Aha (finding out): When in Doubt Part VI

Conocimiento. Knowledge. Consciousness. An invitation.

Spivak’s subaltern and Anzaldúa’s mestiza concerns about the limits and agency of (the English) discourse are invaluable. I invoke Spivak and Anzaldúa cautiously. I remind my/our/yourself (ves) that I am speaking of the inadequacies of language to demonstrate difference, inadequacies whose echoes are sensed and felt by the very colonial policies that drew light from the subject(s). They cleared such a beautiful path, I followed them through the bramble and its remolinos. Recognised the common as belonging and struggle. Resistance is not futile. In the clearing, we witnessed an invitation to discover and demonstrate novel ways to explore difference in institutional settings. The social and moral imperatives of one tradition of institutional education. The challenge is universal.

I am incredibly cautious in institutional settings doing this, so cautious I sometimes become paralysed. When I freeze, I look up and around and find the nearest exits.

I have yet to find a knowing position that does not require a pivot, a change of pace and the movement of earth below. Find a culture of knowledge of admiration and personal-political development.  

Looking around, I see the corner, the wall again. I can’t seem to keep my footing. The ground slips into the see. What did I lose this time?
Barad faces us with a scientific metaphor for explaining difference – where language has failed. Meanwhile, Spivak and Anzaldúa remind us about the paradoxes presented by (the) English when the subject/Object (petite a) invent itself, looping like a snake eating its tail. They invoke words that are not native to English, all the while placing them in context to create meaning – and they still return to the field, all above, to walking and, most importantly, each other.

Barad spells out her understanding of diffraction through description – where the language of quantum physics fails, she invokes walking and turning metaphors. She speaks anecdotally about interactions with Anzaldúa, walking in Santa Cruz in the late 1980s / early 1990s. They are together and apart. They share the field, the common. Ahmed and Woolf return to re/tables. I re/turn to walking. Ahmed and Woolf walk. I/we/you walk. More of the same.

I was there shortly after, in Santa Cruz, walking towards the Lighthouse.

The inability of light and its particles to illustrate itself, the god-trick observation alludes to, the satisfaction of rendering and description after – and still nothing monumental is captured. Of course I/we/you/they said.

The aha comes when the particles stir under the skin, the remolinos. To know the aha, rather than a personal release of expression, I/we/you must be on the field with the others and their Others. It is the tyranny of consistency of that ‘thing’ felt under the skin, under the protective layer of reconstituted plastics and fats, experience, protection. I/we/you/they have all felt it before.

Congratulations. I/we/you gave birth to another, entirely personal, aha.

A Start

There are spacetime coordinates, they diverge apart/together.

Places that matter: to be there, is to be there⁴I am tempted to write of beach bums and surfers here, the perception of the relaxed lives without resistance in Santa Cruz – the ‘throwing in of the towel’. I am also reminded of the impossibilities of Santa Cruz and why things, perhaps, appear that way. Living at the beach often requires working three jobs to cover your rent. You receive food at one job, at another you fulfil your potential. We all meet cliffside, in our social-cultural spaces, perhaps in the water or the farmers market. I am aware of my accent and my shoes – they tell you where I am from. When asked, I confirm. The first question is ‘why would you leave that (relaxed) life and come here’. The truth is, it was impossible – but I was in very good company, just like here. I have swapped surfing for walking and now have healthcare. There are also seasons. Here, I can see, things change.. I/we/you feel this convergence as something familiar, penetrating. This is the prepersonal: you feel you are in good company.

I look around with disappointment (enttäuschund)⁶German has several similar words for a failure to ‘meet expectations’ – some refer to phenomena, objects, general expectations of something other-than-Other (humans, place, moments). I called on enttäuschund as a reminder of shung: a failure of research and finding out. The English word involving appointment offers a reminder of conjoining place, time, and Others. Comparing these words does more than suggest a competition for specificity to description (is one term better than the other to describe a phenomenon)? The comparison highlights how the act of translation produces an aha effect via an act of etymology. In this case the sense between the spaces of imagination, experience, action and expectation. The differences between language raises consciousness of the hegemony of (English) words. We forget we might be speaking the same language, but how we arrived varies and redirects knowledge perceptions upon each encounter., a missed appointment to a world that has depersonalised (neuro/-queer)divergence into a homogenised public problem that can only be dealt with by way of labour priorities, institutional finance and in/sufficient training. Labour, again.
What was one of many forms of being, exchanging, and knowing has been reframed as dis/ability, a phenomenon of rights, codified in law. The feeling under the skin realises this FLINTA mode of being – it is entirely ordinary, yet felt as divergent.

I give the benefit of the doubt to those who are (or feel) responsible to me – it’s more work, new work, and reframes what once appeared to be a competent, independent individual into something that requires assistance. I am responsible to them to live up to my potential and claim that this is the only way right for me/us, and it is a right to live and circulate in conversation with you/us. As did the creatures up on that hill in Santa Cruz who personally advised me to do so.

Have I/we/you got it so terribly wrong?

What was once a convivial request of ‘meet me in person’, ‘can we have a chat about it’, ‘I am still confused’ is now ‘I need to ask for what’. Suddenly it is an extraordinary amount of time required to put things in order, in line. Outliers are left in supported isolation, exceptional cases. Can I/we/you support this track?

I have an image of a transport station and who is loaded on the train. I think of who goes to the left, who goes to the right. Can I/we/you get me/us back on track? Another muddle, another generation, an/Other slowly unloaded, never being in die Richtige Linie.

I/we/us are fully aware of the vulnerability, the inherited trauma of generations that have produced the tracks that lead us here and there. I/we/you/they are not wandering or lost. I/we/you/they are not on/off the (right) path. I/we/you/they am/are not here because of spite or (d)anger.

ad/sum ergo ad/sum.

I/we/you know the institutions fail me/us, and yes, there are boxcars of trauma backwards indefinitely re/producing the situation that arrives at this spacetime. I/we/you am/are waiting at the station, still.

The shame and disappointment arrive when I/we/you don’t show up.
The enttäushund becomes enttäu/Richtige. An unmasking of rights.
Rightige. A fundamental shared starting point.
The zero-point of failure.

This is just the route to producing the intuitive feeling of already knowing something. I know the wall. We/us/you are perfectly ordinary, I/we/you spend an enormous amount of time hyper-fixated on what is already in view. The well-trodden paths, places, and familiar people we are well aware of. We already find use in turning to Others for advice, even something ‘up there’ or ‘inside’. But since I/we/you asked, my answer is simple: if you get up and meet me at the station, we can walk together⁸Never take for granted the satisfaction of a prepersonal exchange upon the realisation of metaphor. For some who live and know divergence, this is the foundational aha. Isolation in privacy, being carried towards a common destination to arrive, together, does not build resilience. It builds dependency … and the paths remain.

I refer to this point, these coordinates of knowing and being. This is knowledge in the field, passed down generationally, interacted with differently at each separate spacetime.

But, I am still. In doubt.