Social Beings, Future Belongings: Reimagining the Social 2018060677, 9781138709782, 9781315200859

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Notes on contributors
Introduction: belonging unbound
Part I: toils
Part II: intensities
Part III: promises
Belonging in academia
References
Part I: Toils
1 Naming belonging: when national vocabularies fail
Introduction
Belonging and its conflation with identity
The asymmetry of belonging and the national
The asymmetry of belonging defined by us and others
Naming, being named and its consequences for belonging
Not being from here: rupture, othering and double alienation
Taxonomies of belonging
Conclusion
References
2 ‘Their time and their story’: inscribing belonging through life narratives and role expectations in wedding videography
Introduction
Conclusion
Note
References
3 Academics anonymous: blogging and feminist ‘be/longings’ in the neoliberal university
Introduction
Belonging in the academy as a feminist killjoy
Blogging, belonging and everyday activism
Calling out sexism
Speaking into the silence
Humour and belonging
Conclusion
References
Part II: Intensities
4 Transforming belongings in Guantánamo Bay
Previous studies
An intensive approach
Fleshing out the enactments of subject status in Guantánamo Bay
Conclusion
Notes
References
5 Belonging in the future?
Introduction
The neglected future temporality of belonging
Belonging and place: putting down roots as future-oriented
When anticipation turns to open-ended waiting
Concluding thoughts: belonging in the (un)making?
Notes
References
6 Costumes of belonging: ‘fitting in’ circus fabrics in the novels The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith by Peter Carey and The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott, and the costume-cum-body art of Leigh Bowery
‘Case study’ 1: a Trojan rodent
‘Case study’ 2: rocket fuel for the body
‘Case study’ 3: costume-cum-body art
Costume-cum-bodies of belonging – conclusion on somatic hyperboles and physicus fiction
Notes
References
Part III: Promises
7 Beyond human (un)belonging: intimacies and the impersonal in Black Mirror
Introduction
Desiring a human future
Black Mirror and bad intimacy
Individuation, the impersonal and intimacy
Rethinking intimacy with impersonality
Impersonal futures
Note
References
8 Belonging, place and identity in the twenty-first century
Introduction
Uprooting
Background
Changing transitions to adulthood
Class, place and belonging
Subversion, symbolic violence and habitus clivé
Conclusion
Notes
References
9 Femininity isn’t femme: appearance and the contradictory space of queer femme belonging
Introduction
Defining the utopic femme online
Embodying femme offline
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

‘This compelling collection reimagines belonging, the social and our futures together, adding layers of complexity while providing rare clarity. It succeeds in rethinking belonging in the context of the pressing challenges for living together that currently face us. Few sociological tasks are as important.’ – Dr Dan Woodman, President of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA), University of Melbourne ‘In a markedly divisive historical moment, this collection of essays on belonging is a welcome intellectual project. Together and independently, the chapters clarify how belonging, a basic element of social life, takes surprisingly complex and multiple forms. From the minds of emergent scholars, this work is both engaging and theoretically sharp.’ – Dr Jenny Davis, editor of Cyborgology ‘This timely and exciting collection critically and creatively reframes the nature, discourse, practice and experience of belonging in a time of unprecedented social and material flux. It beautifully and artfully draws on nuanced theoretical insights and empirical case studies from different regions to make a persuasive case for why belonging has become a central social category and political framework in contemporary times. Asking questions of what belonging means, and how it is constantly being transformed by social relations, the book explicates the governance, situatedness and politics of belonging. This collection, authored by some of brightest lights in the discipline of sociology and science and technology studies, is sure to become an essential read for those interested in the human and non-­human affects of an unfolding socio-­material world that is characterised by explosive geo-­physical, political economic and techno-­cultural motions.’ – Dr Gavin Smith, author of Opening the Black Box: The Work of Watching

Social Beings, Future Belongings

Social Beings, Future Belongings is a collection of sociological essays that address an increasingly relevant matter: what does belonging look like in the twenty-­first century? The book critically explores the concept of belonging and how it can respond to contemporary problems in not only the traditional domains of citizenship and migration, but also in detention practices, queer and feminist politics, Australian literature and fashion, technology, housing and rituals. Drawing on examples from Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, each topic is examined as a different kind of problem for the future – as a toil, an intensity or a promise. Ultimately, the collection argues that creating new ways to belong in contemporary times means reimagining the traditional terms on which belonging can happen, as well as the social itself. Read on their own, each chapter presents a compelling case study and develops a set of critical tools for encountering the empirical, epistemological and ontological challenges we face today. Read together, they present a diverse imagination that is capable of answering the question of belonging in, to and with the future. Social Beings, Future Belongings shows how belonging is not a static and universal state, but a contingent, emergent and ongoing future-­oriented set of practices. Balancing empirical and theoretical work, this book will appeal to researchers, students and practitioners alike. Anna Tsalapatanis is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Socio-­Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD in Sociology from the Australian National University and her research interests include citizenship as status, bureaucracy and identity. Miranda Bruce is a PhD candidate in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University, writing on the ‘Internet of Things: its history, discourse, logic, and implications for how we understand time, technology and the future’. She has published in the Australian Humanities Review and developed and convened advanced university courses. David Bissell is an Associate Professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. He is author of Transit Life: How Commuting is Transforming our Cities (2018), and co-­editor of Stillness in a Mobile World (2011) and the Routledge Handbook of Mobilities (2014). Helen Keane is an Associate Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Her research focuses on drug and alcohol use, including pharmaceutical, recreational and illicit drugs (and the relationships between these categories and forms of use). She is the co-­author of Habits: Remaking Addiction (2014) with Suzanne Fraser and David Moore.

Sociological Futures

Series Editors: Eileen Green, John Horne, Caroline Oliver, Louise Ryan

Sociological Futures aims to be a flagship series for new and innovative theories, methods and approaches to sociological issues and debates and ‘the social’ in the 21st century. This series of monographs and edited collections was inspired by the vibrant wealth of British Sociological Association (BSA) symposia on a wide variety of sociological themes. Edited by a team of experienced sociological researchers, and supported by the BSA, it covers a wide range of topics related to sociology and sociological research and will feature contemporary work that is theoretically and methodologically innovative, has local or global reach, as well as work that engages or reengages with classic debates in sociology bringing new perspectives to important and relevant topics. The BSA is the professional association for sociologists and sociological research in the United Kingdom, with an extensive network of members, study groups and forums, and A dynamic programme of events. The Association engages with topics ranging from auto/biography to youth, climate change to violence against women, alcohol to sport, and Bourdieu to Weber. This book series represents the finest fruits of sociological enquiry, for a global audience, and offers a publication outlet for sociologists at all career and publishing stages, from well-­established to emerging sociologists, BSA or non-­BSA members, from all parts of the world. Feeding Children Inside and Outside the Home Critical Perspectives Edited by Vicki Harman, Benedetta Cappellini and Charlotte Faircloth Climate Change and Intergenerational Justice Tracey Skillington Social Beings, Future Belongings Reimagining the Social Edited by Anna Tsalapatanis, Miranda Bruce, David Bissell and Helen Keane For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Sociological- Futures/book- series/SOCFUT

Social Beings, Future Belongings

Reimagining the Social

Edited by Anna Tsalapatanis, Miranda Bruce, David Bissell and Helen Keane

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Anna Tsalapatanis, Miranda Bruce, David Bissell, Helen Keane; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Anna Tsalapatanis, Miranda Bruce, David Bissell, Helen Keane to be identified as the authors of the editorial matter, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Names: Tsalapatanis, Anna, 1986– editor. Title: Social beings, future belongings : reimagining the social / edited by Anna Tsalapatanis [and three others]. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. Identifiers: LCCN 2018060677| ISBN 9781138709782 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315200859 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Group identity. | Belonging (Social psychology) Classification: LCC HM753 .S6156 2019 | DDC 305–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060677 ISBN: 978-1-138-70978-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-20085-9 (ebk) Typeset in Goudy by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents



List of figures Notes on contributors

ix x



Introduction: belonging unbound

1

D a v id B issell , M iranda B ruce , H elen K eane and A nna  T salapatanis

Part I

Toils

11

1 Naming belonging: when national vocabularies fail

13

A nna T salapatanis

2 ‘Their time and their story’: inscribing belonging through life narratives and role expectations in wedding videography

26

M atthew W ade and M ichael J ames  W alsh

3 Academics anonymous: blogging and feminist ‘be/longings’ in the neoliberal university

43

B rion y L ipton

Part II

Intensities

59

4 Transforming belongings in Guantánamo Bay

61

O riane  S imon

viii   Contents

5 Belonging in the future? 

75

Vanessa  M a y

6 Costumes of belonging: ‘fitting in’ circus fabrics in the novels The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith by Peter Carey and The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott, and the costume-­cum-body art of Leigh Bowery

89

A nna - S ­ ophie J ü rgens

Part III

Promises

105

7 Beyond human (un)belonging: intimacies and the impersonal in Black Mirror

107

C lare S outherton and M iranda  B ruce

8 Belonging, place and identity in the twenty-­first century

122

J ulia B ennett

9 Femininity isn’t femme: appearance and the contradictory space of queer femme belonging

135

H annah M c C ann and G emma K illen



Index

148

Figures

6.1 Infamous, @markturnerimages, 2017 6.2 Leigh Bowery and Rachael Auburn at Kinky Gerlinky, Dave Swindells, 1989

90 96

Contributors

Editors David Bissell is an Associate Professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. He is author of Transit Life: How Commuting is Transforming our Cities (MIT Press, 2018), and co-­editor of Stillness in a Mobile World (Routledge, 2011) and the Routledge Handbook of Mobilities (2014). He sits on the editorial boards of Mobilities, Social and Cultural Geographies and Transfers. Miranda Bruce is a PhD candidate in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University, writing on the ‘Internet of Things: its history, discourse, logic, and implications for how we understand time, technology and the future’. She has published in the Australian Humanities Review and developed and convened advanced university courses. Helen Keane is an Associate Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Her research focuses on drug and alcohol use, including pharmaceutical, recreational and illicit drugs (and the relationships between these categories and forms of use). She has a particular interest in concepts of addiction. She is the co-­author of Habits: Remaking Addiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) with Suzanne Fraser and David Moore. This book examines addiction in an era of neuroscience and expanding pathologies of compulsive consumption and builds on her 2002 work What’s Wrong with Addiction? (New York University Press, 2002). Anna Tsalapatanis is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Socio-­Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD in Sociology from the Australian National University and her research interests include citizenship as status, bureaucracy and identity. She has a strong background in Cultural Studies, Diaspora, Migration and European Studies and has taught in the fields of Anthropology, Migration and Globalisation Studies.

Contributors   xi

Contributors Julia Bennett has taught sociology at Durham University and in the Interdisciplinary Studies department of Manchester Metropolitan University. She has written widely on place, belonging and the everyday and is currently researching understandings of British national identities. Anna-­Sophie Jürgens is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University. Her research draws upon modern and contemporary circus fiction, the history of (violent) clowns, clowns and scientists, aesthetics and poetologies of knowledge, and science in fiction, especially fictional non- and con-­scientists. Her publications include Poetik des Zirkus (Winter, 2016, monograph, Poetics of the Circus); Patterns of DisǀOrder (LIT Verlag, 2017, ed. with Markus Wierschem); LaborARTorium (Bielefeld, 2015, ed. with Tassilo Tesche); ‘Circus as idée fixe and hunger: circomania in fiction’ in Comparative Literature and Culture (2016); and ‘The joker, a neo-­modern clown of violence’ in Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (2014). Gemma Killen is a PhD Candidate in Sociology and Gender Studies at the Australian National University. Her current work focuses on the ways in which queer women’s identities become embodied and are made meaningful in online spaces. Briony Lipton is a sessional academic in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Her current research explores the relationship between feminism and neoliberalism in understanding gender inequality in higher education. She has recently co-­authored a monograph with Elizabeth Mackinlay (UQ) entitled We Only Talk Feminist Here: Feminist Academics, Voice and Agency in the Neoliberal University (Palgrave, 2017). She has an interest in creative and collaborative research methods, feminist and queer theories. Vanessa May is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Co-­Director of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives at the University of Manchester and Co-­Editor of Sociology. Her research interests include the self, belonging, temporality, family relationships and qualitative methods. She has published in a number of journals including Sociology, Sociological Review, Time & Society, International Journal of Research Methods and Narrative Inquiry, and is the author of Connecting Self to Society: Belonging in a Changing World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Hannah McCann is a Lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her research explores feminist discourse on femininity, queer femme LGBTIQ communities, LGBTIQ history, beauty culture and aesthetic labour. She has published in Australian Humanities Review, Women’s Studies

xii   Contributors

Quarterly and Australian Feminist Studies. Her book Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation was published with Routledge in 2018. Oriane Simon completed her PhD in Cultural Geography at the University of New South Wales in Canberra researching detention practices. Her research focused on extraordinary rendition – the practice of abduction, transfer, detention, interrogation and torture of suspected terrorists. She uses a micropolitical perspective based on a Deleuzian reading of Simondon’s concepts of ontogenesis and individuation, as well as Spinoza’s affect theory, to unpack the lived experiences of victims and perpetrators. More broadly, she is interested in the ontology of becoming, the conceptualisation of human beings as body-­mind multiplicities, and the issue of (free) will with regard to (legal) accountability. She currently works as a consultant in data protection and information security. Previously, she worked as a research assistant at Transitions from Education to Employment, a nation-­wide longitudinal study on post-­compulsory education and labour market pathways in Switzerland. She has tutored at the University of Sydney and lectured at the University of New South Wales in Canberra. Clare Southerton has a PhD in sociology and is a research fellow in sociology at the Australian National University. Her research interests include intimacy and digital culture, surveillance and young people, online communities and videogames. Her doctoral research examined the habitual practices of mobile digital device users, drawing on new materialist theory to explore the relations between digital objects and users. Matthew Wade is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. His primary research interests relate to aspirations of ‘virtuosity’, analysed through the sociology of science, technology and health. He is also interested in self-­tracking practices, displays of moral worthiness and related web-­based developments (e.g. crowdfunding for medical expenses). He also has a concurrent research focus in cultural sociology, specialising in spectacles of ‘prosumption’ and affective labour, which promise to infuse life under late capitalism with greater meaning. Michael James Walsh is an Assistant Professor in Social Science in the Faculty of Business, Government at the University of Canberra. His research interests include the sociology of interaction, the writings of Erving Goffman, cultural sociology, technology and music. A chief dimension of his research involves exploring the reception of communication technologies as they relate to and impact on social interaction.

Introduction Belonging unbound David Bissell, Miranda Bruce, Helen Keane and Anna Tsalapatanis

It’s a Sunday morning and one of us is with a friend, crossing the volcanic plains of Victoria by train. We are sitting facing an older man and woman, and I’m feeling the mixture of mild social awkwardness and intrigue that such an intimate transit setting can induce. I notice that their conversation toggles between English and Italian. After a while, during a lull in our own conversation, the woman looks at my friend, her interest possibly piqued by her French accent. ‘Are you enjoying Australia?’ My friend smiles. ‘Yes!’ ‘Are you here for a few weeks?’ the lady asks, perhaps presuming she is on holiday. The lady looks a little taken aback when my friend tells her that she’s been living here for a few years, studying at university. The British accent with which I speak is unremarkable for her. I ask the lady whether Melbourne is her home. She says that she’s lived in Melbourne since the 1960s, but she was born in Italy. ‘You like Melbourne?’ she asks my friend, eagerly. She nods. The woman tells us that that she now lives in a suburb out in the East of the city, near the Dandenong hills. ‘We don’t go into Melbourne anymore’, she says, gravely. There is a pause and I sense slight discomfort in anticipation of what might follow. ‘Too many Asians now’ she adds. Neither of us respond. I raise my eyebrows and turn my gaze to the window; the previously light-­touch sense of conviviality now soured. This train encounter was such an ordinary moment. Two pairs of unacquainted people dwelling together in a public space. Yet, in opening this collection, this ordinary encounter strikes to the heart of the concept of belonging, as an ambivalent, negotiated, transitional experience. Witness how evaluations are made by the woman about the nature of our belonging in the space of the train carriage. A racist judgement is being made about who has the right to belong in the city. The transitional quality of the encounter itself shifted our situational sense of whether we belong with our travelling companions, enough to decide that we didn’t want to talk with them for the remainder of our journey. Stepping back, then, this ordinary encounter raises myriad questions: What does it take to belong? Who decides who belongs? How can you sense that you belong? When can you claim a sense of belonging? What does belonging take? Such  ordinary encounters speak to the heart of the concept of belonging in complex ways.

2   David Bissell et al.

Belonging is one of the most powerful ways of understanding the social, political and ethical stakes of our sociological futures. Our contemporary global political and economic turmoil demands a reinvigoration of the concept of belonging in order to address a whole range of ethically charged issues. The list is considerable: refugee politics in Europe and elsewhere reignites questions of citizenship and belonging; climate change, its effects and our responses to it require the reconsideration of environmental belongings; the ‘Brexit’ plebiscite reflects the exacerbated tensions within generational, economic and racial modes of belonging; the rise of fundamentalist groups such as Islamic State create complex and novel forms of non-­state belonging; the ‘Big Society’ rhetoric of the post-­GFC political landscape shifts the notion of belonging towards the idea of responsibility; and the social impacts of diverse forms of technologies question the ways we belong with each other and the technologies themselves. In this book we argue that retheorising belonging can enable innovative approaches to these pressing social and political concerns. The time is right for a reconsideration of the concept of belonging. On the surface, the concept of belonging might seem rather self-­explanatory. Indeed, in everyday speech, the idea of belonging might be so commonplace that it hardly needs elaborating. However, set against the blinding familiarity of this term, within the social sciences, belonging has often been something of a shadow concept, always present, but dominated by other concepts which have arguably received much more sustained analytical treatment. Consider here how belonging is often used as a synonym for other concepts such as identity or citizenship, for instance (Antonsich 2010). Yet scratch beneath the surface, and the concept of belonging becomes a little stranger. As Wright notes, ‘belonging is a puzzling term. It is at once a feeling, a sense and a set of practices. It can refer to a place – “a place to belong” – yet can also exist despite the absence of any specific site at all […] It is found in relationship to humans and non-­humans and things and ideas’ (2015, p. 391). More ambiguous than the idea of identity and citizenship, Wright challenges us to become intrigued about belonging’s potentials, as a concept that is ‘at once slippery and axiomatic, flexible and self-­ evident’ (2015, p. 391). Many notable researchers have worked on belonging’s potential in a myriad of ways: for instance, by observing boundary practices (Bhambra 2006), the ‘in between being and longing’ of be-­longing (Probyn 1996, p. 35), performativity (Bell 1999), how it intersects with gender, generations and families (Morgan 1996, 2005), the constraints placed on belonging by power (Carillo Rowe 2005), its conception as a process (Mackenzie 2004), its relationship with place (Pollini 2005) and property (Keenan 2015), or theorising the role of affective bodies within it (Diprose 2008). It is the productive ambiguity of the concept that we wish to explore in this collection by thinking about the multiplicity of different belongings. More recently, belonging has begun to capture the imagination of social scientists as a fitting concept for exploring some of the knotty relations between self and society. May has argued this case for attending to belonging along four

Belonging unbound   3

dimensions, pointing out that ‘first, it is person-­centred; second, it takes us into the everyday where the official and unofficial spheres interact; third, it allows us to view the relationship between self and society as complex; and fourth, its dynamic nature allows us to examine social change’ (2011, p.  364). In this regard, we can see how this sense of belonging has its legacy in the symbolic interactionist tradition, where belonging connects individuals to a sense of the social. As May explains, ‘this is important because our sense of self is constructed in a relational process in our interactions with other people as well as in relation to more abstract notions of collectively held social norms, values and customs’ (May 2011, p.  368). Savage et al. provide us with a similar understanding of belonging in terms of its relational constitution. They argue that ‘belonging should be seen neither in existential terms (as primordial attachment to some kind of face-­to-face community), nor as discursively constructed, but as a socially constructed, embedded process in which people reflexively judge the suitability of a given site as appropriate given their social trajectory and their position in other fields’ (2004, p. 12). In their exploration of how people make sense of their relationship to place, Savage et al. introduce the concept of ‘elective belonging’. They underscore how ‘people feel that they belong when they are able to biographically make sense of their decision to move to a particular place, and their sense of belonging is hence linked to this contingent tie between themselves and their surrounds’ (2004, p. 207). The conditions that have prompted a rethink of the concept of belonging are, of course, multiple. However, central among these have been an alertness to the impacts of new forms of mobility that have led to large-­scale transformations in the relationship between self and society. As Urry (2000) has argued, the intensification of mobility, especially during the latter half of the twentieth century, has forced us to think rather differently about what belonging is and how it happens. While epochal theories of globalisation tended to stress how communities were being eclipsed by the impact of global flows of cultural change (Bauman 2000, Putnam 2000), others argued that these mobilities opened up new forms of connection that reworked belonging in new ways. As Massey’s (2005) work has demonstrated, the local can only be grasped through its myriad relationships with other places. In this regard, belonging ‘almost always involves(s) diverse forms of mobility’, so people dwell ‘in and through being at home and away, through the dialectic of roots and routes’ (Urry 2000, pp. 132–133). In schematising belonging, Antonsich suggests that on one hand we can consider belonging in terms of ‘a personal, intimate feeling of being ‘at home’ in a place’. On the other hand, we can think of belonging as a ‘discursive resource which constructs, claims, justifies, or resists forms of socio-­spatial inclusion/exclusion’ (2010, p. 645). In this regard, and drawing on this multiscalar schematisation, we can appreciate how belonging is political in that it is something that is contested, negotiated and struggled over. The politics of belonging has often been considered in terms of identity in terms of who

4   David Bissell et al.

belongs and how such belonging might be achieved. In debates over territorial belonging, Antonsich argues that ‘every politics of belonging involves two opposite sites: the side that claims belonging, and the side that has the power of ‘granting’ belonging’ (2010, p.  650). Referring to how boundaries and borders can intensify a reactive sense of belonging, Antonsich continues by saying that ‘the problem is that any dominant ethnic group tends to fill the notion of belonging with a rhetoric of sameness, which clearly prevents any recognition of difference’ (2010, p. 650). The question of belonging expressed through notions of difference is central to work that has explored experiences of citizenship and migration (Fortier 2000), and the materiality of fences and practices of boundary making (Instone 2009). Yet the concept of belonging pushed beyond the conceptual confines of identity might hold all kinds of progressive potentials for helping us to develop more and pluralistic notions of being with diverse others. Unlike the more oppositional sense that identity comes freighted with, Diprose explores how we might develop a more ‘open sense of belonging together to places’ (2008, p. 36). She says that ‘it is fundamental to human existence that a sense of belonging with others and to places, while subject to habit and coded by a history of relations with others and the government of these, must also be temporally and spatially open to constant renewal through and by others and thereby open to an undetermined future, to new circumstances and strange bodies’ (2008, p.  46). Drawing on Jean-­Luc Nancy’s idea of the ‘unidentifiable’ inclination towards the singularity of others, Diprose argues that ‘what maintains belonging is inclination toward (sharing-­with) other belongings that are, similarly unidentifiable inclinations towards others that cannot be assimilated’ (2008, p.  46). Community in this regard becomes rethought in terms of ‘the sensibility of belonging as inclination towards others and the attendant expression of the uniqueness of bodies’ (2008, p. 46). Reflecting the growing dominance of theories of practice within the social sciences, belonging, then, is not a given, but requires work. In this regard, part of the ambivalence of belonging is an effect of its changing nature. As Bell pithily puts it, ‘one does not simply or ontologically ‘belong’ to the world or to any group with it. Belonging is an achievement at several levels of abstraction’ (1999, p. 3). The palpable registration of belonging to a particular community or group might be an effect of repeated enactments. As Bell summarises, ‘the performativity of belonging “cites” the norms that constitute or make present the “community” or group as such. The repetition, sometimes ritualistic repetition, of these normalized codes makes material the belongings they purport to simply describe’ (1999, p. 3). Through this performative focus, we can trace the legacy of Bourdieu’s contribution to belonging which is especially evident in his idea of the mastery of ‘the game’ within a particular social field which is contingent on knowing the tacit unwritten rules. This central role of repeated practices can also be discerned through May’s definition of belonging as ‘a sense of ease with oneself and one’s surroundings’ (2011, p. 368).

Belonging unbound   5

If belonging is so habitual, woven into our backgrounded dispositions and propensities, then our sense of belonging might only become palpably registered through ruptures and tears, when we are outside our comfort zone. As May suggests, ‘if belonging is understood as a sense of ease with one’s surroundings, then arguably not belonging can be characterized as a sense of unease’ (2011, p. 372). Her point here, however, is that rather than valorising belonging, a sense of unease might be affirmative and productive in terms of social change, since ‘as a result of questioning who “we” are, people construct alternative identities and ways of life’ (2011, pp. 374–375). This idea of the productivities of ‘not belonging’ has parallels with Ahmed’s description of experiences of discomfort when bodies fail to inhabit categories of identity. She says that ‘discomfort […] allows things to move. Every experience I have had of pleasure and excitement about a world opening up has begun with such ordinary feelings of discomfort; of not quite fitting a chair, of becoming unseated, of being left holding onto the ground’ (2006, p. 154). Drawing out the indeterminacies, ambivalences and ambiguities of our lifeworlds, belonging names something that is perhaps more uncertain and provisional (Fortier 2000). Such provisionality is discernible in Probyn’s suggestion that ‘the desire that individuals have to belong, a tenacious and fragile desire that is […] increasingly performed in the knowledge of the impossibility of ever really and truly belonging, along with the fear that the stability of belonging and the sanctity of belonging are forever past’ (1996, p. 8). Yet rather than be suffocated by the melancholia of the impossibility of belonging, Amin (2005, p.  9) has suggested that we might need new metaphors for expressing more ambiguous senses of belonging. So rather than the idea of belonging to a territory, or a cultural or ethnic group, he challenges us to consider how the ethical and political implications change if we think about how we might belong to a ‘situation’. Belonging to an event or to an everyday encounter changes the stakes of what is required of us, and how we might make sense of that encounter. As Wright suggests, ‘belonging is relational, performative and more-­thanhuman. It is not pre-­determined but comes into being through affective encounters, through doing, being, knowing and becoming in careful, responsive ways’ (Wright 2015, p. 404). The concept of belonging is clearly multidimensional. However, in this volume, we are keen to develop the concept in a way that does not collapse its contradictions and inconsistencies. We explore epistemological and ontological questions of belonging in relation to sociological futures. While social scientists have tended to ask: ‘How can we create belonging in an alienating world?’, we address different questions: ‘How can we conceptualise belonging in different ways?’ and ‘How does belonging take place in different facets of social life?’ As Wright invites us to consider, ‘if belonging resonates because it means different things to different people, if it is used in widely disparate ways, then perhaps what is most important about the term is the texture of how it is felt, used, practised and lived. These things may be unresolvable’ (2015, p.  392). In this regard,

6   David Bissell et al.

belonging is a concept that has the capacity to maintain contradictions in tension: ‘Ambiguous, exclusionary, reductionist, open, expansive, tentative, enduring, hopeful, caring, in place, with place, as place – belonging surprises’ (Wright 2015, p. 404). Ultimately, this collection shows how belonging is not a static and universal state, but a contingent, emergent and ongoing future-­oriented set of practices. Each of the three sections considers how we might reimagine the social, through the necessity of labour and toil; through the intensities of experience; and through the kinds of promises we make of a different future.

Part I: toils We begin with a series of case studies on the toil of belonging – as a status, a spectacle and a desire – and the labour that is required but not always recognised, whether in law, in ritual or in institutions. The collection opens with the topic of the relationship between belonging, citizenship and national identity. Anna Tsalapatanis (Chapter 1) uses interviews with multiple citizenship holders to investigate the issues that emerge when one tries to ‘name’ belonging. This chapter highlights how belonging is often problematically conflated with identity, and constrained within essentialist national vocabularies. Critically, she shows the labours that are entailed when one is deemed not to belong, as well as their repercussions, including feelings of exclusion and isolation. In Chapter 2, Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh consider the diverse performative labours of belonging that emerge from the wedding spectacle as captured through videography. These multimodal texts, incorporating dialogue, music and varied imagery, carefully craft, package and preserve belonging for posterity. In this investigation of these curated emotive performances, this chapter considers the diverse utterances, signifying artefacts and ritual displays of the wedding, and how they come to affirm life narratives, perform rootedness and reinforce role designations. Wade and Walsh, through the spectacle of the wedding and its diverse performative declarations, draw attention to the labour involved in marital belonging, as well as its memorialisation. How do anonymous online spaces produce belonging? Briony Lipton (Chapter 3) explores this question with an examination of feminist blogs dedicated to sharing experiences of ‘exploitation, abuse and suffering’ in academia. She uses Sara Ahmed’s notion of the feminist killjoy to illuminate the way women academics, especially those who resist sexism and misogyny, are constituted as subjects who do not belong, even within institutions ostensibly dedicated to equity and diversity. Lipton argues that in this context, anonymous blogs operate as collective digital spaces that allow feminist academics to redefine what it means to belong in the neoliberal university. The process of telling stories of sexism and misogyny produces a collective feminist identity. However, the blogs may also act to reproduce the position of women on the periphery. As Lipton notes, a sense of belonging based on shared experiences of exclusion does not directly challenge the structures that produce exclusion.

Belonging unbound   7

Part II: intensities Moving from the labours of belonging, the second section examines belonging’s intensity – as a feeling, a relation and a source of transformation. In Chapter 4, Oriane Simon studies the testimonies of prisoners and guards at Guantánamo Bay – the US-­run detention centre infamous for its unregulated torture of terrorist suspects. She extends the discussion around incarceration from a question of whether prisoners possess human rights or are reduced to ‘bare life’, to an increased attention towards the intensity of prison life – the ‘tiny variations of beings’ affections before being categorised as this or that experience’. Focusing on intensity and drawing from non-­representational theories, Simon argues that unlike the conventional view of detainees as static subjects or victims, prisoners are constantly undergoing transformations that allow them to change from being right-­bearing to right-­less; from belonging to the human race to being exiled from it. Belonging in Guantánamo Bay arises in novel and surprising forms – from both sides of the wire. Vanessa May (Chapter 5) draws from two case studies in the UK to open up ‘the future’ itself as an experience and site of belonging. ‘Future horizons play a role in whether and how a person can claim belonging in the now’, May argues, and those horizons are deeply inflected by the markers of social status, gender and class. She interweaves anecdotes from her interviewees – about the politics of communal flat living and the strains of retirement – with critical analysis via Bourdieu to show how the intensities of hope and disappointment are methods of attempting to belong to the resource of the future. However, she reminds us that access to that resource is unequally distributed. Anna-­Sophie Jürgens (Chapter 6) looks to two Australian novels and the famous performer/fashion icon Leigh Bowery to consider circus fabric and the clown costume as a literal tapestry of belonging. The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith and The Pilo Family Circus are discussed as examples of how transforming into a circus freak may be a way to belong to the dark politics of an uncertain future. Similarly, Bowery’s fashion series Looks, often invoking the trope of the clown, attests to the power of fabric as a mode of belonging – not to a particular ‘look’, but to the act of expression itself. In Jürgen’s analysis, the lure of the mask, the hyperbole of the clown costume and the ironic performance of the red nose are not just overused clichés, but portals of transformation – into dark and thrilling performances of circus family, style and entity.

Part III: promises Finally, we consider the promises of belonging, and belonging as a promised future. In considering the promise of belonging in a technology filled future, Clare Southerton and Miranda Bruce (Chapter 7) question the far too common tendency to imagine technology, especially future technologies, as disruptive of intimacy and belonging. Drawing on episodes from the series Black Mirror,

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interviews with smartphone users, as well as the work of philosopher Gilbert Simondon, the authors force us to rethink the existing and ever-­growing concerns about the disruptions caused by technology. They illustrate our present strong desires for technology that can foster belonging, as well as our frustrations when this falls short. Finally, they reject the idea of the future as a space of unbelonging, reminding us of the diverse possibilities of non-­human belonging. In Chapter 8 of this collection, Julia Bennett reflects on the complicated relationship between who we are and where we live, reminding us of the continuing importance of place in our belongings. She does so by moving beyond questions of geographical mobility to consider social mobility, using family history narratives that span three generations from families in Wigan, UK. Bennett draws on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus clivé to reflect on the diverse intersections between class, place and family. She focuses on the ‘doing’ of belonging from the perspective of the individual and on questions of the local, while keeping broader tensions in sight. In their chapter on queer belonging, Hannah McCann and Gemma Killen (Chapter 9) contrast the utopian ideal of femme identity as open and inclusive with a discourse that draws a clear boundary between queer and heterosexual enactments of femininity. Drawing on online ethnography and interviews, they examine the contradictions of a form of belonging that relies on the adoption of a feminine style of appearance while at the same time devaluing other forms of femininity as disempowering. In particular they highlight the limitations of viewing willfulness as the exclusive property of queer femininity. Instead they argue for a more expansive vision of queerness based on the recognition of ‘shared material experiences of embodiment, presentation, style and affects’. Through these nine chapters that explore diverse cases and experiences, the concept of belonging is presented, engaged with and brought to life in countless multifaceted ways. From the diverse toils and labours that belonging involves, to the intensities of these belongings and finally their promise, this edited collection highlights the use and usefulness of the concept to sociologists and social scientists more broadly.

Belonging in academia This book project started in a long hallway on the top floor of a largely unrenovated 1960s university building in Canberra, Australia, located in the middle of a large construction site; as the book progressed, buildings were demolished and new structures appeared. The issues articulated between these pages were discussed around a long table in a tearoom and workshopped in a small seminar room. What is somehow hidden by the tidiness of an academic publication is the fact that this book is the product of numerous hallway conversations, group meetings and seminars, countless emails, reminders, chats, read articles and electronic documents that flew back and forth.

Belonging unbound   9

The acts entailed in preparing and writing a chapter, and then compiling an edited collection both reflect and obscure the many ways in which we belong in academia. They reflect the ways in which our work interlinks with others, how we cite our peers and how different individuals work together to foster greater understanding. What they obscure, however, is far greater: the countless encounters, moments and materialities that goes into bringing a book like this together, along with the diverse belongings from outside the academy that each author carries with them. As part of this project we asked each contributor to send us photos of the toils, intensities and promises of belonging they found in their daily life. The images that we received were diverse, at times personal, and spoke to the fluid and varied ways in which we belong to both academia and elsewhere. We have collated these images and presented them at the start of each of the three sections of this book. We hope that these diverse assemblages of text and image act as a point of disruption: images that are both curious, jarring and somewhat out of place when situated within the organised linearity of an academic text. These ‘glimpses through the cracks’ have been acts of reflection on our own belongings in academia and in everyday life, and we encourage those who engage with this text to do the same. We hope that this collection will invite readers to consider how creativity and experimentation can create new ways of doing sociology, as well as new ways of belonging in academia – for all its toils, intensities and promised futures.

References Ahmed, S., 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Amin, A., 2005. Local community on trial. Economy and Society, 34 (4), 612–633. Antonsich, M., 2010. Searching for belonging – an analytical framework. Geography Compass, 4 (6), 644–659. Bauman, Z., 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press Cambridge. Bell, V., 1999. Performativity & Belonging. London: SAGE Publications. Bhambra, G.K., 2006. ‘Culture, identity and rights: challenging contemporary discourses of belonging’. Yuval-­Davis, N., Kannabiran, K. and Vieten, U. (eds) The Situated Politics of Belonging. London: SAGE Publications, 32–41. Carrillo Rowe, A., 2005. Be longing: toward a feminist politics of relation. NWSA Journal, 17 (2), 15–37. Diprose, R., 2008. ‘Where your people from, girl?’: belonging to race, gender, and place beneath clouds. Differences – A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 19 (3), 28–58. Fortier, A.-M.F., 2000. Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity. Oxford: Berg. Instone, L., 2009. Northern belongings: frontiers, fences, and identities in Australia’s urban north. Environment and Planning A, 41 (4), 827–841. Keenan, S., 2015. Subversive Property: Law and the Production of Spaces of Belonging. New York: Routledge. Mackenzie, A.F.D., 2004. Place and the art of belonging. Cultural Geographies, 11 (2), 115–137.

10   David Bissell et al. Massey, D., 2005. For Space. London: SAGE Publications. May, V., 2011. Self, belonging and social change. Sociology, 45 (3), 363–378. Morgan, D.H., 1996. Family theory and research in Great Britain. Marriage & Family Review, 23 (1–2), 457–486. Morgan, D.H., 2005. Revisiting ‘communities in Britain’. The Sociological Review, 53 (4), 641–657. Pollini, G., 2005. Elements of a theory of place attachment and socio-­territorial belonging. International Review of Sociology, 15 (3), 497–515. Probyn, E., 1996. Outside Belonging. London: Routledge. Putnam, R.D., 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Savage, M., Bagnall, G. and Longhurst, B.J., 2004. Globalization and Belonging. London: SAGE Publications. Urry, J., 2000. Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-­first Century. London: Routledge. Wright, S., 2015. More-­than-human, emergent belongings. A weak theory approach. Progress in Human Geography, 39 (4), 391–411.

Chapter 1

Naming belonging When national vocabularies fail Anna Tsalapatanis

Introduction There is a problematic asymmetry between the ways in which we belong and the national categories that we use to name our belongings. Belonging, which is made up of complex, abstract and fluid networks of relations, does not lend itself to being designated using specific terms. Yet, when we describe our own belongings or the belongings of others, we are forced to do so using these static and limited categories. This chapter interrogates how we name belonging – largely through the language that we use to describe identity – and the impact that this has, specifically on people with multiple citizenships or from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. This chapter not only addresses the disjoint between belongings and the identity vocabularies that are used to describe them, but also explores the unintended, sometimes fraught and devastating consequences of this conflation.

Belonging and its conflation with identity Belonging as a concept has always been difficult to convey, yet many approaches have treated the term unproblematically, either leaving it undefined or as synonym of identity (Mee and Wright 2009, p.  772, Antonsich 2010, p.  644, Wright 2015, p. 391). However, these two terms are far from synonymous with belonging being an abstract relational concept, compared to identity’s more categorical individualistic bent: ‘[w]hereas “identity” begins from the separate, autonomous individual, “belonging” focuses on what connects people to one another’ (May 2013, p.  9). Similarly, Carrillo Rowe describes belonging as a ‘politics of relation’ (2005), highlighting again this importance of connection. Belonging is often difficult to pin down as it is ‘created through active, hybrid, fragile, and always contested processes that refuse containment’ (Mee and Wright 2009, p. 777), and while we have a sense of our own belongings, there is a lack of an adequate vocabulary to describe them. When we attempt to articulate these relations, we are constrained to the use of terms that are mutually intelligible, ones that don’t necessarily express the belongings we seek to describe.

14   Anna Tsalapatanis

To better understand the world, and the ways in which certain people belong in it, we seek to transform abstract relations such as belonging into digestible categories (Jenkins 2000), which then become reinforced through their very use (Massey 2013). In doing so, we are compelled to draw upon existing ‘normative schemes of intelligibility’ (Butler 2006). As a result, belonging, as ‘an achievement at several levels of abstraction’ (Bell 1999, p. 3), may fall back on classifications such as race, gender, sexual orientation, as well as ethnic and national categories in order to be named. This however creates some worrying consequences as ‘[c]onceptualizing all affinities and affiliations, all forms of belonging, all experiences of commonality, connectedness, and cohesion, all  self-­understandings and self-­identifications in the idiom of “identity” saddles us with a blunt, flat, undifferentiated vocabulary’ (Brubaker and Cooper 2000, p. 2). There are a great number of possible identity vocabularies and terms to articulate belonging and to describe it to others. This chapter, however, will concern itself with one of the most widely used classification vocabularies, that of nationality or national identity. Questions of belonging and the national have been central to many studies on belonging, to the point where ‘national’ belonging is arguably the area with the largest volume of scholarship on the topic (examples include: Castles and Davidson 2000, Gustafson 2005, Brettell 2006, Yuval-­Davis 2007, Anderson et al. 2011).

The asymmetry of belonging and the national National forms of identification, while being one among the many vocabularies used to describe belonging, add an additional level of complexity as they correspond to legal and political statuses, as well as to a specific territorial entity. National identity and belonging are also intertwined with notions of citizenship, though the nature of this interrelationship has changed over time: ‘[h]istorically citizenship was a mark of belonging and commitment to a specific space and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship were performed in this civic context’ (Desforges et al. 2005, p. 440). However, increases in migration and consequently a rise in the number of individuals born outside their country of residence have altered this association; as Castles and Davidson point out, ‘globalisation has been long eroding the idea that citizenship automatically implies belonging to one’s country’ (2000, p. 156). Increasingly, having the official ‘status’ of citizenship does not automatically mean acceptance into that community, and belonging may still be contested by others on the grounds that they do not look, sound or act as one ‘should’, something which Ngai labels ‘alien citizenship’ (2014). The corollary of this is that others may feel that they belong quite strongly to a particular national category, without necessarily having the official status of being a citizen. Despite these widely accepted and theorised asymmetries between citizenship, national identity and belonging, the three continue to be conflated and at times used interchangeably.

Naming belonging   15

In evaluating the literature that addresses citizenship, nationality and belonging, a significant amount of research considers the ways state policy can foster belonging – or its opposite – at an institutional level. Some consider how different policies inform the possibility of assimilation and integration (for example, Soysal 1994, Fortier 2010, Adamson et al. 2011, Stokes-­DuPass and Fruja 2016), or rather simply use belonging as a convenient synonym for national identity. This is a different approach to the one being used here that rather seeks to highlight the differences between them, and how their use as synonyms is problematic. Belonging has often been associated with notions of place, and national categories not only describe a particular identity, but also lay out in territorial terms where that identity belongs: ‘[b]elonging connects matter to place, through various practices of boundary making and inhabitation which signal that a particular collection of objects, animals, plants, germs, people, practices, performances, or ideas is meant “to be” in a place’ (Mee and Wright 2009, p. 772). In the context of the national, these boundaries are more evident than most: ‘[t]he world of nations is thus conceived as a discrete spatial partitioning of territory; it is territorialized in the segmentary fashion of the multicouloured school atlas’ (Malkki 1992, p. 26). As a consequence, the questioning of the citizenship or national identity of an individual is also a way in which to contest the right of that particular individual to have access to these (national) spaces. Part of these asymmetries between belonging and the national vocabularies that are used to describe them relate to issues around the scale at which belonging occurs. Whereas the nation state is an imagined community – ‘imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-­members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (Anderson 2006, p. 6, emphasis original) – the local communities we belong to are far more tangible (Fine 2010). These issues of scale highlight the ways in which politics and power structures come to influence how we name our affiliations, even if these particular affiliations don’t correspond to the specific scales at which belonging may be experienced. It serves as a reminder that ‘scale is socially constructed, and its meanings come into being through, and are productive of, sociospatial hierarchies and processes’ (Silvey 2004, p.  492), or in other words, that the primacy of the nation state and the language and imagery that surrounds it (Billig 1995) reinforces the need to identify ourselves and others at this level. Throughout the diverse literatures on belonging there is no agreement at which scale it functions, with some scholars focusing on the importance of one particular scale – ‘the city rather than the state becomes the relevant scale for discussion on the different formations of belonging in everyday life’ (Fenster 2005, p. 218) – while others underline its multiscalarity: ‘[n]otions of belonging encompass multiple scales, sites, practices and domains from the affective to the structural and everything in between’ (Wright 2015, p. 394).

