ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the overt denial of contingent labor is perhaps even more forcefully rendered by university administrations than their denial of the labor graduate student employees (GSEs). Contingent academics are subject to the various forms of repressed denial that structure the thinking of tenure-track faculty. The most common justification for hiring faculty to perform only one part of the totality of academic labor is that the contingent possesses specific experience, or expertise in a particular area, that an institution would be unable to hire someone else to do at a reasonable price. The most common form of contingency is the part-time faculty member who is paid by the course and most often hired on a semester-to-semester basis. The critique of domination that has emerged around the problem of contingency frequently focuses on collective bargaining as, at least, a partial remedy for the preponderance of low wages and poor working conditions.
