Bristol: secrets and exile
Jul. 10th, 2010 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmI'm back in the hotel room after the conference. There's an informal next steps meeting tomorrow, but for all intents and purposes this very strange odyssey, which hasn't been a year long, but which I keep describing that way, conflating, or perhaps reasonably dating even before it had conscious intent, my work for this conference to the events of "Day 4" in Torchwood: Children of Earth.
I don't, yet, necessarily have a lot to say about the conference, but I took copious, though perhaps somewhat incoherent notes, which I'll type up and put here under general lock in the next few days while I can still make sense of my admonishments to myself to relate this or that random phrase to this or that random thing.
One of the many themes that emerged today was that of exile, which was something we came to from multiple places. This felt personally resonant for me in a way that's hard to articulate without going into a very long and somewhat boring narrative about my 20s but is, trust me, central to my essential melancholy.
Exile from normativity, from acceptable levels of fascination, from narrative, from desire, from home, from the idea of home -- all of these came up over and over again, and, in a discussion at dinner got related back to the idea of secrets, which aside from the personal resonance, I thought spoke to particular elements of my paper. To condense drastically, it would be fair to say the fictional mourned have secrets and are exiles, and those who so mourn have secrets and are exiles for doing so.
Among the many remarkable things about the conference was the degree to which for most of it I thought the anxiety that I often see from institutionally affiliated scholars about the seriousness, reception of, or personal involvement in fandom was largely absent. This was refreshing, but somewhat peculiar, although I found it not less aggrieving when those anxieties ultimately did bubble up to the surface at the end of the day.
I recognize, that in all and any things, being out is a privilege. In regard, particularly, to fandom activities and academics there are a number of issues in play including the sexism of the Academy that must necessarily make women work harder to prove their seriousness and make women more easily judged for and harmed by any and all indications of sexuality or lack there of.
Having stumbled on my own history and proclivities more than once, I now live a necessarily, sometimes uncomfortably, public life. Nothing is more dangerous to my mind than secrets (except perhaps heights, cobras, certain species of jellyfish, and large dogs), than having something someone could hold over my head, ever and at all. Of course, I have the luxury of making that stand, being without institutional affiliation wherein everything from my grief to my sexual expression to my gender identity would make my words and my intellect suspect.
Being out -- about anything you feel you need to be closeted about -- can be a hard, miserable thing. It is not always safe or pragmatic. But if we treat our passions, our intellectual fixations, our modes of being as shameful, we are in exile, from our selves, from our kind, from those we speak for, and from our fellow travelers, no matter how different from us they may be.
If, in the scholarship, we continue to disguise, misrepresent and masque our fannish investment when doing work about or through the lens of fan studies, we are creating work that is suspect because its originating perspective is, often obviously, obscured. This impacts not just the quality of the finished product and its reception (because thanks, I can tell when a paper is produced by an acafan trying to hide that fact and it muddies the work for me), but also impacts the scholarly relationship with fandom which is already damaged and toxic due to a history of bad actors.
Coming out, in this regard or any other, comes with costs. Always. But in all this talk of exile and secrets today and all this time I have spent with fictional men without faithful friends, consistent lovers, and loyal families, all I can ask is that you think of what truth remains unoffered in your life and offer it. This is, perhaps, the only thing I know how to ask on behalf of the stories I love, but it feels, right now, very important to me that I do so.
We all have secrets, and we are all in exile, but we do so many so much honor every time we choose to speak and come a little bit closer to home.
I don't, yet, necessarily have a lot to say about the conference, but I took copious, though perhaps somewhat incoherent notes, which I'll type up and put here under general lock in the next few days while I can still make sense of my admonishments to myself to relate this or that random phrase to this or that random thing.
One of the many themes that emerged today was that of exile, which was something we came to from multiple places. This felt personally resonant for me in a way that's hard to articulate without going into a very long and somewhat boring narrative about my 20s but is, trust me, central to my essential melancholy.