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The asymmetry of belonging defined by us and others Returning to Carrillo Rowe’s analysis of belonging as ‘the politics of relation’ (2005), we can observe the impact of others on our own belonging: we alone cannot dictate the terms under which we belong or don’t belong. Instead while we may feel that we belong in a certain space, belonging, especially when articulated, can be denied by others, or simply contested through a series of misidentifications creating further asymmetries between where we see ourselves as belonging, and where others do. This can be illustrated with an example from Hage’s White Nation where one of his research participants explains the following: [y]ou’re having fun with your friends and you see them as just that, your friends, and then suddenly you realise that they look at you and what they see is a Lebanese. Look, it’s not that I am not proud to be Lebanese, it is just sometimes it is used to make you feel on the outside. (Hage 2000, p. 64) We are not the only ones who are able to define where we belong and who we belong with, and our belongings are reinforced or ruptured by those around us: ‘claims to a given identity are always circumscribed by the actions and reactions of others’ (Bond 2006, p. 610). The idea of belonging being relational must also consider questions of power. The categories that we identify with, and those that others identify us with, can have quite significant implications on our status and ability to act. Some individuals, by virtue of where they sit relationally, occupy positions of ‘privileged belongings’ (Carrillo Rowe 2005, p.  20), which, in the context of the nation state, Hage refers to as the ‘national aristocracy’ (2000, p.  64), allowing them greater powers in defining the boundaries of who belongs and who doesn’t. This is reinforced by Bond who explains that ‘[n]ational belonging for those who lack one or more of the key markers of national identity can be undermined by the perspectives of the majority who are likely to have a more straightforward sense of this identity’ (2006, p. 623). As Hage explains earlier in the same abovementioned text: ‘[t]he acquisition of formal citizenship does not give any indication of the level of practical national belonging granted by the dominant cultural community’ (Hage 2000, p.  50). This reminds us also how these categories are  neither the same nor equal: ‘categories […] have a certain positionality along an axis of power, higher or lower than other such categories’ (Yuval-­Davis 2006, p. 199). In this way we can see the significant role that others play – especially more privileged and powerful others – in recognising, legitimising and policing the terms which we use to articulate our belongings. One must also not underestimate the impact that these power relationships have on our own self-­descriptions:

Naming belonging   17

‘it is also important to see self-­imposed limitations as being socially influenced [… p]eople may feel that they cannot claim to belong because they anticipate the negative responses of others to such identity claims’ (Bond 2006, p.  611). Finally, in recognising these differences in power and status, we must also acknowledge our capacities to take advantage of these asymmetries for our own uses, such as in the case of those with diverse cultural backgrounds who may successfully make multiple claims. In returning to the notion of naming, this suggests that: ‘[t]he ways in which hegemonic discourses “hail” us as subjects can thus be thought of as through belonging: not only in terms of how power hails us, but also the ways in which power may be hailed by us as a resistive reinscription’ (Carrillo Rowe 2005, p. 28). Given the considerable asymmetry between the ways in which we belong and the national categories that we use to articulate them, as well as the social and relational aspects associated with them, what are the broader consequences of this on belonging? It is at this intersection between the difficulties of articulating belonging through rigid vocabularies, and the demands that one faces in order to give an account of themselves, where we observe the creation of a fraught setting, with the possibility of both alienation and injury. The remainder of this chapter will further investigate this phenomenon through the consideration of speech acts: those of articulating one’s own belonging, as well as the ways we are described by others or called on to give an account of ourselves. These issues will engage with findings that emerged from an empirical study of multiple citizenship holders, carried out between 2013 and 2014. The study involved over 50 in-­depth semi-­structured interviews with individuals in both Australia and Greece. In particular, this chapter draws on the testimony of two of my participants – Maria and Eve – each of whom illustrate examples of how belonging is called into question through its asymmetrical interrelationship with the vocabularies of identity.

Naming, being named and its consequences for belonging Where are you from? It is one of the first questions that we may ask of a newcomer. In order to understand the world, especially one made complex by the diversity brought about by globalisation and widespread migration, demands are often made to others to ‘give account of themselves’ (Butler 2005). In demanding a response to this question, individuals are often compelled to provide an answer that falls within a national frame. In the interview extract below, Eve – an Australian in her thirties of Swiss and Indonesian descent – makes light of her current situation and shows how the answer that is required from those seeking to place her, is a national one: I just remember– that’s my clearest memory of any question that I had all through my teenage years, it was more or less all reflecting on my identity

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and my place. Because one of the first questions, if you met someone new when I was in high school, was, ‘What’s your natio?’, was the first question. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Oh, down the road [laughter].’ ‘I live – see that street over there [laughter]. Where are you from? What’s your natio?’ It was perfectly acceptable, for whatever reason, it was an important question to everybody that I hung around, and everybody who I happened to meet. Here you can see that the answers that she desires to give – ‘down the road’ or ‘that street over there’ – are rejected due to the demand to situate herself within a national context: ‘what’s your natio?’. In doing so, they are also asking her to identify herself within a frame that renders her as not belonging here. The question ‘where are you from?’ identifies the particular individual to whom it is directed as other. Sara Ahmed’s work on strangers makes a similar point when she explains that ‘we recognise someone as a stranger, rather than simply failing to recognise them [… s]trangers are not simply those who are not known in this dwelling, but those who are, in their very proximity, already recognised as not belonging, as being out of place’ (2000, p. 49, emphasis original). Others have also highlighted the othering that occurs when we are forced to situate ourselves by naming a particular (national) identity. Avtar Brah in her text Cartographies of Diaspora explains a very similar situation of her own experience: I could not just ‘be’. I had to name an identity, no matter that this naming rendered invisible all the other identities – of gender, caste, religion, linguistic, group, generation […] The discourse of the interview was not concerned with these. Nor would my interlocutor have asked this question of someone who ‘looked African’. (Brah 1996, p. 3) In being identified as out of place, individuals are pushed to articulate a category to situate themselves to the satisfaction of the person addressing them (Cassilde 2013). Brah and Eve’s experiences show how ‘[they are] dispossessed of [their] own words in advance’ (Riley 2001, p. 47), and illustrate the power relationships that are entangled in these demands for others to define themselves. These issues speak to the difficulties associated with the complex ways in which we belong and highlight the impossibility of a suitable vocabulary to articulate them. Both experiences speak to the demand to situate oneself with a national frame, further highlighting how processes of naming identity insist on the use of particular taxonomies.

Not being from here: rupture, othering and double alienation As has been discussed above, belonging is affected by both an internal sense of  association as well as an external designation by others, allowing for the

Naming belonging   19

possibilities of asymmetry between them. When the accounts of others do not fit with the way we see ourselves there are possibilities of alienation and injury. This can be the result of a number of circumstances, but in the context of ‘national’ identity, migration is a key factor. As national identity is often tied to certain racial, ethnic or cultural markers, those who do not comfortably fit with these distinctions – Ngai’s aforementioned Alien Citizens (2014) – can be identified as not belonging. Some diaspora communities may openly and willingly identify as belonging elsewhere, and this is often the case in those communities where there are fewer opportunities for return. Diasporic difference is created through the emphasis of what is different between the individuals in question and the dominant community (Bottomley 1992), and cultural artefacts may even be put to use in articulating this distinction (Christou 2011). After living in a location, and being identified by either oneself, or others, as different, this then becomes a problem when certain individuals return to the national community, and become identified once again as other (Christou 2006). It speaks to the role of others in being able to interrupt our own senses of belonging where ‘[t]he moment of interruption […] marked a disruption and a calling into question of that feeling of belonging’ (Dawney 2013, p. 632). The clearest way to illustrate this idea of the ‘multiple stranger’ (Christou 2006) comes from an interview with Maria – a Greek Albanian in her twenties who lives in Greece – which was conducted in Greek in Athens: Let’s just say, in Albania – here we are in the Balkans, you know, we have very strong notions of ethnicity – they always considered us as Greeks, they saw us as foreigners, and when we came here, they always saw us as Albanians. Many times, […], I have felt this way – ‘Aaaa, from Albania, yes, from Albania’. I told them that I was homogeneis [lit: of the same birth, i.e. ethnically Greek], they would reply with ‘well, it’s still Albania’ […] There is always disrespect. ‘Ah, you got the identity card? But you are still from Albania, because that’s where you were born’. It is like you never really belong […] you always seem to be stuck in the middle. Always a foreigner; here you are a foreigner and there you are a foreigner. You know what? It is especially with the Albanians here [in Greece], that we have these sorts of issues. Generally, I don’t understand why it is so strong, why they see us in a bad light. Many times, I have felt awful. Or in the shop, many times [I have heard]: ‘Oh the Albanian has arrived to take our place [job]’. (Emphasis added) Returning to the idea of contested belongings, it is evident through Maria’s story that belonging to a diaspora, or living a transnational life, can lead to  what  I have labelled in some of my earlier work as ‘double alienation’ (Tsalapatanis 2011), where, through the terms of identity, an individual or group is classified as other in both communities. While other studies may at this point speak to the policy and legal reasons why this may be the case – due to

20   Anna Tsalapatanis

failed assimilationist policies, or rigid notions of state identities – what is of interest for this chapter are the consequences and the impact of such events and how these encounters play an ongoing role in an individual’s belonging: ‘[n]on-­ belonging […] is generated through proximity and desire but occurs when closeness generates a sense of unassailable, unconnectable difference, a lack of sameness with what is on the other side’ (Wright 2015, p. 399). This is exacerbated through the very threat to selfhood and its affective capacities: ‘the emotional components of people’s constructions of themselves and their identities become more central the more threatened and less secure they feel’ (Yuval-­ Davis 2006, p.  202); the strongest reminder of this comes from Maria’s own words: ‘it is like you never really belong’. Further emphasising the fluidity of belonging, it needs to be noted that individuals themselves alter the terms that they use to describe their own belongings depending on the context. Many are even aware of their tendency to do this: ‘even subjects will know that what they say is situational and that their stories are not fixed but are continually being revised and changed’ (Anthias 2002, p.  492). As a result, these situations ‘produce multiple constructions of self and nation as well as fragmented discourses […] in forging a narrative of belonging’ (Christou 2006, p. 831). Yet, while one may opt in and opt out relationally, in one’s own understanding of their belonging, the ways in which these national identity categories are problematised by others can have a considerable impact: ‘[b]elonging, therefore, is not just about social locations and constructions of individual and collective identities and attachments, but also the ways these are valued and judged’ (Yuval-­Davis 2006, p.  203). This raises a further question: What are the consequences on belonging when we are named as other and we don’t feel ourselves to be? For some individuals, perhaps nothing, for others the impact may be quite profound: ‘[f]eeling a sense of belonging (or not), being legally, morally or socially recognized as belonging (or not), truly has the power to change lives, to make communities and collectives, to bring together and to separate in the most intimate, loving, accepting, exclusionary or violent ways’ (Wright 2015, p. 391). Much of the above speaks not of clear-­cut categories but rather to processes of categorisation, or what has been previously called ‘the dirty work of boundary maintenance’ (Crowley 1999, p. 17). It also highlights the inability or unwillingness to unpack these constructed terms of everyday usage as well as the ‘taken-­for-granted ways of thinking about identity and territory that are reflected in ordinary language, in nationalist discourses, and in scholarly studies of nations, nationalism and refugees’ (Malkki 1992, p. 25). These terms that we use have long histories and come to form part of our collective imaginations. Greater focus needs to be paid to how these mundane interactions come to inform broader ideas, but also to their possibilities of causing injury as ‘[o]ppressive language […] enacts its own kind of violence’ (Butler 1997, p. 9).

Naming belonging   21

Taxonomies of belonging The very real emotional and social consequences of our rigid systems of categorisation emerge when ‘[t]he powerful metaphoric practices that so commonly link people to place are also deployed to understand and act upon the categorically aberrant condition of people whose claim on and ties to national soils are regarded as tenuous, spurious or non-­existent’ (Malkki 1992, p.  27). Yet once again, this problem is one of a taxonomy, both in the sense that there is a lack of adequate terms, but also that we can be powerless in dictating the ways in which we are positioned. As Ahmed opines: ‘Who counts as white? Who counts as black? Who counts as male? Who counts as female? Who counts as a black woman? Passing may render these questions a matter of social contest: it may in this sense politicize identity; it may demonstrate that there are no absolute criteria for making such decisions about identity, property and belonging’ (1999, p.  91, emphasis added). Reflecting back on the considerable power differences in who has the authority to contest belonging we observe that it is these mundane ‘spaces of encounters [that] enact a politics of belonging; that is negotiations and power struggles over boundaries that define who belongs to a particular local and national community and place and who does not’ (Leitner 2012, p. 830). While it may not be the specific intention of the question ‘where are you from?’, the asking of it, and especially the push for further information, become a form of othering, implicitly indicating the fact that the individual belongs ‘elsewhere’. Yet reflecting once again on the case of Maria, this ‘elsewhere’ may become effectively nowhere. This push for naming, and the denial of a particular name, contains with it both power and a certain violence – ‘by being called a name, one is also, paradoxically, given a certain possibility for social existence’ (Butler 1997) – and can have an enormous impact on the ways in which we see ourselves: [t]he daily fact of societal description ‘from the outside’ – how I’m reported by others, what’s expectantly in place, already chatting about me before I appear on stage – is integral to the dialectic of self-­description. External imposition of a harsher sort – above all the force of political change, which is always a linguistic violence – may wring from me some new self-­ description as well as utter its own hostile naming against me. (Riley 2000, pp. 7–8) While there are most certainly particular catalytic events that may cause someone to completely re-­evaluate how and where they belong – such as the cases of re-­evaluatory ruptures described by Maria, or, as in the words of Carrillo Rowe, ‘we encounter collision when our belongings are stripped from us’ (2005, p. 17) – most of these experiences that lead to a sense of not belonging may be neither so specific, nor so grand, but rather may be mundane encounters that echo and accumulate. The ‘everydayness’ of these articulations of otherness

22   Anna Tsalapatanis

build up over time, ‘where repetition itself is productive of difference’ (Dewsbury and Bissell 2015, p. 24). In the context of naming and being named, this is described by Denise Riley as being ‘the echoic aspect of interpellation’ (2001, p.  44). Yet, we must also remember that it is often through the repetition of these identity categories as the required response to certain questions and situations, that help form, build up and consolidate these belongings to begin with: ‘[t]he repetition, sometimes ritualized repetition, of these normalized codes make material the belongings they purport to describe’ (Bell 1999, p. 3). As Pain et al. explain, ‘[b]elonging, and not belonging are of course not simply cognitive processes of identification, but are highly charged, affective relations of attachment and exclusion’ (2012, p. 130). Our interpellation by others – the ways in which we are addressed through terms that we cannot avoid – has implications much more broadly than questions of belonging. For example, the ways in which we are addressed may inform our possibilities of recognition. We must work within existing structures in order to make ourselves comprehensible, but these structures are never neutral: [t]he structure of address is important to understand how moral authority is introduced and sustained if we accept not just that we address others when we speak, but that in some way we come to exist as it were, in the moment of being addressed, and something about our existence that proves precarious when this address fails. (Butler 2006, p. 83) There will constantly be constraints in the way in which we use language to understand and navigate the world. Categorising identity and the social world more generally will always be problematic and near impossible – however, there is a need for greater awareness of the existence and uses of these taken for granted categories and the countless occasions for injury when our self-­ categorisations are contested or even denied. We need to problematise these particular taxonomies showing that, despite the fact they may seem organic, they are the product of a certain set of historical, political and cultural circumstances. The ways in which we belong and the communities to which we belong are fluid; yet, by contrast, the language that we use to articulate them may remain static: ‘coding habits from the past are deeply etched into the institutional and social unconscious’ (Amin 2012, p. 88). While there are other ways that people come to feel that they don’t belong, the multiple possibilities of asymmetry through naming – that you are not what you believe yourself to be – is a powerful way to intentionally or unintentionally contest one’s belongings. This then raises the question of impact, and in doing so we need to maintain an openness to the diverse range of possible outcomes: ‘[t]he opposite of belonging may be exclusion; it may also be isolation, alienation, loneliness, dis-­placement, uprootedness, disconnection, disenfranchisement or marginalisation’ (Wright 2015, p. 395). For others, it may have more

Naming belonging   23

limited consequences. However, the lack of specific dramatic events does not discount the possibilities of injury that these asymmetries may entail. As Ben Anderson reminds us, ‘dispossession is a matter of non-­eventful and non-­ catastrophic disruptions that accumulate to reshape experience’ (Anderson 2017, p. 5), and therefore we must be aware of the possibilities of unintended, sometimes fraught and devastating consequences. Contesting the use of terms through which we identify our belonging – or rather recognising how the linguistic limitations and problematic asymmetries that we face when being forced to give an account of ourselves and from the accounts that we accept of others – shows the infinitely fragile possibilities for articulating belonging. This chapter has also sought to re-­evaluate the locations in which questions of national identity arise in the context of belonging, showing that while government policies may have a role in articulating the various legal statuses as they apply to different individuals, the encounters with which belonging is created, contested and denied may occur at a much more mundane level. Further to this, feelings of not belonging, or of having one’s belonging contested may not come about through the obvious instances of exclusion, but rather through the build-­up of minor encounters.

Conclusion This chapter has illustrated the considerable asymmetries between belonging and the identity vocabularies that we are often forced to fall back on to describe it. Belonging, while being a largely abstract feeling of relation, becomes articulated through terms that are both flawed and contested, but are the categories that we must use in giving an account of ourselves, as well as the vocabularies employed when we are addressed by others, often in ways that we can’t avoid. Greater awareness is needed of the impact that naming and misnaming may have in defining individuals and groups as other, but also the implicit hierarchies of power embedded in the ability to define these national categories. The imbrication and confusion that binds belonging to identity can mean that we are in a position where acts of naming and misnaming can have a considerable impact on the ways in which we belong, as has been illustrated here using the cases of both Eve and Maria. This all speaks to broader issues as to how we come to define ourselves and other individuals and highlight the broader need for a ‘radical critique of essentialising modes of thinking difference’ (Bell 1999, p.  2). The seemingly banal yet loaded question of ‘where are you from?’ will never again seem innocent.

References Adamson, F.B., Triadafilopoulos, T. and Zolberg, A.R., 2011. The limits of the liberal state: migration, identity and belonging in Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37 (6), 843–859.

24   Anna Tsalapatanis Ahmed, S., 1999. ‘She’ll wake up one of these days and find she’s turned into a nigger’: passing through hybridity. Theory, Culture & Society, 16 (2), 87–106. Ahmed, S., 2000. Who knows? Knowing strangers and strangerness. Australian Feminist Studies, 15 (31), 49–68. Amin, A., 2012. Land of Strangers. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Anderson, B., 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Anderson, B., 2017. Cultural geography 1: intensities and forms of power. Progress in Human Geography, 41 (4), 501–511. Anderson, B., Gibney, M.J. and Paoletti, E., 2011. Boundaries of belonging: deportation and the constitution and contestation of citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 15 (5), 543–545. Anthias, F., 2002. Where do I belong?: Narrating collective identity and translocational positionality. Ethnicities, 2 (4), 491–514. Antonsich, M., 2010. Searching for belonging – an analytical framework. Geography Compass, 4 (6), 644–659. Bell, V., 1999. Performativity & Belonging. London: SAGE Publications. Billig, M., 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: SAGE Publications. Bond, R., 2006. Belonging and becoming: national identity and exclusion. Sociology, 40 (4), 609–626. Bottomley, G., 1992. From Another Place: Migration and the Politics of Culture. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press. Brah, A., 1996. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London and New York: Routledge. Brettell, C.B., 2006. Political belonging and cultural belonging immigration status, citizenship, and identity among four immigrant populations in a southwestern city. American Behavioral Scientist, 50 (1), 70–99. Brubaker, R. and Cooper, F., 2000. Beyond ‘identity’. Theory and Society, 29 (1), 1–47. Butler, J., 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. Butler, J., 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself. 1st ed. New York: Fordham University Press. Butler, J., 2006. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London and New York: Verso. Carrillo Rowe, A.M., 2005. Belonging: toward a feminist politics of relation. NWSA Journal, 17 (2), 15–46. Cassilde, S., 2013. ‘Where are you from?’. Hall, Ronald E. (ed.) The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st Century International Discourse. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 115–138.  Castles, S. and Davidson, A., 2000. Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging. New York: Routledge. Christou, A., 2006. American dreams and European nightmares: experiences and polemics of second-­generation Greek-­American returning migrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32 (5), 831–845. Christou, A., 2011. Narrating lives in (e)motion: embodiment, belongingness and displacement in diasporic spaces of home and return. Emotion, Space and Society, 4 (4), 249–257. Crowley, J., 1999. ‘The politics of belonging: some theoretical considerations’. Geddes, A. and Favell, A. The Politics of Belonging: Migrants and Minorities in Contemporary Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate, 15–41. Dawney, L. 2013. The interruption: investigating subjectivation and affect. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31 (4), 628–644. https://doi.org/10.1068/d9712.

Naming belonging   25 Desforges, L., Jones, R. and Woods, M., 2005. New geographies of citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 9 (5), 439–451. Dewsbury, J.D. and Bissell, D., 2015. Habit geographies: the perilous zones in the life of the individual. Cultural Geographies, 22 (1), 21–28. Fenster, T., 2005. The right to the gendered city: different formations of belonging in everyday life. Journal of Gender Studies, 14 (3), 217–231. Fine, G.A., 2010. The sociology of the local: action and its publics. Sociological Theory, 28 (4), 355–376. Fortier, A.-M., 2010. Proximity by design? Affective citizenship and the management of unease. Citizenship Studies, 14 (1), 17–30. Gustafson, P., 2005. International migration and national belonging in the Swedish debate on dual citizenship. Acta Sociologica, 48 (1), 5–19. Hage, G., 2000. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. New York: Routledge. Jenkins, R., 2000. Categorization: identity, social process and epistemology. Current Sociology, 48 (3), 7–25. Leitner, H., 2012. Spaces of encounters: immigration, race, class, and the politics of belonging in small-­town America. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102 (4), 828–846. Malkki, L., 1992. National geographic: the rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7 (1), 24–44. Massey, D., 2013. Vocabularies of the economy. Soundings, 54 (54), 9–22. May, V., 2013. Connecting Self to Society: Belonging in a Changing World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mee, K. and Wright, S., 2009. Geographies of belonging. Environment and Planning A, 41 (4), 772–779. Ngai, M.M., 2014. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pain, R., Smith, P.S.J., Boyle, M., Mitchell, P.D. and Pinder, D., 2012. Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Riley, D., 2000. The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony. Stanford. CA: Stanford University Press. Riley, D., 2001. Bad words. Diacritics, 31 (4), 41–53. Silvey, R., 2004. Power, difference and mobility: feminist advances in migration studies. Progress in Human Geography, 28 (4), 490–506. Soysal, Y.N., 1994. Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Stokes-­DuPass, N. and Fruja, R., 2016. Citizenship, Belonging, and Nation-­States in the Twenty-­First Century. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tsalapatanis, A., 2011. The (Re)Invention of Tradition: National Mythology in the Greek Diaspora. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. The University of Athens. Wright, S., 2015. More-­than-human, emergent belongings: a weak theory approach. Progress in Human Geography, 39 (4), 391–411. Yuval-­Davis, N., 2006. Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40 (3), 197–214. Yuval-­Davis, N., 2007. Intersectionality, citizenship and contemporary politics of belonging. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 10 (4), 561–574.

Chapter 2

‘Their time and their story’ Inscribing belonging through life narratives and role expectations in wedding videography Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh

Introduction Once the proposal has been accepted and the date set, the planning begins in earnest. And of all the plans and organizing, there’s one important decision you’ll be glad you made. It’s the wedding video you chose to capture the sights, sounds, and emotions of this very special occasion. So, what does your wedding really mean? We think it’s more than just the day of celebration and the planning that went into it. It’s about a union of two people, making a lifetime commitment to each other. It’s about the beginning of one of the most important chapters of your life. There’s a wedding video out there that does more than just record the events of the day. We understand that capturing memories on video means expressing in a clear and beautiful way all the hopes and dreams you have for your married life. So, when the day is over and quickly fading from a moment to a memory, you’ll be so glad you have your wedding video, to relive the experience, and share it with friends and family for generations to come. (Cinestyle 2013) The above quote is sourced from a promotional video for a Melbourne-­based wedding videography company. In this video, we can observe the importance attached to the memorialisation of life narratives. Significantly, however, there is an urging here to capture an emotive and aspirational quality of what has been achieved, and what is still to come. The wedding is deemed to constitute ‘the beginning one of the most important chapters in your life’, with the not-­sosubtle injunction that taking authorial control of the wedding day narrative likewise signals control of the narrative of your life. An ethical appeal resounds, suggesting that the couple’s hopes, dreams and shared values must be inscribed for posterity, captured in vivid artefacts that can recreate the affective sentiments infusing their marital commitment. Memory is ephemeral and fragile, but through the carefully curated wedding film others may bear witness to idealised forms ‘for generations to come’. This artefact will both prove and preserve dutiful belonging within the institution of marriage, cataloguing graciously

‘Their time and their story’   27

performed embodiments of the affections that characterise this ritual display. Indeed, for many to-­be-wed couples today, this film may signify the culmination of long-­practised romantic tie performances ‘in front of the lens’ (Schwarz 2010). Meanwhile, the wedding sustains itself in the cultural imaginary through an appeal of both belonging and ‘becoming’ (Bell 1998). For many, the occasion holds a ‘temporal placing’ in normative life trajectories, an event ‘girls are traditionally taught to look forward to, to plan and “rehearse” ’ (Bell 1998, p. 471). The ritual reinforces an expectation of ‘role transitions’, not least through public utterances of vows often rigidly tethered to gendered obligations (Kalmijn 2004). Yet, at least in the Western world, a growing ambivalence is also emergent, an uneasy reluctance to perpetuate a tradition laden with discomforting historical baggage. This laden history includes tendencies towards hegemonic and patriarchal subjugation, unrealistic expectations of marital bliss, and crass commercial exploitation, among many other incisive critiques (Lewis 1997, Ingraham 1999, Freeman 2002, Mead 2007, Humble et al. 2008, Ogletree 2010, Fairchild 2014, Galloway et al. 2015). Nonetheless, the typical wedding film remains a bastion of heteronormativity, powered by the promissory pull of the ‘marriage mystique’ (Geller 2001). Within this somewhat uneasy milieu, the professionally produced wedding video proves a popular and malleable signifier of belonging. Eva Illouz (1997, p.  155) has observed that ‘Romantic love is frequently embedded in a higher-­ order narrative, or “life story”, in which past, present, and future are linked in a coherent and overarching vision of the self ’. The wedding occasion thus becomes a crucial life marker, one where relations of past, present and future are performed by its key actors; explicitly through speeches and ritual, and implicitly through intimate interactions. To this end, the ‘multimodal enmeshment’ (May 2013, p. 152) of video affordances is expressly curated to inscribe ‘shared sentiment’ (Wright 2015, p. 398) and foment a ‘stickiness’ of emotion (Ahmed 2004, pp. 194–195). The resulting text is thus a document of performing rootedness, archiving the couple’s ‘arrival’ as fully-­fledged subjects. As Vanessa May (2013, p.  101) notes, modes of belonging are often tethered to narrative artefacts, serving as orienting tools upon which we inscribe loyalties in ways transmissible to others, using whatever cultural currency may prove resonant. In contemporary weddings that aspire to be both broadly palatable but uniquely one’s own, this can result in seeking increasingly sophisticated ways of repackaging ‘tradition’ – rather than exploring possibilities of reframing these conventions – along with tendencies to ‘sacralise’ luxury commodities (Illouz 1997, Otnes and Pleck 2003, Winch and Webster 2012). Ultimately, these memorial texts attempt to simultaneously inscribe a communal coherence of worldview, uphold cherished customs and weave an instructive tapestry of shared norms. However, those who find themselves ill-­fitting may feel excluded from such narratives, or otherwise co-­opted into uneasy displays of heteronormative assent (Oswald 2000, Harzewiski 2004).

28   Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh

Photographic artefacts have long played a role in particular styles of remembrance in wedding culture (Lewis 1997, Bezner 2002, Strano 2006). The task of professional photographers and videographers, after all, is to provide ‘an enhanced version’ of the wedding (Mead 2008, p.  154). Photographers and videographers carefully scrub out moments of role strain or mishap, and focus instead on imagery that best elevates the couple as a model of affection, intimacy, moral standing and overall admirable habitus. Wedding videography, in particular, provides a vivid narrative in which ‘the couple are literally actors in their own drama, enacting – and re-­enacting – crucial moments of the ceremony’ (Mead 2008, p.  164). Professional wedding videos are exactingly selective, framed as the authoritative text for how the occasion is to be remembered, and therefore play a crucial role in shaping memory, affixing ‘temporal notions and relations between past and present’ (van Dijck 2008, p. 17). Yet, despite this discursive hold over a ritual prominent in the cultural imaginary, wedding films remain surprisingly understudied. While a few studies broadly trace the emergence and professionalisation of wedding videography (e.g. Bezner 2002, Mead 2007), there is a decisive lack of close inquiry regarding the function of the texts in themselves (with Moran (2002) proving a rare exception). This is further surprising given that professional videography provides an enormously rich body of data via the content of wedding speeches (also curiously understudied). This dearth is regrettable, for weddings constitute a rare occasion where key actors are obliged to speak explicitly, emotively and semi-­ publically about their intimate relationships, normative stances and hopeful aspirations. In these utterances key actors must directly articulate their life narratives in ways tightly adherent to convention, but also resonate as uniquely their own. These videos thus serve as potent tools of socialisation through what is valorised for posterity and what is otherwise excluded. This chapter aims to address the importance of ceremonial talk and display through the prism of belonging, offering an overview of the rituals, habits, practices and other multimodal interplays by which alliances of inclusion are deployed. Wedding films foster particular modes of belonging in emotionally salient ways, deploying evocative repertoires that may enrol us in endorsing somewhat rigidly gendered role expectations and performative displays. The wedding film genre – in its current popular modes – leans heavily on popular romanticisations of marital affections and loyalties, re-­inscribing them in creatively and technically novel ways that toe a line of convention through invention. Given this repackaging of ‘new traditionalism’ (Leslie 1993), it would prove fruitful to closely analyse the narrative tropes that carry these norms in novel ways. This study elucidates the amor fati stories and aspirational hopes that emerge throughout these films. Through this we may better understand the forms of belonging and exclusion that permeate the wedding ritual, and posit re-­imaginings of this occasion in ways more inclusive of those who value the institution, but perhaps find the performative expectations of the wedding burdensome, alienating or even denied to them entirely.

‘Their time and their story’   29

Methods, data set and the scenes of past, present and future belonging With these aims in mind, this study analyses a data set of videos sourced from Melbourne and Sydney-­based wedding videographers. Wedding videographers promote their work via web-­based platforms, enabling prospective clients to browse their portfolio through videos that the featured couple have consented to sharing on public platforms (including hosting sites like Vimeo, which functions similarly to YouTube, but is largely preferred by industry creatives). These publicly disseminated showreel videos are usually short-­form films, ranging from approximately 2 to 15 minutes in duration. These distinct short-­form texts – in contrast to the longer ‘feature’ film versions – are crafted not only as keepsakes, but also to be more widely shared, especially via social media. The content generally includes selective excerpts from speeches, key moments of ritual and relationally significant interactions, all accompanied by a tailored soundtrack. For this study our sample included 132 videos sourced from 40 wedding videography businesses based in Sydney and Melbourne, all filmed between 2011–2016 and which were subsequently used as promotional materials, publically available on websites and actively disseminated by videographers on their social media profiles.1 Broad initial coding was conducted using a grounded theory approach (Charmaz 2000), followed by multimodal coding, with a specific focus on the incorporation of music (see Walsh and Wade, under review). Finally, a third coding was conducted, this time exploring explicit articulations and thematic allusions to ‘belonging’. Though sourced from Melbourne and Sydney-­based practitioners, the videos analysed were shot across the globe, from the cliffside cubiforms of Santorini to French countryside villages, the Baroque sandstone buildings of Sicily, the hustle-­and-bustle of New York City, exclusive hamlets in the Hamptons, pristine vistas around Sydney Harbour, the eccentric laneways of Melbourne, and various rural vineyards and homesteads, among many other locations. Faith, ethnicity and other cultural affinities were equally varied in their expression, ranging from: tea ceremonies and ancestor worship in Chinese and Vietnamese celebrations; Eastern Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic ceremonies within Christian traditions; the colourful spectacle of the Hindu Vivaha; various nationalistic sentiments; numerous modes of secular celebration and many other forms of cultural expression. Indeed, the spheres of belonging accommodated proved so expansive that it rendered one form of exclusion in Australian contexts all the more apparent. Though no longer the case, throughout the period in which these videos were recorded, same-­sex marriage remained prohibited. Tensions of belonging, exclusion and ambivalence towards the very desirability of ‘recognition’ thus reverberate throughout. The hurt of non-­recognition retains a ghostly presence in the otherwise saccharine-­sweet idealisations of these texts, for one of the most commonly included shots is of bride and groom proudly signing their government-­issued wedding certificates.

30   Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh

Contemporary wedding videos tend to adopt a bricolage of several genres, combining elements of documentary, reality television, drama, music video, montage, still photography and more. Ultimately, all these influences are turned towards crafting a text that will prove narratively coherent, normatively adherent and aesthetically salient. The intended effect is to create a tapestry of feeling, a sense of multiple forms of capital being woven into a whole cloth of affirmation. Embedded in this rapid-­fire genre and modal ensemble are expectations that viewers can parse this pastiche without becoming disoriented (an assumption of cultural capital which, in itself, has implications for belonging and exclusion). Still, in most contemporary wedding videography a three-­scene narrative arc is sustained. This broadly mirrors the composition of photographic albums (Bezner 2002), with pre-­ceremony preparation, the formal binding ritual and the oft-­bacchanalian reception comprising the three scenes. All three prove necessary in crafting an assuasive narrative of belonging; the first scene effects a nod to the past and the transition into idealised roles, the second is a present-­ focused formal and public assent of entry into these new roles, and the third scene documents raucous celebrations of the successful transition, while also looking towards hopeful futures. The three ‘scenes’ are also clearly delineated by each comprising a distinctive space of belonging. This is most notable when pre-­wedding scenes are set in the domestic home, ceremony scenes within a faith-­based setting and where the reception draws together significant figures in the couple’s life in joyous affirmation. Most videos in our data set fall into a broad ‘highlights’ genre, which typically comprises a 3 to 7-minute video. These short-­form films are often cut together in a manner akin to contemporary music videos, with visuals shifting back and forth through different scenes and settings, but always maintaining a forward momentum through the events of the day. Moreover, the soundtrack plays a vital role, providing a sense of continuity, shot-­to-shot rhythm, and tonal anchoring (Walsh and Wade, under review). Accompanying song lyrics may further accentuate the life narrative significance of the occasion. Some lyrics, for example, refer directly to the wedding event, while others express that ‘this is the perfect day’ or even literalise what is first analogised in the lyrics. One video, for example, features a song with the repeated lyric ‘When I’m with you the fireworks go off ’, resounding as the bride and groom dance together, surrounded by white geysers of fireworks. Such multimodal intertextuality testifies to the affective intensity evoked throughout, a sensory panoply designed to induce irresistible good feeling, thereby enrolling viewers in further endorsement of the couple’s affections. Acknowledging the past and the passed Most wedding films sought to incorporate some acknowledgement of how the bride and groom were formatively shaped through their upbringing and key figures in their life. This is often achieved through brief vignettes of the family

‘Their time and their story’   31

home, especially common during preparation scenes. Videographers use this opportunity to further personalise the film, including through close-­up shots of family photos. Similarly, in one later reception scene, we are presented with an array of framed photos showing other couples within the extended family on their respective wedding days, thus placing this occasion in a long, esteemed tradition, and so further valorising normative expectations. In pre-­ceremony scenes actors display a ‘backstage’ looseness, rather than adopting later pretences of role performance. Telling of this added textual richness is one scene wherein the groom wistfully observes that the very room in which he is now donning his wedding suit was once his childhood bedroom; both a reflexive acknowledgement and contribution to the life narrative currently being composed. Another groom, similarly, stands with his parents outside the family home in a wide, soft-­ focus composition. Accentuating this affecting tableau is a post-­production sepia-­tone overlay, creating a worn patina that prematurely ages what was already likely to be looked back upon with nostalgia. Often, creative means of reverent acknowledgement will be given to family members who have recently passed away. This may be achieved through shots of bride or groom looking upon photographs of deceased loves ones, sometimes further contextualised through voiceovers collected from interviews or during reception speeches. This solemn deference during speeches will typically elicit emotional responses from gathered family and friends, which are in turn incorporated into the final film, heightening its affective sway and further tailoring a close narrative of kinship. In one video, a bride provides voiceover narration of a pre-­ceremony letter penned for the groom, observing how saddened he must feel that his deceased grandfathers cannot witness this occasion. Meanwhile, images show the groom wiping away tears as he gazes upon a locket containing photos of these two men. This affecting scene demonstrates how the affordances of videography can incorporate ‘the ephemera of individual life cycles while preserving them for posterity within a larger family biography’ (Moran 2002, p. 61). Another video draws close attention to the recent death of the groom’s father, including a speech excerpt where the groom addresses his mother directly: Groom:

Mother, you are a tough lady. Physically a lightweight, but a heavyweight example of what love and marriage is all about. Not only the last 12 months I have seen strength, and determination, it has been there all my life. Hang in there, because with [Bride and Groom’s young son] we have plenty of good times to come.

Reaction shots of the mother further enhance this charged moment of love, loss and solace. Throughout these videos, the weight of expectation of the wedding as a crucial narrative marker and genealogical imperative burbles barely underneath the surface. One father of the bride effuses how this occasion has been at the very top of his ‘bucket list’, the event he most dearly hoped to witness before shuffling off this mortal coil.

32   Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh

Courtship stories as affirmations of belonging Wedding videos also draw out narrative threads that espouse the couple’s shared worldviews, thereby stoking an amor fati quality of homophily (Bourdieu 1984, Illouz 1997, pp. 214–215). Often this is achieved by placing emphasis on niche interests and subcultural affinities. For example, one wedding of two aficionados of the Melbourne music scene was wholly themed around ‘Rockers in Love’. The resulting video thus incorporated and added to the semiotic markers on offer. A pre-­wedding scene shows a close-­up of a guitar case, emblazoned with ‘rockers in love’ and equipped with the wedding rings secreted in a hidden compartment. Frequent shots of Melbourne’s laneways and high-­cachet cafes punctuate throughout. Décor shots of the rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic at the reception are plentiful, and the performing Beatles tribute band also get their due. Speech excerpts tell stories of the couple’s shared love of the music scene, which culminated in the groom’s proposal during a Dandy Warhols gig. The groom’s speech praises the bride as ‘so cool, and so beautiful, and so rock ‘n’ roll’. Together, they all toast ‘to the rockers in love’. The closing shot is especially significant in uniting ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ forms of belonging evident in wedding videos, with the ‘rockers in love’ guitar case foregrounding the bridal party walking down the Catholic church aisle after the ceremony. This is just one among many instances of subcultural affinities being incorporated into the narrative, personalising otherwise set templates of wedding films. Similarly, excerpted speeches and interviews draw upon shared values that drew the couple together. Woven throughout are stories of initial courtship, first impressions and first dates, facing good times and bad together, and inventive proposals. This will occasionally be complemented with footage shot prior to the wedding day, such as one couple shown in close embrace on the University of Sydney campus, with voiceover contextualising that this was where the couple first met. One pre-­wedding film is even shot in the form of a music video. Here, bride and groom lip-­synch to a balladic duet, interleaved with re-­creations of how they first met, and ending with a proposal re-­enactment. Similarly, in wedding speeches, besotted flushes of affection are used for mild teasing material, along with poking fun at poor first impressions gradually overcome as love loosens its guises: Maid of Honour:

[Groom], the first time I heard of you was back in [Bride’s] early highschool days, and – as all teenagers do – I asked if she liked anyone in her class. [Bride], who looked rather disappointed replied ‘No, there are no cute guys, but, I think there’s this one guy who likes me. He’s tall, but he’s so skinny and pale, and, oh my god, he has really big ears!’

Courtship narratives are also woven into personalised wedding vows, which videographers use to further mould a bespoke narrative:

‘Their time and their story’   33 Groom:

You’re present to witness that I – [Groom] – take you – [Bride] – to be my lawfully wedded wife. [Bride], I find it so fitting to be standing here today wearing this tuxedo. This tuxedo, which, with 4 days’ notice, I scrambled to purchase and tailor, all in an effort to impress you on our first date.

The interweaving of courtship stories is enhanced through interviews, conducted in a manner broadly akin to reality television genres (though, of course, without the confected drama or wilful provocations). In interviews, bride and groom will speak of first date nerves, humorous missteps, qualities they admire in their partner, hopes and fears for the wedding day itself, and desires for the future. Engagement proposal stories are also commonly included, particularly those especially inventive and spectacular, which in turn valorises the proposal as a necessarily grand gesture in proving one’s sincere intentions. In interviews, the bride and groom speak directly about the wedding as an important marker in their life narrative, and in articulating this trajectory lean  on common discursive tropes of romantic love. One bride poignantly observes that: I have told everyone under the sun there’s no such thing as ‘the One’ or ‘love at first sight’, and I found myself in this phone conversation with my mum saying ‘Mum, I think he’s the one’, and she’s just gone ‘Did you just say those words?! Did that come from my daughter?’… It’s about personal growth for me. I used to think weddings were a little ‘Why would you do that?’, so it’s kind of nice to feel within myself that I’ve gone through that change. It’s celebrating my love for a man that I think the world of. I truly think he’s amazing, I feel so fortunate to have met him, and I wish this upon everyone else, I hope people can have their time and their story. Sorry, I’m getting a little bit emotional. Here, we see an underlying theme of ‘love as force’ (discussed below), a force that bequeaths a ‘story’ to the lucky soul upon whom it is met. What was once an apparent cynicism towards romantic ideals has been overwhelmed and transformed, turning an adversary into an advocate, one who hopes that others may realise the contentment she now feels. One groom similarly speaks of ‘not knowing what love was’ until he met his future wife. Belonging as a feeling of ‘at homeness’ is thus especially evident, evoking a sense of phenomenological reconciliation (Antonsich 2010). For many, a once dimly felt incompleteness is healed and made whole: Bride:

Before we met, I considered myself to be happy and content with life. It only took one date with you [Groom] for me to realise that there was still a piece of my life not fulfilled … I love that making big life decisions with you comes with ease. Marrying you, although the

34   Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh

biggest, is the easiest decision of my life. You make me feel as though I have everything I need. In your ring I engraved the word ‘Complete’ because you really do complete my life. Observe here how popularly held sentiments of romantic love are imbued with personalised touches. Meanwhile, the key actors are acutely attuned to the threat of saccharine cliché and ‘token interdiscursivity’ (Dunn 2006) that may come with ritualised ceremonial talk, and so seek ways around this impasse: Groom:

I will start by saying this, and not because it’s a courtesy, an obligation, or a nice thing to do. No, it is unmistakably a pure fact, the absolute truth, and proof of my happiness. [Bride], you are so beautiful, and I am a very lucky man to call you my wife.

