Like most young PhD students, I often find distinguished academic scholar’s early career biographies extremely interesting.

In particular, I’m always interested in their jobs and hobbies that most had worked through, previous or concurrent to studying, before they became distinguished enough to abandon them. Do these events bestow something iconic, only retroactively defined in what would be their key scholarly work to come?

There are many notable examples of course from history – Bataille and archiving, Derrida and professional football. There are loads more of course.

But if we ask the same question in, say, 50 – 60 years from now – what about the distinguished academics at the top of their profession at that time? What of those who are working in call centres, nightclubs, cocktail bars and administration right now, this second? How will these jobs come relate on their discipline? What hobbies will come to partly define those who will retroactively create important, paradigm shifting works?

Throughout the early career of an academic – it would be naive to consider that loveable / hateful jobs, temporary posts and ulterior hobbies do not have an impact on their future academic scholarly study. The future and past are not as disconnected as some may wish.  Sometimes a determined few of these events can be quite consoling and at the same time revealing.

For instance, consider this contemporary example (and I have it on good authority that this is true). Ray Brassier used to be a Butcher.

Now I don’t know anything other than that (I’m not even ruling out that it may be a myth), we don’t know how long he was a butcher, or the circumstances into why he became one. But does anyone else think that this exposure to the dead, cold mechanical, meat-led perception may have influenced the work we know of him? Just a somewhat trivial thought in an otherwise ridiculously busy day.

The fact that Ian Bogost was a CTO for an interactive media company springs to mind as well, although that would be obvious.