In an exploration of the life-space

In an exploration of the life-space between the visceral experience of living as ىa social being and the rational experience of scholarship in a social discipline, this autoethnography presents descriptions of events in my life when I was consciously aware of my existence as simultaneous subject and object as a woman academic. The key criteria for describing the events for presentation was the experience of the event as consciously enchanting me to or disenchanting me from academia and the connection of the event to my relationship with the gender and feminist literature. In the social disciplines, tension in the woman academic's “dual” existence as subject and object is exacerbated by this literature. The essay seeks to come to some insight about the human experience of this dual existence. The essay develops arguments for further exploration of the academic life in the social disciplines as a way of coming to a better understanding of the subject-object dilemma by reconceptualizing “dilemma ” as “human data-source”; reconceptualizing dualism as wholism; and simultaneously conceptualizing the academy as a situated organizational context that functions as a site for micropractices of power, domination, and human oppression.