However, most feel no need for such qualifiers, and instead a sense of fantastical joy recurs throughout, explicitly inscribing all those ‘hopes and dreams’ the opening quote informs us are requisite components of the occasion. The ‘dream’ now realised motif is commonly invoked: Bride: 

Thank you for being so true and loyal to me. You are my Prince Charming, you make all my dreams come true … I can’t wait to grow old together. Groom:  I see a life with you as the ultimate goal, the dream, what life is really meant to be, complete and happy. You are my compliment and I am yours. Further reinforcing the bride and groom’s claim to ‘their time and their story’ is the way in which other actors are enrolled into this drama. Kinship belonging in particular is strongly emphasised to accentuate themes of achieved transition, role accomplishment, and embodying of new identities. Often this is implicitly rendered through displays of intimate interaction between family members. Typical examples include the bride dancing with her father, mothers helping sons with ties, and reaction shots of family seeing the bride revealed in her gown for the first time; all small but telling vignettes which further contextualise nuanced forms of belonging. Scripted dreams of belonging Most insistent throughout is the motif that the wedding depicts bride and groom at their most self-­actualised, rendering all the more important that this occasion be preserved for posterity. Close-­up shots of venue signs declare this to be the ‘Best day ever!’ and ‘This is where happily ever after starts!’, which signal to the viewer how this text should be interpreted. Typically evident in this composition is the fitting of bride and groom’s life experiences to an idealised path; one

‘Their time and their story’   35

of love everlasting, of finding ‘the One’, of imagined fulfilment and self-­ actualisation, and performative displays of what is commonly anticipated to be the happiest day of their lives. This ecstatic happiness, we are regularly informed by family and friends, will only be surpassed when the bride and groom have children (see below). However, where possible, videographers use the utterances of the bride and groom themselves to drive the narrative. This may be achieved through speech excerpts, or pre- and post-­wedding interviews that are interwoven with scenes from the day itself. It is important to note, however, that a gendered imbalance persists in who articulates this narrative. Excerpts from speeches, for example, are far more commonly sourced from the groom. This may be due to editorial selection, or just as likely reflective of customs dictating who is expected to give a speech. Ironically, this imbalance can be almost tragic in its effects. One groom, for example, praises his wife’s ‘quick wit’ and claims her to be ‘one of the funniest people I know’. Yet, in the entire video, the bride does not speak. This reduction of the bride to iconographic display evinces longstanding expectations that ‘men act and women appear’ (Berger 1972, p.  47). Here, women must conform to a prescribed ‘stylized repetition of acts’ (Butler 1990, p.  191), adhering to the ‘schedule for the portrayal of gender’ in order to ‘constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self ’ (Goffman 1979, p.  8). The frequency with which brides are filmed gazing into mirrors is but one example of this stylised display. However, perhaps an emerging correction to this imbalance is found in videos that incorporate interviews, wherein brides are far more likely to carry the narrative voice. One particularly novel method borrowed from televisual drama is to feature vignettes of the bride and groom reading letters from each other. These billets-­ doux are shown through close-­up shots of envelopes being opened, paired with over-­the-shoulder angles, and sometimes with added voiceover from the subject who penned the note. When read aloud, these letters add emotional exposition, for within them bride and groom trace the path that has led them to this special day, and directly articulate their hopes for the occasion. Altogether, therefore, anything that serves to affirm prevailing idealisations of weddings – and can be accommodated within the multimodal format – is likely to be included in the final cut, such as when a groom expresses the occasion to be ‘a script I thought could only exist in a dream’. Likewise, the father of one bride suggests that ‘This is a day that [the Bride] has wanted all her life, I know she’s rehearsed today in her mind for many years’. Of course, embedded here are gendered role expectations, implicitly suggesting that if one wishes to stage an occasion of comparable spectacle and self-­actualising potential, they had best start ‘mind-­rehearsing’ from a young age. Love as past force, love as future work Related to these implicit instructions of hopeful anticipation and diligent rehearsal, Eva Illouz (1997, pp.  192–198) identifies two dominant discursive

36   Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh

models of romantic love. One is of love as ‘intense force’, a transcendent power that overwhelms the subject, irresistibly enrapturing them. The other model is of ‘love as work’, with each partner ‘investing’ in the other towards mutual fulfilment. Both of these frames are evinced in wedding videos, though if a broad modal separation can be discerned, it is that ‘love as force’ is best captured in the visual, while ‘love as work’ lives in the spoken word. For example – and perhaps reflective of the changing social function of what weddings are intended to serve – love as work is often inscribed by emphasising the joint success of the bride and groom in their professional and social lives. In one speech excerpt, a groom’s father proudly effuses: [Groom] is my best friend, we have no favourites as parents, but in your eldest son you live your dreams. I mean: ‘[Groom] is going to be the best golfer in the world, he’s going to be a professional footballer’, and in actual fact we both ended up as bankers, so I don’t think we’ve done a bad job. I’m so, so proud. Sentiments of celebrating earned success permeate throughout, with various actors praising the respective couples as ‘both extremely smart and hard working’ and having a ‘passion for working’. Success is also tied closely with shared experiential aspirations, such as a bride’s hope for ‘more countries, more adventures, more perfect meals, and lots more love’. These aspirations can be quite specific, often related to future role expectations or material comforts. One groom even states in his vows that ‘we share the same vision about how our house is meant to look, where we will eventually live, and our future life together’. Themes of both irresistible fate and considered choice run throughout, wherein part of the ‘work’ of love is knowing when the ‘force’ has sufficiently taken over, after which the couple must consciously craft the ‘fantasy’ into something sustainable. Contemporary love is thus framed as ‘a very reasonable madness’ (Illouz 1997, p. 215). The task of ritual memorialisation is therefore to prove this ‘reasonable madness’, to show how bride and groom are consumed by their affections, but that those affections have also been dutifully refashioned towards mutually affirming practices of ‘confluent love’ (Giddens 1992, pp. 49–64). Hence, some kind of observable transition is sought, a realisation of an idealised state that can be inscribed in memorial texts. Echoing this refrain of ‘reasonable madness’, the mother of one bride quotes a passage from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin: Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides, and when it subsides you have to make a decision, you have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part, because this is what love is.

‘Their time and their story’   37

Literary references are somewhat common in wedding speeches, reflecting a process of appropriating and re-­contextualising pithy and affecting sentiments. By placing the story of newlyweds within the accepted ‘canon’, such allusions serve to signal and affirm belonging. Even more frequently observed are tropes of marriage as an ongoing ‘journey’, where bride, groom and well-­wishers speak of travails so far, catalogue their hopes for the future (e.g. ‘I cannot wait for all our adventures to begin’), and acknowledge inevitable obstacles they will encounter. These sentiments are then often complemented by visual imagery evoking this journey, quite regularly by bookending the film with motifs of sunrises and sunsets, or through inclusion of farewell scenes, such as the happy couple driving off into the distance. While others may incline towards romantic ideals of ‘love as force’, marriage celebrants, whether faith-­based or secular, are often tasked with explicitly articulating ‘love as work’: Celebrant:

A good marriage must be created … it is the little things that are the big things. It is never being too old to hold hands. It is remembering to say I love you at least once a day. It is never ever going to sleep angry. It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives. It is standing together and facing the world. It is forming a circle of love that gathers the whole family. It is speaking words of appreciation, and demonstrating grateful, thoughtful ways. It is having the capacity to forgive and to forget. It is giving each other room to grow. It is a common search for the good and the beautiful. It is not only marrying the right person but being the right partner.

Romantic love, now bound in martial commitment, is framed as an ongoing project. This project requires shared labours, but in turn promises mutual self-­ actualisation. Such ethical appeals abound in wedding videos, further inscribing the commitment made, while also serving an underlying instructive quality. The officiant – regardless of faith stance – is not necessarily proselytising to bride and groom, for presumably they have already encountered such teachings during their pre-­wedding consultations, but rather is addressing those witnessing, including those contemplating commitments of like kind. Familial achievement and future role expectations The wedding event is firmly articulated as an achievement of the family, with the resplendence of bride and groom a reflection upon the esteem also due to the wider clan. One best man speaks of how the groom was raised solely by his mother, crediting her for the groom’s upstanding character, and this excerpt is duly complemented by shots of groom and mother sharing a tender exchange. Bride and groom frequently express gratitude to their parents for the fulfilled subjects they have become, while responses in kind ‘officially welcome’ them

38   Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh

into their respective in-­law families, noting how well each fits into established kinship relations. This ‘welcoming’ often retains conservative, traditionalist sentiments. One well-­wisher states: [Bride], you have found a great husband in [Groom], who for me has always been a reliable and trusting friend. And [Groom] … you have taken one of the [Bride’s surname] family’s greatest assets, and turned her into your wife, and most importantly, a [Groom’s surname]. Of course, here we may briefly note here the persistent rhetoric of patriarchal possession, a form of belonging stubbornly resistant to dislodging (Rubin 1975). Another speech, this time from the father of the bride, records how he does not want to ‘give away’ his daughter, but rather ‘to keep her’. Frequently such speeches unwittingly infantilise and bind the bride to restrictive performative tropes: As I look on this beautiful woman before me, I cannot help but reflect on the girl she was, and the woman she has become. You were daddy’s girl when you were born, and you will always be my princess.

Father of the Bride:

Male possessive tropes can be expressed somewhat unknowingly, with some utterances intended as progressive but, upon reflection, perhaps missing the mark. For example, in one speech excerpt, the best man speaks of the groom’s love of cars. The groom, we are told, has had ‘more cars than girlfriends’, but, luckily for the bride, ‘he’s never traded you, he’s never sold you and he’s never upgraded you’. Another courtship story echoes this awkward persistence of possessive tropes. One groom recalls his first encounter with the bride, at a nightclub, trying out his ‘creepy dance moves’. The groom then faux-­confesses that upon seeing ‘this [metropolitan area] princess busting her moves on the podium, I did proceed to pull her down – without asking her – into my arms and into my life. The first words I whispered to [Bride] were “are you a dancer?” ’. Of course, these quips are said with knowing jest, though it nonetheless reflects possible underlying expectations of rigid, stereotypical models of hyper-­masculinity and femininity. It seems significant that of all the spoken sentiments that could be included, it remains many of the above kind that are selected for memorial inscribing by videographers and editors. Finally, concluding the narrative arc are projections into the future tied to normative role expectations, commonly that of motherhood. These injunctions are abundant in both speeches and interviews, and often paired with imagery of intergenerational tableaus, such as the bride holding a baby, or playing with the flower girl. The ‘good mother’ role is customarily framed as the next narrative marker of achieved belonging:

‘Their time and their story’   39 Maid of Honour: 

I could not have asked for a better aunty to my children, you love and look after them as if they were your own. I can tell you are going to be a fantastic mother. Best Man:  Not only do you make a stunning bride, but I have no doubt you will be a wonderful wife, and hopefully an even better mother. Groom (in interview):  … she dedicates her life to our relationship, dedicates her time to making sure … that I’ve got everything I need. You know, they’re the qualities you want in someone who is going to be the mother of your child, and she will be the best mother in the world judging by the way she treats me. In some cases, bride or groom will even address their partner directly to the camera, consciously inscribing a performative declaration of their love, along with the duties they promise to uphold. As an important qualification, please observe that the point of highlighting these sometimes patriarchal or otherwise highly gendered modes is not to enact a shallow critique that bemoans any supposed lack of critical reflexivity on the part of key actors. That would be both patronising and presumptive, along with being wilfully blind to cross-­cultural subtleties of ritual, custom and other meaning making practices. Rather, a central consideration is to trace what is recorded for posterity, what is otherwise excluded, and the consequent implications for what functions this event purports to serve for those who may view these memorial texts. One of these implications regards whether to ‘belong’ in this institution now encourages performative declarations of love, sometimes direct to camera, and is altogether packaged in ways that accentuate the occasion as an affective spectacle intended to effect an ontological refiguring of its key actors. As these multimodal artefacts become ever more elaborate and technically complex, it is worth querying what impact this will have on the varying capacity to demonstrate affections in ways resonant to those from whom we seek affirmation. As Illouz (1997, p. 294) notes, ‘romance is a good unequally distributed in our social structure’, so can everyone enjoy ‘their time and their story’ under these demanding conditions of conspicuous display?

Conclusion This chapter has presented an analysis of the utterances, signifying artefacts and ritual displays brought together by videographers in creating affecting texts of marital belonging. The excerpts found within illuminate a rare occasion where key actors are obliged to speak explicitly about their emotions, values, hopes and intimacies. Such utterances showcase the importance attached to ceremonial talk and its placement in generating spheres of belonging, for in these films we see subjects ‘in social bloom’ (Goffman 1979, p.  11). Through analysing these multimodal texts, we have explored the discursive valorising power of wedding films, most notably in the reification of contemporary romantic ideals

40   Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh

of fated affections, realised dreams, mutual successes, role fulfilment, familial achievement and deference to the past coupled with aspirational futures. Quite often, these films reinforce, reinscribe and instruct the viewer on the great esteem attached to relationships predicated upon ‘traditional’ divisions of labour. Through emotive and seductive repertoires, the wedding video speaks to our longing for belonging, yet may remain problematic in what is conspicuously excluded. As Susan Sontag (1977, p. 7) sagely observed, ‘there is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera’. Perhaps we might more closely consider forms of embedded exclusion, especially via narrow depictions of gendered display, for these evocative texts may prove powerful tools of socialisation in ways that constrain alternative ways of reimagining the ritualised display of the wedding.

Note 1 On the sourcing of the sample texts: The focus for this study was on ‘highlights’ or ‘showreel’ videos that are intentionally composed with an eye towards public dissemination. Usually 3–8 minutes in length, these videos have been freely distributed – with the consent of clients – on both dedicated websites of videography companies and wider video hosting platforms (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo). These short videos comprise part of the videographer’s public portfolio, which they try to distribute as widely as possible. Hence, the desired (and potential) audience for these videos is considerable. One of the videos in the sample, for example, has been watched over 963,000 times on YouTube. Prospective clients looking for a suitable videographer typically watch many of these videos, seeking out the aesthetic approach and technical capacities that best suits their aims and budget. Also, the short-­form video is expressly designed to be shared, which clients typically do through their own social media platforms. Alternatively, long-­form videos – which often comprise full ceremonies and speeches, rather than carefully selected excerpts – are not made available by videographers, nor were they sought for this study. Our focus was to analyse only those texts that are most widely disseminated with a public audience in mind, for they speak more directly to the culturally negotiated ideals of belonging that are germane to this collection.

References Ahmed, S., 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Antonsich, M., 2010. Searching for belonging: an analytical framework. Geography Compass, 4 (6), 644–659. Bell, V., 1998. Taking her hand: becoming, time and the cultural politics of the white wedding. Cultural Values, 2 (4), 463–484. DOI: 10.1080/14797589809359310. Berger, J., 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books and BBC. Bezner, L., 2002. Wedding photography: ‘a shining language’. Visual Resources, 18 (1), 1–16. Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Butler, J., 1990 [2006]. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.

‘Their time and their story’   41 Charmaz, K., 2000. ‘Grounded theory: objectivist and constructivist methods’. Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln Y.S. (eds) The Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Cinestyle, 2013. Cinestyle promo video. Cinestyle, viewed 2 September 2017 https:// vimeo.com/39090820. Dunn, C.D., 2006. Formulaic expressions, Chinese proverbs, and newspaper editorials: exploring type and token interdiscursivity in Japanese wedding speeches. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 16 (2), 153–172. Fairchild, E., 2014. Examining wedding rituals through a multidimensional gender lens: the analytic importance of attending to (in)consistency. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 43 (3), 361–389. Freeman, E., 2002. The Wedding Complex. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Galloway, L., Engstrom, E. and Emmers-­Sommer, T.M., 2015. Does movie viewing cultivate young people’s unrealistic expectations about love and marriage? Marriage & Family Review, 51 (8), 687–712. Geller, J., 2001. Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press. Giddens, A., 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Goffman, E., 1979. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row. Harzewiski, S., 2004. Consuming heteroscripts: the modern wedding in the American imaginary. Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 4 (1), 79–91. Humble, A.M., Zvonkovic, A.M. and Walker, A.J., 2008. ‘The royal we’: gender ideology, display, and assessment in wedding work. Journal of Family Issues, 29 (1), 3–25. Illouz, E., 1997. Consuming the Romantic Utopia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ingraham, C., 1999. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. Kalmijn, M., 2004. Marriage rituals as reinforcers of role transitions: an analysis of weddings in the Netherlands. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66 (3), 582–594. Leslie, D., 1993. Femininity, post-­Fordism, and the ‘new traditionalism’. Environment and Planning D, 11 (6), 689–708. Lewis, C., 1997. Hegemony in the ideal: wedding photography, consumerism, and patriarchy. Women’s Studies in Communication, 20 (2), 167–188. May, V., 2013. Connecting Self to Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mead, R., 2008. One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Dream. New York: Penguin Books. Moran, J., 2002. There’s No Place like Home Vide. Minneapolis, MT: University of Minnesota Press. Ogletree, S.M., 2010. With this ring, I thee wed: relating gender roles and love styles to attitudes towards engagement rings and weddings. Gender Issues, 27 (1–2), 67–77. Oswald, R.F., 2000. A member of the wedding? Heterosexism and family ritual. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 17 (3), 349–368. Otnes, C. and Pleck, E., 2003. Cinderella Dreams. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Rubin, G., 1975. ‘The traffic in women’. Reiter, R. (ed.) Toward an Anthropology of Women. New York: Monthly Review Press. Schwarz, O., 2010. Negotiating romance in front of the lens. Visual Communication, 9 (2), 151–169.

42   Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh Sontag, S., 1977. On Photography. London: Penguin. Strano, M., 2006. Ritualized transmission of social norms through wedding photography. Communication Theory, 16 (1), 31–46. van Dijck, J., 2008. Digital photography: communication, identity, memory. Visual Communication, 7 (1), 57–76. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357207084865. Walsh, M.J. and Wade, M. (under review). A soundtrack for love: wedding videography, music selection and the construction of romantic memory. Visual Communication. Winch, A. and Webster, A., 2012. Here comes the brand: wedding media and the management of transformation. Continuum, 26 (1), 51–59. DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2012. 630143. Wright, S., 2015. More-­than-human, emergent belongings: a weak theory approach. Progress in Human Geography, 39 (4), 391–411.

Chapter 3

Academics anonymous Blogging and feminist ‘be/longings’ in the neoliberal university Briony Lipton

Introduction The internet has in many ways transformed feminism (Fuentes 2007, Taylor 2011). In her classic ‘A manifesto for cyborgs’ (1991), Donna Haraway argues that with the increased sophistication of technology and the blurring of the boundaries between human and machine, a new feminism will emerge. One where categories of gender would be made obsolete. She calls for a socialist, feminist cyborg to challenge the singular identities and ‘grids of control’ that work to contain women and other marginalised groups. It was Haraway’s ‘utopian dream’ that women would become more technologically proficient and politically engaged. For many marginalised groups, digital tools, the internet and social media present new opportunities for self-­representation in online spaces. However, the prevalence of digital sexism and vicious and systematic gender-­based trolling online have exposed the persistence of misogyny and gender inequality. The internet empowers women’s expression and feminist politics as much as it is a space of vitriol and violence targeted at women. In many respects, women’s exclusion and our increased awareness of the kind of e-­bile that confronts women’s presence online (Jane 2014) encourages a sense of feminist belonging – a form of recognition and inclusivity based on a commonality of shared experiences. Haraway’s utopian dreams for the internet have not been realised – that is, the internet is a space shaped by patriarchal hegemony and heteronormativity. It is where gendered social norms continue to be negotiated, performed and imposed, and prevents women from realising their political potential online. In May 2016, feminist academic and cultural theorist Sara Ahmed used the internet to publically announce that she had resigned from her position as Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London in protest at her institution’s response to the sexual harassment of its students. In an open letter on her popular research blog, feministkilljoys, Ahmed explained, ‘I have resigned in protest against the failure to address the problem of sexual harassment. I have resigned because the costs of doing this work have been too high’ (2016b, 2016c). She identified her resignation as ‘both an act of feminist protest and an act of feminist self-­care’. She reasoned:

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When I talk about the problem of sexual harassment I am not talking about one rogue individual, or two, nor even a rogue unit, nor even a rogue institution. We are talking about how sexual harassment becomes normalised and generalised – as part of academic culture. Ahmed’s resignation, and in particular her public announcement of her resignation, mobilised an online community of students and scholars. Her resignation not only publicised the systemic issue of violence against women on university campuses, but also made visible the position of women, their place and belonging in academia. Academia, like Hollywood, is facing its own #MeToo movement over allegations of sexual misconduct. Ahmed’s revelation might be considered a precursor to the October 2017 ‘me too’ viral hashtag movement used on social media to help demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, which followed soon after public revelations of sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein. Amid the momentum of this online social movement, it is important to acknowledge the contributions of academics who, after decades of feminist campaigning on sexual assault and harassment, have brought to light the pervasiveness of sexual violence on university campuses and the masculine cultures which frame it (Phipps 2017, Weale and Batty 2016, Willgress 2016, Gray et al. 2017). Ahmed’s blog post is but one example in a myriad of feminist blogs, columns, tweets and posts where women graduate students and academics openly and anonymously share stories of sexism, misogyny and racism in the academy. The public act of blogging about her private act of resignation exposes the extent to which women in the academy still do not belong. In recent years there has been a proliferation of anonymous shared blog sites, guest blog posts on named websites and news articles in mainstream media with the distinct purpose of being online platforms for the sharing of stories on exploitation, abuse, and suffering in academia. Even online news website the Guardian plays host to ‘Academics Anonymous’ (2016a, 2016b) (https://the guardian.com/higher-­education-network), a blog series dedicated to academics, often anonymously ‘telling it like it is’. This chapter focuses on the intersection of gender and digital activism, with notions of belonging in academia. It explores the ways in which blogging about these experiences creates a certain type of belonging online, as well as a sense of yearning for social change in our academic institutions. It draws upon the prolific writings of Sara Ahmed and her characterisation of the ‘feminist killjoy’ (2010) and ‘willful subject’ (2014) to explore the way the ‘everyday activism’ (Vivienne 2016) of these academics sharing their experiences online. Blogs about sexism in academia produce a feminist–willful–killjoy subjectivity that complicates our understanding of belonging on these sites and in higher education more broadly. Specifically, this  chapter analyses four anonymous shared blogs – Academic Men Explain Things to Me  (http://mansplained.tumblr.com), Academia is Killing My Friends

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(http://academiaiskillingmyfriends.tumblr.com), Strategic Misogyny (https://­ strategicmisogyny.wordpress.com), and Sharing Academic Sexism Stories with You (SASSY) (http://academicsexismstories.gendersquare.org) – to better understand how these sites might be imagined as collective digital spaces, where feminist academics through digital storytelling reinvent and redefine what it means to ‘belong’ in the neoliberal academy.

Belonging in the academy as a feminist killjoy Women’s increased participation in higher education does not necessarily equate to their sense of belonging in academia. Being included into the university organisation for ‘being diverse’ or embodying diversity (Ahmed 2012, p. 153) can be understood as a sign of belonging. However, equity and diversity policies in the university organisation and gender representation lack meaning to those who experience a sense of being out of place in the academy. Belonging is not just about social location or the construction of individual and collective identities but also about the way these are valued and judged (Yuval-­Davis 2006, p.  203). John Crowley (1999) defines the politics of belonging as boundary maintenance. That is that belonging is fundamentally concerned with the boundaries that separate ‘us’ and ‘them’, boundaries of the community of belonging or ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1991). The politics of belonging brings to mind Virginia Woolf who much earlier observed that the ‘daughters of educated men’ have always been part of an ‘Outsiders Society’ within the academic confines of the university: ‘He was a Beadle, I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me’ (Woolf 2001, p.  8). A playful spatial metaphor on the subtleties of the inclusion and exclusion of women, it highlights the way a politics of belonging involves the maintenance, reproduction, and contestation of the boundaries of belonging (Yuval-­Davis 2006, p. 205). Belonging is about emotional attachment. Emotions ‘stick’ to particular social objects (Ahmed 2004) even if the way we identify to the community of belonging is varied. There are always performative dimensions to our constructions of belonging (Bell 1999, Butler 2004). Formations of belonging reflect our emotional investments and desire for certain attachments. Happiness, Ahmed posits, functions as a promise that directs you towards certain objects that would lead to the good life (Ahmed 2010, p. 54). Happiness is an orientation (Ahmed 2010, p. 54). There is a shared social bond – a sense of belonging – in striving for the same objects that make us happy. Elspeth Probyn (1996) highlights the affective dimension to the term ‘belonging’; that is not just be-­ing, but also longing. It is not merely about the presence of academic women in higher education. Rather, ‘individuals and groups are caught within wanting to belong, wanting to become, a process that is fueled by yearning rather than positing of identity as a stable state’ (Probyn 1996, p. 19). The yearning implied within the term ‘be/longing’ is about the possibilities for belonging in that idealised place.

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Belonging is about feeling ‘at home’ (Yuval-­Davis 2006). Academics may feel at ‘home’ in their research. The intensification of academic work and the long hours and ‘flexibility’ of academic labour may blur the pleasures of work and personal life into a sense of homeliness. Perpetrators of sexual harassment may feel at home in their violation of workplace regulations. Of course, belonging is not felt or experienced in the same way or to the same extent. Our emotional investment in ideals of belonging shift in different times and contexts. This is not to say that there are not spaces within the contemporary university where women and feminists feel comfortable and confident, but as Nira Yuval-­Davis (2006, p.  198) highlights, belonging only becomes articulated – and indeed, politicised – when our sense of belonging is threatened. Sexism and racism in the university challenge the happy image of diversity (Ahmed 2012, p. 152) and expose the conditions of belonging. Happiness is a shared object of belonging, conditional on others’ happiness. Other people’s happiness thus becomes a shared object (Ahmed 2010, p. 56). Ahmed’s theorisation shares an affinity with Lauren Berlant’s (2011) notion of ‘cruel optimism’ and how our optimistic attachment to this shared object that is happiness may become an obstacle that actively impedes the aim that brought us to it in the first place. If our happiness is tied up with others’ happiness we become caught in a struggle, and our investment in happiness forms the political horizon in which feminist claims are made. Happiness secures social relations by creating ‘scripts’ for the right kind of living and type of behaviour. Going along with institutional happiness scripts is how we get along and gain access to the community of belonging in the contemporary university. This means that as academics, ‘we must be willing to be able to express happiness in proximity to the right things’ (Ahmed 2010, p. 59). To be a feminist killjoy is to challenge the fantasy of happiness, and in many respects, to challenge the conditionality of belonging in the academy.

Blogging, belonging and everyday activism Academics blogging on sexism and misogyny in the academy is emblematic of an array of expressions of feminist practices that we might broadly describe as ‘cyberfeminism’. Cyberfeminism is a concept initially imagined by Sadie Plant (1997) to refer to feminists examining and critiquing (and more recently, producing) the practices and processes of digital technologies and the internet. It is important to note that cyberfeminism as a concept is very much amorphous. It is neither a single theory nor a feminist movement with a clearly articulated political agenda (Flanagan and Booth 2002, p.  12). However, the continued relevance of the term cyberfeminism(s) is in its resolute focus on gender and digital technologies, and on cyberfeminist practices (Daniels 2009, p.  102, see also Flanagan and Booth 2002). As an online practice, cyberfeminism is associated with third-­wave feminism, and takes numerous forms including blogging, online campaigns and tweets (Daniels 2009, Griffin 2017).

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Blogs are personal or organisational websites that allow their authors to publish texts and multimedia materials online without the intervention of an editor or a webmaster. Blogging broadly refers to the act of posting entries on a blog, and are typically structured by personal opinion rhetoric and firsthand reporting style. Microblogging communities such as Tumblr are more interactive than traditional blogging platforms such as WordPress. Tumblr sites enable users to publish short posts of text, images, quotes, links, video, audio and chats with other users then reblog a Tumblr post. It also enables users to more easily interact with posted comments. Regardless of the web platform, blogging represents a community of internet users who produce their own coverage of current events that often contests the monopoly of information distribution by mainstream media corporations (Fuentes 2007). Virtual spaces allow us to think more about belonging in the university. Blogging can thus become a medium through which academics perform scholarly identities (Kirkup 2010, p. 83). For academics, Melissa Gregg (2009, p. 471) suggests: blogs serve as a sort of short-­term ideological resolution to the contradictions of the contemporary university workplace, a safe space to share the disappointment arising from the end of guaranteed ongoing employment, the growth of casualisation and the lack of agency that persists in large organisations of the knowledge economy. While they may not resolve these problems, bloggers voice the grievances and tensions experienced in their work lives at a time of significant structural change for the industry. Discussing these difficulties with others helps bloggers develop strategies to cope with the atomisation of the workplace. Some academics may feel technologically connected when blogging at or about work, but connection is not the same as belonging (McClure and Brown 2008, p.  5). Belonging in academia and blogging both intersect with organisational structures. They become interdependent and contradictory. The encounters scholars share on these blog sites supports Gregg’s findings that academic blog posts may often reflect the treachery felt when loyalty to the university can no longer be maintained. Blogs offer insight into the affective responses that the conditions of higher education engender for women and feminists, as well as being indicative of the tactics used to negotiate this changing landscape (Gregg 2009, p. 471). Academic institutions also take an interest in academics’ blogging. As Inger Mewburn and Pat Thomson (2013, p. 1117) observe, academics are persistently urged by universities to blog and expand their research audiences, to create new networks (and new avenues for funding) and to write in a more accessible style. Yet many academics are unaware of the legal ramifications relevant to academic blogging, particularly in regard to online articulations of dissatisfaction with institutions. Universities also increasingly regulate and track academics’ use of

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online social media. Academics must be cognisant that these strategies are monitored and at times reappropriated by academic institutions. I am referring here to the way women’s blogging can be measured as research productivity by institutions, and how bloggers can be reprimanded by institutions for blogging about their experiences at work. Blogging on sexism in academia thus entails an active or activist use of the internet, in which a mass of users previously thought of as inactive becomes an active and responsive public (Fuentes 2007). Son Vivienne (2016) uses the term ‘everyday activism’ to extend the idea of activism as a purely organised and strategic activity. Vivienne defines ‘everyday activism’ as the sharing of personal stories in public spaces with the aim of challenging the status quo and contends that such activism contributes to ‘erosive social change’ (Vivienne 2016, p. 1). This is a change in attitude that occurs over an extended period of time that profoundly reshapes social norms, as values become diffused among networked publics. While previous scholarly work has focused on digital storytelling as an institutionally mediated practice with limited distribution, Vivienne extends such research to consider individually motivated activist-­oriented storytelling that actively engages with online distribution. Using Vivienne’s concept, Twitter campaigns such as #metoo and #everydaysexism which catalogue individuals’ daily instances of sexism into 120-character tweets becomes a form of ‘everyday activism’. The blogosphere can productively utilise and revive what are often dismissed ‘old’ second-­wave feminist strategies for collective resistance such as women’s consciousness-­raising using ‘new’ media (Taylor 2011). Some cyberfeminists still contend that the internet shifts gender and racial regimes of power through the human/machine hybridity of cyborgs (Haraway 1991). However, the lived experience and actual internet practices of women reveals how they use the internet to transform their material and corporeal lives in ways that both resist and reinforce gendered and raced hierarchies online (Daniels 2009, p. 101). Academic blogs on sexism and gender inequality in higher education redefine what it means to belong online and in the academy. I first came across Academic Men Explain Things to Me on social media and was struck by the similarities between the anonymous blog entries and my colleagues’ and my own experiences of being talked over, patronised and sexually assaulted. Academic Men Explain Things to Me, Academia is Killing My Friends, Strategic Misogyny and Sharing Academic Sexism Stories with You (SASSY) were chosen from an array of anonymous academic share blogs, and were selected for: their active operational status (with particular focus on 2013–2017); reflection of postgraduate student, early career academic and professorial experiences; the varied geographic locations of bloggers (specifically countries such as Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States); and their explicit identification as feminist projects. In 2016 Academic Men Explain Things to Me capped its archive at 1000 submissions due primarily to time commitments. These blogs – including Academic Men Explain Things to Me – also have an active social media presence on Facebook or Twitter.

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Central to claims and counterclaims about the subversive potential of Haraway’s cyborg (1991, p.  7) and to cyberfeminism is the inclusion of women of colour and queer representation online. Cyberfeminist activism is often characterised by younger, white, often middle-­class, highly educated women (Daniels 2009, Griffin 2017). While the academic blog posts analysed in this chapter are anonymous, some bloggers identify their country of origin and web hosting for the sites are administered by academics working in neoliberal ‘Westernised’ universities (see Connell 2007, Carvalho 2014, Lipton and Mackinlay 2017). It is important to highlight the need for an intersectional approach to the analysis of belonging and academic women blogging. Using intersectionality as an analytical lens highlights the entangled and mutually constructing power relations in understandings of belonging, and how various combinations of gender, class, race and ethnicity, age, sexuality and ability can differentially position individuals (Yuval-­Davis 2006, Hill Collins and Bilge 2016). Quotations selected from these four anonymous share blog sites aim to demonstrate diverse inclusion in what is still predominantly considered a privileged, white space. These four sites were created in response to a culture of violence, fear and silence in higher education. Abusive academics are often well known and sexual harassment an accepted norm. Feelings of powerlessness and fear of backlash and unemployment stop women from speaking out. These sites thus share a common mission. They are online platforms for students and staff ‘fed up with the everyday sexism’ (Sharing Academic Sexism Stories with You) of higher education, ‘connecting stories of sexism in universities’ (Strategic Misogyny). Anonymous testimonies on these sites document ‘stories of abuse, exploitation and suffering in academia’ (Academia is Killing My Friends), explicit forms of sexual intimidation, as well as much subtler forms of discrimination, such as those vaguely disapproving remarks about the age, appearance, fertility and gender performativity of female researchers. The following section explores naming and calling out sexism on these anonymous share blogs, the significance of academic women speaking into the silence of spaces where they have felt that they do not belong and the importance of the role that humour plays in creating a sense of belonging online.

Calling out sexism Anonymous share blogs are places for self-­expression and empowerment through digital storytelling that challenges the structures that perpetuate sexism. These stories are important because they describe the way daily micro-­aggressions and sexual harassment are normalised in academic culture. As Ahmed (2015, p. 5) posits: even if sexism seems like some tangible thing, knowable in and from its constancy, something we come up against, repeatedly, it is remarkably difficult to pin down … so much of what we experience as sexism is dismissed as just what we experience.

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Calling out sexism is a response to blatant, casual and insidious forms of sexism at work and in our daily lives. ‘Calling out’ is not merely a neologism related to the rise of online feminist activism, it is also a political tactic based on publically calling a person or institution to account for discriminatory statements and actions. Calling out is enabled by the internet. However, it is important to distinguish calling out sexism on these blogs from what has been pejoratively labelled ‘call out culture’. This is the social phenomenon of publically shaming perpetrators of bigotry and violence on social media, as well as the policing of language and political correctness. Many posts on Academic Men Explain Things to Me, Academia is Killing My Friends, Strategic Misogyny and Sharing Academic Sexism Stories with You (SASSY) recount the experiences and actions of individuals but the focus is on exposing institutional and structural failures rather than naming individual perpetrators. Calling out online reflects changes to the way we address sexism, exclusion and belonging. Calling out sexism not only acknowledges sexism but also problematises its existence and challenges habitualised practices. As outlined in the collective aims of Strategic Misogyny: Our mission is to expose the systematic nature of sexism so that we can intervene in its reproduction and institutionalisation. To achieve this objective, we share our personal stories, as well as other news of institutional sexism. These blogs are connective in the way they call out sexism. When academics upload a post, re-­tweet or share links to these blogs, these actions read: I am with you. This is the support under which these blogs create a sense of belonging. The following post on Academia is Killing My Friends calls out what they see as the failings of academia. It shares feelings of isolation, which creates belonging with others who also feel silenced and disenfranchised by the individualising discourse of ‘feel-­good’ career advice: Academia is a racket. First off, thanks for this page. Academia is isolating and fundamentally sick. There is very little opportunity for support or sharing of experiences. And screw the feel-­good stories and helpful tips. If you haven’t experienced anything awful enough to trip up your career, good for you. You’ve been lucky. If naming sexism goes against the happiness contract, calling out sexism in the academy goes against the happiness of a university institution. The conditionality of happiness is that you must be good and so the desire for happiness is linked to goodness. ‘The good woman wants to be happy and hence wants what is good’ (Ahmed 2010, p.  56) might be, in this case, reread as the good  woman–academic wants to be happy and so protects the prestige the university. However, by calling out and naming sexism in the academy these

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academics are constructed as troublemakers, going against the will of the institution. Blog posts and bloggers also constitute collective feminist identity by excluding supposed allies who are seen as complicit with the institution. As this post on Academia is Killing My Friends also demonstrates: The absolute worst are so-­called ‘feminist’ male academics who build their careers on how ethical they are but keep mansplaining, harassing and otherwise belittling women in their workplace on a daily basis (and don’t even seem to know it!?). Naming a problem thus contains these moments of rejecting the present, making the ‘here’ and familiar strange while creating disorientations. As one anonymous blogger writes on Strategic Misogyny this may often be ‘hard to prove’: Sometimes it’s the smallest things. It’s feeling invisible. The men around me are noticed for their work, their brilliance. Am I less smart, less capable? Is my work less good? It’s hard not to internalise that feedback – or that lack of feedback. Visibility as merit, invisibility as lack of talent. It’s the assumption that I’m slightly incompetent, slightly daft. That I haven’t read the emails or the syllabus. That I’ve come unprepared, and so my question must be a stupid one with an obvious answer, instead of my having caught an error – an oversight in a programme written by men. It’s my having to prove first, and again and again, that I am a serious person before I am taken seriously. It’s so hard to know: are these things the effect of sexism? It’s hard to untangle, hard to prove, but it’s there. It’s not my job to prove it. It’s there. In recognising this blogger’s alienation from the happiness contract there is solidarity, even if we do not inhabit the same time, place or experience. Ahmed is not saying that as feminists we have an obligation to be unhappy, but that ‘we need to think about unhappiness as more than a feeling that should be overcome’ (Ahmed 2010, p. 87, emphasis in original). Another post on Strategic Misogyny reveals how naming the problem of sexism is closely bound with becoming the problem (Ahmed 2015, Perger 2016, p. 1397). This is part of the dual process of naming, that is, revealing the characteristics of the problem and the negative consequences of naming that problem as sexism. Calling out trouble, you get called a troublemaker (Butler 2004, Ahmed 2014, 2016a): I get the double edged sword – I’m non-­white and a woman. Invisible – I’m non-­existent in this place. They always see right through me – I say things and then some claim them or articulate better and as the ‘face fits’ mine doesn’t it looks better from them. I get talked down to, talked over, and the

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vibes of ‘what you doing here’ – and then they harp on about equality and diversity. When attending a meeting with a male colleague I was seen as ‘admin’ and then not even hardly looked in the ‘eye’ in conversations. Everyday can be a battle coming into a place like this, I have no purpose here, I’m just there. ‘Just’ is important to me here in this sense as it shrugs off importance, value. ‘Just’ is important too, because ‘just’ being there is a form of ‘willful’ resistance. Ahmed reclaims the will in willfulness revealing its queer and feminist potential. Subjects are labelled as such when they are unwilling to be agents of their own harm; naming sexism as a problem is a rejection of providing the ‘tyrant with the organs of his power’ (Ahmed 2014, p. 139), or a refusal of always being the one to have to justify and prove what it is that makes a sexist or misogynistic remark sexist or misogynistic. When women call out sexism – even in the most reasonable manner, they are often labelled as angry killjoys. A politics of happiness can easily be displaced by a politics of anger. Alongside the figure of the feminist killjoy is the figure of the angry black woman (Lorde 1984, hooks 2000, Ahmed 2010). To be an angry–feminist–killjoy is to trouble the gendered, classed and raced structures that label those who name sexism and racism as trouble. Although digital storytelling can have significant consequences for the storyteller (Vivienne 2016, p. 5).

Speaking into the silence All four anonymous blog sites posit a strict safe spaces policy. An expression of a safe space refers to an inclusive, autonomous space free from harassment, violence and hate speech. They prioritise the privacy of bloggers and offer content warnings on posts that may cause distress to their audience: ‘This site contains some graphic descriptions of suicide, self-­harm and all kinds of abuse, harassment and oppression’ (Academia is Killing my Friends). This is because by naming sexism, speaking into the silence and calling out sexual violence these everyday activist academic bloggers make themselves vulnerable: The man who attempted to rape me a few months ago received a teaching fellowship from the Gender Studies program at my university. When I filed my complaint this spring, he was literally teaching undergrads about feminism and gender theory. And he was paid extra for it. (Strategic Misogyny) Belonging is fostered in the sadness and grief towards the injustices suffered by academic women. To become a feminist killjoy can often mean to inherit sadness: Worst of all, I don’t even feel that I can tell my story. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody would lift a finger to protect me from retribution. Nobody

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wants to address problems like this. I feel so much grief for the good I might have done in another profession, the life I could have lived. I don’t know what to do with this grief. Academia is sick. It’s a racket. Pure and simple. (Academia is Killing My Friends) In this way, ‘feminism becomes a kind of estrangement from the world and thus involves moments of self-­estrangement’ (Ahmed 2010, p.  86). It is through these disorienting practices and the formation of a disturbance, that a subject may be positioned as willful (Ahmed 2014). Academic women’s experiences of isolation and exclusion are linked to the happiness contract. Ahmed claims that ‘in the thick of sociality of everyday spaces, feminists are thus attributed as the origin of bad feeling, as the ones who ruin the atmosphere’ (Ahmed 2010, p.  65). What happens then when we say nothing? As this post on Sharing Academic Sexism Stories with You reveals: I’m in my thirties with a PhD and several years’ professional experience. During a meeting with all male colleagues, I was referred to by a senior professor as ‘a clever girl’. I felt too humiliated to retort, and besides I don’t think he even perceived it as insulting so I would’ve felt awkward ‘making a fuss’. It’s played on my mind ever since though. Story signed by: Doc Brown The story happened to me as a Post Doc in the year 2013. In the process of sexist infantilisation, Doc Brown is constituted as a feminist killjoy. Labelling herself as Doc Brown brings to the forefront the way in which her sheer presence as a woman of colour in a room full of men marks her as ‘other’, and a threat to the status quo. Willfulness can be about being ‘the one who wills wrongly or too little’ as well as being about the one who wills too much (Ahmed 2014, p.  245). Even though Doc Brown does not respond to provocation she is the origin of the ‘bad feeling’ and is nonetheless positioned as willful. Willfulness is also a strategy for resistance against those who seek to exclude. Willfulness can involve big and small actions. As the following Strategic Misogyny post highlights: I’m fairly shy, so I don’t usually counter this trend: but often, when I’m listening intently and quietly in seminar, I pay attention to who speaks, how loudly they speak, and for how long. Those who break the silence are either those who are most senior in the room, or, more generally, men. Women speak much later, more speculatively, more quietly. Why? What would it take to change this? To will change is about not being willing to bear or reproduce the present. Willfulness can be about the naming of sexism but can also be about ‘the labour required to reach that no, which might even require saying yes along the way’

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(Ahmed 2014, p.  141). In the neoliberal university academics perform acts of compliance as well as resistance. In response to a university’s co-­option of a sexual harassment conference, one blogger – in one of the rare signed blog posts states: We want to clarify that we independently organised the conference. We object to Goldsmiths using our labour as evidence that it is taking action on this issue. (Strategic Misogyny) Institutions often want to claim the successes and rewards of feminist activism without contributing to structural change. Women in their positions as academics possess to varying degrees, institutional privilege. Ahmed’s willfulness could be thought of as being ‘unwilling to give assistance to those who administer unjust laws’ (Ahmed 2014, p. 143). To speak into the silence produces a sense of belonging that comes from an emotional recognition of being marginalised. However, the everyday activism of these online spaces has limitations. At the core of these anonymous share blog sites is a mandate to expose sexism, misogyny and sexual harassment in the academy, and yet bloggers are most often writing for each other. They create communities that support a kind of belonging that is predicated on pre-­existing feelings of exclusion that comes at the expense of feminist allies. Does the sense of belonging fostered online actually help academic women to feel as though they belong in the academy? Do these anonymous share blogs merely continue to render feminist academics and academic women on the periphery of the academy? The fact that they are being willful and resisting the academy in these spaces does position them as ‘troublemakers’ but how much attention is the academy as a whole actually paying to these kinds of digital troublemaking? When we share these stories, we feel supported and connected, but after the initial rush of feelings around our sense of belonging to these blogs and one another there is a worrying pause about what happens next.