Exile from normativity, from acceptable levels of fascination, from narrative, from desire, from home, from the idea of home -- all of these came up over and over again, and, in a discussion at dinner got related back to the idea of secrets, which aside from the personal resonance, I thought spoke to particular elements of my paper. To condense drastically, it would be fair to say the fictional mourned have secrets and are exiles, and those who so mourn have secrets and are exiles for doing so.
Among the many remarkable things about the conference was the degree to which for most of it I thought the anxiety that I often see from institutionally affiliated scholars about the seriousness, reception of, or personal involvement in fandom was largely absent. This was refreshing, but somewhat peculiar, although I found it not less aggrieving when those anxieties ultimately did bubble up to the surface at the end of the day.
I recognize, that in all and any things, being out is a privilege. In regard, particularly, to fandom activities and academics there are a number of issues in play including the sexism of the Academy that must necessarily make women work harder to prove their seriousness and make women more easily judged for and harmed by any and all indications of sexuality or lack there of.
Having stumbled on my own history and proclivities more than once, I now live a necessarily, sometimes uncomfortably, public life. Nothing is more dangerous to my mind than secrets (except perhaps heights, cobras, certain species of jellyfish, and large dogs), than having something someone could hold over my head, ever and at all. Of course, I have the luxury of making that stand, being without institutional affiliation wherein everything from my grief to my sexual expression to my gender identity would make my words and my intellect suspect.
Being out -- about anything you feel you need to be closeted about -- can be a hard, miserable thing. It is not always safe or pragmatic. But if we treat our passions, our intellectual fixations, our modes of being as shameful, we are in exile, from our selves, from our kind, from those we speak for, and from our fellow travelers, no matter how different from us they may be.
If, in the scholarship, we continue to disguise, misrepresent and masque our fannish investment when doing work about or through the lens of fan studies, we are creating work that is suspect because its originating perspective is, often obviously, obscured. This impacts not just the quality of the finished product and its reception (because thanks, I can tell when a paper is produced by an acafan trying to hide that fact and it muddies the work for me), but also impacts the scholarly relationship with fandom which is already damaged and toxic due to a history of bad actors.
Coming out, in this regard or any other, comes with costs. Always. But in all this talk of exile and secrets today and all this time I have spent with fictional men without faithful friends, consistent lovers, and loyal families, all I can ask is that you think of what truth remains unoffered in your life and offer it. This is, perhaps, the only thing I know how to ask on behalf of the stories I love, but it feels, right now, very important to me that I do so.
We all have secrets, and we are all in exile, but we do so many so much honor every time we choose to speak and come a little bit closer to home.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-10 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-10 11:42 pm (UTC)Beautifully written...
Date: 2010-07-10 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-10 11:54 pm (UTC)That last paragraph. So true. So very profound.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 12:11 am (UTC)*applause*
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 12:14 am (UTC)And yet, I can't do it. Not now. I just...can't.
But I will, someday. Hopefully soon. Thank you for this post.
(/posting this comment before I stare at it another ten minutes.)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 07:50 am (UTC)On the other hand... I'm not alone in my exile; I have someone to share my secret with, for the first time in my life. And that's part of the secret, too.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 01:14 pm (UTC)Not being alone is good. (I think, though, that we're not really ever alone, as much as it might feel that way. The world is large, and other people have your secrets too. It's comforting, at least to me.)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 01:58 pm (UTC)But at least we're not alone.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 03:26 am (UTC)I'm also really interested in some of the exile conversation, especially in conjunction with the issues of gender and credibility that came up early.
Woot, Bristol.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 08:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 04:11 am (UTC)thank you
Date: 2010-07-11 04:52 am (UTC)Those who so mourn have secrets and are exiles for doing so.
Date: 2010-07-11 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 05:12 am (UTC)I find this extends past academics and into industry.
People respect Vin Diesel more, not less, for the knowledge that he plays D&D and WoW.
We find a common ground and an ease with the pro Brits at Gally because they're just as excited to work for Doctor Who as we are to read their works for it.
Enjoying what one is doing--and doing what one enjoys--is not something to shy away from.
I wish more people would embrace this knowledge.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 07:55 am (UTC)Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-15 04:32 pm (UTC)I admire, appreciate and applaud the way you live your truthful life, and I hope I can find my own niche someday doing the same.