I haven't paid much attention to the Rachael Gunn stuff, but I wonder if one of the reasons people feel entitled to mock her is not so much the lack of excellence per se but the perception that she lacked awareness of the appropriate venue; that she "should have known better" than to pretend to be an Olympic-level performer presuming to put herself on display among the most accomplished athletes and performers in the world. I like underdogs and am not a big Olympics person anyway, so I don't care. But this separate aesthetic norm around knowing your proper venue, or knowing your proper level, seems like an important dimension. It's only one degree removed from "knowing your place," which has oppressive and discriminative connotations. But even without discrimination, people often react with embarrassment and discomfort if they witness someone whose abilities don't seem to fit the occasion, almost as if that performer has committed the crime of hubris.
Maybe this too is a big source of imposter syndrome in academia: it is not just that one is insecure about being smart enough or good enough, but the fear that they will appear oblivious to their own inferiority and generally lacking self-awareness (thus doubly incompetent) in even presuming to stand alongside real professionals on the same playing field.
I haven't paid much attention to the Rachael Gunn stuff, but I wonder if one of the reasons people feel entitled to mock her is not so much the lack of excellence per se but the perception that she lacked awareness of the appropriate venue; that she "should have known better" than to pretend to be an Olympic-level performer presuming to put herself on display among the most accomplished athletes and performers in the world. I like underdogs and am not a big Olympics person anyway, so I don't care. But this separate aesthetic norm around knowing your proper venue, or knowing your proper level, seems like an important dimension. It's only one degree removed from "knowing your place," which has oppressive and discriminative connotations. But even without discrimination, people often react with embarrassment and discomfort if they witness someone whose abilities don't seem to fit the occasion, almost as if that performer has committed the crime of hubris.
Maybe this too is a big source of imposter syndrome in academia: it is not just that one is insecure about being smart enough or good enough, but the fear that they will appear oblivious to their own inferiority and generally lacking self-awareness (thus doubly incompetent) in even presuming to stand alongside real professionals on the same playing field.
We can excel at not excelling?
Ooh very Daoist thought!
Thanks