Humour and belonging Can individual willful actions create collective belonging? Ahmed’s concept of willfulness can be easily reduced to the acts of an individual; that willful actions are individual actions born from a sense of freedom to act in ways that we choose. Neoliberal new managerialism complicates and restricts willful defiance in academia. Characterisations of the ‘ideal academic’ as driven and self-­ motivating attempt to placate willful subjects through validation of individualised competition and accountability. Nevertheless, individuals can still connect and create collective will. Through the sharing of her experience, Doc Brown calls into action an individual and collectivised will. It is not so much about who possesses the affects or emotions associated with this story; it is, as Ahmed

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contends, about what emotions do. She states that, ‘it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces or boundaries are made: the ‘I’ and the ‘we’ are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contact with others’ (2004, p. 10). Willfulness is an individual act, but it is an act carried out because of ones’ connection to ‘a culture whose existence is deemed a threat’ (Ahmed 2014, p. 151). To recover the collective social body of willfulness is to garner a collective power, and so it is important to recognise how women in the academy are acting willfully in different ways. One such approach is with the use of humour: A new member of staff joined our university department. I popped by his office to say hi. As the majority of my colleagues were fiftysomething (… and male), it was nice to welcome a fellow thirtysomething to the fold. After a few minutes of chitty-­chat he asked me about my role. ‘Oh, I teach on course X’, I said. ‘Well’, he said, ‘my advice is keep at it and you’re bound to get a permanent lecturer-­grade post eventually. These things take time, you know.’ ‘Ooh’, I said. ‘A permanent lecturer-­grade post? You mean like the one I accepted when I started working here a decade ago?’ (Academic Men Explain Things to Me) On Academic Men Explain Things to Me, the tone is often humorous. Women submit stories that ‘recount their experiences of being mansplained, in academia and elsewhere’. Jill Walker identifies these pseudonymous blogs about academic life and the life of a scholar, as often being written with a ‘tongue-­in-cheek refusal of the ivory tower experience’ (2006, p. 130). Humour may be used as an emotionally distancing device that embraces the contradictions in our social lives. When we are too emotive we may not be able to see the humorous or funny side to a situation: I gave a talk about my research to a local interest group, doing my part for public engagement in my field. At the end of it, the male secretary of the group came up to me and said ‘Well, that was really good. You were even as good as some of the men we’ve had’. Praise indeed. (Academic Men Explain Things to Me) Here humour serves to not only call out sexism but also as a mechanism for belonging. Humour, even the denigrating type, can reveal assumptions about the perceived norms and values of certain people and places, and can ‘sometimes be indicative of who is considered “in place” and who is “out of place” ’ (Macpherson 2008, p. 1082). Using humour also assumes that the audience of a joke has the requisite background to understand what is being communicated (Cohen 1999). Humour can create a hierarchy of those who are included in the joke and those who are not (Bloch 2012, p. 73). For the willful–killjoy–everyday activist, humour is also considered to be part of a system of ‘emotion-­work’

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(Davidson 2001, Sanders 2004) that may challenge our attachment to the happiness contract, in so much as it may create as well as destabilise our feelings and understandings of belonging in academia. Humour creates a temporary and troubling sense of belonging on these blogs in that it highlights how our inclusion on these sites is based on our exclusion in the university.

Conclusion In the collective sharing of stories on sexism, misogyny and racism these blogs produce a form of belonging online. Women who feel ostracised from the academy share their experiences and rejoice in the relative freedom and support of an online sisterhood. To name sexism can be cathartic. Whether it is conveyed through humour, outrage, sadness or anger, it nonetheless connects bloggers and readers through feelings and demonstrates the way emotions ‘stick’ to objects. Digital technologies allow us to upload and share experiences with the click of a button and the swipe of a thumb, bringing individuals together quickly, building momentum for a shared social cause. However, calling out sexism online by blogging cannot become an end in itself. Sexism might momentarily disappear from our feminist vocabulary because of the sheer exhaustion of keeping it on the agenda (Ahmed 2015, p. 6). Nevertheless, feminists must keep pushing for change and transformation in the academy. The abundance of blogs calling out sexism in academia highlights the continued relevance of feminism in the academy and the need for action. Action need not take place within institutions, as is demonstrated by the formation of these shared anonymous blogs, but action must happen nonetheless. Academic women’s sense of belonging in the academy should come from more than the mere temporary catharsis of blogging experiences of sexism. For some bloggers, they may never lose the feeling that they are a stranger in the academy. What stands out on these sites is the way these academics’ stories form part of and reflect on the discourses of belonging in the neoliberal university. What these blog posts reveal are the possibilities of moving outside the socially dominant and normative paths academics are expected to follow in order to belong.

References Academia is Killing My Friends, 2016. Viewed 11 May 2017 http://academiaiskillingmy friends.tumblr.com. Academic Men Explain Things to Me, 2016. Viewed 11 May 2017 http://mansplained. tumblr.com. Academics Anonymous, 2016a. I was assaulted while researching, but was too scared to speak out. Academics Anonymous, viewed 11 July 2017 www.theguardian.com/higher-­ education-network/2016/dec/09/i-­w as-assaulted-­w hile-researching-­b ut-was-­t ooscared-­to-speak-­out.

Academics anonymous   57 Academics Anonymous, 2016b. Sexual harassment is rife in universities, but complaining means risking your career. Academics Anonymous, viewed 11 July 2017 www.­ theguardian.com/higher-­education-network/2016/aug/26/sexual-­harassment-is-­rife-in-­ universities-but-­complaining-means-­risking-your-­career. Ahmed, S., 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ahmed, S., 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ahmed, S., 2012. On Being Included. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ahmed, S., 2014. Willful Subjects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ahmed, S., 2015. Introduction: sexism: a problem with a name. New Formations, 86, 1–15. Ahmed, S., 2016a. Living a Feminist Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ahmed, S., 2016b. Resignation, viewed 11 May 2017 https://feministkilljoys.com/2016/ 05/30/resignation/. Ahmed, S., 2016c. Speaking out, viewed 11 May 2017 https://feministkilljoys.com/2016/ 06/02/speaking-­out/. Anderson, B., 1991 [1983]. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Bell, V., 1999. Performativity and Belonging. London: SAGE Publications. Berlant, L., 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bloch, C., 2012. Passion and Paranoia: Emotions and the Culture of Emotion in Academia. Farnham: Ashgate. Butler, J., 2004. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge. Carvalho, M., 2014. Gender and education: a view from Latin America. Gender and Education, 26 (2), 97–102. Cohen, T., 1999. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Connell, R., 2007. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Crowley, J., 1999. ‘The politics of belonging: some theoretical considerations’. Geddes, A. and Favell, A. (eds) The Politics of Belonging: Migrants and Minorities in Contemporary Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate, 15–41. Daniels, J., 2009. Rethinking cyberfeminism(s): race, gender, and embodiment. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 37 (1/2), 101–124. Davidson, J., 2001. ‘Joking apart …’: a ‘processual’ approach to researching self-­help groups. Social & Cultural Geography, 2 (2), 163–183. Flanagan, M. and Booth, A., 2002. Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fuentes, M.A., 2007. ‘Blogging’. Anderson, G.L. and Herr, K.G. (eds) Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 252–253. Gray, E.B., Knight, M. and Knight, L., 2017. A different kind of academic performance: using the arts to address sexism in Australian universities. Australian Association for Research in Education, viewed 21 July 2017 www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=2052 8 March 2017. Gregg, M., 2009. Banal bohemia: blogging from the ivory tower hot-­desk. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 15 (4), 470–483. Griffin, G., 2017. Cyberfeminism. A Dictionary of Gender Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, viewed 23 March 2018 www.oxfordreference.com.virtual.anu.edu.au/view/ 10.1093/acref/9780191834837.001.0001/acref-­9780191834837-e-­76.

58   Briony Lipton Haraway, D., 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.  Hill Collins, P. and Bilge, S., 2016. Intersectionality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.  hooks, b., 2000. Feminist Theory: From Centre to Margin. London: Pluto Press. Jane, E.A., 2014. Your a ugly, whorish, slut. Feminist Media Studies, 14 (4), 531–546. Kirkup, G., 2010. Academic blogging: academic practice and academic identity. London Review of Education, 8 (1), 75–84. Lipton, B. and Mackinlay, E., 2017. We Only Talk Feminist Here: Feminist Academics, Voice and Agency in the Neoliberal University. London: Palgrave. Lorde, A., 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press. Macpherson, H., 2008. ‘I don’t know why they call it the Lake District they might as well call it the rock district!’: The workings of humour and laughter in research with members of visually impaired walking groups. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26 (6), 1080–1095. McClure, J.P. and Brown, J.M., 2008. Belonging at work. Human Resource Development International, 11 (1), 3–17, DOI: 10.1080/13678860701782261. Mewburn, I. and Thomson, P., 2013. Why do academics blog? An analysis of audiences, purposes and challenges. Studies in Higher Education, 38 (8), 1105–1119. Perger, N., 2016. Sexism: naming a problem, becoming a problem. Teorija in Praksa, 53 (6), 1386–1511. Phipps, A., 2017. (Re)theorising laddish masculinities in higher education. Gender and Education, 29 (7), 1–16. Plant, S., 1997. Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + the New Technoculture. London: Forth Estate. Probyn, E., 1996. Outside Belongings. London: Routledge. Sanders, T., 2004. Controllable laughter: managing sex work through humour. Sociology, 38 (2), 273–291. Sharing Academic Sexism Stories with You, 2016. Viewed 11 May 2016 https://strategic misogyny.wordpress.com. Strategic Misogyny, 2016. Viewed 11 May 2011 http://academicsexismstories.gender square.org. Taylor, A., 2011. Blogging solo: new media, ‘old’ politics. Feminist Review, 99, 79–97. Vivienne, S., 2016. Digital Identity and Everyday Activism Sharing Private Stories with Networked Publics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Walker, J., 2006. ‘Blogging from inside the ivory tower’. Bruns, A. and Jacobs, J. (eds) Uses of Blogs. New York: Peter Lang. Weale, S. and Batty, D., 2016. Sexual harassment of students by university staff hidden by non-­disclosure agreements. Guardian, viewed 17 May 2017 www.theguardian.com/ education/2016/aug/26/sexual-­harassment-of-­students-by-­university-staff-­hidden-by-­ non-disclosure-­agreements. Willgress, L., 2016. Feminist studies professor resigns from London’s Goldsmiths university over alleged sexual harassment of students by staff. Telegraph, viewed 17 May 2017 www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/09/feminist-­studies-professor-­resigns-from-­londonuniversity-­over-a/. Woolf, V., 2001 [1928]. A Room of One’s Own. London: Penguin. Yuval-­Davis, N., 2006. Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40 (3), 197–214.

Chapter 4

Transforming belongings in Guantánamo Bay Oriane Simon

I am in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, […] This is a place where there are no rights, and there is no justice. (Guantánamo Bay prisoner al-­Aslami Khan Khan 2008, p. 160)

What does it mean for a prisoner to become right-­less? Being incarcerated in Gitmo, Guantánamo Bay’s prison complex, is a most extreme example of this process. Prisoners at Gitmo underwent extensive forms of torture, were treated as objects and became right-­less ‘enemy combatants’ as Guantánamo Bay officials ‘visibly’ withdraw ‘[a]ll legal protections’ (Gregory 2006, p.  414). Gitmo prisoners’ humaneness, their belonging to ‘humanity’, is denied. Prisoners have been dehumanised in various ways: most infamously, the prisoner Al-­Qahtani was ‘led around on a leash; made to bark like a dog’ (Khan 2008, Hutchinson et  al. 2013, p.  39). Yet, the prisoners’ senses of belonging and rights cannot simply be stripped away through ‘top-­down’ decisions. Senses of belonging – to other prisoners, to the outside world or to the status of ‘human’ – are shaped in continuous and minute processes. And at the same time, prisoners reassert their own forms of belonging. A most surprising means of forming belonging was the attempt to recognise Gitmo prisoners as either iguanas or dogs – both of which having greater rights than prisoners. This demand of ‘animal rights’ is interesting in that the prisoners: ‘gave up’ on ‘legal humanity’ – their existence got transformed – and departed from what in a legal discourse of rights is inherently seen as a ‘higher form of life’, a human life. They abandoned ideas one has about human life to legally live better as ‘a dog’. (Zevnik 2011, p. 163) In other words, both within the prison complex and in the outside world, it was made abundantly clear that Gitmo prisoners belonged nowhere, and thus deserved nothing. It is their removal from the sphere of human belonging that marks them as right-­less and makes their detainment particularly torturous.

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It thus seems self-­evident that becoming right-­less is a matter of being systematically dehumanised and at the complete mercy of others. However, while it is important to analyse how prisoners’ rights are systematically stripped by legal, political, and carceral forces (Gregory 2006, Reid-­Henry 2007, D’Arcus 2014), this chapter shifts focus to the experiences of prisoners in order to tackle the question of how a carceral subject is not just defined, but also emerges and transforms – often in unexpected ways. For prisoners are not passive victims, nor is their belonging entirely pre-­determined. There is more involved in enacting the status of being a right-­less carceral subject than simply the ‘top-­down’ removal of pre-­given rights. Focusing on detention practices in Gitmo, and drawing from archival work and interviews conducted with human rights lawyers and investigators, this chapter argues that multiple and minute intensive experiences – rather than just straightforwardly ‘torturous’ or dehumanising acts – constitute and re-­enact prisoners’ belongings in term of self-­conceptions as right-­bearing/right-­less subjects. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze (1988), Baruch de Spinoza (1994) and various non-­representational scholars, this chapter problematises the fixity of the identity of ‘the prisoner’ and emphasises the richness of their experiences. These theories focus on ‘intensities’: the tiny variations of beings’ ‘affections’ before being categorised as this or that experience. Affections encompass all conscious and unconscious, intentional and unintentional experiences of beings’ bodies and minds. Thus, focusing on intensities allows analysing phenomena without pre-­judging them on the basis of categorical schemas. In the case of Gitmo, focusing on the intensity of prisoners’ experiences shows how the subject status of being right-­less is not given, but rather is a status that is continuously re-­ performed. It also explains how seemingly innocuous practices can have massively deleterious impacts on prisoners’ bodies and minds, while at the same time, prisoners find surprising means to resist and foster their sense of being right-­bearing, and thus their sense of belonging. The first section explains how an intensive approach based on a Deleuzian– Spinozist ontology contributes to previous studies on Gitmo and the concept of belonging. The next section sketches out this intensive approach, problematises supposedly given categories, and conceptualises a continuously transforming human being. The final section fleshes out the continuous re-­enactments of prisoners’ subject status and then describes how practices of abuse and resistance shape the possibilities for prisoners’ self-­conceptions as right-­less/right-­bearing subjects. The conclusion discusses the political relevance of a Deleuzian– Spinozist intensive approach to both human rights and belonging studies.

Previous studies Previous studies on detention practices in Gitmo have predominantly used Agamben’s conception of ‘bare life’ to discuss exactly how prisoners are stripped of their rights. Bare life designates the legal status of subjects abandoned by law,

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and stands in contrast to right-­bearing subjects (Agamben 2002); beings are situated in between nature and law (Agamben 2002). A bare life subject can be subjected to any violence without this constituting a crime (Gregory 2006, Vaughan-­Williams 2008). The merit of these studies is to emphasise and critique the purposeful stripping away of victims’ rights (Gregory 2006, Reid-­Henry 2007, D’Arcus 2014). While being a bare life subject is seen as a historically contingent process, it is generally treated as a fixed category. That is, one is or is not a bare life subject. Thus far in the literature, there is little emphasis on how prisoners come to be categorised as right-­bearing or right-­less carceral subjects, nor on how prisoners’ self-­conceptions might transform during their detention. Scholars allude to the importance of prisoners’ treatment for producing this deplorable subject status, but have so far failed to examine how this treatment might change the prisoner throughout their detention. Another issue with the concept of bare life is that it implies that life and humanity are pre-­given values, which are then translated into obvious and universal human rights. As Sharp (2011) points out, the classical, representational conceptions of human beings, their rights and humanity are problematic. Prisoners are then forced to rely upon their ‘recognition’ as human subjects in order to be treated humanely. And equally, it means that their captors need only revoke their status as ‘humans’ in order to justify and legitimise torture. For instance, upon arrival in Gitmo, prisoners were declared right-­less ‘enemy combatants’ (Khan 2008, Zevnik 2011, 2013). In this framework, which relies on universally agreed-­upon representations like ‘the human’ and ‘the human rights’, questions such as ‘is a terrorist a human being?’ or, ‘what is the baseline condition required for detaining human beings?’ make sense. While these questions are important to providing humane treatment and preventing prisoner suicides (Rose 2004, Khan 2008), they preclude grasping exactly how US officials attempt to manipulate prisoners into right-­less carceral subjects. What is missing is an emphasis on how prisoners are subject to continuous transformations, and  how they become, as well as resist transforming into, a right-­less carceral subject. Along these same lines of questioning the usefulness of pre-­given categories, recent studies increasingly consider how belonging is enacted by various aspects, such as gender or age, rather than purposive identification with a single group or idea (Yuval-­Davis 2007, Bondy 2015). For instance, Yuval-­Davis (2007) argues that ‘people’s lives are shaped by their rights and obligations in local, ethnic, religious, national, regional, transnational and international political communities’ (2007, p. 562). It follows that researchers have to situate subject status ‘in the wider context of contemporary politics of belonging which encompass citizenships, identities and the emotions attached to them’ (Yuval-­Davis 2007, p. 561). Thereby, Yuval-­Davis (2007 p. 566) deplores ‘attempts to homogenize the differential meanings of such identity notions’, and calls for more study into how cohesion within a group increases or decreases over time (Yuval-­Davis

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2007, Bondy 2015). This is an especially important insight regarding Gitmo, as it emphasises that prisoners are not a cohesive and unified group of potential terrorists, but a heterogeneous group of people with different languages, educational backgrounds, cultural affinities, and so on – and thus their sense of belonging is far more uncertain. Similarly, Bondy (2015) emphasises that belonging is negotiated. This aspect of negotiation is important because self-­conceptions, such as identities, are a ‘constructed and open-­ended process that takes various routes and opens up spaces for belonging’ (2015, p.  368). Multiple features play into the ways in which subject status and ‘belonging are framed and contested’ (2015, p. 356). In her analysis, Bondy (2015 p. 356) highlights that identities ‘are formed through daily lived experiences’. She traces how some bodies are constructed as belonging to particular spaces of society while others are excluded and shows how this implies an inclusion and exclusion of rights. This binary conception of belonging as inclusion versus exclusion is problematic, Bondy concludes, because framing belonging ‘within language such as origin/destination and push/pull binaries’ (Bondy 2015, p. 354) has the effect of delimiting experiences and self-­ conceptions. With this in mind, then, ‘[r]esearchers need a framework to explore […] identities in non-­binary ways’, for self-­conceptions and belonging exceed ‘either/or classifications’ (Bondy 2015, p.  355). Bondy (2015, p.  370) documents how people’s experiences of belonging do ‘not fit neatly into narrow conceptions of citizenship’; instead, people construct their senses of belonging within fields of power by accepting and pushing existing categories and so create novel spaces and possibilities of living (Bondy 2015). While forms of belonging are intentionally shaped, people simultaneously consciously and unconsciously engage in everyday practices that create unpredictable, minute and multiple ‘spaces of belonging’ (Bondy 2015, p. 356). Belongings, then, are not completely given or fixed, but negotiated in relation to other beings. Finally, Diprose (2013) defines belonging as a sense of interdependence between human and non-­human bodies, which then constitute the subject (Diprose 2013). This conception of belonging as interdependence implies ‘a fundamental ambiguity of the body’ which allows human beings’ existence and emotional feelings to be affected by human and non-­human actors alike (Diprose 2013, p.  195). Two major implications follow from this conception: first, it is precisely human beings’ interdependency that opens up the potential for transformation – both positive and negative (Diprose 2013). Second, there is never full control over transformation itself. It is ‘[t]his ambiguity of the body’ that ‘spares human existence from the ruin of [socio-­political and biological] determinism’ (Diprose 2013, p. 195). The sense of being right-­bearing/right-­less thus depends upon human as well as non-­human actors and is based on a fundamental interdependency between bodies. Reading belonging as interdependency and continuous re-­performance highlights that prisoners’ self-­conceptions as right-­bearing/right-­less can and do transform through minute, everyday actions and decisions of multiple human

Transforming belongings in Guantánamo Bay   65

and non-­human actors. Similarly, the category of ‘bare life’ becomes less useful as an identity that Gitmo prisoners automatically inhabit, and more useful as a subjective status that is performed and felt through changes in the intensities of prison life. In order to focus on the minute affections that prisoners experience beyond the commonly used categorisations of experiences, this chapter draws upon an intensive approach embedded in a Deleuzian–Spinozist ontology.

An intensive approach The intensive approach described in this section allows grasping the surprising forms that belonging – in terms of self-­conceptions of being right-­bearing/right-­ less – can take, and the importance of prisoners’ affections in these processes. Due to the scope of this chapter, only a few key aspects of Deleuzian–Spinozist ontology can be discussed. In the case of Gitmo prisoners, there are two particularly crucial aspects. First, (human) beings are seen as complex compositions of bodies and ideas, which transform in parallel (Deleuze 1988, Spinoza 1994, Sharp 2011). Second, human beings experience affections far exceeding the sensations derived from the traditional five senses (Spinoza 1994, Swirski 2013). Under the Deleuzian–Spinozist ontology, human beings are not self-­enclosed entities, but are equally dependent upon their exterior and interior environment (Deleuze 1978, Simondon 2009b, Sharp 2011). Exterior forces, such as detention conditions, physical and mental abuses, or judicial structures to challenge one’s detention, affect the human subject. Equally, the individuals’ dispositions – what Simondon (2009a, 2009b) calls their ‘interior milieu’ – affect their self-­ conceptions. Internal disposition includes all subbodies within the individual being – such as arms, stomach or bladder – as well as all conscious and unconscious ideas, such as an urge to urinate, an empty stomach or feelings of dignity. This listing of affections points to the inadequacy and impossibility of clearly separating material and immaterial experiences; the distinction between interior and exterior forces is purely analytical. It follows that human beings and their self-­conceptions are formed in and through encounters with other bodies (Deleuze 1988, Spinoza 1994). This re-­formulation of human beings raises questions about the perception of a ‘self ’ and its continuity, and what specifically this means for prisoners at Gitmo. As Andreja Zevnik (2011) explains, legal subject status has no material essence. On the same note, Edward Mussawir (2011 p. 33) argues that rights are not ‘inherent to human existence’. Non-­representational scholars emphasise that the unity of the mind is a consciously and unconsciously retrospective unification. In other words, the self is simultaneously an effect of affections and actively affects the way in which human beings make sense of these affections. Furthermore, as various non-­representational scholars emphasise, the self is a limitation of the mind in that it limits possible associations and meanings (Smith 2007, Deleuze and Scott 2011). The self, or in Erin Manning’s (2013 p.  21) words the conception of one’s ‘I’, ‘is the afterthought of a complex

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affective process that will always nonetheless, to some degree, retain the collectivity at the heart of its having come-­to-be’. There is then, ‘no human beings in the absence of relations with others’ (Story 2014, p.  361). As Story (2014) demonstrates in her study of isolation detention, the self is not autonomous; it requires exterior stimuli in order to function and maintain itself. In her words, the violence of isolation practices ‘is enacted against the social structures that make a particular way of being possible in the first place – the very relationality that constitutes subjecthood itself ’ (Story 2014, p. 359). Using the intensive approach to analyse the question of being right-­less at Gitmo has two major implications, which question the current academic approach to detention practices. First, because shaping the body concurrently shapes the mind (and vice versa) (Deleuze 1988, Spinoza 1994, Potter 2008), it follows that the manipulation of prisoners’ affections are induced through framing both the body and the mind. Prisoners continuously re-­situate themselves with regard to their self-­conceptions as right-­bearing/right-­less subjects depending upon their milieu as well as their individual dispositions. Being right-­ bearing/right-­less is not simply the result of top-­down decisions, nor is it uncontested or achieved once and for all. Being right-­bearing/right-­less is not simply the result of top-­down decisions, nor is it uncontested or achieved once and for  all.  It  is a continuously re-­performed subject status. Therefore, one needs to  focus on the day-­to-day decisions and actions that affect prisoners and  their  subject status in order to grasp how they may or may not transition from one subject category to another. Second, because human beings continuously experience multiple and minute affections, there is never full control over them, and therefore the intentions of captors and caretakers is not the determining factor, as popularly believed. Although US officials fully intend to strip prisoners of rights, this does not mean that they totally determine prisoners’ self­conceptions. That is, Gitmo prisoners are not only defined by intentional encounters with US officials, but also continuously experience minute, conscious and unconscious as well as intentional and unintentional affections, which allow them to experience various – and often surprising – forms of belonging. In sum, this chapter aims to foster sensibility towards the multiple and minute forces constituting the prisoners’ conceptions through everyday practices. Leaving aside political and moral questions about the legitimacy of Gitmo, the intensive approach proposed here problematises the idea of purposefully stripping prisoners of rights and constituting them into right-­less subjects without resistance. The chapter explores the intensities of detention practices and depicts the manipulations of the prisoners’ self-­conceptions as right-­less subjects, as well as their resistance and re-­enactments as right-­bearing subjects.

Transforming belongings in Guantánamo Bay   67

Fleshing out the enactments of subject status in Guantánamo Bay This section opens up the rich potential of an intensive approach to detention practices and the transformations of the carceral subject. Starting from intensities – that is, analysing the visceral affections involved – fleshes out how US officials manipulate prisoners into right-­less subjects, while the prisoners simultaneously foster their sense of being right-­bearing subjects. This section sheds light on two aspects of Gitmo’s day-­to-day operations: first, how US officials attempt to turn prisoners into right-­less subjects; and second, how prisoners respond to these attempts. Manipulation techniques depend upon the conception of human beings’ selves. Ben Anderson (2014) traces manipulation techniques inducing ‘debility, dependency and dread’ (DDD) back to the 1950s and documents the de-­ naturalised subjecthood of war prisoners. A key shift in thinking has been to move from viewing carceral subjects solely as systematic responses to their environment, towards understanding them also as an effect of their internal dispositions (Anderson 2014). Anderson points out that because of the changed conception of prisoners’ selves, the techniques to induce DDD transform as well. Manipulation techniques in the contemporary war on terror shape the environment and act directly on the prisoners’ bodies (Anderson 2014). Anderson (2014, p.  65) explains that these techniques aim to undo ‘an otherwise normal, coherent, subject’. Prisoners ‘are stripped of what makes them subjects’ (Anderson 2014, 52). While the aim in the 1950s was to produce a detainee who would confess to whatever the government wanted, now the aim is to gather valuable information (Galella and Espósito 2012, Anderson 2014). Prisoners’ senses of selves are thus to be shattered and reformed into subjects who are responsive to interrogation (Anderson 2014). Where I would like to extend Anderson’s analysis of this historically specific conceptualisation of torture is to emphasise the continuous production and transformation of a prisoner’s sense of belonging in terms of self-­conception. Focusing on intensities shows that prisoners are continuously shaped by all the minute affections they experience. Seemingly inconspicuous techniques of sensory deprivations and assaults can have significant repercussions on body and mind in parallel (PHR and HRF 2007). The organisation Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and Human Rights First (HRF ) Report (2007) documents, for instance, that forced standing ‘can cause “the ankles and feet of the prisoner to swell to twice their circumference”, “the skin to becomes [sic] tense and intensely painful” and “large blisters develop which break and exude watery serum” ’ (PHR and HRF 2007, p. 9). In addition, the prisoner ‘develops ‘a delirious state … delusions and visual hallucinations’. For example, Zubaydah’s account of being confined to a cramped box illustrates the intensity of suffering in both body and mind that such practices induce, and how they exceed the five senses:

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I felt I was going to explode from bending my legs and my back and from being unable to spread them not even for short instants. The very strong pain made me scream unconsciously. The contractions in my muscles and nerves were increasing with every hour, every minute and every second that were passing by. (Zubaydah, cited by ‘Excerpts from newly disclosed documents on C.I.A. torture’, 2016, p. 6) While these techniques target the prisoners’ sensory faculties, statements made by the prisoners highlight that these affective deprivations have effects that go well beyond the five senses. Contrary to the idea that torture is a matter of controlled manipulation, the techniques used also ‘work’ because they are uncontrollable and ‘excessive’. For example, music or noise assaults have more effects than simple sleep interruption. These techniques may lead to chronic tinnitus, hearing loss and the release of stress hormones, which in turn increase heart rate, blood pressure and potentially life threatening rhythm disturbances of the heart (PHR and HRF 2007). As Ami Harbin (2012) explains, disorientations – which result from novelties, conflicting needs and requests, new challenges, new environments or particular constraints – affect the normal functioning of self-­conceptions. Movement restrictions, feelings of discomfort and uncertainties about one’s potential of actions and achievable goals disrupt the prisoners’ self. These disruptions, then, maintain the prisoners’ sensitivities to manipulations and entrench the self-­conception of being right-­less. The point is that manipulation techniques affect the interdependence between the prisoner’s body, mind and environment and, in particular, affect a prisoner’s self-­conception. Yet by the same token, there is a limit to manipulation techniques, in that their effects cannot be fully controlled. Neither human beings nor their affections are free-­floating or pre-­determined; rather, they are the results of relations between entities and depend upon other beings and their relations (Thrift 2004, Kraftl and Adey 2008, Anderson 2009, 2014, Sharp 2011, Harbin 2012). Using the example of music, this implies that one and the same song transforms according to the environment and individual affections. The TV character Barney’s song, while a ‘mildly irritating yet harmless accompaniment to everyday parenting’ became a ‘sonic element within an environment designed to ‘break’ interrogation subjects’ (Anderson 2014, p.  62). ‘Barney’s sugar-­coated song of love and friendship was weaponised … Over the course of days of captivity, the song would be played thousands of times at ear splitting volumes to detainees otherwise forcibly deprived of sensory stimulation’ (Anderson 2014, p.  62). Being detained and exposed to the ‘same’ technique of music bombardment still leads individuals to respond in very different ways. As prisoner Binyam Mohamed’s1 description shows, the music bombardment traumatised him: ‘[t]here was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this non-­stop over and over, […] then they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and

Transforming belongings in Guantánamo Bay   69

Halloween sounds. It got really spooky in this black hole’ (Mohamed, cited by Siems 2011, p. 134). In contrast, Mohamedou Ould Slahi2 ‘enjoyed’ the music assault (Slahi 2015). He writes, ‘I didn’t really mind the music because it made me forget my pain. Actually, the music was a blessing in disguise. I was trying to make sense of the words’ (Slahi 2015, p. 244). Because manipulation techniques require renewed and increased attention to one’s perceptions of their surroundings, whether an act is torturous is more about how an intensity varies and transforms. It is not so much that the painful volume of the Barney song broke down the prisoners, but that the forced shift from sensory deprivation to excessive sensory input induced an (unbearable) transformation. An intensive approach also draws attention to the unexpected ways in which prisoners can respond to torture, and which defy efforts to catalogue them. Rachel Pain (2009) argues that manipulations are not simply passively absorbed by individuals. Practices aimed at inducing negative feelings are embedded in wider geopolitics and are ‘felt, patterned and practised in everyday life’ (Pain 2009, p.  467). Re-­formulating the prisoners’ resistances in terms of responses allows grasping prisoners’ responses extending beyond conscious and intentional resistance. Starting from given categories, such as compliance versus resistance, recognition-­based forms of evaluation gloss over the multiple affections that prisoners’ experience. An advantage of an intensive approach is to analyse practices before they are categorised as either normal behaviour or forms of resistance. Focusing on affections’ intensities rather than their categorisation documents novel forms of resistance. For what matters is not so much what is done, but how it is done, as well as how it is experienced. Slahi’s use of music bombardment to learn English is a good example of unexpected effects of manipulations. And as former prisoner Ahmed Errachidi3 (2013) claims, a prisoner’s every action could be deemed subversive, and that even without intending to, he would end up being labelled non-­compliant. This approach thus documents the surprising forms ‘resistance’ can take. One and the same manipulation technique leads to different behaviour, which bears potential to constitute compliant as well as resistant behaviour. It is thus important to note that prisoners’ selves are not pre-­given nor are they manipulated without resistance. Prisoners respond in ways that provide them with a sense of coherency, which affirms that they ‘remain themselves’ (Errachidi 2013). The effects of abuses on prisoners, as well as the prisoners’ responses to manipulations – which, if recognised, are labelled as either resistance or compliance – always depend upon the prisoners’ dispositions and milieus. For instance, prisoners found ways to turn humiliation into means of forming solidarity among themselves (Errachidi 2013). Former prisoner Errachidi (2013) was often not allowed to go to the toilet; and so, he soiled himself. While this humiliated him, it also made it clear to other detainees that he was a fellow prisoner, not a US spy (Errachidi 2013). This point further refers back to  the fact that Gitmo prisoners are not a unified and homogenised group of people with naturally given cohesion, but that this belonging and cohesion is

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continuously re-­enacted. The prisoners’ self-­conceptions and their sense of belonging are fragile, partial, and always ongoing. Finally, an intensive approach sets out the wide-­ranging effects of manipulation techniques. The multiple, minute, intentional and unintentional interactions between prisoners and US officials have effects beyond transforming the prisoners into right-­less subjects. For example, the prisoners’ hunger strike had effects beyond the hardship of the prisoners in that it led US officials to develop infrastructures and implement policies for force-­feeding. These force-­ feeding practices, in turn, led to scandals and international pressure on the US to close the facility (Leonard 2013). It is not only the prisoners, then, whose senses of belonging are transformed, but also that of guards, interrogators and bystanders. For affections are created in relation; both the ‘exerting’ and the ‘receiving’ part of the relation are affected (Kraftl and Adey 2008, Anderson 2009). US officials’ experiences in Gitmo, their affections, even if unnoticed, in turn affect their family and their later work on the mainland (Lakemacher 2010, Corsetti 2013, Walls 2015). As former Gitmo guard Joseph Hickman (2015, p. 197) points out, ‘[h]unger strikes made everyone’s job more difficult and put all of us in a toxic mood’. The CIA itself recorded the effect of its personnel witnessing torture techniques as follows: ‘[i]t is visually and psychologically very uncomfortable. […] Several on the team profoundly affected … some to the point of tears and choking up’ (cited by SSCI 2014, pp.  44–45). As Human Rights lawyer Interviewee K (2016) points out ‘[t]he people who did the torture, […] they suffer’. She cites a guard saying ‘I have PTSD [post-­ traumatic stress disorder], not for what happened to me but for what I did to people’. The effects extend further, as Interviewee E, a Human Rights investigator, affirms that the prisoners’ affections ‘had a profound effect on me and it does motivate me’ (Interviewee E 2015). Or, as Interviewee B, a Human Rights lawyer, explains: ‘my life […] took a drastic turn. So, my life is different because of that’ (Interviewee B, 2014). Both Interviewee E and Interviewee B point out that the contact with (former) Gitmo prisoners affected them. Especially defence lawyers have experienced direct and indirect pressures against their work on behalf of Gitmo prisoners from both the public and government (Interviewee B 2014, Interviewee K 2016). The point to note here is that detention practices on the remote island of Guantánamo Bay have wide-­ ranging effects on very diverse people beyond the prisoners themselves and, in the end, on society in general.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that by assuming that prisoners’ self-­conceptions and their status as right-­bearing/right-­less subjects are given, we fail to grasp the multiple and minute affections that prisoners experience, and we miss what their wide-­ranging effects might be. What a human being is and what ‘to live’ means cannot be simply fixed in unchanging universal values. Expanding who is

Transforming belongings in Guantánamo Bay   71

recognised as a human being, who belongs to humanity and what rights are deemed fundamental will always remain restrictive and exclude some beings and some aspects of life. In contrast, an approach sensitive to intensities enriches the conception of belonging by emphasising that a subject status and its allocated rights requires re-­enactment. It allows grasping the continuous transformations of prisoners’ senses of belonging, his (or her) self-­conceptions as right-­bearing/right-­less subjects. A first advantage of this approach is to highlight the richness of prisoners’ affections and that practices inducing affections are not easily rendered through categories such as torturous or humane treatment and resistant or compliant behaviour. Prisoners’ affections are intensive and exceed categorisation; thus, problematising the prisoners’ affections is important to grasp the surprising forms they can take. In re-­asserting their selves, prisoners re-­constitute their sense of self and belonging, and thus their sense of being right-­bearing subjects, and so resist transforming into right-­less subjects. A second important point made here is that conceptualising belonging as interdependence allows drawing attention to the wide-­ranging effects that detention practices have. Due to the scope of this chapter, it could only be hinted at how, despite the remoteness of Gitmo, the mistreatment of prisoners has reverberating effects on the US officials, the prisoners’ lawyers and ultimately on society as a whole (see Mountz and Loyd 2014 on the aspect of remoteness). The political implication of an intensive approach, then, is that an attention to the prisoners’ transformations and the continuous re-­enactments of their belonging and their subject status including their rights imply that there are no neutral actors; all actors affect detention practices. At the same time, all actors are affected by them: the emphasis on the interdependence of human and non-­human beings sets out the wide-­ranging effects Gitmo’s detention practices have not only on the prisoners, but on all directly and less directly involved beings.

Notes 1 Mohamed is a UK resident captured in 2002 in Pakistan and eventually released in 2009 (Reprieve 2008). He suffered heavy torture at the hands of Moroccans and US officials (Reprieve 2008). 2 Slahi is a citizen of Mauritania who arrived in Gitmo in August 2002 (Slahi 2015). He was cleared for release in July 2016 (Ackerman 2016) and eventually released in October (ACLU 2016). 3 Errachidi is a British citizen born in 1966 in Morocco (Reprieve no date, Errachidi, 2013). Before his release in April 2007, Errachidi was detained in Pakistan, Afghanistan (Kandahar and Bagram), and eventually in Gitmo (Reprieve no date, Errachidi, 2013).

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References Ackerman, S., 2016. Guantánamo detainee who wrote about his torture to be released, 21 July, Guardian, viewed 16 August 2016. ACLU, 2018. ‘Guantánamo Diary’ author to rejoin family in Mauritania after U.S. review board cleared way for release, viewed 19 November 2016 www.aclu.org/news/ mohamedou-­slahi-released-­guantanamo-after-­14-years-­without-charge-­or-trial. Agamben, G., 2002. Homo Sacer. Die souveräne Macht und das nackte Leben. Frankfurt Main: Suhrkamp. Anderson, B., 2009, Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2 (2), 77–81. DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2009.08.005. Anderson, B., 2014. Encountering Affect. Capacities, Apparatuses, Conditions. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Bondy, J., 2015. Hybrid citizenship: Latina youth and the politics of belonging. The High School Journal, 98 (4), 353–373. DOI: 10.1353/hsj.2015.0012. Corsetti, D., 2013. Drunk on power at 22, witness to Guantánamo. Witness to Guantánamo, viewed 2 March 2017 http://witnesstoguantanamo.com/videos/drunk-­on-power-­at-22/. D’Arcus, B., 2014. Extraordinary rendition, law and the spatial architecture of rights. ACME: An International E-­Journal for Critical Geographies, 3 (1), 79–99. DOI: https:// ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/acme/article/view/998. Deleuze, G., 1978. Gilles Deleuze, lecture transcripts on Spinoza’s concept of affect, viewed 18 November 2014 www.webdeleuze.com/php/sommaire.htm. Deleuze, G., 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (trans. R. Hurley). San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. Deleuze, G. and Scott, D., 2011. Supplement. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 16 (2), 181–188. DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2011.591596. Diprose, R., 2013. Corporeal interdependence: from vulnerability to dwelling in ethical community. SubStance, 42 (3), 185–204. DOI: 10.1353/sub.2013.0035. Errachidi, A., 2013. ‘The general [sound recording]: the ordinary man who became one of the bravest prisoners in Guantánamo’. Edited by G. Slovo and read by A. Deu. Bath: AudioGO. ‘Excerpts from newly disclosed documents on C.I.A. torture’, 2016. New York Times, viewed 19 January 2017 https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3381183/ Excerpts-­of-Newly-­Disclosed-Documents-­on-CIA.pdf. Galella, P. and Espósito, C., 2012. Extraordinary renditions in the fight against terrorism forced disappearances?. Sur – International Journal on Human Rights, 9 (16), 7–31, viewed 9 April 2014 https://ssrn.com/abstract=2190382. Gregory, D., 2006. The black flag: Guantánamo Bay and the space of exception. Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography, 88 (4), 405–427. DOI: 10.1111/ j.0435-3684.2006.00230.x. Harbin, A., 2012. Bodily disorientation and moral change. Hypatia, 27 (2), 261–280. DOI: 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01263.x. Hickman, J., 2015. Murder at Camp Delta. A Staff Sergeant’s Pursuit of the Truth About Guantanamo Bay. London, New York, Sydney, Toronto, New Delhi: Simon & Schuster. Hutchinson, A., Jones, J.R., D’Alemberte, T., Epstein, R.A., Gushee, D.P., al-­Hibri, A.Y., Irvine, D.R., Kennedy, C., Pickering, T.R., Sessions, W.S. and Thomson, G.E., 2013. The Report of the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment. Edited by Task Force on Detainee Treatment. Washington, DC: The Constitution Project.

Transforming belongings in Guantánamo Bay   73 Interviewee B, 2014. ‘Interview conducted by Oriane Simon’. Interviewee E, 2015. ‘Interview conducted by Oriane Simon’. Interviewee K, 2016. ‘Interview conducted by Oriane Simon’. Khan, M., 2008. My Guantánamo Diary. The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me. New York: Public Affairs. Kraftl, P. and Adey, P., 2008. Architecture/affect/inhabitation: geographies of being-­in buildings. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98 (1), 213–231. DOI: 10.1080/00045600701734687. Lakemacher, D., 2010. Irony behind the wire. Witness to Guantánamo, viewed 11 March 2017 http://witnesstoguantanamo.com/wp-­content/uploads/2015/01/DanielLakemacher_ IronyBehindtheWire.pdf. Leonard, T., 2013. Inside Guantanamo Bay: horrifying pictures show the chairs, feeding tubes and operating theatre used on in terror prison. DailyMail online, viewed 24 November 2016 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-­2349693/Inside-­Guantanamo-Bay-­ Horrifying-pictures-­restraint-chairs-­feeding-tubes-­operating-theatre-­used-inmates-­terrorprison.html. Manning, E., 2013. Always More Than One: Individuation’s Dance. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 17–40. Mountz, A. and Loyd, J., 2014, Transnational productions of remoteness: building onshore and offshore carceral regimes across borders. Geographica Helvetica, 69 (5), 389–398. DOI: 10.5194/gh-­69-389-2014. Mussawir, E., 2011. Jurisdiction in Deleuze. The Expression and Representation of Law. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Pain, R., 2009. Globalized fear? Towards an emotional geopolitics. Progress in Human Geography, 33 (4), 466–486. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309132508104994. PHR and HRF, 2007. Leave No Marks. Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality. Washington, DC: Physician for Human Rights and Human Rights First. Potter, C., 2008. Sense of motion, senses of self: becoming a dancer. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 73 (4), 444–465. DOI: 10.1080/00141840802563915. Reid-­Henry, S., 2007. ‘Exceptional sovereignty’? Guantánamo Bay and the re-­colonial present. Antipode, 39 (4), 627–648. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2007.00544.x. Reprieve, 2008. ‘Human cargo’: Binyam Mohamed and the rendition frequent flier from Goldhawk Road to Guantánamo Bay – Binyam Mohamed’s torture odyssey. London: Reprieve, 1–58, viewed 19 June 2009 www.therenditionproject.org.uk/pdf/PDF 100 [Reprieve, June 2008. Human Cargo, report on Binyam].pdf. Reprieve, no date. Ahmed Errachidi, Reprieve, viewed 24 March 2017 www.reprieve. org.uk/case-­study/ahmed-­errachidi/. Rose, D., 2004. Guantánamo. America’s War on Human Rights. London: Faber and Faber. Sharp, H., 2011. Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Siems, L., 2011. The Torture Report. New York and London: OR Books. Simondon, G., 2009a. Technical mentality. Parrhesia, 7, 17–27. Viewed 8 July 2015 www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia07/parrhesia07_simondon2.pdf. Simondon, G., 2009b. The position of the problem of ontogenesis. Parrhesia, 7, 4–16.  Viewed 24 February 2016 www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia07/parrhesia07_ simondon1.pdf. Slahi, M., 2015. Guantánamo Diary. Edited by L. Siems. New York: Little, Brown and Company, Hachette Book Group.

