year. Anxiety crept in. I was trying to find myself in the new situation. I hoped to get a position in the following year. ‘We will be in touch’, I’ve heard. And they were so close to me. I could feel their touch, hear their awful voices, and smell their breath, which made me feel sick. I wanted to vomit. I felt sick all the time. I didn’t really know when I fell into their arms… Or maybe I ran into their arms myself. I don’t know, I can hardly recall. But does it really make any difference? I was with them when I was writing applications for jobs at universities all around the world and in Poland. I felt desperate. They embraced me when I was talking with my friends about the situation at ‘our’, or maybe ‘their’ university. They were with me when I was working on the grant application and when we were working together. I was falling apart, as they ate my soul. I was beginning to think solely about grants, points and positions. My every effort had only one aim – to be at the university. At that time, I took a job at a school. I hated the community of teachers and I felt extraneous. They were so different from me and my friends from the academy. I was afraid that the job, this community, was like a swamp and it would draw me in and I would always be a teacher. ‘I am not a teacher’, I thought. I just needed money and time for my research work, so being a teacher was the only solution. Oh, I used to hate teachers when I was at school and I still do. I felt happy to shed family burdens and I was terrified about my future. I felt threatened with ‘being a teacher’, staying a teacher forever. Being a teacher is being a zombie. I teach what is on the government’s curriculum, I speak with the voice of the minister of education. I omit only the more propogandist fragments. I do not want to teach children that they should dream of dying for their country. This country will kill them anyway while keeping them alive. I couldn’t wait. I was waiting, sometimes with hope, sometimes not. I felt happy and unhappy at the same time. I was torn. The position at the university was in my head throughout the day and it returned in my dreams. And I felt: ‘I’m zombie. I am dead for real. I am walking dead when I walk to work or to meet my friend.’ I even helped my friend to solve problems, which he had made himself. I was weak, I had no strength for my science work. I started to postpone my research plans. Later had never come. My only passion was sleeping. Reality was so wearisome and painful. I literally ran away in my dreams. And… finally, it came! My chance, which I expected, I prayed for, it was close… This was life, I wanted to live! But I’m not sure, if I am alive anymore…
I am a zombie – I am hiding between walls. I am pretending that I am alive. Maybe I will survive.
Earlier, minister Jarosław Gowin threatened to eliminate all gay and lesbian scientific journals (dziennik.pl, 2015). He intervened in defence of homophobic statements by professors (onet.pl, 2019a). Now, Patryk Jaki says, ‘the process of hostile socialization of the society is underway – the white-red flag is replaced with a “rainbow” flag, a libertarian-conservative society with a leftist one. The world of societal values is mostly shaped by liberal-left media and left-wing universities’ (quoted by Wprost.pl, 2019). The police appeared at the Marx conference and then investigated whether it promoted terrorism and totalitarianism (see Kasia, 2018; Woleński, 2018). The list of scientific publishers includes Catholic publishers who produce books about the dictatorship of gender study. There are not many scientific books and journals published (see Leszczyński, 2019a). ‘Why does money go to universities that are “leftist”, gender-oriented, and where lecturers often speak against God and their homeland?’ (Tadeusz Rydzyk, quoted by Radio Zet, 2018). I’ve heard that our research has to ‘be shaped by reasons of state’ (Leszczyński, 2019b).
Troops on the streets. Troops in my house. ‘We protect and serve’. Their eyes are dead. And I do not feel safe. In fact, their eyes, their skin… I am not sure who they protect.
I am a critical educator. I am against the state. I support LGBT. I am dangerous for the new state order. I am a fucking monster.
I am a zombie – I am a victim. I am reduced to nothing. I walk in the corridors aimlessly. I babble: points, points, points.
The Death King takes me to the window. He said: ‘Look. There is hell. You are lucky. You may still live’.
The air smells of decomposing corpses. Damp and rotten air in the room. I feel bad. Unnecessary, worthless, unwanted. I have their blood on my hands. Because I felt terrible. I had to do this. I cleaned the rooms and blocked the access.
‘We are condemned anyway,’ says a colleague of mine. He has blood all over too. He is panting. He is tired.
Night is coming.
Now we see what a cruel world for workers we’ve created. This is not a country for employees. Morning. Good morning everyone. Good morning death.
Soldiers are chanting: long live death!!
Academics are chanting: long live death!!
Those who survived are chanting: long live death!!
I am also infected. I want blood. I want to tear things apart. Bite meat! Kill! Only the strongest will survive.
I look in the mirror. Am I a zombie?
‘We’re all infected’ (Darabont, 2012).
If I want survive I have to become one of them. It is their world now, their academy.
The new reform is to educate new academics. Only what kind of academics? What is this dream subject of the authorities like? International, but at the same time national, traditional, upholding the Catholic truth, and supporting the authoritarian regime of the party? Neoliberal mechanisms for controlling work, at the same time, are becoming mechanisms of political control. Ultimately, expert, arbitrary judgement decides everything. And only those who follow the Party’s line can count on additional rations.
Now, I have a little time before the next lecture. The corpses are in the classroom. On the floor, the blood congeals. A dead word in a dead world. Words are played from the tape. The tape is inside of me. The Death King puts it in. He said: ‘If you want to survive, do what I say’.
Together, we become dead alive. Survival is not life.
