Coming back to the University of Essex as a lecturer feels like unfinished business. It’s now 35 years since I first walked onto this unforgiving campus with the wind direct from the Urals sweeping through those brutalist towers. I arrived at the British home of French critical theory: the reading list was Barthes and Derrida, Foucault and Kristeva. I understood next to nothing.
At the time I was working nights at a shop that sold “tat” in Covent Garden. My shift started at 11pm and ended at 6am. Farting purple dinosaurs, musical boxer shorts and novelty mugs that changed colour in contact with hot water. One night, or early morning, to demonstrate the poor quality of the goods, I pulled a handle off a mug which slashed through my palm. I still have the scar. I was so exhausted by Christmas, working all night, studying “The Sociology of Literature” by day, that I simply collapsed. Dropping out was not just inevitable, it probably saved my health and sanity.
Coming back, I find myself in the same department, but the Sociology of Literature is long gone. I’m teaching Orwell to students of journalism now. Do the ghosts of those French theorists still haunt the corridors? I’ll let you know.
No mention of your technological challenges? 😂