The woman academic as subject/object/self: Dismantling the illusion of duality

In an exploration of the life-space between the visceral experience of livi ng as a social being and the rational experience of scholarship in a social discipline, this autoethnography presents descriptions of events in my lif e 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 t o or disenchanting me from academia and the connection of the event to my r elationship with the gender and feminist literature. In the social discipli nes, 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 argu ments for further exploration of the academic lift in the social discipline s as a way of coming to a better understanding of the subject-object dilemm a by reconceptualizing "dilemma" as "human data-source"; reconceptualizing dualism as wholism; and simultaneously conceptualizing the academy as a sit uated organizational context that functions as a site for micropractices of power, domination, and human oppression.