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Part V of ‘When in Doubt’ autoethnographic companion to the walk ‘A Speculative Muddle’ (Richmond-Upon-Thames).

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What was the use of my having come from (there)
it was not natural to have come from there

yes

write about it if I like
or anything if I like
but not there, there is no there there.

Gertrude Stein. Everybody’s Autobiography, 19371I have made alterations to line breaks. Stein, Gertrude. Everybody’s Autobiography. 1937. Reprint, Vintage Books Edition, 1973. pp. 289

There is no there, there

(if we do not go there).

I/we/you asked about the palimpsest – to look up, around, and think of what is behind. But I asked I/us/you to get away from the chair. Do anything but stay still in the chair. Please, step away from the table. Resistance, silence, other commitments, labour in the background, the protection, the privacy of what is in that room.

No one asked me to disclose anything about the location I wrote from. No one asked about the watercolours and Jewish prayer book.

What is at stake? What would be a popular answer? What would be a conversation that feels good? What (a) disappointment?

Why is this, though? In part, disappointment can be channelled as though it were a judgment rather than a feeling, supporting the mytheme that the solitary and independent life of the brain precedes and is superior to the simple attachments of intimate proximity. On the other hand, no one experiences abandonment as a pleasure that simply feels good.

Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism, 20012Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press. pp. 141.

I have an answer. It is (the terror of) consistency.

Consistency is the name, not for any homogeneous purity … but rather for the irreducible, attaching heterogeneity and indeed impurity with which each meets the “touch” of another.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 20033Sedgwick, E.K. (2003) Touching Feeling. Duke University Press. pp. 47

Consistency clears the path, makes the same path more visible by its retracing over and over, deeper and deeper into the ground, consistently. The divergent becomes typical. Normal. Not ordinary. Just, straight even while wobbly. I can see the line. All you must do is follow the line to get to your destination. It makes apparent where we are going and no explanation is needed: we know we are getting there on this path. There will be bumps in the road, but at least there is a path.

I have asked my/our/yourself to go off the path: there will be even more bumps in the road. However, they are not as difficult as they appear. There are a few basic requirements.

  • The terrain has some thorns and parasites. Protect yourself.
  • Bring your own water and use the restroom ahead of arrival, our journey is experienced as a whole, not in fragments.
  • If you need a break, chat with the guide – something can be arranged.
  • Let me know in advance how you move. Different routes we can take demonstrate similar, but different things.
  • Be prepared for all kinds of weather.
  • You will be reading, speaking, still and moving.
  • The run time is estimated and does not include travel (though optional elements can be taken during travel to prepare you for our journey).
  • Be prepared to interact with others.
  • Please take a moment to reflect, saving your questions until the end. You will not ‘get it’ until you get it.

I turn to my companions who I exchange words with – here in Barnes I think with Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Lauren Berlant, Rebecca Solnit, Karen Barad, Gloria Anzaldúa, Gaytri Spivak, Sara Ahmed, Bracha Ettinger, Eve Sedgewick. I/we/they walk. I/we/they walk and think, invoke the walking metaphors while concerned with showing how FLINTA experiences are best understood by something that is more-than-words. They keep you reading though. The talk with and to each other4They all have, at one point, made a point, drawn a parallel, invoked the words of Virginia Woolf. A diagram, is forthcoming.. I/we/they/you are (text) companions.

A companion text is a text whose company enabled you to proceed on a path less trodden. Such texts might spark a moment of revelation in the midst of an overwhelming proximity; they might share a feeling or give you resources to make sense of something that had been beyond your grasp; companion texts can prompt you to hesitate or to question the direction in which you are going, or they might give you a sense that in going the way you are going, you are not alone.

Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, 20075Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a feminist life. Durham: Duke University Press. pp. 16.

Perhaps these days I have overly concerned myself with fitting – hearing that metaphor about pegs invoked time and again. I highly vulnerable revealing to a reader/participant the ‘truth’ felt under the skin. It is intimate and that stays at home. I fear a defence, a question of the agency of vulnerability and clumsiness in research and knowledge exchange. I worry hearing that vulnerability is lazy, prescriptive, or confrontational. The work is both, and neither and here we are now.

There is no absolute boundary between here-now and there-then … There is nothing that is new; there is nothing that is not new … Sedimenting does not entail closure. (There are) spacetime coordinates. How might difference be figured in a way that disrupts this geometrical optics of closure, this colonising logic?

Differences are within; differences are formed through intra-activity, in the making of ‘this’ and ‘that’ within the phenomenon that is constituted in their inseparability (entanglement). Subjectivity and objectivity are not opposed to one another.

Karen Barad, ‘Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart’, 2014 6Barad, K. (2014) ‘Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart’, Parallax, 20(3), pp. 168–187.

Some illustrations:

Figure 1 – Schema of the hoop net. Jacques Lacan, Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre Xl, Les quartre concepts fondamentaux de Ia psychanalyse, 19737Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vol. XI. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. 1973. Reprint, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.pp. 143
Figure 2 – The Mirror Mess. ibid8Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vol. XI. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. 1973. Reprint, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.pp. 144
Figure 3 – The differential image/screen world famous Gaze complex. ibid9Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vol. XI. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. 1973. Reprint, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.pp. 106

Feminists often turn to Lacan and psychoanalysis to say the same thing: someone already said this, there is something behind us all and something in front, and each time it is different, but more of the same – we are stuck? Are we stuck? How do we get out of this? I invoke Lacan’s illustrations to reiterate my point and Barad’s point and Ahmed’s point all the points that have come to matter: nothing is new and nothing is not new. This is not new. The point is not new, only relocated.

“write about it if I like or anything if I like
but not there, there is no there there.”10Stein, Gertrude. Everybody’s Autobiography. 1937. Reprint, Vintage Books Edition, 1973. pp. 289

The signifiers (point there) and the signified (point there) keep texting each/Other in differential consciousness (raising) exercises that excite my ears and eyes. So I follow that lead, that aha moment through the surface, skin, screen, gut, trench.

Find out how to do what I/we/you/they already know.

Didn’t I/we/you/they just say that?

When in Doubt Series

Footnotes

  • 1
    I have made alterations to line breaks. Stein, Gertrude. Everybody’s Autobiography. 1937. Reprint, Vintage Books Edition, 1973. pp. 289
  • 2
    Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press. pp. 141
  • 3
    Sedgwick, E.K. (2003) Touching Feeling. Duke University Press. pp. 47
  • 4
    They all have, at one point, made a point, drawn a parallel, invoked the words of Virginia Woolf. A diagram, is forthcoming.
  • 5
    Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a feminist life. Durham: Duke University Press. pp. 16.
  • 6
    Barad, K. (2014) ‘Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart’, Parallax, 20(3), pp. 168–187.
  • 7
    Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vol. XI. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. 1973. Reprint, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.pp. 143
  • 8
    Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vol. XI. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. 1973. Reprint, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.pp. 144
  • 9
    Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vol. XI. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. 1973. Reprint, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.pp. 106
  • 10
    Stein, Gertrude. Everybody’s Autobiography. 1937. Reprint, Vintage Books Edition, 1973. pp. 289
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