Coming to terms with the missing pieces: Toilet paper and ethnography in the neoliberal university

Abstract

This article contributes to the rethinking of failure within the neoliberal university, particularly in relation to ethnography. It is grounded in the ethnographic setting of a boxing club and focuses on one unusual dynamic of which I was aware during the research, but for which I could not – and still cannot – account for in theoretical terms. One or more members of the boxing club recurrently stole the toilet roll, and I have no idea why. This, however, also reflects a broader trend within the ethnographic genre: whilst toilets are used for cover by researchers, they are a space where the ethnographer's gaze fails. In turn, this reflects the social construction of defecation as moral failure. Similarly, failure - whilst routine - is individualised within the neoliberal academy. Accounting for dead ends and unknowns within research thereby becomes risky, and this actively discourages recognition of the complexities of life within ethnography. Writing ethnography which actively incorporates failures and unknowns would promote vitalism and would resist a neoliberal articulation of success.