Draft 1, Chunk 1 (Power)

[This was first written on 9 September 2011]

Introduction

After our session at Bank Street, I feel that I want to develop an account of the project as a whole – an account that resists the temptation to describe each strand (‘home’, ‘street’, ‘documents’) separately and instead tries to find the commonalities among them by working at a higher level of abstraction. For example, questions of POWER are clearly important in all three strands and so any account of the project as a whole needs to include POWER in some way. But all three strands also touch in one way or other upon the MATERIALITY of writing – the fact that one can write with a wide variety of instruments on a wide variety of surfaces, some robust and enduring (like inscriptions carved in stone), others entirely ephemeral (‘clean me’ in dust on the back of a van). I’m keen to develop a kind of mind-map in which POWER, MATERIALITY, and some of the other keywords we’ve identified GENRE, AESTHETICS, PERCEPTION, MEMORY and so forth) are positioned in a nework, not as isolated concepts but as part of a rich and complex description of how writing functions in everyday life, a description that arises directly from our multidisciplinary, multimodal project. How are POWER and MATERIALITY connected, for example, and what does their relationship have to do with MEMORY? These are the kinds of connections I would like to explore.

Just to emphasise the point, I want this map to transcend the specific argument of each individual strand and present the commonalities that we can identify. That is not to say that we have to ignore any tensions that have arisen as a result of contrasts between different academic disciplines, between academic research and arts practice, or between different approaches to arts practice. However, I think there is enough commonality for it to be worth starting with what is shared. If one starts with the tensions, there’s a risk that the writing degenerates into moaning about how difficulty it is to be cross-disciplinary and collaborative – not very interesting to my mind.

So, to get going, I’m going to write here about the first two terms that I identified earlier: POWER and MATERIALITY. The writing is provisional. It is a sketch rather than a finished work.

Power

One idea that emerged very strongly for me yesterday is that, in the ‘everyday’ settings we have been exploring, POWER can often be talked about in terms of an interaction – or struggle? – between FREEDOM and CONTROL. For me this was beautifully exemplified in in the texts printed in one of the passports that Irna and Will have been working on. On the one hand, the passport promises the bearer FREEDOM of movement. In fact, it demands that the border officials of other states grant the bearer passage. (Looking at my own passport, I read: ‘Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary’.) On the other hand, it incorporates the bearer into a state organised system of classification and definition by describing him or her with reference to a series of official categories, foremost among them nationality.

This interaction of FREEDOM and CONTROL within a single document is interesting and is actually more complex than I have so far suggested. The FREEDOM offered here is certainly over-stated. The border officials of other states do not, in fact, allow bearers to ‘pass freely without let or hindrance’ (although, in fact, holders of some passports are more likely to be allowed to ‘pass freely’ than holders of others). But there is a kind of rhetorical force to this text: it promises a kind of FREEDOM in excess of what it can really offer. And, conversely, the incorporation of the bearer into official categories of nationality and so forth, while certainly subjecting him or her to a form of control, also offers possibilities – a position from which to speak and, perhaps, be heard. In short, FREEDOM and CONTROL interact in complex ways within the document. It is not that some parts of the text are related straightforwardly to one of this pair of opposites and different parts to the other.

It occurs to me that one could look at some of our ‘street’ material in similar ways. Official signs – the ‘street’ equivalent of official documents? – also offer FREEDOM and exercise CONTROL. I’m thinking here about urban parks, which promise a kind of FREEDOM – the possibility of pursuing leisure in your own way. But this is leisure hemmed in by CONTROL. (There is a sign in the park at Ferham that simply says ‘no golf’.) To look at another example, East Herringthorpe is covered with signs that say ‘no ball games’ as well as warnings about anti-vandal paint. But, again, there is something double-edged about these. When Steve and I did our first walk in East Herringthorpe, we were photographing an ‘anti-vandal paint’ sign positioned on a row of lock-up garages. A woman came out of her house and began to talk to us – it seemed that she thought we were from the council – and she expressed a lot of anger. She felt that the garages should be pulled down because only one of them was in use and they constantly attracted vandals. More than anti-vandal paint was needed, she said: ‘An anti-vandal flame-thrower’. Her words were confirmed by the fact that one of the garages had been broken into and the interior was covered in graffiti. My point is that the CONTROL represented by the signs is welcomed by some residents and, in fact, does not extend far enough.

This story introduces the possibility of asserting FREEDOM by producing oppositional writing – the graffiti inside the garage – and I think the contrast between OFFICIAL WRITING and OPPOSITIONAL WRITING may need to be introduced. The ‘anti-vandal paint’ signs are OFFICIAL and the graffiti is OPPOSITIONAL. Does this happen with documents like passports? It’s not that people annotate their passports with OPPOSITIONAL WRITING in the way that people write on the walls but perhaps they do produce their own texts that cut against the categories encoded in the passport?

It seems to me that these issues emerge very clearly in the ‘home’ strand. The school represents a kind of CONTROL in that it directs children to produce certain kinds of writing themselves (following certain OFFICIAL models). But, if I’ve understood what Kate told me about this, education in literacy also proceeds from certain assumptions about children’s identities, and, if the projected IDENTITY does not fit the child well, it is disempowering. Again, education promises FREEDOM – or, at least, opportunity – but this promise may need to be treated with scepticism. Furthermore, home writing may have an OPPOSITIONAL character – or maybe that term is too strong? – in that it moves away from what is required by the school and articulates a different voice, although one that may, in fact, go unheard.