On Strike! A Poetic Autoethnography of Labor

Abstract

During my first semester of doctoral study, our faculty union went on strike. The administration successfully negotiated with the other unions (service employees, non-tenure-track faculty, and graduate assistants) at the last minute (3 a.m. on the day that strikes were slated to begin). As a result, I not only taught my classes and completed my assignments, but also stood and sat and paced in solidarity with my striking faculty. This poetic autoethnography seeks to account for a variety of labor-based, union moments in my own life and how they informed—even if for a split, ephemeral moment—my processing of fellow union members/colleagues defiling and attacking “scabs,” presumably without question or reflexivity. My intent is to trouble assumptions about the “good” of labor by pointing to ways in which we, laboring bodies, are capable of reifying—even if unknowingly—the systems of oppression we seek to challenge.