74   Oriane Simon Smith, D., 2007. Deleuze and the question of desire: toward an immanent theory of ethics. Parrhesia, 2, 66–78. DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641178.003.0008. Spinoza, B., 1994. ‘Ethics’. Spinoza, B. (trans. Curley, E.M.) A Spinoza Reader. The Ethics and Other Works. New Jersey and West Sussex: Princeton University Press, 85–265. SSCI, 2014. Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program. Findings and Conclusions. Executive Summary. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, viewed 25 August 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20141209165504/ www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf. Story, B., 2014. Alone inside: solitary confinement and the ontology of the individual in modern life. Geographica Helvetica, 69 (5), 355–364. DOI: 10.5194/gh-­69-355-2014. Swirski, T., 2013. Lines of affect and performativity: singing the body electric-­politic in qualitative research. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 13 (4), 347–352. DOI: 10.1177/1532708613487881. Thrift, N., 2004. Intensities of feeling: towards a spatial politics of affect. Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 86 (1), 57–78. DOI: 10.1111/j.0435-3684.2004. 00154.x. Vaughan-­Williams, N., 2008. Borders, territory, law. International Political Sociology, 2 (4), 322–338. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-5687.2008.00054.x. Walls, G., 2015. Failing our discharged vets, witness to Guantánamo. Witness to Guantánamo, viewed 2 March 2017 http://witnesstoguantanamo.com/videos/failing-­ our-discharged-­vets/. Yuval-­Davis, N., 2007. Intersectionality, citizenship and contemporary politics of belonging. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 10 (4), 561–574. DOI: 10.1080/13698230701660220. Zevnik, A., 2011. Becoming-­animal, becoming-­detainee: encountering human rights discourse in Guantanamo. Law and Critique, 22 (2), 155–169. DOI: 10.1007/s10978-0119087-0. Zevnik, A., 2013. Life at the limit: body, eroticism and the excess. Theory & Event, 16 (4), 1–10, viewed 19 February 2014 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/530501.

Chapter 5

Belonging in the future? Vanessa May

Introduction This chapter focuses on the core topic of this volume, namely the temporality of belonging. More specifically, I explore the important role that ideas about the future play in people’s sense of belonging. The study of belonging is popular among sociologists, no doubt because belonging can be defined as a fundamental element of social life (May 2011, 2013). While much of the existing research focuses on people who have experienced a change in their sense of belonging – usually in the form of loss resulting from, for example, transnational migration – the necessary condition of change, namely time, is rarely examined in and of itself. Yet belonging is inescapably a temporal experience: our sense of ease with ourselves and our surrounding world of people, places and cultures responds to shifts in our selves and in our social, cultural and material environments (May 2011, 2013). In other words, belonging never stands still and must constantly be achieved. The present chapter explores belonging as something that is experienced in time (May 2016, 2017b). The future is a time horizon that has hitherto received less attention in the belonging literature, which tends to assume that belonging is something that should be experienced in relation to the here and now. For example, nostalgia for past belongings is delineated as a lack of belonging in the present (cf. May 2017a). Yet the future, just as much as the past, contributes to how people define their present (Luhmann 1976, Uprichard 2011, Adam and Groves 2007). This chapter therefore asks the vital question: what happens to our understanding of belonging as a felt experience when we study it through the temporal lens of people’s future horizons? Empirically, I explore this question with the help of two case studies that are drawn from recent research conducted in the UK. The first project, ‘Place and belonging’, utilises architectural and social science methods to explore how residents of a modernist housing estate engage with the built environment, and their resulting sense of atmosphere and belonging (see Lewis et al. 2018, for more information).1 In this chapter I discuss the case of Emma and Richard, a couple in their thirties. Their interviews illuminate the complex temporalities

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that can be in operation as people negotiate a sense of belonging to place, with past experiences and future plans interacting with each other in the present. The second project, the ‘Inter/generational dynamics’ project, was a mixed methods project that examined interaction and engagement between and within generations, focusing, among other things, on belonging to place, with older people at the centre of the enquiry (see May and Muir 2015 for more information).2 I draw upon one case study involving Diane, a 60-year-­old woman, which illustrates how important future projections are for a person’s sense of belonging. I argue that as people attempt to form a sense of belonging, they experience a complex interweaving of ‘past futures’ (the future as it was anticipated in the past), ‘present futures’ (the future as it is seen now) and the present, which creates a continuously changing horizon of possible anticipation.

The neglected future temporality of belonging The future as a temporal horizon has been of interest particularly to researchers studying young people (e.g. Anderson et al. 2002, Brannen and Nilsen 2002, Phoenix and Sparkes 2008, Carabelli and Lyon 2016). Though the future orientations of older adults have also been studied (e.g. Allison 2012, Lahad 2012), I would argue that there exists less appetite among social scientists to study these, perhaps partly because of dominant Western cultural scripts which depict ageing in terms of loss and diminished options – not only help people orient themselves in time (May 2017b). It seems that the older people become, the less significant and interesting their future projections are deemed to be and, consequently, research tends to depict older people as oriented towards the past. Yet the future contributes to how people define their present, no matter their age. In the philosophical literature on the human experience of time, the present is understood not as a pinpoint but, to use Bergson’s terminology (1988), as duration: as encompassing the past moments that have led to this moment as well as future projections (e.g. Mead 1932, Luhmann 1976, Muldoon 2006). Similarly, in the words of Bourdieu, the present ‘cannot be reduced to a momentary instant’ because ‘it encompasses the practical anticipations and retrospections that are inscribed as objective potentialities or traces in the immediate given’ or what he called ‘the forth-­coming’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 210). Put simply, the future is part of the present and is for example visible in the way that people adjust their present actions depending on what they anticipate to be forthcoming. Despite the acknowledged importance of the future as a horizon of expectation, until recently, it has received less attention in the research literature than the past (Guyer 2007, Harden et al. 2012, Cantó-Milà and Seebach 2015). Perhaps one reason why social scientists have preferred to study the past is because of the perceived ontological difference between the past and the future: a common assumption is that we cannot change the past, but we can ‘trick’ or influence the future through our actions today (Ringel 2016). Drawing on Mead (1932), Uprichard argues that although what and how we can know about the

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past and the future differ, the past and the future are nevertheless made of the same stuff in that they are ‘real ontological entities which shape the world’ (2011, p.  106, emphasis in original). This is because both our past experiences and future projections of the things we hope or fear will happen are part of the dynamics of the present. For example, no small amount of ontological security can be derived from the belief that the future can be controlled and that our actions are not fruitless or meaningless (Davies 1997). What has not yet received sufficient attention is the future as a time horizon of belonging. In studying the future as an integral dimension of belonging, I am guided by Probyn’s (1996, p. 19) definition of belonging as having two dimensions: being (belonging) and a wish or yearning to belong (belonging). Similarly, Challinor (2012) depicts ‘be-­longing’ as striving towards or longing for a belonging that one is excluded from or that one has lost, while Melly (2010) describes belonging as a process that is rooted in both present circumstances and future possibilities and therefore as necessarily future-­oriented. What these future possibilities look like depends upon that person’s position in the social field and her resultant habitus; that is, the set of durable dispositions or ways of seeing and acting in the world that she has internalised (Bourdieu 2000). Furthermore, Bourdieu argues, the future offers different opportunities to people with different levels of economic, social and cultural capital. Building on these observations, I argue that there is more to be learned about how past, present and future as temporal horizons interact in people’s sense of belonging, and particularly how their future projections interact with present belonging. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to present a definitive theory of the many ways in which the future figures in the complex temporalities of belonging, what I aim to demonstrate, with the help of the two case examples below, is that when we begin to explore the future seriously in relation to belonging, this opens up fascinating new questions and puzzles for consideration. In the first empirical example, I explore how the notion of ‘putting down roots’ is necessarily future-­oriented, while the second example examines what happens when the future is emptied of meaning. The analysis of these cases shows that because future horizons play a role in whether and how a person can claim belonging in the now, the future is an important aspect of the constitution of the subject, and therefore worthy of analysis.

Belonging and place: putting down roots as future-­ oriented The first case example comes from the ‘Place and belonging: What can we learn from Claremont Court housing scheme’ project, where we interviewed residents of a modernist social housing project located in a Scottish city, which now houses a mixture of council tenants, private tenants and owner–occupiers. The Court is a loose grouping of 63 dwellings in a composition of four mid-­rise slab-­blocks and two blocks of cottages around two landscaped courtyards. Emma

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and Richard, a middle-­class professional couple in their thirties who had bought their flat the previous year, were interviewed twice. The first semi-­structured interview focused on their experiences of community, belonging and atmosphere in Claremont Court. This was followed two months later by a walk-­along interview, where the couple led the interviewer around their flat and the Court, stopping to discuss places of particular significance. When talking about their decision to move to Claremont Court, their relationships with their neighbours and their sense of belonging at the Court, Emma and Richard expressed tensions between the ‘past future’ and the present; conflicting views among different residents of the past of the Court and of what its future should look like; and the ‘present future’ and the present. These tensions led to somewhat uneasy accounts of (not) belonging in Claremont Court, underpinned by the question of whether their lack of an envisaged future at the Court made it more difficult if not impossible for them to form a sense of belonging in the now. The first temporal tension emerged in how Emma and Richard talked about the past future versus the present. One past future concerned the repairs to the building that had been promised by the vendor of their flat: ‘we were told that it [the leaky roof] was, you know, being fixed … and ‘cause the guy also told us that the whole block was going to get repainted so that really did help us like decide to buy it’. These repairs had not taken place, thus placing in jeopardy the couple’s hopes that the ‘drab’ and ‘councilly’ look of the Court could be transformed into something a bit more ‘cool’. Emma and Richard also expressed disappointment over the fact that their initial hopes and dreams of living in a vibrant community of like-­minded people had not been realised. They described Claremont Court as a friendly place to live: ‘People do take the time to stop and chat which I think is lovely which is something quite rare’. Nevertheless, the couple had hoped that residents would socialise more than they did: Emma: 

I guess I kind of thought, you know, ‘cause when we were researching it there’s –, yeah, like ‘cause there’s a website, erm, you know, and it – it kind of looked like there was lots of barbeques and, you know, like there were social events – but actually there’s not.

Instead, the couple had found a ‘divide’ between those who had lived at the Court when it was still fully owned by the Council, who had been ‘in it from the start’, and ‘the new crowd’ of ‘those that had come and bought’ their flats. This divide between residents underpins the second temporal tension in the couple’s account, namely competing notions of Claremont Court’s past and future. Emma and Richard depicted the original council tenants as wanting to return to an outmoded way of life, to ‘turn it all back to council housing like the good old days like it originally was’. In contrast, Emma and Richard wished to reinstate the original aesthetic of the Court, which they believed ‘would have been quite a statement’ and ‘really, really cool’ in the 1960s when it was built.

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Emma and Richard explained that the longstanding residents (current or former council tenants) had managed to put a stop to any such proposed changes, thus marking their stronger claim to belonging at the Court. While expressing some sympathy towards the strength of feeling evinced by the established residents – which was rooted in, for example, fond memories they had of ‘their kids in paddling pools out in that green space’, memories that were in danger of being ‘diminished’ or ‘diluted’ by any changes to the Court – Emma and Richard were nevertheless saddened by their own lack of influence: Emma:  It’s just a Richard:  Yeah,

bit sad. it’s a shame. It’s a shame that those voices carry so much weight when you would think that it would be for everyone that’s here, but they are –, they are definitely a driving force on what decisions are made.

Emma and Richard’s initial hopefulness over what life at Claremont Court could be like had given way to resignation. As Richard said: ‘and you’re like, “Why are we bothering? Like why are we bothering?” Because ultimately you can’t change anything’. When asked whether they felt a sense of belonging there, Emma and Richard distinguished between feeling at home in their flat and a sense of belonging to the Court. Richard said: ‘I wouldn’t say I belong here I think that’s a very –, I think I belong in [city] but I won’t say I belong in this particular flat’. Whereas Emma began to dissect what a sense of belonging meant to her: ‘Yeah, what’s the definition of belonging? Feeling like I’m part of the fabric or … Well it definitely feels like home but, yeah, I don’t feel like I’m part of it or anything’. Notably, Richard interweaves their present future into his account of lack of belonging in the present, stating that: for me it’s not the final, you know, it’s not like okay this is where I’m going to be for the next 10–15 years, it’s like here we are for probably, you know, the next few years and then – … So I enjoy living here. It is definitely – it’s where I would call home but it’s not a sense of belonging. This leads us to the final temporal tension that arose between the future that Emma and Richard envisaged at the time of the interview and the present. Partly fuelled by their somewhat disappointing experiences of living at the Court, but also by their middle-­class aspirations for living somewhere nicer and bigger, Emma and Richard imagined that their life at the Court would only be temporary. They planned to have children, which for them necessitated living in a house with a private garden – instead of the shared courtyard at the Court – for the children to play in, one that was located in the catchment area of a better school than their current local school was. The case of Emma and Richard exemplifies how a sense of belonging is predicated on ‘the right to “future aspirations” ’ and on ‘engaging in ongoing

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future-­oriented techniques that carve out spaces of … participation’ (Melly 2010, pp.  39–40). I argue that Emma and Richard sense that they were, for various reasons, barred from participating in the shaping of the Court as a building and as a community of residents, which then contributed to the tensions they felt between their flat as a home and the Court as a place where they did not belong. Like Melly says of migrants who build homes in their country of origin, Emma and Richard were ‘fore-­grounding their future’ (2010, p. 62). Thus we see that ‘belonging is a process that is rooted in both present circumstances and future possibilities’ (Melly 2010, p. 62). It is also clear that Emma and Richard’s present circumstances and future possibilities, which helped to form ‘the frame of the imaginable’, were partly shaped by their class background (Cantó-Milà and Seebach 2015, p.  211). Bourdieu argues that looking forward to a more or less assured future offers people ‘the dispositions needed to confront the future actively’, but that these assurances are ‘unequally distributed’ depending on habitus (2000, p.  225). According to Bourdieu, ‘[h]abitus is that presence of the past in the present which makes possible the presence in the present of the forth-­coming’, by which he means that habitus represents a form of ‘incorporated acquisition’ from the past which provides a person with a ‘structure of hopes and expectations’ in terms of what they can anticipate in the future (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 210–211). This is evident in the way that Emma and Richard, both from middle-­class backgrounds and with professional occupations, were able to anticipate an upwardly mobile housing trajectory that would also bring educational advantages to their future offspring. Bourdieu argues that looking forward to a more or less assured future offers people ‘the dispositions needed to confront the future actively’ (2000, p.  225), but that these assurances are ‘unequally distributed’. The ability to plan ahead by a year or more – as Emma and Richard did – is also dependent on resources: ‘having a degree of control over resources is, for many people, one key requirement for confident long-­term planning’ (Anderson et al., 2002 p. 84). In sum, although Emma and Richard had experienced a failed past future and were living in an ambivalent present in terms of belonging, they were ‘endowed with’ a habitus that allowed them the ‘capacity to anticipate’ and invest in (Bourdieu, 2000, p.  213) an alternative present future and to form an attachment to a (future) elsewhere. Thus the complex temporalities of belonging are also necessarily classed, as well as shaped by gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age/ generation, health, dis/ability and so on.

When anticipation turns to open-­e nded waiting The second case example consists of two interviews with Diane, conducted as part of the ‘Inter/generational dynamics’ project that explored experiences of ageing, intergenerational relationships and belonging among people aged 50 and over. Diane turned 60 and retired between the first and the second interview.

Belonging in the future?   81

She and her husband had bought their former council house in a deprived neighbourhood of a city in the North of England where they had both grown up.  A recurring theme in Diane’s interviews was how limited their financial resources were, even more so after her retirement, which led to a further tightening of the belt as Diane gave up her car and reduced her leisure activities. Whereas Emma and Richard, whose past future had turned into a rather disenchanted present, expressed some hope over a better future somewhere else, Diane’s interviews show what happens when an anticipated past future is emptied of meaning and remains as such. Diane’s first interview was infused with a sense of anticipation and the mood was upbeat. Right at the outset of the interview, when I was asking her for some background information, she informed me of her upcoming fortieth wedding anniversary and retirement, which were to be celebrated by going on a cruise. ‘Can’t wait’, Diane said. This, for me, set the tone of the interview, during which Diane expressed optimism about the future. She was looking forward to retirement, which would allow her to take up new hobbies such as cycling and to spend more time with her husband: ‘he only works four days a week so at least we’d have three days where we can do things together you know’. The future that Diane envisaged for herself was a fun and sociable one, including replacing Saturday bingo nights with cheaper nights in playing Wii games with her family and friends: I’ll get [sister] and [brother-­in-law] and our mates who used to live across the way, but they’ve moved, and just make Saturday night a fun night you know what I mean? In this first interview, Diane came across as a woman at ease with her life and expressing a clear sense of belonging. This sense of belonging extended to the future and the past: Diane was excited about her imagined future, and she also clearly took pleasure from the anecdotes she told me about her courtship and her children’s upbringing. She seemed content with her past and present, and her future horizon looked hopeful. The second interview was conducted four months after the first interview and two months after Diane had retired. Immediately upon my arrival, Diane informed me that her husband had refused to go on the fortieth anniversary cruise because he did not want to leave their elderly dog in someone else’s care. Diane seemed bitterly disappointed about this. She said she had not done much in the intervening time: I mean I don’t really do an awful lot … at the moment. I mean I go out with him [the dog] every morning with me hubby and then me other sister who retired last year … she goes on some … walks so I’ve been going with her, you know … And err a chappie across the way he’s gonna look at a computer course … free for pensioners, so I’ve promised [husband] I’ll learn

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computers and … But other than that I’ve not done an awful lot, no. Bone idle (laughs). Compared to the first interview, Diane came across as downbeat, and I left the interview with a sense of depression that was hard to shake. Diane’s existence had proven to be more curtailed and lonely than she had envisaged – her anticipated ‘past future’ had not been realised. In particular, Diane’s hopes of doing more things with her husband during the day had not materialised. Instead, she spent her days and evenings alone while her husband was at work: You see like he [husband] goes to work at quarter past 12 while I’ve been doing (coughs), and then I’m on me own then till [midnight].… So er it’s just me and him [the dog]. So I might potter round doing a bit of housework here and there. Diane also remarked that one of her sisters was reluctant to accompany Diane on her outings because she preferred the company of her husband, and it was clear that Diane was not pleased about this: And me eldest sister who I’ve always … gone round with, her husband retired the month after me …, and err but she’s one of these, she won’t go anywhere…. ‘Oh I can’t leave [husband].’ … You know, even when he goes fishing she has to go with him. You know what I mean, the’, she’s too … Diane’s life had turned out to be less sociable than hoped for, and the sense of belonging in the present that she had evinced in the first interview was no longer there. In addition, her anticipated future horizon – by now her past future – had dissolved into thin air. Diane’s plans for taking up cycling were postponed: ‘but I mean come the better weather I’m gonna go out on that most days. Not anywhere in particular’. But Diane’s own hesitancies around her various plans contributed to the sense that this more active future was unrealistic. She would intersperse telling me about her plans – of cycling and attending a course – by saying that she was currently not doing much, and wondering whether she would in fact realise them: But. So, as I say, at the moment not doing too much. I might look at college courses, you know in September or something. See if there’s something that I, ‘cos I always wanted to do basic woodwork …, just learn the bits you know.… But whether I get round to it I don’t know. For Diane, losing her grasp on the present seemed to have led to a loss of ambition to control the future; the future projects that she told me about were to a degree ‘detached from the present’ in the sense that she no longer seemed to believe that they would materialise (Bourdieu 2000, p.  222). This rather

Belonging in the future?   83

depressed tone also seeped into Diane’s accounts of all other areas of her life, which, in the first interview, she had presented in a much more positive light. It was only now that Diane talked about the distance that existed between her and one of her sons, whom she saw infrequently. When her son and his family did visit the neighbourhood, they spent more time with his in-­laws: Diane:  Yeah [son 2] I only see … whenever there’s a family do or a funeral. Vanessa:  Yeah. (Long pause) Yeah, and is that just ‘cos he’s so far away

or …? Well I think it’s more his wife prefers to go to her family rather than come here. You know, so I don’t bother, I just let ‘em get on with it. I mean they were down for me party. You know. I mean in the last five years he’s been down for two funerals …, two parties …, and that’s it I think. You know, so … Vanessa:  So he wouldn’t come up to see you? Diane:  Not just to see us as visit, no. No. Diane: 

Diane spoke more warmly of her other son, whom she described as more like herself; but he also lived far away. Her one friend had recently moved to another part of the city and Diane saw much less of her. She did see her sisters and brothers, who all lived relatively close by, fairly frequently. But these relationships were not without their strains – one brother she described as a ‘ball-­ache’, while the other never told her anything about himself, and one sister did not spend as much time with Diane as she would have liked. Diane’s sense of relational belonging, in other words, was thin. Diane was also downbeat about the neighbourhood, which she felt had ‘deteriorated’ since her childhood, leading to a reduced sense of belonging to place. Their once ‘lovely, tidy clean’ street was now inhabited by ‘scumbags’. Diane recounted stories of nightmare neighbours whose noisy parties, out-­ofcontrol children and serious domestic violence caused a nuisance. She expressed a wish to move: ‘Oh I’d love to get away. I’d love to get away’. But she and her husband were constrained by finances: she said it would be difficult to sell their ex-­council house located in an undesirable area of the city, and even if they managed to do so, they could not afford to move closer to their son who lived in a more expensive part of the country. Diane’s case – where a hoped for ‘past future’ is emptied and where anticipation turns into something that is not even yearning, but more like resigned waiting – raises important questions about how important a person’s ability to feel in control of their future can be for a sense of belonging. Diane’s waiting is infused with a ‘negative modality’ (Crapanzano 1985, p. 45): no longer waiting for something that she desires (the cruise, new hobbies or activities with her husband, sister and friends), there is a sense of dread in how she approaches the future. She presents herself as trapped in a neighbourhood that she finds increasingly unpleasant to live in, and in a set of relationships that offer her little joy

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or companionship.  Rather than the ‘open-­ended, expansive, and adventurous’ future that she had hoped for, Diane’s life had turned out to be ‘truncated’, ‘numb, and muted’, leading to a mixture of ‘anxiety, helplessness, vulnerability, and rage’ (Crapanzano 1985, p. 43). Her boredom and dissatisfaction with the present imply ‘the negation of the present and the propensity to work towards its suppression’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 209). The future that Diane is waiting for is ‘a constricted one that closes in on the present’ (Crapanzano 1985, p. 44). Crapanzano describes this kind of waiting as a temporal orientation whereby the present ‘loses its focus in the now’ and its vitality: ‘Its only meaning lies in the future – in the arrival or the non-­arrival of the object of waiting’ (1985, p. 44). Vitus (2010) further points out that open-­ended waiting can lead to de-­ subjectification and to a mode of being that entails neither existing in the present nor being able to project oneself into the future. This in turn can open up ‘a reservoir of existential and anxiety-­provoking meaninglessness, ordinarily hidden from us by layers of preoccupation about the future possibilities and of projecting our life into those possibilities’ (Vitus 2010, p.  40). According to Vitus (2010), waiting creates powerlessness, which perhaps helps explain the pervading sense of being stuck that came through in Diane’s second interview. Sociological analyses of waiting understand it in the context of power relations; having the capacity to make others wait allows those higher in the social hierarchy to create social distance from those lower down (Schwartz 1974, Bourdieu 2000). In Diane’s case, perhaps waiting for a future object could analogously be seen as an experience of dependence and powerlessness, but in relation to time rather than status. Crucially, people’s relationship to time, for example their sense of control over the future, is shaped by access to resources (Bourdieu 2000; see also Carabelli and Lyon 2016). We can use Bourdieu’s (2000) observation that people whose lives are blighted by deprivation experience the link between the present and future as broken to further interrogate the sense of powerlessness that Diane expressed over her present future. Likening people’s relationship to the future to a ball game – whereby the future is ‘something which is already there in the configuration of the game’ and being able to play the game well means being able to anticipate where the ball is about to land – Bourdieu argues that having an interest in the game and investing in it ‘presupposes possession of a habitus and a capital capable of providing it with at least a minimum of profits’ (2000, p. 208, 212). Habitus, he says, is a ‘can-­be’ that shapes what a person judges to be possible in their present situation. A person who feels that their chances of winning are nil is unlikely to invest in the future. In a similar fashion, Diane, whose limited economic and social capital restricted her ability to fundamentally change her existence, could be described as living under temporal conditions where she is lacking a future and consequently living in alienated time – in other words, she is finding it difficult to be an agent (Bourdieu 2000, p. 237). Given Diane’s initial excitement over what she hoped would be a more expansive future, I do not wish to completely reduce her temporal powerlessness to a lack of economic capital. Nevertheless,

Belonging in the future?   85

her subsequent sense of being trapped was likely accentuated by her restricted resources. Diane’s case also illuminates the dynamic and contingent nature of belonging. Between the first and second interviews, she had experienced an important life transition – retirement. This deprived her of the ‘deadlines, dates and timetables’ usually associated with employment which ‘orientate and stimulate action and, through it, social life’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 222). Bourdieu notes that ‘employment is the support, if not the source, of most interests, expectations, demands, hopes and investments in the present, and also in the future or the past that it implies’, and that those who shift to non-­employment can experience their ‘free time’ as ‘dead time, purposeless and meaningless’ – that is, they experience an annihilation of time. It is most likely that a mere two months after retirement, Diane was still adjusting to her new temporal reality. Had I returned to interview her a year or two later, I might have discovered a very different Diane, perhaps once again at ease with and experiencing a sense of belonging in her life.

Concluding thoughts: belonging in the (un)making? This chapter has explored a central question: what happens to our understanding of belonging as a felt experience when we examine it from the perspective of people’s future horizons? The Claremont Court case study illuminates the complex ways in which different temporalities – past futures, present futures and the present – interweave with other dimensions, like class and subtle social exclusion. The case demonstrates how the future, as well as the past, were never far away as Emma and Richard considered their belonging to Claremont Court. Likewise, Diane’s interviews raise questions about the consequences of experiencing a sense of lack of temporal agency. Diane’s anticipated fun and active future retirement had, at least initially, turned out to be an empty present void of future projections. Diane was stuck in a state of open-­ended waiting, meaning she was not fully in the present either, which in turn seemed to weaken her sense of relational and place belonging. Uprichard and Byrne (2006) observe that when asking people about the future, we are able to see the world in the making. Analogously, I argue that when we pay attention to how people talk about the future, we can see belonging in the making – or, as it may be, in the unmaking. I therefore echo Uprichard’s (2011, pp. 115–116) encouragement to social scientists to talk to people not only about their past and present experiences, but also about the future, and, more specifically, about how and why they think the future impacts on their present and how this in turn affects their ability to act in the world. When studying belonging from the perspective of future projections, we become attuned to how past futures and present futures interweave in the present to construct a tension-­filled and perhaps contradictory sense of belonging. We can also become aware of different orientations to the future – for example, of

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anticipation and open-­ended waiting as active and passive modes of moving towards the future, and the different consequences these have in terms of belonging, which in turn relates to a person’s sense of themselves as a subject. The aim of this chapter has not been to offer definitive answers, but rather to open up a new field of study, namely belonging in relation to the future. Crapanzano has noted the effects of ‘a problematic and limited future’ (1985, p. 307) in terms of creating a sense of dis-­ease in the present. Bringing ‘past futures’ into the analysis further complicates our understanding of belonging as a temporal experience. How might a truncated past – that is, the annihilation of past futures, such as refugees might experience – influence future projections, and what happens to present belonging as a result? We also need to understand, in light of Diane’s case, the dynamic nature of belonging and how easily it can be disturbed. I have previously argued that belonging is a complex experience because the sources of belonging are varied – people, places, things, cultures – and because people can simultaneously experience differing senses of belonging in relation to these factors (May 2011, 2013). What I hope to have shown in this chapter is the importance of adding a further layer of complexity to our understanding of belonging – namely time – and, more specifically, the future as a temporal horizon that encompasses past futures, the present, and present futures. Doing so sheds further light on the dynamic and multidimensional nature of belonging as an experience that is never just one thing, and never stands still.

Notes 1 The ‘Place and belonging: what can we learn from Claremont Court housing scheme?’ is an interdisciplinary research project involving architects and social scientists (grant reference AH/N002938/1). The research team comprised Sandra Costa Santos (PI), Nadia Bertolini, Stephen Hicks, Camilla Lewis and Vanessa May. The study was granted ethical approval by Northumbria University and adheres to the ethical guidelines of the British Sociological Association. 2 The ‘Inter/generational Dynamics’ project was a component of the Realities (Real Life Methods for Researching Relationalities) programme, part of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (grant reference RES-­576-25-0022). The research team comprised Jennifer Mason (PI), Vanessa May, Stewart Muir and James Nazroo at the University of Manchester. The study was granted ethical approval by the University of Manchester and adheres to the ethical guidelines of the British Sociological Association.

References Adam, B. and Groves, C., 2007. Future Matters: Action, Knowledge, Ethics. Leiden: Brill. Allison, A., 2012. Ordinary refugees: social precarity and soul in 21st century Japan. Anthropological Quarterly, 85 (2), 345–370. Anderson, M., Bechhofer, F., Jamieson, L., McCrone, D., Yaojun, L. and Stewart, R., 2002. Confidence amid uncertainty: ambitions and plans in a sample of young adults. Sociological Research Online, 6 (4), 1–17.

Belonging in the future?   87 Bergson, H., 1988 [1896]. Matter and Memory (trans. N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer). Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books. Bourdieu, P., 2000 [1997]. Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Brannen, J. and Nilsen, A., 2002. Young people’s time perspectives: from youth to adulthood. Sociology, 36 (3), 513–537. Cantó-Milà, N. and Seebach, S., 2015. Desired images, regulating figures, constructed imaginaries: the future as an apriority for society to be possible. Current Sociology, 63 (2), 198–215. Carabelli, G. and Lyon, D., 2016. Young people’s orientations to the future: navigating the present and imagining the future. Journal of Youth Studies, 19 (8), 1110–1127. Challinor, E.P., 2012. Mobile communications and belongings: Cape Verdeans in Portugal. Identities, 19 (3), 303–319. Crapanzano, V., 1985. Waiting: The Whites of South Africa. New York: Random House. Davies, M.L., 1997. Shattered assumptions: time and the experience of long-­term HIV positivity. Social Science & Medicine, 44 (5), 561–571. Guyer, J.I., 2007. Prophecy and the near future: thoughts on macroeconomic, evangelical, and punctuated time. American Ethnologist, 34 (3), 409–421. Harden, J., Backett-­Milburn, K., MacLean, A. and Jamieson, L., 2012. Hopes for the future: parents’ and children’s future employment orientations. Sociological Research Online, 17 (2), 13. Lahad, K., 2012. Singlehood, waiting and the sociology of time. Sociological Forum, 27 (1), 163–186. Lewis, C., May, V., Costa Santos, S., Hicks, S. and Bertolino, N., 2018. Researching the home using architectural and social science methods. Methodological Innovations, 11 (2), 1–12. Luhmann, N., 1976. The future cannot begin: temporal structures in modern society. Social Research, 43 (1), 130–152. May, V., 2011. Self, belonging and social change. Sociology, 45 (3), 363–378. May, V., 2013. Connecting Self to Society: Belonging in a Changing World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. May, V., 2016. What does the duration of belonging tell us about the temporal self? Time & Society, 25 (3), 634–651. May, V., 2017a. Belonging from afar: nostalgia, time and memory. Sociological Review, 65 (2), 401–415. May, V., 2017b. Belonging across the lifetime. British Journal of Sociology, Early View. DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12276. May, V. and Muir, S., 2015. Everyday belonging and ageing: place and generational change. Sociological Research Online, 20 (1), 8. Mead, G.H., 1932. The Philosophy of the Present. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Melly, C., 2010. Inside-­out houses: urban belonging and imagined futures in Dakar, Senegal. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52 (1), 37–65. Muldoon, M.S., 2006. Tricks of Time: Bergson, Merleau-­Ponty and Ricoeur in Search of Time, Self and Meaning. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Phoenix, C. and Sparkes, A.C., 2008. Athletic bodies and aging in context. Journal of Aging Studies, 22 (3), 211–221. Probyn, E., 1996. Outside Belongings. New York: Routledge. Ringel, F., 2016. Can time be tricked? A theoretical introduction. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 34 (1), 22–31.

88   Vanessa May Schwartz, B., 1974. Waiting, exchange, and power: the distribution of time in social systems. American Journal of Sociology, 79 (4), 841–870. Uprichard, E., 2011. ‘Narratives of the future: complexity, time and temporality’. Vogt, W.P. and Williams, M. (eds) Sage Handbook of Innovation in Social Research Methods. London, SAGE Publications, 103–119. Uprichard, E. and Byrne, D., 2006. Representing complex places: a narrative approach. Environment and Planning A, 38 (4), 665–676. Vitus, K., 2010. Waiting time: the de-­subjectification of children in Danish asylum centres. Childhood, 17 (1), 26–42.

Chapter 6

Costumes of belonging ‘Fitting in’ circus fabrics in the novels The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith by Peter Carey and The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott, and the costume-­c um-body art of Leigh Bowery Anna-­S ophie Jürgens A young Australian clown in red trousers with braces inflates a giant red balloon and then squeezes his head inside. The gigantic red balloon thus seems to replace his head. A moment later, his entire body completely disappears into the balloon. Then, his head pops out again, giving his body yet another new shape. Is this what a full-­body red clown nose looks like? Traditionally, clown costumes reshape the body. By padding parts of the body or by exaggerating facial features with paint and make-­up – epitomised by mouths that reach ear to ear,1 jumbo-­ sized foam noses, and behemothic feet – clowns embody an expressive exaggeration of the human form and figure. Their extravagant costumes are display and identity of an emblematic circus archetype; they act as a culturally-­condensed coding of circus style, hyperbole and extraordinariness, and as a sign for creative performance practices.2 Jessie Mikie Grant’s balloon-­clown in Ashton’s 2017 circus show Infamous – A Cabaret Circus Sensation typifies this tradition. Bopping around in a red monstrous balloon-­onesie, he is not only ‘incorporated’ in, but ‘becomes’ his costume – until, with a bang, the balloon explodes, leaving the clown completely naked in the ring. Grant’s most stunning performance raises many questions about the intimate relationship of the clown with his costume.3 This costume, the red balloon, is itself redolent of the circus world and its iconography, as it is reminiscent of the archetypal red clown nose, which has become the universal identifier and symbol of the clown (Weihe 2016, p. 265). It is also reminiscent of the notorious red balloons from Stephen King’s It, which have been giving moviegoers the circus-­clown creeps since 1990. Grant’s act thus invites us to ponder on the seldom-­considered conjunction of costume, circus and belonging – a conjunction that is not as singular as it might seem. ‘Belonging’ implies much more than having been born in a particular place: ‘It suggests that one is an integral piece of the marvellously complicated fabric’ which, according to Anthony Cohen, constitutes community (1982, p. 21). In what follows, I will explore how belonging might be defined if that fabric is actually not a metaphor but a literal costume that evokes the circus and its performers; how does one ‘fit in’ when ‘fitting in’ does not relate to the right place but to the right ‘dress’, and thus to a circus background? Adherence to an aesthetic style can not only be ‘a declaration of a kind, an allegiance to a

Figure 6.1 Infamous, @markturnerimages, 2017.

Costumes of belonging   91

particular group or social order, it is, at the same time, an expression of social inclusion and belonging’ (Finkelstein and Morgan 2016, p. 173). This chapter therefore charts (by no means exhaustively) constructions of belonging through costumes in two Australian circus novels – The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith by Peter Carey (1994) and The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott (2006) – and the  unique out-­of-this-­world Looks of Australian-­born artist Leigh Bowery (1961–1994). In so doing, it seeks to clarify what identity narratives might emerge when someone ‘belongs’ to an object of attachment, in this case circus-­ related clothes or costume: when he becomes a costume-­cum-body. To see Leigh Bowery’s name in this context may cause some surprise as he was not a clown nor in the circus. However, my interviews in 2017 with Nicola Bateman-­Bowery (his comrade-­in-performance and wife) and Sue Tilley (his biographer and friend) revealed that Bowery had an active interest in cultural imaginaries of the clown and used hyperbolic circus aesthetics, circus-­related identity play and the imaginative visual displays of clown iconography as a source of inspiration for his original costume inventions. We will see towards the end of this (admittedly adventurous) cross-­disciplinary, transmedial discussion to what extent this  sense of association with the circus sphere can be called ‘belonging’ in a costume-­cum-body context.

‘Case study’ 1: a Trojan rodent The cyborg shuck of belonging in the novel The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith by Peter Carey The adventures of the eponymous hero in Peter Carey’s dystopian circus novel The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994) are linked to a religious world of circus myths belonging to the large, fictional island nation Voorstand. These myths are expressed through immense, popular spectacles featuring cyborgs, holographs, high-­tech animations, laser shows and actors in mythological costume. Serving as an ideological and imperialistic weapon, Sirkus (as these shows are known) and the Sirkus folk spread and gradually encroach on the culture of the neighbouring island of Efica, a forsaken colony with its own distinctive circus culture and an old circus tradition. As a means of cultural survival, a circus–theatre company led by Tristan’s mother opposes the miraculous cultural industry of high-­tech Sirkus by consolidating and celebrating genuine Efican circus customs.4 After his politically-­active mother is murdered by the intelligence apparatus of Voorstand, Tristan and two allies embark on a journey to the Sirkus country. On the way, they run over and eviscerate a mouse cyborg, which happens to be a Sirkus-­idol. For security reasons – so he can travel incognito and undercover – Tristan’s companions sew him into the mouse-­machine’s mantle. Wedged into this costume (like a toy in a Kinder egg or a clown in a red nose), he looks like a 106 cm-­tall Sirkus mouse from the outside (resembling a vertical wind-­up Mickey mouse); and this costume changes his life.

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Before wearing the cyborg wrap, Tristan is a sensational creature who enriches the world with horror and engages intensely with his mother’s circus– theatre. He tries hard to become a performer but is thrown back by his twisted physiology: he is a small-­statured ‘parcel of bad dreams’ (p.  43) whose bodily integrity is dramatically compromised by a plethora of disabilities. Looking at him causes shock, blanching (p.  38), cramps (p.  333) and even vomiting (p.  133). The obstetricians can hardly prevent themselves from killing him at birth. However, painfully squeezed into the husk of the worshipped holy Sirkus relic, Tristan is changed into a prosthetic celebrity, a posthuman super-­abled freak who, for the first time in his life, is coveted. He thus becomes a virtuosic performer presenting ‘the cartwheels, the tumbling, the juggling with tennis balls or apples’; he ‘could do things no doctor could ever have predicted’ (p. 344, 359). The impact of his performance in the streets of Voorstand is enormous: They stretched their hands out towards the Mouse as if it would bless them with Sirkus jobs, parkside apartments, topsoil ten feet thick, and the Mouse […] struck poses, rolled, tumbled, held its hand across its mouth in a giggle. […] They picked me up and held me in the air making a collective noise, a sort of sighing. They were devotees, worshippers. They wanted to eat Bruder Mouse, to fuck him, smother him. (p. 317) The Sirkus cyborg costume transforms Tristan into a performer and fetish, but by enhancing his body, it also takes on a subversive function. Only by wearing his version of the red balloon, a cyborg’s hull – a self-­portrait of the Sirkus power’s hegemonic ideology of cultural over-­moulding – is Tristan, a public enemy from Efica, able to enter the country’s capital Saarlem. And only due to his costume does Tristan achieve precarious political notoriety and reach sexual fulfilment, when the wealthy Sirkus patron Peggy Kram develops a wild sexual passion for the 106 cm-­plastic mouse idol who ‘is better than a man’ (p.  400). Being squeezed into that awful costume – chafed, almost suffocating and sick from his own foul air – is paradoxically ‘enabling rather than disabling’ (Blyn 2013, p.  244). Thus, Tristan not merely experiences his first (1-week long) private erotic ecstasy through a hole in his costume; but through his boudoir chit-­chat he also tries to detach Peggy’s mind from further colonial ambitions in Efica. Infecting Peggy with the idea of returning the Sirkus to its pacific origins (not to mention the possibility of spreading his Efican genes), he challenges the Sirkus as an ideological weapon that manipulates popular consciousness and hangs like a sword of Damocles over his home island. This is why later, after a rude awakening, he is feared by the most powerful executives in Voorstand (p. 409) and accused of ‘wilfully, blasphemously, seditiously disguise[ing] his being’ and purposively ‘defrauding the citizens of Saarlim’ (p. 401, emphasis in original). In sum, by wearing an über-costume, Tristan challenges the Sirkus institution from within. In Tristan Smith’s fictional circus world, the protagonist’s Sirkus

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costume both masks and enhances his belonging to Efica in a way that, from a Voorstand-­perspective, transforms him into a terrorist. Qua cyborg mouse costume, Tristan becomes a Trojan rodent. When his costume is violently torn to pieces, he is left naked – like the clown from Infamous, after his red balloon explodes. However, in contrast to the young man’s perfect body, the countenance of Carey’s fictional protagonist is abhorrent to look at: he is all ‘blood, snot, some ill-­defined horror like a piece of meat, wrapped in plastic, left too long in the refrigerator’ (p. 411). Thus, Tristan’s costume not only stands for subversive camouflage and is not only an interface of belonging – a junction for personal identity and collective identities (cf. Jones and Krzyzanowski 2011, p. 44), Efican and Voorstandian – but it is also a barrage, holding an excess of uncontrollability behind a hard, slick external surface: a Dionysian core within an Apollonian mantle. These functions of the costume also appear in another circus novel, albeit in a different way.

