Close Readers at the MLA

Why do we wear nametags at the MLA?

I've just returned from the annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the umbrella organization for academic professionals in the fields of language and literature.

This is my third MLA in a row: last year I had job interviews (conventionally held there); the year before, I presented a paper on English lessons in Shakespeare (I can trace my current job to that paper: amen); and this year, I presented my research on the first textbooks printed (in the sixteenth century) to teach English. It went very well, thanks (indeed, many thanks to those who were in attendance, who fielded such great questions).

Conference participants receive their nametag as a form of receipt upon registration. To my knowledge, however, the nametag itself is only needed, or tendered for show, to enter the "book hall," a quasi-marketplace where academic publishers vend their goods at a discount to convention registrants.

And yet, hours after the book hall has shut and every panel has wrapped for the day -- nay, every waking hour of the conference, in hotel lobbies, at restaurants, in coffee houses, and all along the street -- you will see Spanish teachers and Wordsworth experts with nametags dangling from their necks.

(An easy mark.)

Far be it from me to reproduce stereotypes about the anti-social character of academics, but we are not the glad-handing type. That is, when I imagine conventions in other industries, I presume that the nametag performs an essential function related to networking. The MLA, indeed any academic conference, means to foster communication between members of the field. For better or for worse, however, our field comprises individuals who relish their solitude while they read, or write, or conduct research. The chief mode of communication at the academic conference is the panel presentation, in which three or more speakers stand at a dais to read prepared papers to an assembled audience; a question-and-answer period is mandatory, but perennially (and often sadly) brief. Finally, no protocol exists for one faculty member (or graduate student) to approach an unknown colleague with a hearty, "Hi, I'm Gwynn, from the Kingston office. I see you're based in New Haven. . ." No, that's not the done thing: wouldn't be seemly.

Such meetings of the minds a dream deferred, what happens is that MLA nametags incite close reading -- not too close, mind you, you don't want to get caught -- as we surreptitiously eye the names and institutions displayed on oneanother's chests. . .

I know: as if furtively contemplating ces documents du décolletage is any more seemly? (Nay, I know not seems, madam.)

In my reading of the phenomenon, the MLA nametag provides the opportunity either to say to one's familiars, "I was just on the elevator with Stephen Greenblatt," or, if you're Stephen Greenblatt, to show that you are (and go up and down the elevator?).

I'm picking on Greenblatt arbitrarily here. For all I know he doesn't wear a nametag; I haven't worn mine, but chiefly because I felt I didn't have a name worth reading (which is to say, worthy of reporting). That the book hall is the one place where just about everyone drops in at one point -- wearing their nametag (dems be da rules) -- speaks volumes about our professional character(s), in that we visit the hall not only to purchase our stock, but also to consume one another (most discreetly), and see how we stack up.

In that sense, the MLA nametag does more than prompt close reading. In a field that rewards scholarly individuality and distinction, the nametag gives us a name, which is to say, an identity, at a convention whose calling card could be professional anonymity, if not anomie.

Each year, the MLA attracts tens of thousands of academic professionals. At any given time, there might be a hundred different panels in session on an equal number of different topics. College and university departments hold their own independent receptions, and thousands of job seekers arrive for their job interviews. Finally, conference participants are housed in a dozen hotels throughout a given city (this year in Philadelphia; it was supposed to be held, pre-Katrina, in New Orleans). Far from convening its members so as to promote collective identification, let alone effervescence, the MLA is positively post-modern in its scatteredness, and must send many of its participants home feeling alienated to the operations of the mother ship.

In this respect, the MLA nametag grants its wearer an essential badge of belonging, a symbol of attendance, in ways that compensate (as a form of receipt) for his or her otherwise benign neglect. Read between the lines and the nametag says, "not only have I registered, but I have also arrived. You can see it, right here. Right here on my chest."

In a field so preoccupied with the powers and limits of language, if not with naming itself -- from Platonic nominalism to Renaissance self-fashioning to post-modern identity politics -- I find it charming, even sweet, to see so many individuals proudly brandishing the kind of sign they might otherwise parse or deconstruct (as I have).

No, I didn't wear my nametag in Philadelphia.

Maybe next year.