Success as a choice is one of the most dangerous fallacies of our time. The social implications of this fallacy are immense.

Late last year, the organisers of an alumni evening for research master's students asked me to defend a thesis from my current position as a cultural leader. It had to be about my position as a literary scholar by telling them about my professional path since graduation. I could frame this article hopefully and hopeful and elaborate on the competencies that the literary practitioner has to have to keep up with the existing and upcoming job market.

Predictions of the future are inherently dangerous and leading climatologists do not take seriously anyone who thinks further than 10 years ahead. Yet I would venture the proposition that in the future there will be more rather than less need for good readers, for people who can carefully and intently separate, analyse, evaluate flows of information. Although visual culture has never before imposed itself on us so intrusively, almost everything of policy importance is linguistic, and language, yes, a man of letters can do something with that. I will not elaborate on this thesis here but take you on a walk through my professional autobiography - flattered, of course.

Solid chair

During the lion's share of my studies, I had a clear ideal for the future: write a brilliant dissertation dealing with the influence of the whole of world literature on the entire history of the world, then secure a place as a lecturing researcher at a university, fairly quickly assume a solid chair and found a research school that paired in-depth literary research with social influence. Things turned out differently. June 2009 was crucial in that respect.

At that point, my first two attempts, still from the research master's programme, to secure a PhD position had failed. My masterful thesis had reached such monstrous proportions mentally that self-flagellation still seemed the best option. In any case, the university was threatening to cut my final grade because, for various reasons, I was already taking a year too long on my studies. I had already agreed in early 2009 to take up a part-time position in Brussels with an organisation I did not know but where I would work only temporarily anyway, waiting for the academic jackpot to one day fall on my literary lottery number.

Unique opportunity

In my most depressed moods, I wondered why my thesis supervisor Geert Buelens, whose dedicated assistant I had been for many years, had banished me to the Belgium he had so successfully fled. However, in my realistic moods, I realised that I had a unique opportunity here: after all, the university had a deal with my future employee that allowed me to get work experience and a PhD at the same time.

My first day of work at the Flemish-Dutch House deBuren was on Tuesday 2 June 2009, exactly one day after Snow Patrol closed the fortieth edition of Pinkpop AND my then-girlfriend, with whom I had become involved during the six months I spent at the University of Sheffield, broke up with me for good in Landgraaf. My contract stated that I was a 'researcher-programmer'. The term sounds ict-like but mostly meant that I was expected to create literary programmes in Flanders and the Netherlands. I was not given a clearer definition of my function but the space and trust that was given to me made me grow.

Visible positive effect

The short stress arcs paid off: instead of toiling for months on a piece that five people read (two befriended colleagues and three sour competitor colleagues), I organised audience programmes with an immediately visible and much more often positive effect. What also helped was that a month and a half after I started in Brussels, I met my current wife - a neerlandist! - met. My three-fifths appointment in June became four-fifths from September and from January 2010 I was officially working full-time, having already been quietly making forty hours a week informally that autumn. I taught another lecture series at the University of Utrecht on postcolonialism and migration literature with Henriëtte Louwerse from the University of Sheffield until early 2010, and with that I closed my academic career for the time being - although I still hadn't graduated.

Then things went fast. Those 40 hours a week initially doubled and eventually stabilised at a workload of around 60 hours. Both privately, within my job and in the professional context around it, I started doing more and more and took on more responsibilities. For instance, I became coordinator of the international residency project citybooks with which deBuren won a European grant together with partners in five cities (including Sheffield). I went to live with the aforementioned woman whose only marital condition was that, prior to saying yes, I would have graduated, which forced me to add a final chapter to my thesis write.

Champagne

A year later, our previous director appointed me as his deputy, I became first a member and then chairman of the prose committee of the Flemish Literature Fund, I joined the editorial board of DW B and to the board of directors of literary-critical platform The Reactor and the current director confirmed my position as deputy. He asked me to become programme leader and allowed me to participate in the intensive leadership programme LinC. Finally, I bought a house in Antwerp, still with my wife happily a raised a glass of champagne with me when deBuren came up with international literary talent development programme CELA drove in another European award.

Yes, I am a successful alumnus and it is entirely appropriate that I am regularly asked to speak for humanities students, freshly graduated research masters and experienced alumni. None of my strides could have been made without my literary background and I have put it to full use. I have done exactly what the performance society requires of me: turn my talents into products and work extremely hard to sell them to the best of my ability.

Talent development

At least as fair, however, is the observation that I do not owe any of these steps entirely to that literalism. Indeed, I don't think I even owe many of these opportunities to myself. Now I could continue this talk with a warm and heartfelt plea for the importance of lifelong talent development but another turn seems more honest and sincere. After all, coincidence played a major role in my career and instead of the above account, many what-if scenarios can be imagined.

What if the first man of letters with whom I fell in love had not rejected me but instead embraced me, possibly preventing me from going to Sheffield? What if my thesis supervisor and future director had not met on a cruise (!) and the former had never introduced me to the latter? What if the second man of letters with whom I fell in love had not dumped me but instead persuaded me to go back to England with him? What if illustrator Dick Matena hadn't had a fear of flying and, as planned, had given a lecture series in Indonesia on the adaptation of Elsschot? What if I had been in Jakarta during the attacks there not on campus but in the city centre? What if the third and last man of letters with whom I fell in love had not followed me to Flanders but had asked me to come to Rotterdam? What if deBuren had not been slightly cut by the authorities but cut back? And what if, in the summer of 2013, when accounting for our glorious European citybooks file, I had succumbed to the almost unbearable administrative pressure? Einstein is undoubtedly right when he argues that chance loves people who have prepared well for it, but still.

Fallacy

Without physical and mental health, without a PhD spot and without a starting position in a fertile corner of the then-grazed cultural field, my prospects would have been decidedly grim and the chances of me being allowed to speak often in front of groups were slim. Success as a choice is one of the most dangerous fallacies of our time and the social implications of this fallacy are immense.

Just consider the yet scarcely held genetic discussion, within which I defend the thesis that our beautiful meritocracy - which assumes that power accrues to those with the greatest merit - radically oligarchises within one or two generations and thus transforms into a self-affirming, brand-new capitalised network of families and friends, even before there has been a fair start for the participants in this value race at all.

Humanities scholars

Why am I keen to share these reflections with humanities scholars in particular? Perhaps because I fear that we are among the last to have had the opportunity, through intensive study and the privilege of concentration, to potentially relate critically to the false-meritocratic market economy. Humanities scholars are entering education, research and journalism who can place themselves substantially on a meaningful cultural continuum because they do not have to concern themselves exclusively with their position on the labour market. That is, a future job market which, due to its increasing volatility, they can hardly know.

I see it as my task as a man of letters and a leader in culture to defend that position permanently, without forgetting the privileges and coincidences that help me do so. I wanted to ask the same of you.