‘Case study’ 2: rocket fuel for the body Fantabulous face paint in the fictional insanatorium of The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott The clowns … I had to … the clowns made me … (p. 48) The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott is the story of Jamie, an everyday dude and deadbeat, who is forced by three infernally deranged, sadistic clowns to pass an audition. He succeeds in making them laugh by lighting some fireworks in a shopping mall and running naked through it, screaming ‘THERE’S A BOMB!’, with a backwards swastika and a smiley painted on his body (p.  47). As with Tristan Smith, becoming a street performer [sic!] carries the risk of being identified as a terrorist (p. 48). But before being charged, Jamie is chloroformed and kidnapped: ‘The clowns went home, dragging their newest recruit by the feet’ (p.  51). ‘Home’ is the Pilo Family Circus, a nightmarishly violent and savage alternative universe, a farm for human souls, responsible for humankind’s most horrific tragedies. Once trapped on the circus grounds, Jamie is forced to become a clown. Wearing a silly costume and white face paint he transforms into a different self, a psycho. JJ, ‘the newfound clown in him’ (p. 104), wants Jamie dead. Trying to outsmart each other, Jamie and JJ engage in a battle over control of their body. The face paint of Pilo’s clowns is made by the Matter Manipulator, a ‘Flesh sculptor’ (p.  89), who – in his hellish workshop called the funhouse – creates the freaks of the circus, suffering creatures that are melting, condemned to eat glass or to bear a severed head (pp. 66–67). His paint makes the user ‘lose everything’: fear, but also the memory of who he was before he came to the circus (p. 95). If not taken off from time to time, the painted individual will lose who

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he was to the paint and always be what he is while wearing the paint: a violent clown, a member of Pilo’s circus who gets slapped on stage and engages in slaughter behind the curtains. In other words, as Tristan’s cyborg husk is the Sirkus, Jaime’s face paint is the Pilo Circus. It is reminiscent of a mourning veil, calypsis: it simultaneously exposes what it hides (Hansen-­Löve 2010, p. 110). The face paint makes JJ the clown wicked and gleeful; it makes him lie and laugh at horrible events; the ‘sights and sounds’ of murder touch him and titillate him ‘in a spot no sexual craving could, though the feeling was not dissimilar’ (p. 208). In accordance with the rule that the ‘[n]icer the man, [the] meaner the clown’ (p. 103), JJ amuses himself by harassing carnies, ‘kicking their stalls, stealing game prizes, spitting at them’ (p.  106) and pinching the gills of the freak Fishboy (p.  116). He also bestially massacres a gypsy with an axe, as ‘[w]hatever this face paint did to a person’s head, it was rocket fuel for the body’ (p. 132). Jamie confesses about JJ: I no longer have control of myself most of the time. A lunatic is at the helm, and I am completely in his hands. If he wanted to get me killed, I wouldn’t be able to stop him. I attacked the acrobats. I have stolen property which, if discovered in my possession, will probably get me killed. I have the resident psychopath – the psychopath who is now my leader – out for somebody’s blood, and it’s only a matter of time until he realises that somebody is me. (p. 152, italics in original) Although Jamie longs for his clown-­self ’s contempt for death, running loose ‘without a reason not to do harm’ (p. 153), he has to protect himself from both JJ (who does not care what happens to the body they share) and the other diabolic clowns (who are a danger to life in ways the paint protects him from) (p. 183, 153). Elliott’s circus novel thus encourages us to amend Hugh Mackay’s observation that ‘we belong to each other in ways we can never “belong” to a house or a car, a pair of shoes or a piece of jewellery. Those things belong to us, but that’s a one-­way street unless we have surrendered so utterly to materialism that we’ve actually become slaves to our desire to possess’ (p. 20). Surrendered utterly to the destructivity that it induces, Jamie as JJ clearly belongs to the circus paint, his costume, through which he (a formerly functional, healthy human being) becomes a warped, inhuman, ruined slave of the Pilo Circus and its community. Elliott’s novel reads like a parody of Anthony Cohen’s suggestion of what ‘belonging’ comprises, ‘that one is a recipient of its proudly distinctive and consciously preserved culture – a repository of its traditions and values, a performer of its hallowed skills’ (p. 21). In The Pilo Family Circus, belonging through costume is imposed inseparability.

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‘Case study’ 3: costume-­c um-body art ‘Clowning around’ and transcending the clown: Leigh Bowery’s ‘Looks’ and his sources of inspiration I want to disturb, entertain and stimulate. (Leigh in Tilley 1997, p. 112) Leigh Bowery was ‘one of Australia’s most fantastic exports’, an ‘epochal unicum’ (Tilley 1997, p. 3, Greer 2005, p. 7).5 Extravagant performance artist and entertainer, club promoter, fashion designer and model for Lucien Freud, he was an electrifying, outlandish, sybaritic figure in the clubs of London in the 1980s and early 1990s. In his own club, Taboo, and in several shows in New York and Tokyo, Leigh presented his staggeringly inventive outfits that he called ‘Looks’. Bowery’s wild costumes – famously photographed by Fergus Greer – were designed by himself and created by his assistant and partner(-in-­ performance) Nicola Bateman. Bowery’s works strongly inspired and influenced a plethora of artists and fashion designers including Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier and David LaChapelle.6 Almost all his creations were tailored to fit his body only; his ‘costume-­cumbody’ outfits (Millner 2015, p.  189) were never meant to be worn by others. And one might feel reminded of the Pilo Circus’s Flesh sculptor by Jacqueline Millner’s remark that, in Leigh’s costumes, ‘the surface became the essence of who he was: he did not wear gloves, but dipped his hand in glue and glitter instead; he did not wear masks so much as used his face as another sculptural surface’ (p.  187). Hilton Als summarises by quoting W. Lieberman, the chairman of twentieth-­century art at the Met: ‘The extraordinary thing was that it was never drag – it was really costume. […] he wasn’t trying to imitate or personify anyone else. He was simply creating a new being’ (1998, p. 25). Leigh Bowery’s new beings emerged from a combination of paddings, foams, pompoms, corsets, crinolines, helmets, tights, hairy blankets and ‘pussy wigs’ (mimicking female genitalia, cf. Bowery 2016, p.  117), thick facial make up, masks, gaudy or psychedelic-­patterned fabrics, and all kinds of other materials. Leigh’s extremely sculptural costumes present protruding mammary miracles, a splurge of excessive bulges and indentations, awkward alternative anatomies and absurd silhouettes. In one instance, preserved in Fergus Greer’s photographic aspic, Bowery appears as/in a whole-­head spongy wig in the colour of ham or dead flesh, as well as a skin-­tight jumpsuit that looks like the inside of a fruit, a condom, a skin-­coloured sea cucumber or a particularly unusual corkscrew (cf. Pregnant Tutu Head in Healy 2003, p. 83). Another photograph shows him – a large, overabundant person – in a shiny yellow ball gown with his belly hauled up and gaffer-­taped into place forming a substantial cleavage, crowned by an electric light bulb headpiece and red lipstick, kidney-­shaped to clownish proportions outside the lip-­line of his mouth (1987, cf. Healy 2003, p.  84).

Figure 6.2 Leigh Bowery and Rachael Auburn at Kinky Gerlinky, Dave Swindells, 1989.

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When his face is visible, Leigh Bowery’s expression is ceramic and doll-­like, reminiscent of gaudy religious statuary but also of clowns. It is surprising that this phenomenon has barely been discussed. To what extent and how did Bowery associate with clowns and the circus sphere? How do his costumes-­cumbody creations relate to circus costumes and belong (in)to circus imaginaries? Bowery’s outfits have already been associated with clowns by Philip Hoare, for whom Leigh ‘was a perverse comic-­book clown to a post-­punk generation’ (1995); by Robyn Healy who describes his role ‘as a ‘provocateur’, ‘part voodoo part clown’ (2003 p. 78); by Francesca Granata who defines him as ‘a modern-­ day medieval clown’ (2017 p.  59); and by Hilton Als who touches upon his ‘clown-­like make-­up’ (1998, p. 11). However, close companions during his lifetime have a different view: ‘I personally don’t think he looked clown-­like’, remarks Nicola Bateman-­Bowery, his wife; ‘he transcended that’. Sue Tilley, his biographer, explains: ‘[i]f he was influenced by clowns I think that it was subconsciously’ (interviews, 11 and 4 July 2017). Throughout my interviews, it became clear that Leigh Bowery was not a passionate clown-­aficionado. Nevertheless, he loved anyone who acted in an extreme way and did not mind (cf. Tilley 1997, p.  88), and ‘was keen on strange scenarios that culminated in chaos’ (Tilley interview, 4 July 2017), which are hallmarks of the clown character and its ventures.7 Leigh also referred to clown aesthetics within his costume-­ cum-body creations and daytime outfit. In a 1989 performance at London’s Serpentine Gallery, for instance, Leigh’s costume consisted of a huge clown nose, worn over a white stocking mask with black rimmed eyes and some rather sad fluffs of green hair on the back of the head (cf. Jürgens 2014 on the iconography of the Joker, a neo-­modern clown of violence). The enormous clown nose also appeared on Leigh’s face at a scandalous show in Brixton (1990) and in his performance in Charles Atlas’ movie The Hanged One (1994/1997; photographs of these outfits can be found in Violette 1998, pp.  210–211, pp. 216–217). Apart from this, Leigh – who dreamed of becoming ‘a very rich comedian’ in his childhood (Tilley 1997, p.  6) – ‘liked clowning around’ as Nicola Bateman-­Bowery remembers: ‘His daytime attire was very normal looking to the outsider until you looked closer. Often when we were on the underground tube, Leigh would move his wig further and further off his head until someone noticed and would laugh’ (interview, 11 July 2017). And there are other expressions of attachment that feed into Leigh’s sense of sympathy with – or at least interest in – the aesthetics of circus costume and clown-­like adornment. Leigh loved the idea of complete distortion: ‘I’m interested in a jarring aesthetic and the tension between contradictions – the idea that something can be frightening and heroic and pathetic all at the same time’ (in Tilley 1997, p. 110, 112), which is how circus aesthetics might be described (cf. Jürgens 2016, pp.  387–420). He picked up ideas for his outfits ‘from the weirdest places’ (Bowery 1998, p.  157). Although there is no place here to expand on these influences in detail, the mere outline of some of Leigh’s best-­known sources of

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inspiration and the artists towards whom he explicitly oriented himself reveal a striking affinity to clowns and/or the circus world, its imaginary and costumes: Divine, Edna Everage, A Rebours and the Triadic Ballet. Leigh Bowery admired Divine, the American drag queen, character actor and singer. It is thus interesting that, when creating her style and costume, Divine wanted to look like a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Clarabell the Clown from NBC’s television programme Puppet Playhouse (cf. Tilley, p.  23, 86).8 Hence it comes as no surprise that she also cultivated clown-­connections: one of her last movies, Out of the Dark (1989) includes Bobo, a psychotic killer who dresses in a clown costume with a giant red nose and a mammoth smile; Sue Tilley is convinced that Leigh must have watched this movie (interview 4 July 2017). He also greatly admired Barry Humphries’ Edna Everage who, according to Nicola Bateman-­Bowery, he thought ‘was acerbic, extremely clever with words, and thoroughly entertaining’ (11 July 2017). Sue Tilley remembers ‘Leigh was very keen on Dame Edna and when he had seen a video of her show his accent got more Australian for a few days. He liked the way she used a character to hide behind as she insulted people. He also like her general rudeness and veiled vulgarity’ (4 July 2017). This is interesting as Humphries explicitly associates his dame character with clowning, emphasising the ‘clown-­like effect’ of her dress on her first appearance (1992, p. 152). Or again, in discussing Edna with John Lahr, Humphries explains: ‘There’s something of the clown, something rather ritualised in the character […] It’s a clown in the form of an Australian housewife’ (Lahr 2000, p. 5).9 Intriguingly, young Humphries enthusiastically read Joris-­Karl Huysmans’ 1997 novel A Rebours (Lahr 2000, p.  37), the infamous ‘Bible of Decadence’, which Leigh also cherished (cf. Violette 1998, p.  9). As I clarify elsewhere in more detail, this 1884 novel about a young rich man, a zoon erotikon, and his universe of excess, artefacts and simulacra, prominently (and path-­breakingly, for many novels of the twentieth century) features a female ventriloquist and ‘Miss Urania’, a virile female acrobat. The text’s protagonist is enticed by the transgression between persona and person and her physical body as it is shaped ‘by the circus’ – through training and costume (cf. Tait 2005, pp. 150, Jürgens 2011, pp. 299–300). Urania is described as an aerial ‘clownesse’ (Huysman 1977, p. 206). Like Edna and Divine, using Leigh Bowery’s above-­quoted words, she embodies a specific ‘tension between contradictions’: that the clown’s sexuality can operate outside the gender binary, it ‘may take on other more ambiguous forms: clowns may be androgynous, appear as male-­female pairs or engage in cross-­dressing’.10 Finally, to let disappear the dancer’s body as much as possible behind abstract props or costume pieces, to make costume parts independent of the wearer and thus create a certain kind of ‘own life’ (Scheper 1988, p.  270), were central ideas of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet. Intensely inspired by circus and dance, and following their vision of freeing man from the manifold bondages of physical limitations, Schlemmer and his team created elaborate hyper-­sculptural

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costumes in the 1920s – personifications of the unification of costume, dance and music – that transmogrified dancers into ‘artificial figures’ (cf. Michaud 1983, p. 125).11 In 1988, Leigh and Nicola travelled to Germany to visit a huge anniversary exhibition presenting Schlemmer’s work, including original costume drafts and costumes of the Triadic Ballet (interview, 11 July 2017). What unifies these sculptural avant-­garde dancers, the fictional aerial clownesse, Edna and Divine is that they construct their stages with their costumes – as does Leigh Bowery. In totally different contexts their performances are defined and recognised by their costumes, which are susceptible to the ‘confusion between a consciously constructed performance persona and that of the performer’s personal identity’ – an essential (and distorted) characteristic of the cultural imaginary of the circus (cf. Tait 2006, p. 219).12 The circus imaginary as artistic inspiration and creative stimulus – condensed in clown iconography and clown-­like effects (extreme make-­up and outfits), clown-­related gender ambiguity and historical circus-­inspired costume-­cum-body art – thus seems to run like a thread through Leigh Bowery’s aesthetic and cultural interests and models. By referring to, transcending and associating with the cultural idea of circus as a costume-­cum-body repository and the circus’ visual rhetoric of exaggeration, artificiality and ambivalence accomplished on bodies, in particular clown bodies and identities, Bowery’s costumes (described above) reflect both a certain circus ethos and belonging to the imaginary of the Arts of the Ring – if ‘associative feelings with several collective identities’ can account for belonging, as argued by Delanty et al. (2008, p. 9).

Costume-­c um-bodies of belonging – conclusion on somatic hyperboles and physicus fiction The costumes discussed in this chapter are sartorial incarnations of different facets of belonging. They are cultural evidence of the centrality of clothing to this subject. Belonging, we can conclude, has aesthetic dimensions and implies much more than having been born in a certain place. Its definition requires nuance in different medial (circus) contexts, as this chapter has tried to evince. ‘Names and titles – personal, professional and kin based – are the stuff on which we construct identity, and through which we experience belonging – belonging to family, place and cultural groups’ (Huppatz et al. 2016, p. 1). We can now add costumes as part of this ‘stuff ’, which turns out to be encoded as symbols of circus identity and ambivalent ‘inclusion’. The adoption of clown, circus or Sirkus characteristics respectively is a non-­verbal means of communicating affirmation, if not ‘membership’, of context-­dependent circus aesthetics. In this way, circus costumes are given value as a means of making a statement about individuality, the wearer’s place in the cultural fabric and (thus) belonging. They may be read as a viable alternative account with which to trace belonging transmedially. Circus bodies perform cultural ideas: ideas of contrasting notions of authenticity, originality, surrogacy and deception; ‘of identity, spectacle, danger,

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transgression – in sum, of circus’ (Tait 2005, p.  6) – and the costumes with which these bodies are adorned are crucial in defining them as circus bodies. Dress is a means by which circus artists communicate and through which communication they are constituted as circus artists, but as the texts and phenomena examined in this chapter underline, this may be a rather complex affair. Indeed, in Tristan Smith, the costume serves as camouflage, subversum and interface of the protagonist’s belonging to another culture and country while he acts (apparently) as ‘an integral piece of the marvellously complicated fabric’ (Cohen 1982, p. 21) that constitutes Sirkus culture and community. In contrast, in The Pilo Family Circus, the costume is a schizophrenic mask of (dangerous) human qualities; it is a stigma of belonging – or rather be-­loathing – to a fatal tribe of violent circus weirdos that has the power to define who can belong and under what conditions. Exploring how these circus individuals experience belonging and selfhood through costume, we have uncovered identity narratives emerging from bodies that are reformed, deformed and emphasised through the questioning of boundaries between dress and wearer, body and clothing, self and surface, subject and object, interior and exterior, masking and unmasking – that is, demonstrations of the impossibility of corporeal integrity. Tristan and Jamie/JJ do not represent the muscular circus body and its immaculate physical action traditionally associated with circus, but rather the costume-­cum-body, representing actualisations and reconfigurations of notions of the function of the human form in circus contexts and a playful rearrangement of the codes of the circus and its hyperbolic aesthetics. Their costumes add potency to the visual imaginary of the circus in fiction. This is what Leigh Bowery’s sartorial art achieved on stage and in photography. Through their circus vibe, Bowery’s costumes defy classical properties, questioning categories of normalcy. They remap and reformulate the body, invoking the clown as a model for a subject that is tolerant of alterity. By appropriating circus behaviour via dress and mannerisms, Leigh Bowery redefines gender, bodily norms of propriety, and beauty. By distorting the body, his garb art (as well as the other costumes discussed in this chapter) change their beholders’ perception of what the body is and indicate the impossibility of one isolated and fixed aesthetic and identity. In fact, this chapter highlights that mimicry and exaggeration of circus characteristics through costumes allow non-­normative bodies to ‘belong’ – to be clothed in belonging. Wearing their costumes, the literary protagonists Jamie/JJ and Tristan – such as the young clown with the red balloon from the beginning – do not engage in role playing (in the way actors do by interpreting and realising dramatic texts or literarily fixed character), nor do they appear as ‘private persons’. Instead, they play their own role as tour de force, ‘fictionalising’ themselves through costume. The transformation into a more or less fictionalised figure is therefore only a means, not the purpose of their ‘performances’ (cf. Schmitt 1993, p. 193). This is  what distinguishes the circus artist from an actor; and this also applies to Leigh Bowery. With Hilton Als we could say wearing these outfits is a form of

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auteurism (in Violette 1998, p. 16): their costumes are the text; their performances ascribe meaning to them. Reshaping the body and body-­and-clothes unit, a red bulbous clown nose like a Sirkus cyborg husk and clown-­making face paint, is thus a form of circus text, the smallest mask in the world (cf. Weihe 2004, p. 18) and a vibrant symbol of ‘fitting in’, of multifaceted attachment and membership to the circus world; a symbol of belonging to circus aesthetics, circus ‘family’ and place, circus-­cultural groups and styles – to circus entity.

Acknowledgements The author expresses her profound gratitude to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation – for giving her the opportunity to conduct research in Australia – and to the National Library of Australia. A 2017 fellowship of the National Library of Australia led to this chapter. Nicola Bateman-­Bowery and Sue Tilley lent invaluable assistance by answering questions and actively contributed reconstructing Leigh’s interests in circus spheres; René Zechlin and Dr Dallas Baker provided advice and material; Dr Werner Möller and Torsten Blume from Bauhaus Dessau, Nina Schönig from Bauhaus-­Archive helped tracking down a specific exhibition from the 1980s – the author thanks them all very much. Many thanks also to Jessie Mikie Grant from Ashton’s Infamous – A Cabaret Circus Sensation for discussing his unique clown act and to Dr Ira Seidenstein for making this possible. Of equal importance, Dr Rebecca Hendershott pushed the author to clarify key components of this chapter. She thanks her for enhancing her argument.

Notes   1 Face paint is an intrinsic part of clown costumes, cf. Weihe 2004, p. 17 (on how the mask in a broad sense fulfils the same functions as the costume).   2 Cf. Maynard (2000) defines ‘the symbolic ‘skin’ of fashion’ as ‘a socially agreed coding of style, display and identity, although it is also an internalising notion, a sign of personal aesthetics and creative practices’ (p. 1). See also: Tait 2005, p. 138.   3 Fragments of Grant’s act can be watched on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot Zlxn7GDfg.   4 For an overview of Tristan-­research and a more extensive discussion of circus in this novel, see Jürgens 2016, pp. 275–316.   5 Bowery has been discussed as a reinvention of the diva and dandy (cf. Als 1998, p. 12, Bronfen 2008, p. 20, Millner 2015, pp. 187–189) and his fashion art in terms of camouflage (Millner 2015, p. 189), queer body physicality and shamelessness (cf. Als (1998, p. 19) and Tait (2006)). His relation to the circus world, circus aesthetics and clowns in particular has not yet been unravelled.   6 For Leigh’s legacy, see Wilson 2007, p. 103, Engler 2008, p. 55, Zechlin 2008, p. 21; Cf. Day 2012. Bowery described his role at Taboo as ‘a sort of local cabaret act, I suppose – the original vaudeville drunkard’ (in Violette 1998, p. 17).   7 In circus contexts, clowns are defined by their eccentric movements, idiosyncratic looks and their ongoing struggles with the perfidities of (misused) objects (cf. Jürgens 2016, pp.  64–66). They also display a disrespectful attitude towards social

102   Anna-Sophie Jürgens conventions and taboos: ‘The clown then is an imposter, arrogating human dignity and status’ (Zucker 1967, p.  311). Nicola Bateman-­Bowery also remembers that ‘Leigh did have a strong affinity with freaks or people with any sort of disability that made them stand out’ (interview 11 July 2017).   8 Divine’s films Female Trouble (1974) and Pink Flamingo (1972) celebrate equivocal visual eroticism, multifaceted debauchery and an excess of icons of rebellion against (bourgeois) norms. The same could be said about The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I asked Nicola Bateman-­Bowery what Leigh thought of that cult movie and Franknfurter in particular. Her answer might surprise the reader:  Leigh was dismissive of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I think maybe because I thought it was a fantastic film, and Leigh deliberately liked to say that he disliked the things I liked just to be contrary, not because he meant it. Also people dressing up in suspenders was not his cup of tea, if there was any character I would say he identified with, it would be Eddie.  (Interview, 11 July 2017) Sue Tilley expands on Leigh’s aversion to drag:  He hated being called a drag queen as it certainly wasn’t what he was or wanted to be. He saw his “looks” as a new way to dress and a way to transform himself. He had as much interest in drag as any other gay man but it certainly wasn’t a consuming passion.  (Interview, 4 July 2017)   9 See Edna’s clown dimensions and cross-­dressing in circus contexts in relation to Australia and Dr Franknfurter in my forthcoming paper ‘Comic in suspenders: Jim Sharman’s circus worlds in The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show’ (Jürgens 2018). 10 See Tobias 2007. 11 For a discussion of circus in Bauhaus, see Scheper 1988, pp.  139–146; pp.  270–272 and Jürgens 2016, pp. 42–44. 12 Peta Tait also detects a ‘connection to the live tradition of theatre and circus’ in Bowery’s performance of defiant shamelessness and moving body, and discusses the location of his art of dressing the body within the history of theatre (2006, p. 219).

References Als, H., 1998. ‘Cruel story of youth’. Volette, R. (ed.) Leigh Bowery. London: Violette Editions, 10–25. Blyn, R., 2013. Freak-­Garde: Extraordinary Bodies and Revolutionary Art in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bowery, N., 1998. ‘Interviewed by Cerith Wyn Evans’. Volette, R. (ed.) Leigh Bowery. London: Violette Editions, 148–159. Bowery, L., 2016 [1989]. ‘Audience – in conversation with Richard Torry’. Getsy, D. (ed.) Queer (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art). Cambridge: MIT Press. Bronfen, E., 2008. ‘Being one’s body: the last diva Leigh Bowery’. Zechlin, R. (ed.) Leigh Bowery: Beautified Provocation. Heidelberg: Kehrer, 75–80. Carey, P., 1994. The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith. London: Faber and Faber. Cohen, A., 1982. ‘A sense of time, a sense of place: the meaning of close social association in Whalsay, Shetland’. Cohen, A. (ed.) Belonging: Identity and Social Organisation in British Rural Cultures. St. John’s: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 21–49.

Costumes of belonging   103 Day, E., 2012. David LaChapelle: ‘Fashion, beauty and glamour are the mark of civilisation’. Guardian, 19 February, viewed 6 February 2019 www.theguardian.com/artand design/2012/feb/19/david-­lachapelle-interview-­fashion-photography. Delanty, G., Wodak, R. and Jones, P., 2008. ‘Migration, discrimination and belonging in Europe’. Delanty, G., Wodak, R. and Jones, P. (eds) Identity, Belonging and Migration. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1–20. Elliott, W., 2006. The Pilo Family Circus. Sydney: ABC. Engler, M., 2008. ‘The multiple bodies of Leigh Bowery’. Zechlin, R. (ed.) Leigh Bowery: Beautified Provocation. Heidelberg: Kehrer. 55–60. Finkelstein, J. and Morgan, M., 2016. ‘Consumption’. Huppatz, K., Hawkins, M. and Matthews, A. (eds) Identity and Belonging. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 168–180. Granata, F., 2017. Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body. London: Tauris. Greer, F., 2005. Leigh Bowery Looks. London: Thames & Hudson. Hansen-­Löve, A., 2010. ‘Der Schein trügt: Kunstlügen und Lügenkünste – Dissimulationen’. Kohler, G-­B. (ed.) Blickwechsel: Perspektiven der slawischen Moderne. Vienna: Otto Sagner, 109–134. Healy, R., 2003. ‘Where the sun shines: Leigh Bowery the super-­fashion heavyweight’. Webb, V. (ed.) Take a Bowery – The Art and (Larger Than) Life of Leigh Bowery. Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 78–85. Hoare, P., 1995. Obituaries: Leigh Bowery. Independent, 5 January, viewed 6 February 2019 www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaries-­leigh-bowery-­1566637.html. Humphries, B., 1992. More Please. London: Viking. Huppatz, K., Hawkins, M. and Matthews, A., 2016. Identity and Belonging. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Huysmans, J-­K., 1977. A rebours. Paris: Gallimard. Jones, P. and Krzyzanowski, M., 2011. ‘Identity, belonging and migration: beyond constructing “others” ’. Delanty, G., Wodak, R. and Jones, P. (eds) Identity, Belonging and Migration. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 38–53. Jürgens, A-­S., 2011. Hermetische Liebesakrobatik: Joris-­Karl Huysmans’ Des Esseintes und Thomas Manns Felix Krull im Zirkus. SprachKunst: Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft Jahrgang, 42 (2), 271–300. Jürgens, A-­S., 2014. The Joker, a neo-­modern clown of violence. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 5 (4), 441–454. Jürgens, A-­S., 2016. Poetik des Zirkus: Die Ästhetik des Hyperbolischen im Roman. Heidelberg: Winter. Jürgens, A-­S., 2018. Comic in suspenders: Jim Sharman’s circus worlds in The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show. Journal of Australian Studies, 1–17. Lahr, J., 2000. Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilisation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Maynard, M., 2000. Out of Line: Australian Women and Style. Sydney: UNSW Press. Michaud, E., 1983. ‘Au Bauhaus: Modèles populaires et rééducation des masses’. Amiard-­ Chevrel, C. (ed.) Du cirque au théâtre. Lausanne: L’Age d’homme, 123–131. Millner, J., 2015. ‘Camouflage/fashion/ performance: a case study of Leigh Bowery’. Elias, A., Harley, R. and Tsoutas, N. (eds) Camouflage Cultures beyond the Art of Disappearance. Sydney: Sydney University Press. Scheper, D., 1988. Oskar Schlemmer, das triadische Ballett und die Bauhausbühne. Berlin: Akademie der Künste.

104   Anna-Sophie Jürgens Schmitt, C., 1993. Artistenkostüme: Zur Entwicklung der Zirkus- und Varietégarderobe im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Tait, P., 2005. Circus Bodies. Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance. New York: Routledge. Tait, P., 2006. ‘Performing shamelessness: Leigh Bowery, Copi and queer body physicality’. Kiernander, A., Bollen, J. and Parr, B. (eds) What a Man’s Gotta Do?: Masculinities in Performance. Armidale: CALLTS, 208–221. Tilley, S., 1997. Leigh Bowery: The Life and Times of an Icon. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Tobias, A., 2007. ‘The postmodern theatre clown’. Robb, D. (ed.) Clowns, Fools and Picaros: Popular Forms in Theatre, Fiction and Film. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Violette, R., 1998. Leigh Bowery. London: Violette Editions. Weihe, R., 2004. Die Paradoxie der Maske: Geschichte einer Form. München: Fink. Weihe, R., 2016. ‘Die Paradoxie des Clowns: sieben Spielformen’. Weihe, R. (ed.) Über den Clown. Bielefeld: transcript. Wilson, E., 2007. A note on glamour. Fashion Theory, 11 (1), 95–108. Zechlin, R., 2008. Leigh Bowery: Beautified Provocation. Heidelberg: Kehrer. Zucker, W.M., 1967. The clown as the lord of disorder. Theology Today, 24 (3), 306–317.

Chapter 7

Beyond human (un)belonging Intimacies and the impersonal in Black Mirror Clare Southerton and Miranda Bruce

Introduction Both in popular and academic discourse, human belonging has been conceptualised as under threat in imagined futures that are increasingly mediated by technologies. These objects are positioned as obstacles to, or corruptors of, human intimacy. Examining intersections of popular culture and lived experience, we draw from qualitative interviews with smartphone users and episodes of the series Black Mirror to discuss dominant narratives of device culture producing a problematic intimacy that revokes our belonging to future human communities. We examine the ways in which belonging is understood in relation to contemporary technologies through the spectre of a future of unbelonging. However, we propose that these accounts do not demonstrate only melancholic imagining of a loss of human intimacy, but rather also gesture towards new forms of intimacy. Finally, we propose a rethinking of intimacy, via philosopher Gilbert Simondon, which allows us to imagine how non-­human belonging might refigure technological futures.

Desiring a human future Technological futures tend to be imagined as deeply human affairs. While the focus of this chapter is primarily on the notion of understandings of human belonging as it is imagined in popular culture, academic discourse is also pre­ occupied with what connections between human beings will look like in an  increasingly technological future. Though sociological understandings of belonging have focused more broadly on questions of citizenship, locality, community and identity (Savage et al. 2004, Huppatz et al. 2015), when it comes to questions around futures of belonging the concept of intimacy becomes an important one. In particular, debates surrounding the role of communication technologies have become entangled with the question of intimacy when future forms of belonging and sociality are imagined. Though sociologists have long been interested in the changing nature of intimate relationships in the context of economic and social changes associated with contemporary

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capitalism (see for example Giddens 1992), recent scholarship in digital sociology has contended that technological changes in human communication are starting to significantly impact intimate relationships, and ultimately reform how belonging is constituted (Licoppe 2004, Turkle 2011, 2015, Hjorth et al. 2012, Green and Singleton 2013). Though there has been significant variation in what constitutes intimacy both historically and contextually (Frank et al. 2013), intimacy in the sociological tradition has tended to be based on an idea of familiarity and closeness, including physical proximity and emotional contact, as well as the as well as the social recognition of the relationship (Jamieson 2011). Very recent work by Forstie (2017) puts forward an interdisciplinary framework which calls for more dynamic questions about what constitutes the intimate, given how intimacy is transformed by mediation through technologies. However, as we will go on to discuss, much of the present debate around intimacy in a technologically enabled future is focused solely on the capacity of technology either to facilitate human belonging and connection or to undermine it. In contrast, following Vanessa May (2011), we reject such a privileging of belonging over unbelonging and instead seek to trace the novel forms of belonging and unbelonging formed through intimate relations with technologies. Scholars who have identified technological change – in particular, digital communication technologies – as threatening existing practices of belonging have focused on how these technologies take the places usually occupied by social actors in intimate interactions. Sherry Turkle (2015, p.  7) argues that digitally mediated social interactions, which increasingly stand in for face-­toface interactions, in fact, produce the ‘illusion of friendship without the demands of intimacy’. A consequence of what Turkle has termed the ‘flight from conversation’ facilitated by the rise of communication technologies like instant messaging and social media is a crisis of empathy. She (2011, 2015) concedes that technologically mediated interactions can supplement the face-­toface; however, she emphasises that these relations cannot and should not be prioritised over the possibility of interaction with physically proximate actors. Turkle’s concerns mirror popular debate around communication technologies, which can be found in news articles touting the negative impact of smartphones and tablets on social life (Walters 2015, Arlington 2016, Brody 2017) or the popularity of ‘digital detox’, described as a process of ‘disconnecting from technology in order to reconnect with yourself and others’ (Edrich 2014). Despite the popularity of such accounts, other scholars contend that, though these devices do have the capacity to draw attention away from co-­present social interactions, they are also a valuable tool for managing relationships and constituting new forms of intimacy. Eileen Green and Carrie Singleton (2013) argue that mobile devices constitute new relations of belonging by fostering intimate connections between users. Christian Licoppe (2004, p. 136) contends that instant messaging facilitates connections with absent others ‘in which the boundaries of absence and presence eventually get blurred’. In the wake of

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growing popularity of locative dating apps like Grindr, which use GPS in combination with other sources of data to identify potential partners who are nearby, Licoppe (2016) claims that these constitute hybrid spaces in which digital intimacies with strangers coexist with co-­present reality. Kate Crawford (2009) argues that new social media platforms like Twitter can facilitate intimate connections with strangers through the documenting of mundane happenings as individuals enact intimacy in the digital public space. Intimacy with the device itself, in the form of customisation, adaptation and affection, has also preoccupied academic research, with scholars considering the capacities of technological objects to become objects invested with significant emotional attachment. Hjorth (2006, p.  30) argues that the performance of identity through the fetishisation of the device highlights the way that we ‘domesticate technologies as much as they domesticate us’. However, this intimacy with, and attachment to, the device has largely been conceptualised as a consequence of its role as a mediator of intimacy with others and as a repository of personal information and data (Lasén 2004, 2014, Vincent 2006). For all these accounts, whether the mobile digital device is a facilitator of intimacy or a participant in its own right, the intimacy that is generated is a personal one, appropriated from human sociality. Whether these scholars seek to defend intimacy in the face of the mobile digital device or see the potential for new forms of intimacy between users of mobile digital devices, intimacy is figured in solely personal terms. For those who argue that the rise of smartphones and tablets presents a threat to intimacy through their capacity to disrupt, displace and replace it, human intimacy remains an inherent good that provides social actors with an ethical foundation (Ling and McEwen 2010, Turkle 2011, 2015). Furthermore, this apparent lack of intimacy in new devices fuels the fear of a technological future to which we cannot belong; a future of unbelonging. While others have argued that devices can to act as a tool for social interaction rather than only as a barrier, these perspectives remain oriented by an understanding of the social as the sphere of human-­to-human interaction and defend an intimacy defined in solely human terms, leaving the immanent potentiality of impersonal forces unthought. Discussions around belonging in future in the context of the technological, as we have outlined here, seek to establish whether human intimacy can be retained in light of new digital social practices. Forms of belonging that are not oriented around human-­to-human connection, not around the personal but the impersonal, are considered a dystopian future to be feared. We argue that this turn from the personal to the impersonal – from human-­centric moralism to the ontological indifference of non-­human forces (Hynes 2016 for more on indifference) – might be a productive way of rethinking human–technological relations in the present so that we may avoid a dystopian future.

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Black Mirror and bad intimacy Before delving into the question of impersonal intimacy and what it might look like, we will show how the focus on intimacy in personal terms is echoed in popular visions of a technological future, as well as in everyday habits. We turn to qualitative interviews with smartphone users, as well as episodes from the popular TV series Black Mirror, to consider how anxiety around technological intimacy becomes directly connected to visions of a future where we will not, or cannot, belong. The series has been understood as a ‘dystopia of the present’, praised for revealing the more threatening potentials of contemporary, technologically enabled consumer capitalism (Sculos 2017, p.  2). It has been positioned as a warning against currents of unbelonging in the present, specifically afforded by the new connections to devices and technological spaces, which undermine human connection (Singh 2014). As Greg Singh (2014, p.  121) argues, the series often positions its characters as ‘misrecognising the relationships they have with other people, and therefore feeling the bite of their alienated existence’. Bad intimacies, forms of belonging undone and tainted by the intrusion of screens and circuits, are the fertile ground of popular anxieties from which Black Mirror grows. In Black Mirror, the future is never placed too far away; it is very much just inside the periphery of the present. In each of its vignettes (many of which appear to occur within the same universe, or similar ones at least), the social world is constituted by new and deliberately technological modes of human intimacy. The series focuses on integration, the now-­established trope that signals a technological future; smartphones are thinner, translucent and implanted. New technologies are closely intermingled with the bodies of their human hosts, and the narratives of the series tug at already present anxieties about what human belonging means in digitally mediated times. Charlie Brooker, the main scriptwriter for Black Mirror, has described the series as existing ‘between [the] delight and discomfort’ proffered by the endless technologies we humans have chosen to ‘embrace’: I relish this stuff. I coo over gadgets, take delight in each new miracle app.  Like an addict, I check my Twitter timeline the moment I wake up. And often I wonder: is all this really good for me? For us? None of these things have been foisted upon humankind – we’ve merrily embraced them. But where is it all leading? If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-­effects? (Brooker 2011) Brooker’s statement reflects a sense of a technological future that is somewhat uncertain and potentially hostile. By referring to technology as a drug, Brooker connects technological pleasures to other so-­called ‘anti-­social’ practices like drug and alcohol abuse (Brooker 2011), suggesting at least in part that the

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enjoyment of technology must carefully indulged, lest it disrupt or corrupt our otherwise pro-­social belonging to each other. Although intimacy is not at all absent in Black Mirror, its critique weighs heavily on how technologically mediated intimacy translates into new – often alienating – social forms. ‘Fifteen Million Merits’ (Black Mirror 2011a), an episode that critiques the popularity of talent shows and shock-­value entertainment, exposes the intimate sacrifices and inevitable hypocrisy of surviving under late technological capitalism. ‘San Junipero’ (Black Mirror 2016a), which imagines how technological advancement might intervene with death, illness and fantasy through virtual reality, decries the corporate control of memories, sex and love via the nostalgia market. ‘The National Anthem’ (Black Mirror 2011b) and ‘White Bear’ (Black Mirror 2013) both explore the ultimate ends of the media-­enabled nation-­wide obsession with schadenfreude – one by bringing the viewer uncomfortably close to non-­consensual intimacy, and the other to a world where intimacy is promised, hoped for and then violently refused. In Black Mirror intimacy is the underlying object that ought to orient social life, but its not-­too-distant futures are disoriented from this ideal. The ‘White Christmas’ episode (Black Mirror 2014) particularly explores the potential for technology to physically alienate and separate humans from each other. In this episode, technologically enhanced eyes integrate photography, videography, social media and smartphone capacities into the eye itself. A feature of this is the capacity of individuals to ‘block’ each other using this technology. In the dystopian world of Black Mirror, this involves the actual complete blocking process by which the two individuals cannot see or hear each other. Blocking, then, becomes the manifestation of technological intervention in human intimacy, severing human connection and introducing a novel form of unbelonging. In the episode, one of the characters, Joe Potter, is blocked by his girlfriend during a breakup and gives this description: When there’s a block, you can’t even wallow properly. You can’t switch it off. You can’t take the Zed-­Eyes out. And it doesn’t just block them; it blocks every image of them. So every memory I had of her was vandalised. (Black Mirror 2014) Describing memories of his girlfriend as ‘vandalised’, Joe establishes the ability of these devices not only to intervene in his future capacity to form intimacy but indeed to materially damage his existing intimate relations in their existence as memories. This technology is so rupturing that it severs existing and established relations of belonging as well as preventing new forms of human connection. Joe’s reference to the irreversibility of the technology is also significant here as it gestures towards an anxiety about the future that has already been initiated and cannot be undone.

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Black Mirror has been praised for its ability to pluck out the most poignant modern anxieties and massage them into a wholly believable and uncannily familiar world. It is easy to see a thread of the inspiration for ‘blocking’ when we turn to the emerging narratives from our qualitative interviews with smartphone users, as participants reflect on their close encounters with technological objects. While Black Mirror offers insight into the dominant cultural narratives about the changes new technologies are making to relations of human belonging, these interviews allowed us to become attuned to the ways these narratives crystalise at a micro level. The kinds of anxieties the series responds to emerged in our interviews, as well as the more ambiguous moments of desire for the object that, as we will discuss, urge a rethinking of existing intimacy itself. One participant, Alexander, was concerned about the impact mobile digital devices were having on his interactions with friends as he recalled social situations in which the objects had become a distraction that took attention away from human actors. In the interview, he explained the way the device came to be an obstacle in intimate relationships: Like sometimes it also creates a barrier between people, like if you just … you’re talking to someone and they’re just constantly on their phone … not listening to anything you’re saying, you know? Alexander identifies the smartphone, and their ubiquitous and habitual use, as an intervention in proper relations of intimacy. Like the ‘blocking’ envisaged in Black Mirror, the smartphone here is described as a ‘barrier’ that disrupts the intimate relations that constitute human belonging. Though entertainment devices like videogames have faced similar criticisms, technologies that mediate communication, like smartphones and earlier mobile phones, have been particularly associated with this criticism as they may draw attention away from co-­ present interactions to interactions mediated through the device. Anxieties around their allure emerged for participants, as they attempted to manage their desire for the device, on the one hand, with their sense of appropriate use on the other. One participant, Caleb, felt that his practice of ‘checking’ his smartphone, to see if he had received any new messages or notifications, was excessive and ultimately unhealthy, though his admission was accompanied by laughter. He playfully acknowledged his desire to check the device and the ways in which his anxiety about this desire had led to him changing his behaviour, at the same time as holding this change in tension with moments in which his desire for the device continues to prevail. Discussing his sense that the practice of checking was interfering in what he saw as the appropriate social practices that constitute human belonging, Caleb focused on his desire to reach for the device: Caleb: 

Uhh … I think I check it way too much. For sure. At home. I try … I’ve really tried to cut back on using it in public.

Beyond human (un)belonging   113 Interviewer:  And why is that? Caleb:  I just … when I’m with people

I like to be with them. And I could see myself … I could see it getting out of hand … I still … if I’m waiting or on my own I still pull it out. I could probably avoid that as well. (Laughs).

Caleb talks about his habitual use of his smartphone – ‘still pull[ing] it out’ even when he’s on his own – as problematic, something he’s trying to ‘cut back on’, because it prevents him from being with people. In this scenario, his habits mediate his sense of belonging. Specifically, technological habit excludes him from human company. Caleb conceptualises the draw of the device in similar terms to Brooker, as almost drug-­like and needing to be managed to preserve healthy sociality. The excessive intimacy between digital technologies like smartphones and their users, characterised by the reach for the device, becomes a centre trope in ‘Hated in the Nation’ (Black Mirror 2016b), which critiques the role of mobile devices and social media in enabling and fuelling ‘call-­out-culture’ bullying. In one scene, reflecting on the change in the adoption of smartphones, one character, Karin Parke, remarks ‘I’m old enough to remember when people walked around with that stuff just tucked away in their heads’ (Black Mirror 2016b). In doing so she constructs a historical narrative in which human beings are increasingly alienated from their own cognitive capacities. To this statement her partner Blue replies ‘But now they can’t help but entrust it to their little companions. These things absorb who we are, they know everything about us’ (Black Mirror 2016b). Here the smartphone is not only replacing the ‘appropriate’ human social actor in relations of intimacy but is also treated suspiciously as a potentially dangerous and untrustworthy character. The knowledge the devices have of their human companions is considered excessive and extreme, a kind of perversion of intimacy that marks it as inhuman. In both Black Mirror and our participants’ narratives, intimacy with technology poses a threat to the bonds of belonging with other human beings. Like both Brooker’s and Joe Potter’s, Caleb’s statement inclines towards an imagined future. His comment, ‘I could see it getting out of hand’, suggests a sense of danger in the present. The anxiety that underpins this statement, and that which Black Mirror comes from, is the feeling that we will not belong to the humans of the future because we are losing the desire to belong to each other. Technology, as it is encountered in the present, is the bearer of this impersonal relation between fellow humans, and between humans and their futures. If we reclaim that desire, Black Mirror suggests, then perhaps we will make space for human belonging in an otherwise technologically saturated future. Belonging is constituted here as a wholly human property, and it is the future of unbelonging that is conjured up as one in which belonging and intimacies are constituted readily between objects and their users.

