Labour Hierarchy and _white_space_

As a post-graduate student at Florida State University, I teach first-year Composition to incoming undergraduates. Since this is my first year teaching at this university, I am delegated (as are all first-time TA’s) to the basement of Dodd Hall.  In this windowless (and, as of today, leaking) room are dozens of cubicles where these new TA’s work and meet with their students.  On the faculty hierarchy (if we even achieve the status of “faculty”) we are the lowest of the low.

But there is something interesting happening on the walls of the Dodd Hall basement. Check it out:

Here, in the workspace of those at the lowest rung of the labour hierarchy at the university, we are surrounded by _white_space_.  This makes me wonder (and I’m thinking of the abandoned buildings in New York and the many in my beloved Detroit):  since we TA’s were given an abandoned space, an unuseable space, an invisible space in the university (literally underground), we are allowed some freedom in what we do with the space. We can make an impression on it, we can inscribe ourselves on the walls.  The second year TA’s who work upstairs in the English department in the Williams Building are not afforded quite so much leeway in a more formal space.

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