El mantón, the flamenco shawl, refuses to do my bidding. It refuses to levitate in the air in front of me, in order to then fall softly on my chest – like it levitates in front of my teacher and then falls on hers, right under her collar bones and covering her entire wide-open arms. […]
On feminist philosophy, Freud, populism and flamenco shawls
My Alice-in-Wonderland moment of (allegorically) entering a smoke-filled room full of (mostly male) critical theorists, which I described earlier, has brought me here, to this point (or should I already start saying ‘standpoint’?) of musing on, puzzling over and, as one of the professors at our department loves saying, ‘muddling’ with feminist epistemology. A reminder: […]
On power, self-doubt, and the collective nature of novel-writing
The day I held in my hands a book written by one of my supervisors (physical, i.e. IRL ink on IRL paper), the other sent me an email. The ones and zeroes assembled themselves to spell out, digital ink on digital paper: ‘difficult work’ and ‘tough ask’ (I had to etymologically trace the latter all […]
On vueltas, roots, and the (field)work of love
In Latcho Drom, a music film by Tony Gatlif, there is a footage which invariably enthrals me: a Rajasthani girl performing pirouettes. Her back is bent at ninety degrees to the rest of her body, almost parallel to the ground, and she uses her arm as the centre of the propelling motion with which she […]
On deconstruction, acute social theory overdose, and Guernica
In the first couple of weeks of my PhD, I made the mistake of reading The Structure of Sociological Theory by Jonathan H. Turner. It’s an old book and somewhat out-of-date (at least the edition I had), but I just happened to run into it in India and brought it home. Not that it wasn’t […]
On taking the space, or The choreographies of unfolding
It still feels like early days of my ‘research training’, but I have had ample opportunity to observe the problem of taking the space, both in myself and others. Women tend to be worse at this than men, but of course there are exceptions in both cases. I have been keenly and purposefully observing women […]
On gender, critical theory and flamenco guitar
Hm, wouldn’t it be nice to start this blog with something lighthearted? Sure! – thought I enthusiastically, and jumped head first into the heavy-lifting topic: gender. A couple of days after I ‘immortalised’ in my individual study plan (ISP, a.k.a. the Holy Bible of a PhD student) the idea that I will use critical theory […]
Introduction: A hundred fathoms under water
‘To fathom’ has three meanings which essentialise an artistic/scholarly process. In the most widely used sense, to fathom means to understand, comprehend, get to the bottom of something. Both artists and scientists spend most of their time figuring things out by thinking deeply. They also tend to imagine things which are not there, and sometimes […]
Preface
This blog is dedicated to you, my fellow artists/researchers. Do you recognise yourselves in this definition? Because I recognise you. My departure point is that everyone is an artist and a researcher. At least part-time, and at least in part. Some people don’t think of themselves as researchers, but we all are. We do research […]
Fathom 