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Individuation, the impersonal and intimacy Belonging and intimacy, then, have been conceptualised as a capacity of human inter-­subject relations, and the kinds of questions posed about these relations remain tied to these understandings. As this chapter has explored so far, this reductive understanding of intimacy is demonstrated within academic literature, as well as popular discourse and narratives. In such analyses, the questions posed about belonging, and how belonging may be constituted in the future, can only be moral ones that see intimacy as an inherent good to be defended. To imagine ways we might belong otherwise, we must think outside these limited terms. To this end, we turn to the work of Gilbert Simondon, French philosopher of the mid-­twentieth century who took as his problem the souring relationship between humans, technology and progress.1 Industrialisation was delivering its promised efficiency, but failing to produce the utopian social relations that had been long assured by politicians, philosophers, writers and artists. Although opposed to ‘facile humanism’, Simondon’s goal was to develop a philosophy of technology that could nurture human interest and allow societies and communities to flourish. To achieve this, Simondon argued, the idea that new technologies are fundamentally socially alienating must be abandoned. Alienation and social conflict was an increasingly extreme characteristic of industrial societies, yes, but to blame this on the technologies of industrialisation is ‘caused by a misunderstanding of technology’ (Chabot 2003, p. 41 emphasis added). Simondon attributes this misunderstanding to a bad conception of the individual and how it exists. He specifically blames classical philosophies which attempt to explain the individual as a simple process of a force acting upon a pre-­formed body: ‘first there is the principle of individuation, then this principle undertakes an operation of individuation, and finally, the constituted individual appears’ (Simondon 2009a, p. 5). According to this basic assumption, the individual can be understood and explained by starting with a collection of matter (a person, a chemical substance, a community) and working backwards to discover the forces that have imposed themselves upon it (an economy, an attraction of atoms, a feeling). Simondon (2009b, p. 4) argues that this back-­thinking approach ‘run[s] the risk of … not placing the individual into the system of reality in which the individuation occurs’, and that it gives ‘an ontological privilege to the constituted individual’. This is a problem for Simondon because, under this ontology, both humans and technologies are treated as products whose histories are self-­ evident, and whose environments are only sideshows to the main event of the individual and their identity. It is the very idea that humans and technologies are separately constituted that creates the problematic relation between humans and technologies. Thus, according to Simondon, it is not technology that intervenes into intimacy; it is the personal. In order to circumvent this bad relation, Simondon argues that we should view individuals ‘ontogenetically’, as always in the process of becoming an individual, and always being involved in other

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bodies’ individuation. Though this chapter cannot cover the entirety of Simondon’s theory, we will sketch out some of his main ideas here. Individuation requires three things: organic or inorganic bodies, an environment (or milieu) and a form of communication between these. Together, these form a regime of individuation, which both produces and is produced by the resulting individual: ‘[w]hat communicate are not subjects between themselves, but regimes of individuation that meet’ (Debaise 2012, p.  7). What fuels this regime is the ‘pre-­individual’ forces, which ‘pre-­exist and make possible the emergence of individuality’; they ‘predate’ and ‘constitute’ the individual, its ongoing set of potentials, and its environment or milieu (Grosz 2012, p.  38). Simondon famously likens the pre-­individual to the saline solution in which a crystal grows; exactly which path and form the crystal takes is not a matter of conscious intention, but of the resolution of the differences, incompatibilities and tensions that exist in the saline solution (the varying levels of density, the dispersion of salt in the liquid, the positive and negative pressures of air, etc.). Similarly, a human individual emerges from its milieu according to the incompatibilities, differences and tensions in which it is embroiled, which always include a vast multitude of non-­human (including technological) forces and bodies. This is not to say that an individual’s milieu is a-­historical. Rather, where we might think of someone’s personal history as a resource for becoming an individual, the pre-­individual exists irrespective of intention. It has no ‘purpose-­ giver’ to direct it towards a goal or form; it only works towards its next provisional solution of competing forces (Grosz 2012, p.  53). In this way, the pre-­individual and the process of individuation as a whole is largely impersonal. Thus, the human–technological relationship is not a problem of the clash between human and technical interests or histories, which leads to the misunderstanding that technology intervenes in human relationships. Instead, it is a problem of how different regimes of individuation come into communication, and what relations emerge from a fundamentally impersonal but deeply singular set of potentials. Simondon can thereby be used to reframe the problem of intimacy as a problem of how we conceive of the individual in the first place. This approach renders the kind of thinking that draws firm distinctions between technological objects and their users untenable, significantly intervening in questions around how relations of belonging are constituted with technology. Simondon’s approach is completely antithetical to the common sense and traditional sociological approach to technological intimacy because he rejects the presupposition of pre-­existing individuals whose intimacy can only be measured by closeness and distance. This also means that the question of whether technology is a barrier to intimacy is no longer useful because both the human and the technological emerge from the same set of forces. There are only the conditions of human-­technological relations, which are less or more likely to emerge depending on the milieu and the pre-­individual forces found therein.

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As we have argued, social life is not constituted by fully determined individuals. Rather, individuals are never fully individuated, always retaining an unactualised potential, a ‘pre-­individual nature’. Simondon (1992) argues that to understand these processes of individuation, the constituted individual cannot be the focus of analysis. The individual cannot offer insight, as it ‘does not represent the totality of the being’ and is only a partial and temporary actualisation of potentiality (Simondon 1992, p. 300). In this respect, the question of the human–technological relation must be understood as something other than the belonging between subjects-­and-subjects or subjects-­and-objects, since the relation always precedes, and is always more than, the subjects and objects that result from it.

Rethinking intimacy with impersonality Black Mirror showcases an anxiety about future unbelonging as a result of alienation; the blame for which, as discussed above, tends to be put on technological devices and the human habits that allow this alienation to spread. Re-­reading Black Mirror through Simondon, alienation changes from an inevitable result of human–technological relations, to an avoidable misunderstanding of the relation itself. If we take seriously the challenges Simondon makes to our understandings of the individual, then how might moments in which we find ourselves intimately enmeshed with digital devices be rethought? If these intimacies have been popularly understood as heralding a future in which human belonging is under threat, how might they be understood if what ‘belongs’ to the human is far less clear? Despite the ease with which Black Mirror can be read as a humanist reframing of the problem of technology, it can just as easily be read as a story that introduces the possibility of the new. For all the implicit (and explicit) critique of current habits and politics around the use of devices in Black Mirror, its episodes also relocate the source of discomfort these devices generate from human actors to relations. Many of the episodes force the viewer to confront the intimate relations in which they and their device are constituted. In the world of ‘Nosedive’ (Black Mirror 2016c), each social encounter comes with the opportunity to ‘rate’ the quality of the interaction from 1 to 5, with each person having an individual overall ‘score’. We follow Lacie Pound, a socialite with a thoroughly average score, who attempts to climb her way up the ranking system by attending a high-­ranking wedding. Of course, her journey to the reception is pitted with disaster. After getting into a shouting argument with a flight attendant, her score has dropped from 4.2 to 3.1, which means she’s unable to access most basic transport and is forced to hitch a ride with a truck driver with an abysmal score of 1.4. Eventually, Lacie recounts her story to the driver Susan Taylor, who asks: Susan: ‘How did Lacie: ‘Awful.’

it feel?’

Beyond human (un)belonging   117 Susan: ‘I meant the yelling.’ Lacie: ‘I don’t know. I was mad.

Look at where it got me …’ (Black Mirror 2016c)

Over the rest of their late night drive, Susan gives Lacie – and the audience – a glimpse back into the possibility of a world without an economy of ratings, a world in which trust is gained and maintained through simple and unmediated human interaction: between two women, at night, driving down an empty highway. The encounter seems to touch Lacie, and when Susan drops her off, we see that something has changed in her. She arrives finally at the reception, covered in mud, and delivers a damning tirade against the bride who, as it turns out, only wanted her there to boost her own rating. Lacie is disgracefully escorted out of the wedding and thrown into jail. Up until this point, Nosedive accords with the usual narrative of technologies (and the bad social forms they enable) intervening in intimacy, which we have critiqued above. However, the final scene in the episode offers an alternative and far more impersonal comment on what exactly devices do to the possibility of intimacy. As Lacie is in jail after her outburst at the wedding and rejection from society, she outstretches her hand to another inmate in a cell across from her and attempts to rate him. However, she finds her hand is empty, her device is gone, and she can only make the thumb gesture towards a ‘1’. A moment later, he makes the same gesture back. They exchange profanities and insults, finding pleasure in the release and freedom from the social order they are now rejected from. In their shared exuberance, Lacie and the inmate introduce the possibility of repurposing the rating economy from a source of sadness and shame into a joyful act of rejection. In a Simondonian sense, the emphasis is shifted from the individuals involved – Lacie, the wedding, the betraying bride, the smartphone, the rating economy, the inmate – to the way the relation between these individuals has crystallised. The thumb-­flick gesture is, in one sense, a damning critique of the embodiment of an oppressive social regime. However, from an impersonal viewpoint, it is also a solution to the problem of strained social interaction; a solution that results in the greater communication, relation and therefore belonging between two individuals and their milieu. In Simondonian terms, what emerges from their pre-­individualities (the thumb flick) puts their  regimes of individuation into direct communication – which, regardless of the personal identities involved, creates a novel relation wherein there is belonging. Like Lacie experiences in the jail, moments with interview participants also gesture towards these relations between individuals and their milieu, to the habitual inclinations towards the device and the conditions that are conducive to this new kind of intimacy. Indeed, drawing on Simondon’s understanding of social life as constituted by individuals who are never fully individuated, we can  see the kinds of relations of intimacy constituted between users, their environments and their devices as actualising potentials into new and ongoing

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individuations. As one participant, Elle, explains, the close connection with the device reconstituted her sense of what belonged to her body: Yeah, it’s just like so automatic! It is the first thing I put in my bag … It’s almost like you’ve lost a limb! Like, strange. And then you’re like … wrecked. I’m always really anxious about it. Describing the feeling of forgetting a device as like losing a limb, Elle makes reference to the new modes of embodiment that the device makes possible through the routines and repetitions of use. These impersonal relations crystallise in these moments of close proximity with the device or even in its sudden absence, making possible new belongings that are not oriented around human connection but rather are a property of these impersonal relations themselves. For Elle, the absence of the device drew her attention to herself as co-­constituted with the device and to the everyday routines of carrying the device close to her that create the conditions for this relation. Again, the issues proposed by Nosedive and Elle’s forgotten smartphone can seem at first like a problem of the human – the human ignoring the human in favour of the technological, for example. However, as we have shown, there is always more than ‘the human’ and ‘the technological’ happening in these encounters, because individuation is always more than identity, and exceeds the realm of the personal. Imagined futures abrim with melancholic unbelonging, heralded by the dreaded device, are still ontologically rife with the conditions for new intimacies; it is a matter of looking to the impersonal and unhuman gestures, relations, and belongings which crystallise in the present.

Impersonal futures ‘Jesus, I didn’t expect to find myself living in the future, but here I fucking well am.’ (‘Hated in the Nation’, Black Mirror 2016b)

Karin Parke:

At the end of an essay in Bad Feminist (2014), Roxane Gay chronicles the difficulties of trying to find a place for herself in her work, in popular media, in feminism and in her own life. She concludes with a wish: ‘There are times when I wish finding community was as simple as entering some personal information and letting an algorithm show me where I belong’ (2014, p. 14). Similarly, in the Black Mirror episode ‘Hang the DJ’ (Black Mirror 2017), a young couple in an intensive dating programme are forced to escape in order to be together, only to discover that they are only one of 1000 simulations fabricated by a dating app algorithm – a virtual test-­run to see whether the real couple would be compatible in the real world. As the thousandth successful test-­run, they dissolve and the ‘real’ couple is officially ‘matched’.

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Ultimately Gay decides that the human social problems that have led to her lack of belonging – institutionalised racism, sexism, etc. – cannot be made finite enough to be calculated and solved, and that ‘perhaps I am not looking for an algorithm at all’ (2014, p. 14). Black Mirror shows us a future in which our intimacies can, at least in simulation, become finite enough to solve the problem of belonging; and while the episode ends with the real couple smiling at each other from across the room, there is the lingering unease of a thousand lives cut short in service of just two. Both laments strike a familiar chord: we desire a future in which technology can help us belong, and yet we resent that technology for being incapable of and inadequate to our desires, and to the future itself. What we suggest here is a rethinking of intimacy and the impersonal in a way that re-­figures human–technological relations in the present so that the future is not automatically a space of unbelonging. An impersonal future allows the human and the technological not only to coexist but to co-­individuate. Simondon does not redeem our technological futures into one that is happily intimate. Rather, he allows us to identify the cause of unbelonging as something other than the technological device itself – and thereby to create the possibility of a technological future that is not always-­already hostile to human intimacies. What must be rethought in order to consider the future of intimacy is that belonging itself may not actually belong to the human.

Note 1 Though Simondon’s work predates mobile communication technology, we take up his rethinking of the ontological status of the individual in order to understand the ways in which technologies and bodies are always already co-­constituted.

References Arlington, K., 2016. This is why you can’t put your phone down. This is what it’s doing to you. The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March. Black Mirror, 2011a. Episode 1, Season 2, Fifteen Million Merits. Netflix, Channel 4. 12 November. Black Mirror, 2011b. Episode 1, Season 1, The National Anthem. Netflix, Channel 4. 4 December. Black Mirror, 2013. Episode 2, Season 1, White Bear. Netflix, Channel 4. 18 February. Black Mirror, 2014. Episode 7, Season 2, White Christmas. Netflix, Channel 4. 16 December. Black Mirror, 2016a. Episode 3, Season 4, San Junipero. Netflix, Netflix. 21 October. Black Mirror, 2016b. Episode 6, Season 3, Hated in the Nation. Netflix, Netflix. 21 October. Black Mirror, 2016c. Episode 1, Season 3, Nosedive. Netflix, Netflix. 21 October. Black Mirror, 2017. Episode 4, Season 4, Hang the DJ. Netflix, Netflix. 29 December. Brody, J.E., 2017. Hooked on our smartphones. New York Times, 9 January. Brooker, C., 2011. Charlie Brooker: the dark side of our gadget addiction. Guardian, 1 December.

120   Clare Southerton and Miranda Bruce Chabot, P., 2003. The Philosophy of Simondon: Between Technology and Individuation. London: Bloomsbury. Crawford, K., 2009. ‘These foolish things: on intimacy and insignificance in mobile media’. Goggin, G. and Hjorth, L. (eds) Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media. New York: Routledge, 252–266. Debaise, D., 2012. What is relational thinking? Inflexions, 5, 1–11. Edrich, C., 2014. What you gain by ditching your smartphone. The Huffington Post, 7 October. Forstie, C., 2017. A new framing for an old sociology of intimacy. Sociology Compass, 11 (4), 1–14. Frank, A., Clough, P.T. and Seidman, S., 2013. ‘Introduction’. Frank, A., Clough P.T. and Seidman, S. (eds) Intimacies: A New World of Relational Life. London: Routledge. Gay, R., 2014. Bad Feminist. New York: Harper Collins. Giddens, A., 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Green, E. and Singleton, C., 2013. ‘ “Gendering the digital”: the impact of gender and technology perspectives on the sociological imagination’. Orton-­Johnson, K. and Prior, N. (eds) Digital Sociology: Critical Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 34–50. Grosz, E., 2012. ‘Identity and individuation: some feminist reflections’. De Boever, A., Murray, A., Roffe, J. and Woodward, A. (eds) Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 37–56. Hjorth, L., 2006. Postal presence: a case study of mobile customisation and gender in Melbourne. Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 19 (2), 29–40. Hjorth, L., Wilken, R. and Gu, K., 2012. ‘Ambient intimacy: a case study of the iPhone, presence, and location-­based social media in Shanghai, China’. Hjorth, L., Burgess, J. and Richardson, I. (eds) Studying Mobile Media: Cultural Technologies, Mobile Communication, and the iPhone. New York: Routledge, 43–62. Huppatz, K., Hawkins, M. and Matthews, A., 2015. Identity and Belonging. Basingstoke: Macmillan International Higher Education. Hynes, M., 2016. Indifferent by nature: a post-­humanist reframing of the problem of indifference. Environment and Planning A, 48 (1), 24–39. Jamieson, L., 2011. Intimacy as a concept: explaining social change in the context of globalisation or another form of ethnocentricism? Sociological Research Online, 16 (4), 15. Lasén, A., 2004. Affective technologies – emotions and mobile phones. Receiver, Vodaphone, 11. Lasén, A., 2014. ‘Mobile sentimental education: attachment, recognition, and modulation of intimacy’. Goggin, G. and Hjorth, L (eds) Routledge Companion to Mobile Media. New York: Routledge, 396–405. Licoppe, C., 2004. ‘Connected’ presence: the emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in a changing communication technoscape. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22 (1), 135–156. Licoppe, C., 2016. Mobilities and urban encounters in public places in the age of locative media. seams, folds, and encounters with ‘pseudonymous strangers’. Mobilities, 11 (1), 99–116. Ling, R. and McEwen, R., 2010. Mobile communication and ethics: implications of everyday actions on social order. Etikk i praksis – Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics, 4 (2), 11–26.

Beyond human (un)belonging   121 May, V., 2011. Self, belonging and social change. Sociology, 45 (3), 363–378. Savage, M., Bagnall, G. and Longhurst, B.J., 2004. Globalization and Belonging. London: SAGE Publications. Sculos, B.W., 2017. Screen savior: how Black Mirror reflects the present more than the future. Class, Race and Corporate Power, 5 (1), 1–4. Simondon, G., 1992. ‘Genesis of the individual’. Crary, J. and Kwinter, S. (eds), Cohen, M. and Kwinter, S. (trans.) Incorporations. New York: Zone Books, 296–320. Simondon, G., 2009a [1989]. L’individuation psychique et collective. Paris: Editions Aubier. Simondon, G., 2009b. The position of the problem of ontogenesis. Parrhesia, 7 (1), 4–16. Singh, G., 2014. Recognition and the image of mastery as themes in Black Mirror (Channel 4, 2011-present): an eco-­Jungian approach to ‘always-­on’ culture. International Journal of Jungian Studies, 6 (2), 120–132. Turkle, S., 2011. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books. Turkle, S., 2015. Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. New York: Penguin Books. Vincent, J., 2006. Emotional attachment and mobile phones. Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 19 (1), 39–44. Walters, J., 2015. Tablets and smartphones may affect social and emotional development, scientists speculate. Guardian, 2 February.

Chapter 8

Belonging, place and identity in the twenty-­first century Julia Bennett

Introduction I really liked the work in a solicitor’s office … so much so … if I’d have been a boy I would have been a solicitor ‘cos there was no such thing as a girl, a female solicitor then. (Beryl, 77, 2010) I’d quite like to be a solicitor, ‘cos that’s what the law leads to, ‘cos that’s what I want to be. [In my work experience] I worked in a solicitor’s office. (Lauren, Beryl’s granddaughter, 16, 2010) There have been many changes in education and opportunities across class and gender since Beryl went to school in Wigan, UK, in the 1940s. After leaving school when she was 15 she took a shorthand and typing course paid for by her father before taking a job in a solicitor’s office in Wigan. In contrast, her granddaughter Lauren went to a Catholic primary and high school and then an OFSTED1 ‘outstanding’ rated sixth form college, before attending a prestigious university a good distance from home. However, rather than going into a graduate job, Lauren, already saddled with considerable student debt (she was part of the first cohort with the £9000 fees in England), is planning to borrow more to take a Master’s degree. The job opportunities in the UK in the area Lauren wants to work in are almost all in London or the Southeast, where the cost of accommodation is prohibitive on the low salary she could earn as an intern or in a junior position. With parents unable to support her financially, her options are therefore limited. Beryl had few choices in life – it has pretty much happened to her. She followed the expected course of a feminised office job and then marriage and children before taking on another administrative role. For Lauren, on the other hand, individual choice underpins her life and the success or failure of that life is deemed to depend upon the choices she makes. The choices she has made so far have taken her away from home and family both geographically and, to some

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extent, socially. These changes – from a largely unreflexive life embedded within a generational cohort which saw ‘absolute social mobility’ (Boliver and Byrne 2013) to the current individualised generation of reflexive individuals where social mobility is relative – are the focus of this chapter. Gaining a degree promises upward social mobility but can also reproduce the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic advantage and marginalise those who do not continue beyond compulsory schooling. The impact that social mobility can have on people’s sense of belonging in place is explored through the life stories of families in Wigan, UK. The two biographical vignettes above are an illustration of some of the changes that have taken place over the last 60 years, particularly in gender equality, but also the continuing discrepancies in opportunities based on regional and economic location. Beryl benefitted from ‘absolute mobility’ in moving ‘up’ with her generational cohort. At the same time, her family have managed to remain in Wigan for their entire lives: no geographical mobility has been required for improvements in education and housing (Savage et al. 2005, 2010). Lauren, on the other hand, belongs to a generation where social mobility has stagnated and she anticipates struggling to be relatively (economically) socially mobile among her cohort, despite her academic success. The reproduction of social class across generations is complicated by extended youth transitions, exorbitant housing costs in some areas and high levels of student debt, as well as the more positive changes of increased access to higher education and far greater gender equality. Using family history narratives embedded within a local context allows for ‘descriptions of feelings’ and ‘dreams of lives that might have been’ (Bertaux and Thompson 1996, p. 7) to examine belonging and social mobility in a detailed and meaningful way. Following principles laid out by Bertaux and Thompson (1996), this chapter will show how accepted conventions of an individualised late-­modern life can be subverted through a strong sense of family and local belonging.

Uprooting Although Bourdieu himself wrote little about place, his concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ have a place dimension. These constructs have been used by others in looking at social class, belonging and place identity, notably Savage et al. (2005) and Robertson (2013). Habitus refers to the embodied dispositions that are developed in the earliest stages of life and subsequently understood to be difficult to change or shake off, such as accent. Fields are ‘hierarchical spaces of social and spatial positions’ (Savage et al. 2005, p. 9). Fields are not necessarily distinctive physical places but are sites of power (‘symbolic capital’ in Bourdieu’s terms) which people inhabit more or less comfortably, depending on the ‘fit’ with their embodied habitus, that is, whether they know how to behave ‘correctly’. For Savage et al. (2005) belonging in place is predicated upon moving to a field which is appropriate for one’s habitus, which is in turn dependent upon

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economic, social and cultural capitals acquired throughout life. According to this analysis, if one’s habitus changes, for example through increased cultural or economic capital (perhaps due to gaining a degree and a professional job), then one should probably move to a different place in order to fit in. Place is merely a tool through which people both accrue and display their symbolic capital (Savage et al. 2005, p. 207). Alternatively, the interrelationship of place and social life can be understood as ontological necessity: who we are is inseparable from the places in which we live (Miller 2002, Bennett 2014b). This is a more useful way of understanding the belonging in place of most of the respondents here: belonging is predicated on knowing and being known by other people, an in-­depth knowledge of the place and its history, which leads to caring for the place. When being-­in-place is understood as an intrinsic part of being human, the importance of place as part of identity and belonging is clear. The next section will briefly outline the wider project these family stories stem from before examining the lives of Beryl, Lauren and others in some detail in relation to changes over time of concepts of belonging in place, social mobility, gender and youth transitions. The discussion ends with a look at how the younger generation have developed ways of fighting back against the expectations of wider society.

Background The original research into belonging in place that this chapter builds on took place in Wigan, Northwest England, in 2009–2010 (Bennett 2014a, 2014b). Celia Fiennes, in her travels around England and Wales in 1698, described Wigan as ‘another pretty Market town built of stone and brick’ (Fiennes 1888), a very different description to the one given by George Orwell in his 1937 classic A Road to Wigan Pier, during the depression. Beryl and Ethel remembered the Orwellian Wigan of poverty and slums, but there is also a tacit understanding of the history of the town and a corresponding pride in being ‘Wiganers’. The town began to expand after the discovery of coal in the sixteenth century and later, in the nineteenth century, cotton mills were also a major source of work. As the cotton industry was already in decline in Wigan by the 1960s there was no significant South Asian migration, and so Wigan remains predominantly white working class. All the participants mentioned here are White British. Wigan today is, as one respondent with a middle-­class profession put it, ‘quite a nice place to live’ with ‘nothing wrong with [it]’. In 2016–2017 I revisited some of the original research respondents and undertook further interviews with: Tom (24) and Lauren (22) and their Mum, Janet (58); Kate (40) and her son Josh (18), who was too young to take part first time around; and Antony (32), who was the only member of his family to take part. Returning in 2016 I wanted to find out whether the younger family members were planning to stay put or move on, especially in light of the new

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opportunities higher education offered them. Although I would never presume to speak on their behalf I hope that by bringing together their speech and actions with social theory we can, together, illuminate broader sociological concepts of belonging and social mobility. Perhaps because it is such a taken-­forgranted concept, belonging is difficult to research (May 2013). Here, I am looking at how people ‘do’ belonging rather than how they think about it (Bennett 2014b) and how this ties in to current concerns around social mobility. In taking a biographical approach I am looking ‘up’ at society from the perspective of the individual, rather than ‘down’ on the individual from a broader societal perspective. What the small number of participants included here have to offer can be seen as potentially ‘typical’ and offering interpretations applicable to other families and places (Bertaux and Thompson 1996, Friedman 2016, Finn 2017). The families whose stories are being told here are ‘The Aspinalls’2 (Bennett 2014a) and Ethel’s family. The Aspinalls (those who took part) comprise Beryl, who was in her mid-­seventies when interviewed in 2010; her younger brother Ian; her eldest daughter Janet; her grandchildren Tom and Lauren. Ethel was in her mid-­eighties when interviewed in 2010 and she is now deceased. In 2010 I also spoke to her eldest daughter Linda and her daughter Kate. I re-­interviewed Kate in 2016, along with a first interview with Kate’s 18-year-­old son Josh. I also spoke to and had email conversations with Antony in 2010, 2013 and 2017, the only member of his family to take part. What the first half of the twenty-­first century holds for the youngest generation of Tom and Lauren, Josh and Antony, in contrast with their grandparents’ generation, is explored in what follows. Educational transitions are understood as key to questions of social mobility (Boliver and Byrne 2013) as well as having implications for belonging in place. As Aaltonen and Karvonen (2016) point out, most research into social mobility looks at either the well-­resourced middle classes or disadvantaged young people. Here a more nuanced analysis looks at those in the lower or middle ranks of the middle classes.

Changing transitions to adulthood In 2010 I spoke to Beryl, Tom and Lauren’s grandmother, and Ethel, who is Linda’s mother and Kate’s grandmother. Beryl and Ethel were in their mid-­ seventies and mid-­eighties respectively at the time. Beryl has three daughters, including Janet, and Ethel had five children, with Linda being the eldest. All their children still live locally. Ethel left school at 14 and started work during the Second World War in a pie shop.  Beryl, slightly younger, left school just after the school leaving age had been raised to 15 as part of the 1944 Education Act. She spent six months on a secretarial course and then started work in a solicitor’s office. Both married local men and had children in their twenties and continued to do a variety of jobs that they fitted around family life. Their husbands had skilled trades and both families purchased their own homes, but

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would not consider themselves wealthy. They did, however, acknowledge the changes that had taken place during their lifetimes and the overall improvements in living standards. Beryl told me of poverty during her childhood in the 1930s when her mother took on cleaning work to make ends meet but they lived on what was then a new and respectable council housing estate. Beryl lived with her in-­laws when first married but after Janet was born she and her husband bought a newly built house. They now live in a semi-­detached house where their children grew up. Place is not just a backdrop but ‘saturates social life: it is one medium (along with historical time) through which social life happens’ (Gieryn 2000, p. 467). Class in Wigan, and other places, is not separate from belonging and place (Frankenberg 1966, Bell 1994, Dorling 2014): it is cut through with location, length of residence, family connections and language, all of which provide authenticity to any claim of being a Wiganer. Ian, Beryl’s younger brother, used his childhood on this particular estate to authenticate his working-­class origins and highlight his own comparative social mobility. Despite often leaving school with minimal qualifications, the men within the ‘parent’ generation did pursue careers that involved further training and education. Beryl’s daughter Janet’s husband began with an apprenticeship but through ongoing training, particularly attending evening classes, he became a senior manager. Linda’s husband followed a similar path and her brothers all undertook lengthy apprenticeships. These were all standardised transitions at the time and few choices were available. Often the school one attended at 11 years old would determine educational and career outcomes. Comprehensive education has changed that and given young people far more control and choices in their lives. Janet’s family live in a detached house close to good schools – as Janet described the sixth form college her children went to: ‘it’s not a private school and it’s just up the road … it’s no accident that we live here’ (interview with Janet, 2016). This consciousness of the importance of catchment areas for schools is a typically middle-­class attitude from the current ‘parent’ generation. Although today extended youth transitions refer to the increasing years spent in education before starting a permanent job, in the past this extended education was often undertaken part time, in addition to a full-­time job. Evening classes were available locally without having to uproot oneself to a university town. Now the standardised route into a job or career is to attend university straight from school. Lauren’s older brother Tom has followed a straightforward trajectory of school, university, career. He also went to a Russell Group3 university but stayed in the Northwest of England. Being a couple of years older than Lauren he went when the fees were ‘only’ £3000 a year and consequently has far less student debt. He wants to stay living in Wigan, in the particular area he grew up in, and currently lives with his parents while travelling to work South of Manchester. He is saving to buy his own home within a one and a half mile radius of his parents’ house (interview with Tom, 2016). Although neither of Lauren and Tom’s parents went to university when they left school (Janet, their

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mother, has subsequently obtained a degree as a mature student), their father did continue to study well into adulthood in order to progress in his career. Janet pointed out that their life was not easy and when they first bought a house they were ‘paying interest at 15.4 per cent … that was all my salary taken up by providing the housing which would still be the case now’ (interview with Janet, 2016). Although both she and Kate (Josh’s mother) feel that ‘it’s a worry’ in terms of student debt which makes it ‘different for [Lauren] who is dragging this forty-­odd thousand pounds behind her all the time’.

Class, place and belonging It is useful to look at the changing nature of education and careers in relation to place and social mobility because these hold people in, and draw people to, places. People identify with the places they live in order to develop or affirm a sense of belonging there (Savage et al. 2005). Class is not simply the class one was born into or an outcome of one’s own education and occupation, but is intimately entwined with place. Generally, ‘the industrial North’ in England is understood to be working class and a working-­class identity or origin endows symbolic capital here (Loveday 2014). The image of Wigan as a working-­class place has stuck, which exacerbates the problem of defining who is socially mobile within a place. The question that needs to be asked is: is it possible to move away from a working-­class identity without moving away from Wigan itself? Kate’s step-­daughters all went to local universities and all still live locally pursuing the kinds of typically female careers that Ian (Beryl’s brother) described as ‘the aristocracy of the working classes’ in the public sector: healthcare, civil service and education. Lauren went further afield to what could be described as an ‘elite’ UK university and does not intend to live permanently in Wigan again. The differences between those going to university and either returning or remaining local and those who decide to move away permanently seem to be partly dependent on the kind of career the graduates want to pursue, options often being curtailed for those who stay put (Finn 2017). Despite being a strongly ‘working-­class’ town, those with middle-­class occupations such as teachers, solicitors and health professionals may not be perceived as much different from the working class if they are demonstrably Wiganers through accent, family connections and lifetime residence. I spoke to people in these professions from both the ‘grandparent’ and ‘parent’ generation who clearly identified as Wiganers first and foremost (Friedman 2016). Those who are pursuing what Boliver and Byrne (2013) called ‘nominally middle class’ professions can work anywhere and, as a number of respondents pointed out, Wigan is a good place to live with excellent transport connections. Kate’s step-­daughters fall into this category. For those who do choose to move away, either to another place and/or another class, there is the potential risk of experiencing the kind of dislocated identity that Bourdieu termed a ‘habitus clivé’ where one potentially belongs

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nowhere (Friedman 2016). For specialised roles, such as the work that Lauren intends to pursue, jobs simply aren’t available outside of large cities, and the vast majority of these opportunities are based in London. In order to be socially mobile it is very often necessary to also be geographically mobile for this reason (Savage et al. 2005). Tom, for example, made it clear that he would not be prepared to move away except for a very good (and probably temporary) career move. While conversely, Lauren was adamant when I interviewed her at 16 in 2010 that she did not want to live in Wigan forever and she was clearly intending to live and work elsewhere when I spoke with her in 2016. Wigan’s population does not have the skills that match the work available in the area. Keith, a retired senior manager for a large international organisation, told me when I interviewed him in 2010 that ‘in the borough … we have potential work for knowledge based activities but we don’t have the knowledge or the education or the people with the educational background to go for the jobs … it tends to be a McDonalds or [a supermarket] or things like that that people find themselves going to ‘cos they’ve not got the academic qualifications’. Josh, 18, (Kate’s son and Ethel’s great grandson) is one of those young people without academic qualifications having failed to achieve the requisite grade C or above in Maths and English at GCSE level. He is among the first cohort to have to stayed in education or training until 18 and is not enjoying college – it’s ‘boring’. He would have liked to get an apprenticeship but the best of these are very competitive and they do not always lead to a permanent position. He is now considering the armed forces as an option despite his mother’s opposition to the idea (interview with Josh, 2017). Whereas, for his younger sister, according to Kate (their mum) when I spoke to her in 2017, her intention is to go to university before pursuing a ‘nominally middle-­class profession’ (Boliver and Byrne 2013). Kate herself remains in the semi-­skilled work she began when she left school. She married young (and subsequently divorced) – something she does not want for her children. Perhaps ironically, in being keen on continuing the family tradition of skilled manual work, it is Josh who is the ‘odd’ one by not wanting to continue in education – he is out of sync with his generation, but seems to be following a ‘family script’ (Bertaux and Thompson 1996, p. 21) of tradesman occupations continued across generations. Gender also comes into play here. Women are now more likely than men to go to university in the UK (Hillman and Robinson 2016). However, women are also likely to continue in ‘female’ ‘nominally middle-­class’ careers such as teaching and nursing which did not require a degree level education for previous generations. Another participant who is ‘out of sync’ is Antony. He turned 32 in 2017. He is self-­employed and also set up and runs a charity to protect Wigan’s heritage. Like Josh, he left school with few qualifications but failed to find work and was then encouraged (by the job centre) to attend courses at college. Eventually this led to a teaching assistant post at his local primary school. He resigned from this role when the leadership of the school changed. Antony has spent a lot of time researching his family history, discovering that both his grandfather and

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great grandfather worked the steam engine at one of the local mills. His dream job would have been to follow in their footsteps (interview with Antony, 2010). Despite a lack of educational qualifications, in choosing part time self-­ employment Antony has actively chosen to take control of his life and has made time to do what he is passionate about, that is, saving Wigan’s architectural industrial heritage (interview with Antony, 2017). Place identities are reflected in the people who live there (Robertson 2013) and for ‘born and bred’ locals are integral to their identity. Antony has a very strong sense of belonging to Wigan and of being working class and has chosen his lifestyle accordingly (Loveday 2014). Josh and Antony both show that choosing lifestyle or career paths from within a limited range of options still makes it possible to make individual ‘real’ choices in a way which wasn’t feasible for Beryl or Ethel two generations previously. Most people follow the path laid out for them which for many young men Josh’s age would be to go to university or do an apprenticeship, neither of which would necessarily lead to a job or career. Josh is happy to be flexible on where he lives and works (although he said he would like to stay in the Northwest) in order to increase his options, as he does not want to remain in full-­time education. Antony’s priority is living in Wigan and generally having some control over his life so that he can pursue his hobbies and he has managed to achieve this. ‘Choice’ is often illusory and limited and the lack of choice presented to young men like Josh can be seen as a part of the ‘symbolic violence’ exercised by the powerful on the rest of the population (Bourdieu 1977). Antony has managed to subvert this ‘top-­down’ power and instead exerted his own power-­ from-below by leaving what would generally be perceived as a good job as a teaching assistant and choosing to earn the minimum amount he needs to live on to enable him to pursue other activities.

Subversion, symbolic violence and habitus clivé These different life course trajectories of those who have embraced the opportunity to access higher education and those who have refused to conform to expectations (to some extent) demonstrate that social mobility, choice and individualisation do not necessarily form a linear progression. Family and place are important to people and will often impact on career choices (Finn 2017). For the older generation of Beryl and Ethel moving away from Wigan was unlikely, unless they met and married someone from elsewhere. The youngest people here – Josh and Lauren – claim not to be tied to the place and are prepared to move away for the ‘right’ jobs but are nevertheless supported by close family ties. In contrast Antony does not have particularly close family ties and perhaps as a substitute is tied the most strongly to Wigan as a place. Staying put is a demonstration of commitment to the place, as Tom shows, where social class becomes secondary to being a local. He seems to have been  able to remain firmly embedded within Wigan both geographically and

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culturally. His social life at university was largely taken up by rugby league,4 which he played locally previously and has returned to since leaving university. He now socialises mainly with people he has known for most of his life: ‘we’ve got a Whatsapp group with 16 people in … they all live within a few miles of here’ (interview with Tom, 2016). In his determination to continue to live close to where he was born and grew up and in continuing to socialise with friends from primary school, he has both taken on the increased educational opportunities available to his generation and simultaneously refused the pressure to choose another place to live (Savage et al. 2005), which Fortier refers to as ‘the reification of uprootedness as the paradigmatic figure of the postmodern experience of identity’ (1999, p. 42). He has instead elected to belong here, where he is also a ‘born and bred’ local with a middle-­class profession. His accent, family and friendship ties and his leisure activities ensure that habitus and field remain a good fit. His choices seem to contradict Savage et al.’s (2010) apparently clear­cut distinction between locals refusing to make individualised decisions appropriate to modern life, and elective belongers. Finn (2017, p.  753) found that students made ‘complex and agentic’ decisions about moving away and moving back home, and that there is no simple dichotomy of mobile/immobile but rather a ‘dynamic matrix’ of options through which different forms of capital can be acquired. Moving away to join an ‘elite’ university through hard work and achievement rather than privilege does not necessarily lead unproblematically to elite employment and the corresponding social mobility. Lauren’s career aspirations changed due in part to the symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1977) visited on her at university. Lauren strongly objected to what she could see as the unfairness of the admissions process: ‘if they were from our school and if they were from Wigan they wouldn’t be [at this university] … but their private education has led to them being at [university] … and that still annoys me because I don’t think that’s fair’ (interview with Lauren, 2016). Because of this understanding of the system she has rejected the opportunity to work in a similarly elitist environment, pointing out that ‘they aren’t better people just because they’ve got higher salaries’, and she is determined to pursue a career where she can contribute to social justice in the world. She was always keen to move away from Wigan and her encounters with more privileged members of society have, to some extent, given her a particular form of self-­ confidence. She is happy to be able to say that ‘I’m completely fine with people that are extraordinarily rich and then also weirdly people that have nothing, like none of those situations particularly faze me anymore’ (interview with Lauren, 2016). Rather than suffering from a ‘habitus clivé’ (Friedman 2016), she has the symbolic capital to belong anywhere and make her habitus fit. Antony has also succeeded in subverting expectations and the standardised rhythms of modern life. His decision to work part time and pursue his interests is one that could be regarded as a privilege of the wealthier middle classes. Antony has managed to make the kind of individualised and reflective choices expected in late modernity while also subverting the idea of earning as much as

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possible and instead living modestly: ‘I’ve no ties, I can’t drive, I’ve no holidays so I can sort of live on what’s quite minimal … it gives me time to get out there … and deal with heritage concerns … so I feel really good about that’ (interview with Antony, 2010). He uses his working-­class identity to overthrow career expectations and enable him to pursue his preferred lifestyle (Loveday 2014). Josh, at 18, is younger than the other respondents and still (at the time of interview) ‘stuck’ within the compulsory education system. In looking outside of Wigan for employment he is going against what his uncles and cousins have done, although he is also keen to continue the ‘family script’ for the men of following a trade. He also seems determined to make his own choices and to escape the standard trajectory or transition where it is not working for him, while remaining a Wiganer through an ongoing loyalty to his local football team (interview with Josh, 2017).

Conclusion This chapter has unpicked some of the changes that have taken place over the last three generations in terms of education, social mobility and belonging in place. Place identity, our attachment to or sense of belonging in place, is part of a rhythm of life that has changed over the time period of the memory of my participants. The period of youth and education has lengthened while marriage and family life – settling down – has lessened in importance in some respects. Marriage may no longer be a primary goal in life (although Tom does see this as important) and buying a home is increasingly difficult for the younger generation. Remaining in place and living with parents for a longer period can be a practical choice. While opportunities for women have increased dramatically, there are still distinct gender divisions in career and educational choices. The grandparent generation lived an unreflexive life as part of a generation that saw absolute social mobility, whereas younger people need to reflect on how and where they live their lives with their choices determining their subsequent status in society. The narratives of the ‘grandmothers’, Beryl and Ethel, showed how in the early years of the Welfare State social mobility was absolute – most in society were ‘moving up’ in terms of better education and housing, for example. However, lives were very much mapped out with little choice, particularly for women, in the kinds of careers that were available. Geographical mobility among young people was rare. Leaving school at 16 and taking up a lengthy apprenticeship remained common among the ‘parent’ generation – now aged between late thirties and late fifties. For the youngest generation there is pressure to gain formal qualifications and ideally access higher education, extending youth transitions into adulthood. Ostensibly everyone has a choice of career, although this may be circumscribed by access to economic and social capitals – as Lauren demonstrates – or by gender. Choosing where to live is also a responsibility of the younger generation and can define their

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access to work and therefore social and economic status. Upward social mobility, or economic improvements from one generation to the next, is no longer taken for granted. However, in the biographical stories laid out here, there is evidence of young people’s potential to turn the tables on the accepted conventions of an individualised late-­modern life and to make social mobility a ‘pick and mix’ concept. There are a range of acceptable career paths which may not conform to a standard ‘grand narrative’ but are still meaningful (Aaltonen and Karvonen 2016) as Antony and Josh illustrate. They show how social mobility may not be a straightforward movement between social classes, and therefore also between places, but can be partial, ambiguous or tentative (Bertaux and Thompson 1996). In following the ‘family script’ of intergenerational occupational transmission (Bertaux and Thompson 1996, p. 23), Josh puts himself at odds with his own generation and the pressure to enter further and higher education. Antony, slightly older, has used his reflexive individuality to carve out a specific career for himself while maintaining his working-­class roots (Loveday 2014). Tom and Lauren follow more ‘accepted’ trajectories. Where Lauren could potentially be moving far enough away from her roots to suffer from a ‘habitus clivé’, instead of speaking of feeling ‘out of place’ (Robertson 2013) she says she feels at home anywhere. In most ways Tom conforms to the idea of a ‘born and bred’ local (Savage et al. 2005, 2010): he has numerous friends and family living close by and is actively involved in the local community, particularly sporting activities. Antony, meanwhile, although his historical interests stem from family history, is now concerned with the wider history of Wigan. In this he resembles, to some extent, elective belongers (Savage et al. 2010). Each of these young people, including Josh, can be argued to have fully absorbed the rhetoric of individualisation and is prepared to make and acknowledge their own choices, rather than simply being defined by the place they live, their parents’ lives or their own education or occupations. None of them seem to ‘know their place’ (Robertson 2013), instead potentially subverting the distinctions found in previous generations by Savage et al. (2010) between elective and ‘born and bred’ belonging. All these stories point to people continuing to be shaped by the place in which they belong. Nevertheless, these young people are reflexive in their life choices and subvert expectations in order to create the ‘paradigmatic’ individualised life course trajectories of postmodernity (Fortier 1999) while continuing to belong in this place.

Notes 1 Office for Standards in Education, an organisation monitoring standards in schools by regular inspections (in the UK). 2 All names have been changed.

