About "the profession"

What exactly is professionalism and does it apply to the academic institution? Is it a certain prescribed protocol? Or is it a qualification given by a group, an institution, an authority? How can one become professional? Does professionalism require a certain skill a certain mannerism?
A definition of professionalism of course would entail a division of professions and should we call ours the “intellectual profession”? Is professionalism driven by personal interest, by convenience? Is it a responsibility or a liability? Is it an imitative activity, a molding magma? What falls under the professionalism of the academic intellectual are certain requirements such as writing papers, publishing them and going to conferences, but for some the demanded production of papers can be a burden. Too often there seems to be a split between what one reads and discusses in a classroom and the requirements and expectations of the “profession” This type of separation between theory and praxis is exactly what turns the early passionate and engaged interest of students into an alluring and dispassionate theoretical horizon of time.
In this sense professionalism remains the burden of a bureaucratic load that provides a certain position, label, name, and a “home”. Students are introduced to the routine from the start but are not engaged in a discussion of the routine’s premises and processes.
Professionalism has become an assessing parameter for success. We as a group are proposing undisciplinarity as an unfixed position from which to reconsider the role of academia and our own work as academics.