Formal Authorship in the Wake of Uncertain Futures: The Narrative of Publish or Perish in the Humanities

Abstract

Publish or Perish has a variety of meanings. Most often, the term is understood as a reference to the material requirements of publishing relentlessly in order to make or advance a career in contemporary academia. In this article, I show that Publish or Perish is also a cultural narrative that provides a formal rationalistic solution to the uncertainty of early career scholars. Funds are scarce, competition is fierce, the individual future within academia is unknown - the Publish or Perish narrative claims that if you just keep publishing, you can overcome these obstacles. This narrative is perpetuated among aspiring scholars and creates peer pressure where it exerts its power to a certain extent regardless of material requirements, especially in the humanities. Based on extensive discussion of literature and data from a qualitative study with humanities scholars in Germany and the UK, employing a cultural sociological approach, I trace the meaning of Publish or Perish as this narrative. I look at how it is passed on among early career scholars, and how senior scholars respond to it in situations of mentorship and supervision. This perspective emphasizes the importance of everyday situations that trigger anxiety, as well as the importance of mentorship as a crucial means of reducing such anxiety. This is pertinent to reforms of evaluation practices that tend to abstract from such mundane situations. The notion of the slippery slope (Hartmut Rosa) helps comprehend this anxiety.