Belonging, place and identity   133 3 A group of research-­intensive, world-­class universities (russellgroup.ac.uk). 4 Rugby League is a working-­class sport prominent in the North of England and particularly in Wigan.

References Aaltonen, S. and Karvonen, S., 2016. Floating downstream? Parental support and future expectations of young people from less privileged backgrounds. Sociology, 50 (4), 714–730. Bell, M., 1994. Childerley Nature and Morality in a Country Village. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bennett, J., 2014a. Researching the intangible: a phenomenological study of the everyday practices of belonging. Sociological Research Online, 19 (1). Bennett, J., 2014b. Gifted places: the inalienable nature of belonging in place. Environment and Planning D Society and Space, 32 (4), 658–671. Bertaux, D. and Thompson, P., 1996. ‘Introduction’. Bertaux, D. and Thompson, P. (eds) Pathways to Social Class A Qualitative Approach to Social Mobility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–31. Boliver, V. and Byrne, D., 2013. Social mobility: the politics, the reality, the alternative. Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, November. Bourdieu, P., 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Dorling, D., 2014. Thinking about class. Sociology, 48 (3), 452–462. Fiennes, C., 1888. Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary Being the Diary of Celia Fiennes. London: Field and Tuer, The Leadenhall Press. Available at www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/fiennes/saddle/saddle.html. Finn, K., 2017. Multiple, relational and emotional mobilities: understanding student mobilities in Higher Education as more than ‘staying local’ and ‘going away’. British Educational Research Journal, 43 (4), 743–758. DOI: 10.1002/berj.3287. Fortier, A.-M., 1999. Re-­membering places and the performance of belonging(s). Theory Culture & Society, 16 (2), 41–64. Frankenberg, R., 1966. Communities in Britain Social Life in Town and Country. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Friedman, S., 2016. Habitus clivé and the emotional imprint of social mobility. The Sociological Review, 64 (1), 129–147. DOI: 10.1111/1467-954X.12280. Gieryn, T.F., 2000. A space for place in sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 26 (1), 463–496. Hillman, N. and Robinson, N., 2016. Boys to men: the underachievement of young men in higher education – and how to start tackling it. Higher Education Policy Institute HEPI Report, 84. Available at hepi.ac.uk. Loveday, V., 2014. ‘Flat-­capping it’: memory, nostalgia and value in retroactive male working- class identification. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 17 (6), 721–735. DOI: 10.1177/1367549414544117. May, V., 2013. Connecting Self to Society Belonging in a Changing World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Miller, L., 2002. Belonging to country: a philosophical anthropology. Journal of Australian Studies, 27 (76), 215–223.

134   Julia Bennett Robertson, D., 2013. Knowing your place: the formation and sustenance of class-­based place identity. Housing, Theory and Society, 30 (4), 368–383. DOI: 10.1080/14036096. 2012.755472. Savage, M., Allen, C., Atkinson, R., Burrows, R., Méndez, M-­L., Watt, P. and Savage, M., 2010. Focus article. Housing, Theory and Society, 27 (2), 115–161. DOI: 10.1080/ 14036090903434975. Savage, M., Bagnall, G. and Longhurst, B., 2005. Globalization and Belonging. London: Sage Publications.

Chapter 9

Femininity isn’t femme Appearance and the contradictory space of queer femme belonging Hannah McCann and Gemma Killen

Liberating femininity from its history in our bodies and communities is easier said than done and we are used to being misread and unseen. (Dahl 2008, p. 22) Because appearance is always produced on the body, in femininity, the body is read as truth. (Skeggs 2001, p. 300)

Introduction Historically, the term ‘femme’ referred to an identity that emerged within the 1950s lesbian bar scene in the USA and UK, where feminine-­presenting women would often be seen paired up with ‘butch’ masculine-­presenting female partners (Dahl 2010). However, since the 1990s femme has become untethered from this pairing with butch, with femme communities emerging particularly in the USA, Australia and in some countries in Europe. Though the ways in which femmes define femme identity varies, as femme ethnographer Ulrika Dahl has identified: ‘feminine gender expressions and the politics of visibility and femininity are central to their body politic’ (2014, p. 607). The femme attachment to feminine aesthetics has complicated their relationship to LGBTIQ communities and to the politics of queer identity. In contrast to lesbians who eschew normative femininity, and are thereby visible as queer and labelled as ‘mannish’, femmes often continue to embody the femininity expected of them as women. This superficially normative femininity has produced tensions in relation to not only femme belonging in queer communities but also in terms of who can belong in the category ‘femme’. Invisibility is a central theme in discussions of femme identity. The lack of recognition of femme as queer within both LGBTIQ and non-­LGBTIQ spaces is frequently cited as one of the reasons femmes need organised communities of their own (Brushwood Rose and Camilleri 2002, Volcano and Dahl 2008). While butch/femme identities were central to the lesbian bar scene in the 1940s and 1950s, subsequent eras of feminism – particularly a lesbian feminism hostile

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to butch/femme as a copy of heterosexual gender roles – challenged the legitimacy of such identifications (for example, see MacKinnon 1982, p. 534). The issue of femme invisibility has been widely charted in the literature on femme since the 1990s when a femme scene began to emerge in response to this lesbian feminist critique. Femme literature highlights the different experiences of butch and femme individuals in relation to gender and sexuality (Walker 1993). Femmes are perceived as heterosexual because of their gender presentation. Masculine-­presenting or gender-­crossing appearance is read as queer (Harris and Crocker 1997). On the one hand this means that femmes are less likely to be subject to homophobic violence or discrimination, as they are not easily perceived as queer (Levitt and Horne 2002, Levitt and Hiestand 2004). However, femmes face discrimination within LGBTIQ spaces as they are regarded as outsiders, as Joan Nestle writes, ‘If, in the straight world, butches bear the brunt of the physical and verbal abuse for their difference, in the lesbian-­feminist world, femmes have had to endure a deeper attack on their sense of self-­worth’ (1992, p. 15). Here we do not read Nestle as suggesting that physical and verbal abuse directed towards anyone is less serious than mis-­recognition (or indeed, that these cannot go hand in hand). Rather, Nestle’s point is to illustrate that the queer invisibility that keeps many femmes safe from homophobic violence on the street is also the cause of a more pernicious homophobia that can only see queerness according to certain logics of self-­presentation. Accordingly, this logic can operate within queer communities to mark certain bodies as ‘less’ queer than others. Some have labelled this form of exclusion ‘femmephobia’ (Blair and Hoskin 2015, Stardust 2015). In other words, the inability of feminine presentation to be read as queer, leads to femme invisibility and thus is an obstacle to belonging in the LGBTIQ community. In response to these patterns of exclusion, the contemporary femme movement has built itself and organised around the issue of visibility. For example, the Sydney Femme Guild motto reads, ‘Visibility. Solidarity. Celebration’ (Femme Guild n.d.). We do however note that the ways that this issue of invisibility has been responded to, has sometimes meant the re-­drafting of a ‘charmed’ inner femme circle (following Rubin 1984), rather than an extension of queerness into a way of seeing even the normative-­appearing ‘lipstick’ lesbian. In other words, our concerns here are to ask: How might processes of group formation also inform exclusion and the creation and reification of boundaries? Or: how might non-­ belonging perpetuate in tandem with processes of belonging? We wish to highlight here how exclusion is often a response to exclusion. We must also understand such responses as a reaction to the broader exclusions faced within society at large. While we may be critical here of not only the exclusion of femmes, but the femme exclusionary boundaries that have emerged in response, we wish to take seriously the pressures that create these dynamics that are not simply the inherent tendencies of those within the LGBTIQ community. Indeed, just as being recognised as queer doesn’t work unless there is a ‘not-­queer’ to define against, our cases below explore how a ‘not femme’ understandably

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emerges from attempts to define femme. The aim of this chapter is to explore the ways in which belonging is constituted in queer femme communities. Here we focus on the contrast between a utopian imaginary of femme articulations and the lived reality of queer feminine identity. As scholars working on queer femme identity who identify as queer femme ourselves, we feel the pull of the desire to belong within queer communities on an intimate level. However, we have been troubled by a certain form of femme distancing from femininity that we have come across in our recent research efforts, which seems antithetical to some of the stated values and aims of the femme community. Belonging is often shaped through exclusion, and the case femme demonstrates a form of this logic, structured around distinctions between different forms of femininity. Rather than imagining it as a fixed, either/or state, we approach belonging as ‘a dynamic process’ that centres on the negotiation of emotional attachments and the political and social implications of those attachments (Yuval-­Davis 2006, p. 197). That is, belonging is about personal feelings of solidarity and of being at home, but is also an integral part of producing socio-­political hierarchies that are always being contested. Therefore, belonging is best articulated in moments of precarity, when the feeling threatens to be lost. As Elspeth Probyn observes, ‘while [belonging] may make one think of arriving, it also always carries the scent of departure – it marks the interstices of being and going’ (1995, p. 2). It is precisely these interstices that we are interested in, and the contradictions that arise in the marking of a binary space of the femme/not-­ femme. We begin by outlining the issue of femme belonging as represented in the femme literature, where exclusion is coded as the problem of ‘invisibility’. We then draw on two empirical studies to demonstrate the way belonging and identity are understood and experienced by contemporary femmes. The first study we discuss is a digital ethnography of popular queer women’s website Autostraddle.com carried out by the second author. The second study is interview-­based research of Australian femmes carried out by the first author. In both cases, we focus on the discursive constitution of femme identity and its separation of the femme femininity from the realm of heterosexual femininity, the former being constructed as willfully chosen, the latter as unknowing and disempowering. We explore the role of this digital community in making sense of queer feminine aesthetics and identities, and the potential for online spaces to articulate a utopian imagining of femme. Our analysis of Killen’s findings looks at this constitution of ‘what femme could be’ even as it is spoken as ‘what femme is’. We then turn to interviews conducted by the first author in 2013 with 12 Australian femme-­identifying participants, which unpacks the lived experiences of femme belonging in relation to LGBTIQ and non-­LGBTIQ spaces. Our analysis of this discussion reveals that in the face of a desire for femme boundaries to remain open, femmes often discuss their identity as willfully chosen and as sitting in contrast to heterosexual femininity that is perceived (by femmes) as disempowered.

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Defining the utopic femme online As physical, in-­the-flesh, lesbian and gay spaces have begun to disappear, many young queer people have turned to online communities as both refuges and sources of information about sex and identity (Gray 2014). The accessibility of online spaces is particularly important for LGBTIQ people in rural or remote areas but also for those that might have felt excluded from more traditional, geographically specific queer communities. Indeed, the online universe can enable femmes to overcome obstacles to belonging, within the wider LGBTIQ community, especially those related to invisibility as queer. Online spaces support more flexibility and fluidity in self-­presentation than offline spaces as many of the traditional indicators used for ‘reading’ gender (gait, mannerisms, voice pitch and so forth) can be eliminated or re-­negotiated. Though they are not entirely gender-­free, disembodied or democratic spaces (Pham 2011, Cover 2014), online worlds can offer the potential for more creative gender self-­ expression (Connell 2013). To investigate the role of online communities in queer women’s lives, the first author carried out a digital ethnography of Autostraddle, currently the most popular queer women’s website in the world. Autostraddle describes itself as a progressively feminist online community for ‘multiple generations of kickass lesbian, bisexual & otherwise inclined ladies (and their friends)’ (Autostraddle 2017). The primary audience for the site is queer women between the ages of 18 and 34 and most of the writers fit within this category as well, with the editorial team all in their mid-­late thirties. The site is financially dependent on community participation, through membership, merchandise sales and event attendance. Therefore, fostering a sense of belonging and community is vital to its viability and success. Autostraddle explicitly describes itself as a welcoming and accommodating space for femmes through article series such as ‘High Femme’ or ‘Femme Brûlée’. It also sells t-­shirts printed with slogans such as Lazy Femme or Tomboy Femme. The work presented in this chapter is part of a larger, ongoing ethnography that explores the role digital and online technologies can play in producing community and affirming belonging for queer women. This ethnography has involved long-­term (3 years) observation and engagement with Autostraddle, through their website, social media channels and in person, at official and unofficial meet-­ups and social events. This engagement has included informal interviews, participant observation, textual and visual analysis and autoethnographic reflections. This chapter draws on that work and focuses particularly on an article titled, ‘What We Mean When We Say “Femme”: A Roundtable’, published in Autostraddle in 2016, and a Facebook discussion with community members about selfie practices and how they relate to visibility. In the online space of Autostraddle the articulation of femme belonging seems  to hinge less on aesthetic visibility than it does in femme literature. The  ‘Roundtable’ article includes eight self-­identified femmes discussing their

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understanding of the concept of femme. Key points included whether femme is related primarily to aesthetics or to emotional and care work, and whether the femme identity and associated aesthetics could or should be ‘claimed’ or co-­opted by people who don’t identify as queer women. There was no consensus among the writers about what it meant to identify as femme or enact that identification in everyday life. For the most part, responses were esoteric and lyrical rather than descriptive or precise, with one contributor, Yatta, writing that ‘Femme means that you’ve got some sensitivity that doubles as strength and you are down to aestheticize it, commune over it, or fucking fuck about it’ (Autostraddle 2016). Yatta’s comments suggest that femme identity can be about aesthetics but is also about emotions and communal belonging. Interestingly, contributors constituted their femme identities in terms of emotional and care work instead of aligning themselves with any particular aesthetic or style of presentation. For example, Rudy writes that femme is about ‘allowing a particular kind of tenderness to be part of your identity’, and Mey adds that, ‘for me, my femme-­ness is tied a lot to my emotions. I use it to find myself and center my mind and my heart’. These responses de-­centre feminine deportment as an essential part of identifying as femme, but they also speak to a broader desire to locate femme-­ness within community relationships. Bryn notes that their experience of femininity is enmeshed with empathy and understanding, particularly for other feminine identifying people, and Cecelia writes that practicing femme rituals ‘reminds me how important it is to comfort and protect each other’. Each of these responses reflects a sense of belonging for these femmes, where belonging is not constituted by who can be seen and ‘read’ as femme, but rather, is discussed as constituted by shared emotions as well as experiences of intimacy. Some of the contributors were hesitant to align femme identity with any particular aesthetic performance or presentation. Some femmes explicitly disavowed aesthetics as a motivating force or signifier for identifying as a queer femme. Rudy, for example, stated that ‘Having something based on just aesthetics is really dangerous because it removes the politics from things’. Other femmes mentioned fashion, but stressed that femme-­ness extended beyond aethetics, while Bryn wrote that ‘taking ownership of my existence as a femme is more than the way it looks, it’s a revolutionary act in itself ’ (emphasis added) and Mey commenting that ‘If I’m not being a femme, I’m hiding more than just my fashion or my attitude or my personality, I’m hiding my essense’. Instead of focusing entirely on fashion, the writers described femme as a way of being in the world and of connecting with other members of the community. Surprisingly, even where these writers did highlight aesthetics and feminine presentation as central to femme identity they did not explicitly link appearance with invisibility or a sense of queer non-­belonging. For instance, Cecelia described her feminine presentation as ‘armour’ that was anything but invisible or even subtle: ‘Purple lipstick and scrunchies and too much glitter and baby pink harnesses and chokers and five shades of rainbow hair and iridescent

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combat boots’. She conjures a very specific image of femininity here, one that is joyful in its excess and not at all aligned with heteronormativity or even with notions of how heterosexual women engaged in femininity. As the first author has argued, ‘Excessive femininity is troubling because it blurs boundaries, is unruly, and difficult to contain’ (McCann 2015, p. 249). Overt markers of femininity helped these women to recognise one another in the offline world and they became something enjoyable to commune over online. The taking and sharing of selfies also emerged in the digital ethnography of Autostraddle as a central practice of femme identity and community building. Selfies enable femmes to make themselves visible as members of the queer community. The #femmelesbian tag on Instagram has more than 40,000 posts attached. Indeed, the literature on selfie practices among minority groups, including people of colour and queer and trans people, suggests that sharing selfies online is also a key way in which people make themselves visible to the wider community (Pham 2015). As a part of the digital ethnograhy of Autostraddle, members of a site-­related Facebook group were asked about their motivation for taking and sharing selfies. Many of the responses mentioned the desire to contribute to conversations about queer visibility and to document experiments with gender presentation. Maryanne explicitly claimed selfies as a femme practice: ‘As a femme and a chronically ill/disabled person, selfies, makeup, all femme rituals really are vitally important parts of my queer identity’. They also noted that selfies were particularly important for them when confined to home due to illness. Selfies, and all of the associated social media, allowed them to continue to feel as though they belonged to a specifically queer community as well as allowing them to challenge perceptions of chronic illness and gender identity. These conversations show that the online space offers femmes an opportunity to negotiate and reconfigure their position within the LGBTIQ and broader communities without relying solely on specific aesthetic cues. Here the issue of femme invisibility is rendered somewhat moot, as the very presence of posting images or having discussions online ‘as a femme’ marks femme as intelligible. This marking negates the need for others to ‘read’ for signs of queerness and allows an upfront and immediate expression of identity. Regular participation in online spaces that are specifically queer as well as open discussion about their sexuality and identity produces a form of visibility that is not completely possible in everyday offline life. Given the well-­versed problem of femme invisibility, the visibility offered in these online discussions and spaces marks them as potentially utopic spaces for femmes. Here, femmes can, seemingly without bodily limitations, discuss, explore and wax poetic about what femme could be. This utopic imaginary centres on intimacy and connection, but also on self-­expression unhindered by social expectations. The online arena is one in which the utopian ideal of femme-­ness as open, unbound and universally accepting, can be articulated and explored, even if that ideal is not completely realisable in day-­to-day life.

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Despite this ‘opening up’ of femme potential in online spaces there are still contentious discussions about who can lay claim to the identity. In the ‘Roundtable’ article, contributors were asked about the expansion of the femme community to include those who do not identify as queer women. Most were critical of the idea that the femme identity should be available only particular people, namely women, can identify as femme. Aja, for example, writes: ‘I find that kind of restriction on ‘femme’ to be abhorrent and willfully cruel’. Similarly, Erin notes: ‘Everyone is becoming so indecipherable that the inclination to label yourself or someone else is pointless. I think it adds a richness to the femme identity, really, that we’re more complex than a separatist identity’. Instead of segregation and labels, the writer argues for more inclusion within the femme community – for trans women, for men and for non-­binary people. Though the community seems to be moving in this inclusive or welcoming direction, Bryn writes, ‘In my experience, many cis women of all ages feel that my identity as a non-­binary femme somehow invalidates theirs’, suggesting that there are still some boundaries within the community that are sharply felt. While in online spaces such as Autostraddle there is increasing acceptance of non-­female queer people into the folds of femme, there is resistance to non-­ queer identifying people adopting the label. In the ‘Roundtable’, Cecelia writes about the negative effects of the increasing popularity of femme aesthetics within mainstream culture. In the first mention of invisibility in the article, she argues that by adopting an aesthetic that might otherwise have been clearly read as queer, heterosexual women promote femme invisibility. Similarly, Alaina writes, referring to straight, white women: ‘It’s like, they steal our aesthetic, they steal our identities, and they steal our ideologies … but they water them down’. According to this criticism, femme qualities might be attractive to straight women, but because they engage with queer styles with a seeming disregard for their historical basis, their practices are understood as both mimicry and theft. Femmes online imagine femme in utopian terms: in this context, it is described as an expansive and unconstrained identity, yet one that is clearly marked off from heterosexuality. For these femmes, femme exists as a utopian imaginary, as much as an identity marker, a way of forging community and connecting with queer others. Websites such as Autostraddle offer a sanctuary and place of belonging for queer women, where they do not have to rely on aesthetic codes and cues to find one another or participate in community. Social media also enables femmes queer visibility. However, the celebration of femme online spaces as open and inclusive co-­exists with the production and policing of boundaries. Non-­queer women are not permitted access to the bonds and sense of belonging of femme identity, indeed their encroachment is seen as a form of illegitimate appropriation. As we draw out in the remainder of this chapter, we need to think carefully and critically about why drawing such lines in the sand is so important to the meaning of femme-­ness, and what kinds of belongings and community are being limited through such an approach to identity.

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Embodying femme offline So far we have discussed the utopian imaginary of femme inclusivity found online. This notion of femme as an open and unrestricted identity is enabled by the way online identities are formed on self-­definition and curated self-­ presentation rather than external evaluation of visible cues. Yet, despite this inclusive vision of femme, ‘straight’ feminine women are excluded as their heterosexuality is understood as antithetical to queerness, even though the work of identifying who is straight and who is queer enough may compromise the utopic image of femme as a radically open and flexible category. In this section, we turn to an analysis of interviews with 12 self-­identified Australian femmes conducted by the first author in 2013, to draw out this tension of belonging to femme. The contradiction between boundary drawing versus maintaining ideals of an open and flexible identity were further apparent in these interviews. Many of the femmes interviewed raised their anxiety about appearing ‘queer enough’, and the problem of their feminine presentation being read as ‘straight’. For instance, Gemma said that she was assumed to be straight in both LGBTIQ and non-­LGBTIQ spaces because of her feminine presentation, ‘Last time that I went to a lesbian event, which rarely happens anyway, I was told, someone was like, “oh are you being supportive for your friend?” ’ Daria who was only recently ‘out’ noted that there was no universal code for femmes to signal queerness to others: ‘It’s like you almost need to wear a badge like “yeah, I’m not straight”. It’s really difficult. I don’t know how people do it’. Along these lines, Daria talked about how cutting their hair short sent a signal that they no longer wanted to receive sexual attention from men, and while this felt like a powerful way to communicate their sexuality, it was also distressing because it reaffirmed conventional gender norms: ‘It also makes me a little bit mad at society. Like they just see short hair and assume that you’re gay’. They extend earlier findings in femme literature, showing that many femmes continue to feel that feminine presentation is a barrier to being recognised as queer. Many participants explicitly talked about feminine surface presentation as central to femme identity, for example Chloe stated, ‘I guess it’s such a general category, it’s really hard to say exactly what it means, but probably just wearing more typically feminine clothing’. Or, as Rachel reflected, ‘It’s outer, one’s outer expression’. Julia also suggested, ‘It’s about presenting in a feminine way and taking joy and power out of presenting in a feminine way’. However, despite offering ways of defining femme as intimately bound to feminine styles of the body, many of the participants also wished to leave open the possibility that others would define femme differently. For instance, Julia argued that, ‘[G]ender I think is something that is a personal thing, and for me being femme is very personal. It’s not about other people, it’s about me’. As Liz also reflected, ‘We go “oh my god I feel like that” with each other, and then there are other things that are completely our own that are just our things about being femme’. This

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idea of femme as something that is at once a common formation but also uniquely individual, is also found in the literature on femme, for example as Jennifer Clare Burke argues: ‘Above all, my femme is not your femme’ (2009, p. 11). Similarly to the Autostraddle participants, many of the Australian femmes were very reluctant to give definitions of femme, and instead tried to leave their explanations very open. This notion of femme suggests an opening up of space, making room for different people to identify as femme in their own way, rather than prescribing what is ‘femme enough’. However, as these perspectives sometimes also revealed, focusing on the individual aspects and definitions of femme sometimes took precedent over reflecting upon possible commonalities that led to feelings (as Liz described) of ‘oh my god I feel like that’, that is, the sense of shared identity. Furthermore, while many participants refused to draw a sharp boundary around femme, the interviews revealed a strong belief that the queerness of femme required the mindful and willful adoption of feminine styles. While online spaces can more easily mobilise such willfulness through the explicit use of identity labels, in offline spaces the body is usually read by others before such statements about identity can be made. Despite this, many of the femmes interviewed commented that femme reading strategies were possible. Daria for example suggested that they recognised other femmes because they made a ‘statement’ with their femininity, ‘using femininity in a really different way, and expressing yourself through that, but not in a way that’s conforming to the ways society wants you to be’. For Monique, femme felt like a way of taking charge of the social expectations of femininity, ‘in a way it’s kind of challenging norms. There’s a bit more consciousness about how to express femininity and that kind of thing’. Monique’s claim that ‘consciousness’ is key to femme identity reflects two central ideas. First, it suggests that most women’s feminine presentation is a matter of false consciousness, an obedient following of norms. Thus, heterosexual women who are expected to be feminine and are feminine cannot be said to be ‘queer’ in their feminine presentation. Second, it also suggests that femininity can be recuperated and made subversive through willfulness, even if this subversive feminine presentation does not appear different from normative femininity from the outside. This construction of femme paradoxically reinforces traditional feminist critiques of femininity as a false masquerade that is the result of oppression and conditioning (McCann 2013, p. 147). This produces a conundrum for femmes because it suggests that one form of femininity is more radical and subversive than another form, even if these forms look the same. But prescribing how to present as queer femme in ways that make apparent the distinction between queer and heterosexual would entail the prescription of femme norms, which contradicts the utopian vision of femme as an open and inclusive space. Indeed, some participants reported that queer femme norms did exist, what Rebecca Ann Rugg refers to strategies of ‘something wrong with this picture’ (1997, p. 186). In other words, femme in offline spaces faces a

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difficulty: willfulness cannot easily be conveyed when one’s bodily aesthetics ‘appear’ before one’s identity claims can be expressed. However, defining ‘how’ to look femme may exclude those femmes who feel invisible because of their gender presentation, who seek inclusion on this basis in the first instance. A commonly expressed understanding of femme was as a form of willful femininity. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s work on willfulness as obstinacy (2014), we might see this understanding of femme as a refusal to enact femininity in the ‘right’ (that is, heteronormative) ways. This construction of femme as willful consequently suggests another, less willful femininity. This kind of femininity is perhaps seen as willing rather than willful, in that it does not stand in the way of heteronormativity. Where the queer potential of femininity is seen as something that must be mindfully enacted, a bind emerges when feminine presentation that looks ‘straight’ is inevitably read as heterosexual, cementing into place what queerness looks like. This reinforces the femme invisibility that many femmes seek to challenge. Even as participants talked about the pain of not being read as queer in LGBTIQ and non-­LGBTIQ spaces, they simultaneously reinforced notions of appropriate femme appearance. For example, Natasha explained, ‘There’s such a divide in Melbourne between North side and South side. Like Southside lesbians, or queer girls, are really … there’s a really strong divide between butch and femme. And femme girls are really … they look kind of like straight girls. There’s not much … that is really queer about Southside lesbians’. Although Natasha has described the difficulty of not being acknowledged as queer, she constructs a category ‘southside lesbians’ who are not ‘really queer’ because of the way they look. Natasha further argued that a sharp line had to be drawn between straight women who saw themselves as feminine (sometimes using the descriptor ‘femme’), and queer women who were femme: ‘If you’re feminine and you’re a straight woman, you’re just a woman. That’s how people read you, and there’s no, there’s nothing subversive about it’. For Natasha, it was sexual desire that changed the meaning of femininity and made it queer. However, overall, the interviews revealed that ‘belonging’ as a queer femme entails not only having queer desires, but also presenting oneself in a particularly queer way (even if that in itself is difficult to define). Here the boundaries between straight and queer, queer and not queer enough, can be seen as fundamental to many of the ways that femme is currently conceptualised, in spite of the utopian vision of femme. While interacting in online spaces might overcome some of the obstacles of invisibility, as we saw in the case of the Autostraddle participants, discourse can be employed to maintain a sense of separation from seemingly heterosexual femininity. In part the Autostraddle participants did this through distancing themselves from concerns with feminine aesthetics and focusing instead on emotional care work. Though each discussed the need to broaden the horizons of femme, to become more inclusive – particularly of non-­binary and trans femmes, some also criticised a heterosexual appropriation of femme style. Yet while

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articulation of femme willfulness is relatively easy to carry online in a space where self-­definition takes precedence over bodily aesthetic, embodying and identifying as femme offline presents a challenge to these articulations.

Conclusion Analysis of femme belonging in both online and offline spaces reveals conundrums for femme queer identity. In both spaces, there are contradictions inherent in attempts to produce and enact a sense of belonging that relies on particular forms of gender presentation and yet also ideals of openness, inclusivity and self-­definition. Femme belonging relies on a specific kind of exclusion – maintaining the queer, excluding the straight – that may inadvertently cement what appears to be ‘queer enough’, thereby undermining the potential to see feminine presentation as queer in the first instance. By looking at how femme belonging might be engendered in a way that promotes solidarity rather than an individual focus, perhaps we might overcome some of the contradictions of the exclusivity of femme. Here, the common ground between LGBTIQ and non-­LGBTIQ identifications and experiences of gendered embodiment might be discussed and unpacked, to make room for rethinking femininity broadly. While this might feel like dangerous or difficult ground for many femmes, given that this might risk diluting difference in favour of sameness, it also offers the possibility of uncovering the potential queerness of femininity that does not rely on unstable and problematic notions of willfulness alone. For example, one might look to the shared experiences of enjoying particular surface presentations, and experimenting with makeup, hairstyles, fashion and so forth, that might exist for femme and non-­femme identifying people alike. For many femmes, being read as ‘straight’ feels marginalising because it erases their queerness, however another tactic might be to extend queerness rather than confine it to ever-­smaller spaces. In other words, rather than suggesting that the queerness of the femme ought to be questioned (an idea that is unfortunately reproduced by femme norms and ideas of what is ‘queer enough’), perhaps we ought to start questioning the straightness of the non-­femme. Here we might find space for belonging together through shared material experiences of embodiment, presentation, style and affects, and extend queerness forth in ways that make room rather than foreclose possibility. The existing femme criticism of ‘straight’ femininity marks an ever-­present return to the aesthetic when thinking through the meaningfulness of femme identification. The problem here is that a denigration of particular styles of femininity arises in the production of femme. That is, in claiming femme, one is also pronouncing a not-­femme, whose femininity is complicit rather than willful. The question that emerges in each of these cases is whether the construction and enactment of femme belonging relies on exclusion and how we might best deal with that exclusion. Femmes in each of our studies expressed desire for a more inclusive community, to extend the realms of belonging, but

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consistently draw the line at welcoming the heterosexual woman into the fold. Femmes then, seemingly reside in that complicated and precarious space between femininity and heteronormativity, between willfulness and complicity. In order to answer a specific ‘yearning’ to belong (Probyn 1996, p.  19), it is imperative that they continue to define and negotiate the boundaries between these terms. Identifying as a femme means living in the contradiction, caught within and between the desire for belonging and the need for exclusion. We should be generous to these desires and the emotional investments associated with femme identities and recognise the attachments that such identifications produce, but perhaps we also need to be critical of the role of boundary work and exclusion in producing belonging.

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Index

Page numbers in italics denote figures. academia 8–9, 46; sexism and misogyny in 44–45, 48, 49, 50–54, 55–56 Academia is Killing My Friends (blog) 44–45, 48, 50, 51, 52–53 Academic Men Explain Things to Me (blog) 44, 48, 50, 55 activism 44, 48; cyberfeminist 46, 48–50, 52–54; individual and collective 54–55 aesthetics and femme identity 135, 138–140, 141, 143–145 affections 62, 65–66, 67–70, 71 Agamben, Giorgio 62–63 ageing and loss 76, 80–82 Ahmed, Sara 6, 43–44, 45, 46; on identity 5, 21; on sexism 49, 51; on strangers 18; wilfulness strategy 52, 53–55, 144 alien citizenship 2, 13, 14, 19 alienation 1, 5, 18–20, 22; in Black Mirror 110, 111, 116; and sexism 51; and technology 110, 113, 114 Als, Hilton 95, 97, 100–101 Anderson, Ben 15, 23, 67, 68 anticipation 76, 80–82, 83, 85–86 Antonsich, Marco 3–4 artefacts and memory 26, 27 Autostraddle 137, 138–141, 144 Bad Feminist (Gay) 118 ‘bare life’ 62–63, 65, 91 Bateman-Bowery, Nicola 95, 97, 98, 102n8 Bell, Vikki 4, 14, 22, 23 Bergson, Henri 76 Bertaux, Daniel 123 Black Mirror (TV series) 110–112, 113, 116–117, 118, 119

blogging on sexism and misogyny in academia 6, 43–45, 46, 47, 48–54, 55, 56 Bond, Ross 16 Bondy, Jennifer M. 64 boundaries 4, 15; and identity 16, 20, 21, 45, 100; and sexuality 136–137, 141, 144–146 Bourdieu, Pierre 4, 8, 76, 77, 80, 84–85, 123 Bowery, Leigh 7, 91, 95–98, 96, 99, 100 Brah, Avtar 18 Brexit 2 Brooker, Charlie 110–111; see also Black Mirror (TV series) Burke, Jennifer Clare 143 Carey, Peter see Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, The (Carey) Cartographies of Diaspora (Brah) 18 Challinor, E.P. 77 CIA 68, 70 circus aesthetics 7, 89, 91, 97–101; see also Pilo Family Circus, The (Elliott); Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, The (Carey) citizenship 2, 4, 6, 63–64; multiple 6, 17; official status 14, 16; and place 15, 17–19 Claremont Court housing scheme 77–80 class 8, 123, 125; aspirations 79, 80; and education 122, 126–127; and place 124, 126, 127–131, 132 climate change 2 clown costume 7, 89, 93, 100–101; and costume-cum-body 97; and gender ambiguity 98, 99

Index   149 Cohen, Anthony 89, 94 community 4, 63–64, 89; and alienation 19–20, 21; and citizenship 14, 15, 16; and costume 99–100; imagined 15, 45; local 15, 78–79, 83; online 138, 140; and technology 107–108, 118; see also femme; LGBTIQ communities costume and identity 89–91, 92–94, 98–101 costume-cum-body 91, 95–97, 99, 100 courtship and marriage 32–33, 38, 81 Crapanzano, Vincent 83–84, 86 Crawford, Kate 109 cultural appropriation and femme aesthetics 141, 144 cyberfeminism 46, 48–50, 52–54 Dahl, Ulrika 135 dating apps 109, 118 debility, dependency and dread 67 dehumanisation in Guantánamo Bay 61, 62 Deleuze, Gilles 62, 65 detention practices 7, 62–63, 66, 71; see also manipulation techniques device culture 107, 108, 110; and attachment 109, 116, 117–118, 119; and social interactions 111–113 diaspora communities 18, 19–20 digital technologies 43, 108; as addictive drugs 110–111, 112–113; and cyberfeminism 46–52, 56; and intimacy 109, 111–112, 113, 116–118, 119; misunderstanding of 114, 115; and queer women 137, 138–139, 140 Diprose, Rosalyn 4, 64 diversity 17–18, 45, 46 Divine 98, 99, 102n8 Doc Brown (blogger) 53, 54 double alienation 19–20 drag 95, 98, 102n8 dystopia 109, 110 education 122, 123; and employment 125–127, 128–129; and place 127; and social mobility 124, 125, 130, 131 education, higher see academia Education Act 1944 125 elective belonging 3, 130, 132 Elliott, Will 93, 94; see also Pilo Family Circus, The (Elliott) employment 85, 125–127, 128–129 environment and self-conception 65, 67, 68, 75, 115

Errachidi, Ahmed 69, 71n3 ethnic identity 4, 5, 29; and place 17–20 Everage, Dame Edna 98, 99 exclusion 6, 22–23, 64; of femmes within LGBTIQ 136–137, 145–146; and internet 43; of prisoners 61; and weddings 27, 28, 29, 40; wilfulness as resistance to 53–54; of women in academia 45, 51–52, 56 family: and place 8, 123, 126, 127, 128–130, 132; and retirement 81–82, 83; and weddings 8, 30–31, 34, 37–39, 83 family script 128, 131, 132 femininity 8, 135, 137, 139–140, 142–146, 145–146 feminism 43, 56, 118, 135–136, 138, 143; academic sexism blogs 6, 44–45, 48, 50, 52–53, 54–56; feminist killjoys 6, 43–46, 52–53 femme 135–137, 142–146; and gender ambiguity 141; identity 138–140 fields 123–124 Fiennes, Celia 124 Finn, Kirsty 130 Forstie, Clare 108 Fortier, Anne-Marie 130 future expectations 75, 76–77, 81; disappointed 81–82; negative 83–84; and present belonging 78, 79–80, 85 Gay, Roxanne 118–119 gender 43, 135–136, 142; ambiguity 98–99, 100, 136, 138; and femme identity 140, 141; and inequality 43, 48, 52, 123, 131; presentation 136, 140, 144, 145 gendered expectations 27, 28, 35, 38–39, 40, 122, 128 globalisation and community 3, 14, 17–18 Granata, Francesca 97 Grant, Jessie Mikie 89 Green, Eileen 108 Greer, Fergus 95 Gregg, Melissa 47 habitus 8, 28, 77, 80, 84, 123–124, 130 habitus clivé 8, 127–128, 129–131, 132 Hage, Ghassan 16 Hanged One, The (film) 97 happiness 45, 46, 52; contractual 50–51, 53, 56

150   Index Haraway, Donna 43, 49 Harbin, Ami 68 Healy, Robyn 97 heteronormativity 27–28, 29; and femme identity 136, 140, 144, 145–146; and internet 43 Hoare, Philip 97 home 3, 46, 79–80, 137 homophobia 136 housing see Claremont Court housing scheme human rights 7, 61–66, 70–71 Human Rights First (HRF) 67 humour as inclusion mechanism 49, 55–56 Humphries, Barry 98 hunger strikes 70 Huysmans, Joris-Karl 98 identity 3–4, 13–14, 16, 45, 51; categories of 5, 14, 21–22, 23, 63–64; and costume 89, 91, 93, 98–99, 99–100; femme 8, 135–137, 138–141, 142–145; marital transition 27, 30, 34; and nationality 2, 14–18, 19–20; and place 123, 124, 127–129, 130, 131; of the prisoner 62, 64, 65; and technology 109, 114–115, 118 inclusion 3, 28, 45, 64, 99 individuation 114–116, 117–118 Infamous - A Cabaret Circus Sensation (Ashton) 89, 90, 93 interdependency and belonging 64–65, 68, 70–71 internal disposition 65, 67 internet 43, 46, 47–48; see also cyberfeminism; social media intimacy: in Black Mirror 7–8, 111, 116–117; and technology 107–109, 111–113, 114–115, 119; and wedding videos 28, 34 invisibility 51–52, 135–136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 144 isolation detention 66 It (King) 89 lesbians 135–136, 140, 142, 144 LGBTIQ communities 135–136, 137, 138, 140, 142, 144, 145 Licoppe, Christian 108–109 Lieberman, W. 95 life choices 122–123, 126, 129, 130–131, 132 life narrative 26, 27, 28, 131–132; courtship and marriage 6, 30, 32–33;

expressed in letters 35; family within 30–31; future mapping 36, 38–39; wedding day as turning point 27, 30, 33 love 27; and marriage 33–35, 39; as work and force 33, 35–37 manipulation techniques 66, 67–70 masks and masking 7, 93, 95, 100 Massey, Doreen 3 May, Vanessa 2–3, 4–5, 27 meaninglessness 84, 85 Melly, Caroline 77, 80 memorialisation of events 26–28, 36, 39 migration 4, 14, 17, 19, 80 Millner, Jacqueline 95 misogyny 6, 43, 44, 52 Mohamed, Binyam 68–69, 71n1 music: in manipulation techniques 68–69; in wedding videos 29, 30, 32 naming 17–18, 21–23 Nancy, Jean-Luc 4 nation state 15 nationality 6, 14–15, 17, 20–21, 23, 63; and citizenship status 16, 17–18, 19 Nestle, Joan 136 Ngai, M.M. 14, 19 ontology: Deleuzian-Spinozist 65; Simondon’s 114, 119n1; and temporality 76–77 Orwell, George 124 othering 18–20, 21, 23, 53, 64 Out of the Dark (film) 98 Pain, Rachel 22, 69 past futures 76, 78, 80, 81–82, 83, 85–86 patriarchal structure 27, 38, 39, 43 performativity 4, 6, 28, 35, 38–39, 45 Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) 67 Pilo Family Circus, The (Elliott) 7, 93–94, 100 place 2, 3, 4, 75–78, 89, 123–124; and attachment 45–46, 129–130, 131–132; and boundaries 15; claims to 21, 78–79; and class 127; and community 83, 99, 126–127; and identity 18, 55, 124, 127–129 Plant, Sadie 46 powerlessness 84–85 present futures 76, 79, 80, 84, 85–86 prisoners: as bare life subjects 63; and manipulation techniques 66, 67–70;

Index   151 right-lessness 61–62, 63, 66, 67, 68; selfconception 63, 64–65, 70–71 Probyn, Elspeth 5, 45, 77, 137

symbolic capital 123, 124, 127, 130 symbolic interactionism 3 symbolic violence 129–130

queerness 8, 135–136, 138–139; and femme identity 136–137, 139–141, 142–143, 143–146; and heterosexuality 141, 142, 143–144

technological futures 107, 109, 113, 116, 118–119 temporal placing 27, 28, 84, 86 temporal tensions 78, 79 temporality 75–77, 80, 85, 86; and dependence 84 Thompson, Paul 123 Tilley, Sue 97, 98, 102n8 torture see manipulation techniques tradition 27, 29; family and marriage 31, 38; ‘new traditionalism’ 28 Triadic Ballet (Schlemmer) 98–99 Turkle, Sherry 108 Twitter 48, 109, 110

racism 1, 46, 53 retirement 7, 80–82, 85 Road to Wigan Pier, A (Orwell) 124 Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (film) 102n8 romance 27, 33–34, 36, 37, 39 Rugg, Rebecca Ann 143 safe space 52 Savage, Mike et al 3, 123–124, 130, 132 scale and community 15 Schlemmer. Oskar 98–99 self-actualisation 27, 34–35, 37; and costume 100–101 self-conception 62, 63, 64–66, 67, 68, 70–71 selfhood 20, 65–66, 100 selfies 138, 140 self-presentation 136, 138, 140, 142–144, 145 sexism 6, 43, 44–45, 48; calling out 49–51, 52–54, 55, 56 sexual harassment and assault 43–44, 46, 49, 52, 54 Sharing Academic Sexism Stories with You (SASSY) (blog) 45, 50, 53 Simondon, Gilbert 65, 114–116, 117, 119 Singh, Greg 110 Singleton, Carrie 108 Slahi, Mohamedou Ould 69, 71n2 smartphones 107, 108, 109, 112–113; in Black Mirror 110, 111, 113 social media 29, 43, 108–109, 113; #femmelesbian 140; #MeToo 44, 48; see also Autostraddle; blogging on sexism and misogyny in academia social mobility 123; and place 125, 127–128, 129, 130, 131–132 Sontag, Susan 40 Spinoza, Baruch de 62 states and citizenship 15, 16, 19–20, 23 strangers 18, 19, 109 Strategic Misogyny (blog) 45, 48, 50, 51–52, 53, 54 student debt 122, 126, 127 subcultural affinities 32

unbelonging 8, 107, 108, 109, 119; in Black Mirror 110, 111–112, 113, 116, 118 Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, The (Carey) 91–93, 100 Uprichard, E 76–77, 85 utopianism 43, 114; femme 8, 137, 140–141, 142, 143, 144 videography 6, 26, 29, 40n1; fixing memory 28; structure and editing 30–31, 35, 39 virtual reality 111, 118 virtual spaces 6, 47 Vitus, Kathrine 84 Vivienne, Son 48 vocabularies of identity 6, 13, 14, 15, 17–18, 23 waiting, open-ended 83–84, 85–86 Walker, Jill 55 weddings: ritual 27, 29, 36, 39–40; speeches 28, 31, 32–33, 35–39; three stage sequence 30; as turning points 27, 30, 33 Weinstein, Harvey 44 ‘What We Mean When We Say “Femme”: A Roundtable’ 138–140, 141 White Nation (Hage) 16 Wigan 124, 127–128 women, violence against 43–44, 136; see also sexual harassment and assault Woolf, Virginia 45 Wright, Sarah 2, 5–6, 15, 20, 22 Yuval-Davis, Nira 16, 20, 46, 63–64