I see zombies in the mirror.
We are sitting in a room with several other people. Someone is talking. ‘There is a safe university. There is normal life. We just have to get there.’
Fairy tales. Myths. Novels. Just like the stories about magic auto-ethnographers who sustain life through words. They create a better world for their own community of storytellers.
I am looking for an auto-ethnographic hammer (Denzin, 2018; Madison, 2010). What for? What do I want to break down? I do not know anymore. Someone’s head? My own head? The world? The mirror?
I write in the dark, in search of light. I write in an attempt to oppose subjectivization within new national-neoliberal academia. I write trying to find others, make contact, awaken hope, let those speak who never spoke in academia and those who are losing their right to speak. I write to make connection, to make sure I still am – that…
This is not your mother. This is not your father. This is not your wife. This is not your friend. This is not your son. This is not your daughter. This is not your grandmother. This is not your neighbour. This is not your lover. Nevermore. You are alone. I am alone.
I close the door. I am scared to go out. Too many zombies are out there. They are waiting to get me. They want to tear me apart. I hear their steps on the hallway. I hear them all time. I am not alone. I wish they would leave me alone. I wish they would disappear.
The Death King organizes an annual survival race. I have a sprained ankle. I may not be able to finish the race. Death follows me. It is so close. Too close. I push my friend, she falls over. Maybe I can make it. Me. Not her.
I am a zombie.
I’m trying to get some points for the Death King. I come back with empty hands. I’m stuck in the corner. Beyond his gaze. I can see an eye inside my body. His eye turns inside my guts. I haven’t eaten for a long time.
The rules of the game are constantly changing. I don’t know what to do to survive. You find out after the fact. My attempt to discern fails. Just as you don’t know who you should and shouldn’t talk to. Which rooms are safe and which are better not to stay in.
I do not know who I am. I do not know who I am becoming. I wanted to be an academic, a university man. Now I am not sure what that means. Have I ever been sure? Our subjectivities are so fragile. So dependent on those with the power to define, and to distribute funds.
Am I already dead? Dead enough?
I had a dream. Now I have no dreams. Only nightmares full of blood, flesh torn apart, nationalistic shouts.
Day or night? I am not sure it is a day or a night. Darkness rules.
Conversation in the room. We chew dry bread.
‘What does it mean to be a zombie? Am I a zombie? Are they zombies?’
‘I think there are many types of zombies, zombies like us – science labourers without dreams. Zombies like those out there – furious, hungry and just in want of meat. But also among them and among us, I can see sleeping zombies wandering aimlessly, deprived of their basic desires. And out there, zombies still reign and fill our suffering.’
‘They are not just our Masters?’
‘I think they are closer to vampires (see Godfrey et al., 2004; McNally, 2011; Riach and Kelly, 2015; see also Shaviro, 2002). Hence, they still need fresh blood.’
‘Do they need it?’
‘Haven’t you heard that they should let some young people in?’
‘But… We don’t have room for them. Especially after the changes, you know, all this protection, and we lost rooms… and resources are also scarce.’
‘They’ll get rid of someone.’
We fall silent. We look at each other with uncertainty.
The military took me for questioning. Empty room. It’s dark.
‘What do you lecture on?’
‘Philosophy.’
‘National.’
‘And ethics.’
‘National.’
‘What?’
‘Excellence.’
Voices from the walls.
He whispers in the government’s ear.
‘Shaping patriotic attitudes should be the task of public universities. This can be said clearly and directly.… The principle for Polish scientists should be: I am a Polish scientist, so I have Polish responsibilities.… You must do everything to make public universities take the patriotic path’ (Łon, 2019).
And another voice, stronger. I hear military boots stomping on the floor.
‘Schools and colleges are important. Leftism rules there, a fashion for everything anti-Polish.… It must be taken into account that Satan’s work is real. We need prayers and exorcisms’ (Tadeusz Rydzyk quote in onet.pl, 2019b).
Of course.
Yeah. Yeah.
Excellence.
National.
There is also a liberal, libertarian voice, which means it’s the market voice.
Excellence! Publish in highly ranked journals!
No Polish publication. Polish is for losers.
Survival for a few only. In our country, we have too much university. Too many academics.
Too much of everything.
Yeah. Yeah.
Surveillance is salvation!
Yeah. Yeah.
Excellence.
I eat rice with water.
Remember: Competition!
And both voices say that democracy is a problem. A barrier to development. The source of infection.
Only international publications to defend our national values and convey our party vision of the world.
Run!
Nowhere to run.
Fear of falling. Once you stumble, it will be the end for you. You’ll slow down and you’ll be finished. That’s what they say through loudspeakers. It only attracts death. It intensifies in and around us.
I hear screams. Someone’s body has been torn apart, but I am not scared. I am happy. One less.
In fact, we have only one can of beans. Competition is very fierce.
I find a nut bar. I go to an empty room and eat it quickly.
Through the dirty window I can see the crowd coming. Screaming and swarming bodies. It’s a wave that will sweep us away. I smile and wait.
Last word
Voices from afar, some noise: Autoethnography helps us not only to heal ourselves, it helps us to heal each other (Herrmann, 2014: 334). I write so I and you and we can BE. I write so the darkness cannot win (Poulos, 2017: 38).
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
