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Pablo Dávalos

The unjust academic revenge against Boaventura de Sousa Santos











Pablo Dávalos, Ecuadorian academic researcher, university professor and economist, with postgraduate studies in Louvain (Belgium) and Grenoble (France). He was an advisor to the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador and undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy in the government of Alfredo Palacio (2005).


At the beginning of 2023, a text was published as a chapter of the book Sexual Misconduct in Academia, Informing and Ethics of Care in the University, edited by Erin Pritchard and Delyth Edwards and published by an academic publisher, whose title translated into Spanish would be: "The walls spoke when no one else would. Autoethnographic Notes on the Control of Sexual Power in the Avant-Garde Academic World", by authors Lieselotte Viaene, Catarina Laranjeiro and Miye Nadya Tom. The manifest objective of the same is, as they expressed, "to denounce the way in which the academy (the universities) covers up the scandals of their "Star Professors" in their behavior towards young researchers who, in turn, depend on their academic approval to be able to continue with their academic careers and who, in addition, have been victims of harassment,  mistreatment and psychological damage." Not surprisingly, the three worked at a research center, the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra, Portugal.


The problem in this regard is that, as a result of the publication of this chapter, a "hurricane" has been unleashed in university circles, in feminist movements and in academic networks that has caused the suspension of the academic career of the Portuguese sociologist and philosopher Boaventura de Sousa Santos, director emeritus of the CES of the University of Coimbra in Portugal and who appears involved and negatively referenced in the article with the qualification of "Star Professor".


With regard to the drastic consequences that Boaventura de Sousa Santos has had to assume, it is therefore necessary to examine the methodological and theoretical rigor of an article classified as an academic article, as it is a book published by an academic publisher. Thus, given this condition, it is assumed that the authors have carried out some intrinsic and necessary practices in the process of research and analysis, such as the foundation of the concepts and categories used to support the hypotheses described by them in the article. 


However, if the characteristics in which it is formulated are analyzed, it can be observed that it is not an academic text or a research or theoretical reflection, since it does not meet the requirements that this type of text is required to be considered as such. On the contrary, it bases the foundations of the facts described in the text on the indiscriminate and unjustified use of categories or terms, such as intellectual extractivism and sexual extractivism. These are used as adjectives to qualify and denounce alleged abusive conduct that takes place in the academic center of which Boaventura de Sousa is director emeritus and that are allegedly exercised by him and other "Star Professors" towards young researchers. This behavior on the part of the authors shows that in practice the text is an almost judicial plea and a journalistic report of denunciation, but never an academic text.


In fact, although adjectives can be used to describe a given situation, this is not appropriate in the chapter of a book of theoretical reflection because that detracts from the basis of such terms used to transform them into a mere ideological argument.


Likewise, the authors acknowledge that they did not conduct interviews with institutional actors, but rather investigated their behaviors based on their own perceptions and experiences lived in the academic center. Therefore, they use their personal experience as the only basis for what is described in the article to carry out an analysis of the behavior that takes place in the upper echelons of academic research in order to bring to light the unjust power relations that occur in these spaces. They mistakenly call this exercise of analysis "autoethnography", which they use as a method of investigation, although in reality what they do is testimonial journalism.


Use of unsubstantiated terms

In the chapter of the book, the authors accuse the director of the center of harassment, violence and different forms of a practice that they call extractivism. Specifically, they use concepts such as "intellectual extractivism" and "sexual extractivism" to refer to the abuses of the research directors of the academic center, terms that must be examined in depth since the strength and credibility of the text depends on them.

Well, for the authors, intellectual extractivism is the abusive practice carried out by research directors, who explain that they use the work carried out by their research assistants without subsequently recognizing their intellectual authorship in the respective research project.


However, the lack of intellectual recognition of research assistants in research projects, behavior that is described as a complaint by the authors, has nothing to do with any type of intellectual extractivism. It only corresponds to a recurrent dynamic of academic precariousness or overexploitation that has been normalized in the university environment worldwide to produce knowledge and research in this stage of academic neoliberalism. The explanation in this regard is that in order for universities to obtain income to launch research they need "Star Professors" who are obliged to write and publish all the time in their own name, hence the need for them to have research assistants to help them fulfill their mission in a highly market.


In this way, the "Star Professor" (Boaventura de Sousa) to which the authors refer cannot in any case be an architect of intellectual extractivism. Although it is true that this practice exists, it is not done by the research directors of any university in the world, but by large publishing companies and scientific journals.


Similarly, the authors include various references to the term "sexual extractivism" and in no case does its use have a foundation, an endorsement of analytical reflection or bibliographic support. As such, sexual extractivism is considered a crime inscribed in the practices of sexual exploitation and consists of the use of women's bodies (and men's) to generate income, generally to mafia groups dedicated to trafficking, abuse, prostitution and pornography. Therefore, the appeal to the term "sexual extractivism" to refer to the practices committed by a group of professors led by their main director in the academic center would imply that not only was there harassment by them, but that they would have committed crimes of trafficking, prostitution, abuse and sexual exploitation to generate income, a fact that has not happened.


Therefore, it can be easily observed that the authors use this category in the same way that they use the notion of "intellectual extractivism", that is, as a qualifying adjective. This is so because in the text they do not make any theoretical reflection or of any kind on these categories.


For all these reasons, it can be concluded that it is a text that does not meet the epistemological rigor required for an academic text: it does not present a theoretical framework or methodology, it confuses autoethnography as a research method with testimony, it uses memory and subjectivity strategically, and it expands on details that do not contribute to academic reflection or denunciation. Therefore, the chapter acts as a complaint arising from the authors' indignation at the situation of job insecurity and alleged sexual and workplace harassment suffered, going against a specific academic institution and its directors.


Some of the questions that arise as a result are: why was this text published if, given its shortcomings, it would not have been accepted in other contexts? Why did it generate so much scandal? Why did it cause the suspension of Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos' academic career?


 

 

 

 


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