Chartist Poetry and the Fate of Research: Writing and Activism, Then and Now

This essay draws connections between what might seem like two very different bodies of writing: Chartist poetry and modern academic scholarship produced by those who lack support or incentives for research, especially non-tenure-track faculty. In many respects, it is an apples-to-oranges comparison, but it illuminates questions about the relationship between pedagogical work, political work, and creative work that reverberate through higher education today. I start by observing that the unremunerated and extracurricular writing characteristic of Chartist poetry is increasingly the norm for academic scholarship as well. I then turn to the life and writings of Ernest Jones (1819–69), a major Chartist political leader and poet and a complex figure with unique affordances for imagining solidarity today. After meditating on how Jones’s declining class status parallels the recent trajectory of faculty work, I argue that Jones usefully models a way to find the self in the collective and to combine activism with creative expression. In the final sections, I return to a reflection on connections between the material circumstances under which knowledge of Chartism is produced and the Chartist poetic and political project. Considering the parlous state of higher education today, I emphasize the political impotence of scholarly writing and the necessity of collective action.