Image: Frakieleon, 'True Colours', 2009, Flickr/Creative Commons
It
has been almost three decades since the publication of Clifford and Marcus’ Writing
Culture: The Poetics & Politics of Ethnography. Yet, the volume’s statement
on interdisciplinarity as not just the act of ‘picking a theme or a subject’
but the decision of ‘creating a new object that belongs to no one’ (p. 1) still
retains its relevance across the social sciences. Although Clifford is talking
about ethnography and the ethics of partial truth excavation in scholarship, his
observations certainly apply to writing as a form of agency upon the social in broader
terms to date. His decision to expand on writing as a metaphor of ‘pilgrimage’ in
Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century (1997) shifted
debates on movement in phenomenological and interactive terms. In Returns:
Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty First Century (2013) he also
suggested that collective and individual subjectivities are processual and
emergent; that we all are overdetermined in some respects by the presence of an
interconnected network of cultures –
so much so, that our own (auto)biographic rootings remain ever-shifting and
malleable.
The
lengthy reference to the politics and poetics of writing makes sense in the contemporary
context of Western academia as this undergoes ideological changes due to the
invasion of unregulated market ideologies in its informal ways of ‘doing things’.
Looking past this polemics – possibly, also past any ‘publish
or perish’ ultimatums (Colquhoun, 5 September 2011) – one discovers a world of barely visible
networks of people striving to articulate what matters to them nd not for the
sake of a Research Excellence Framework. With all the hassles of the academic
job, putting an idea into words, shaping up an argument (or more than one)
persist as values referring back to other values – amongst them the assaulted
freedom of expression.
Writing
is a dangerous act: not only does it release feelings and notions the author
never manages to fully tame into texts – for, meaning always exceeds its
original articulation – it puts us into indirect contact with other voices. My
mental closets are full of significant others who fade or return in my desktop
every time I type up a new idea. If, as de Certeau (1986) noted, spatial
trajectories find a way to project their creators’ psychic world, then it is
true that writing will always invoke and release some form of darkness. And by ‘darkness’
I refer to the innermost recesses of our intellect and heart, not to a chiaroscuro
artistic exercise. As Neil Gaiman recently said, our stories should openly ‘[ask]
whether
any fictions should in fact be “safe places”, or whether their purpose should
instead be to “hurt in ways that make [one] think and grow and change”’
(Kennedy, 25 October 2015).
A retired now colleague used to classify us into 'talkers, doers and writers'...
Scholarly
writing in particular encompasses both the politics of friendship and the
poetics of love. Friendship follows a code of paradigm affiliation, which binds
scholars into the same dark space, coerces them to fumble their way around for
the right words and to provide mutual support via all sorts of direct and
indirect exchange. Here ‘exchange’ becomes interchangeable with ‘reciprocity’,
as writers are supposed to be bound by a norm of mutual acknowledgment of
sharing in intellectual projects. Where this is absent, the relationship dies
before it grows into a stable and more permanent friendship. I am constantly
engaging in such precarious exchanges, often guessing the identities of those
who proclaim solidarity, retreating in disappointment for broken links with
others, or building new unexpected connections. ‘Muses’ assume different form,
context and content in my writing ventures, often via faint and fleeting
interactions, indirect communications or textual sites I discover during
searches. In such complex and interconnected virtual and terrestrial encounters,
belonging remains emergent much like Clifford’s politics of belonging.
My sanity is dependent on my interlocutors's intellectual maturity
Image: Denise Krebbs, 'A Writing Six-Word Story', 2013, Flickr/Creative Commons
Nevertheless,
there is also another side to this shared darkness that leads one down a more
dangerous path and straight into the poetics of love. To explain, I refer again
to Clifford’s original point about interdisciplinary writing (the decision of ‘creating
a new object that belongs to no one’), which links to a direct quote from
Roland Barthes’ work. Clifford is less interested in Barthes' interdisciplinarity
however than in making a point about the interpretative nature of fieldwork in
Malinowski’s ethnographic journeys. It is this bringing together of Barthes with Malinowski in Writing Culture’s introductory chapter that
allowed Clifford to make an enduring ethical statement on authorial violence,
creative representation and partial truth-making. Would the two scholars ever
had looked eye to eye, if they had been brought together? Such synthetic
referencing always involves the effacement of one’s original inspiration, even
though the source’s acknowledgment is an act of love. Such violence might also creep up aposteriori, when
manuscripts have already been published –especially when stylistic similarities
or intellectual compatibilities eventually prompt new source-searching and
writing. These occurrences are not uncommon in scholarly networks and coerce authors
to readjust their cognitive panoramas, resort to accepting new significant others
into their own dark field, or even explore new collective or individual
opportunities of articulation. Ironically then, though the poetics of authorial
love are dedicated to humanising ideas, they may have to resort to some
dehumanising techniques, to objectify those we cite or acknowledge in our
writings.
References
Clifford, J. & Marcus, G. (eds.) (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California
Press.
Clifford, J. (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Clifford, J. (2013) Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty First Century, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Colquhoun, D. (5 September 2011) ‘Pressure on scientists to publish has
led to a situation where any paper, however bad, can now be printed in a
journal that claims to be peer-reviewed’, The
Guardian.
de Certeau, M. (1986) Heterologies, Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Feminist Media Studio (2013) James Clifford discusses his new book
'Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century' with Trish Audette,
doctoral student in Communication Studies, at the Feminist Media Studio,
Concordia University, October 2013.
Kennedy, L. (25 October 2015) ‘Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman review –
nasty surprises and bold recastings’, The
Observer.
