Atheism and Photography

Atheism has been around for many centuries. The early Christians were accused of being ‘atheists’ because they did not believe in the gods of the Greek and Roman world. Atheism as we know it today, however, as a rejection of all that is supernatural or non-empirical, is largely a product of the nineteenth century (with roots going back into the age of enlightenment at the end of the eighteenth century). It is often associated with the development of science as an empirical discipline and the growth of rationalism as a way of thinking. Many of the main theorists of religion and culture in the mid-nineteenth century – Comte, Frazer, Tylor, Weber, even Marx – associate the decline of religion with the growth of rationalism and many of them link atheism proper (a rejection of God) with a wider rejection of anything that might be considered superstitious, irrational, non-empirical or supernatural. In their terms this is a rejection of all that is not ‘real’.

I am currently reading a recent text on the place of photography in the museums and scholarship related to ethnography in France from 1930-1950. This may not seem an obvious starting point for a discussion of atheism in the nineteenth century, but the introductory remarks within the book, about the development of photography and its impact on ethnography at the turn of the twentieth century led me to ask whether there might, in fact, have been a relationship between the growth of photography in the nineteenth century and the particular form that atheism took among the intellectual elite of that time. It was largely those who were writing on religion and culture, and those they associated with, who were at the forefront of the development of photography. Could there, therefore, be some kind of link.

Others will know this field much better than me, but there is surely some relationship between the growth of a medium that was seen to capture, in a mechanical form, only that which was in front of it, and an understanding of what might be considered ‘real’ and what might not. Before the photograph it was never possible to say that a person who had seen a ghost, or met fairies at the bottom of their garden, or the forces of evil, or whatever, was lying. We might not have seen such things, we might not be able to see such things, but could we ever convincingly say that they were not there, and not visible to those who can see them? When we recognise that many people across the world still live within a world that is populated by spirits and other creatures that cannot normally be seen (but which are clearly visible in certain contexts to certain people) then the oddness of our own position, which largely claims that such things simply do not exist, becomes particularly stark.

However, if we have a machine, a mechanism that allows us to see what is ‘really’ there, then that is evidence that cannot be ignored. The impact of technologies of seeing and of observation are very important to science, but they have also had a significant impact on the daily lives of the people who have come to accept, and to live, with such technologies. A camera is defined, in some ways, as a technology for capturing the visual, that which is physically in front of it. This is not true of any form of painting or printing, and it is the lack of human intervention that made this possible, or at least made the reality/validity of the image apparent to those who were observing the process.

It is no surprise that there were attempts, largely towards to end of the nineteenth century, to photograph the spiritual, or the non-empirical. The images were believed, people wanted to see them as a photograph, that is as a real representation of what was in front of the camera, and they circulated very widely throughout society. The Cottesloe Fairies are a classic example, as are the various images of plasma and other phenomena associated with seances. Arthur Conan-Doyle was a great advocate of such images and saw them as proof of the existence of what it was that they purported to show. Over time, however, such images were dismissed as fakes and eventually the mechanism of their creation was uncovered. At the same time the range of phenomena that could be captured by the camera became fixed and, more importantly, that which could not was dismissed as unreal, as simply not existing.

It is this wider sense of the radically empirical, as espoused by many of the great thinkers of the nineteenth century, that I would suggest was a product of the camera, and other technologies of seeing. If it cannot be photographed, then it cannot be real, and if it cannot be real then it does not exist, end of story. So, the question raised by so many of these early thinkers about religion and culture is how is it that so many people from across the world claim to believe in, and claim to see and engage with, that which is so patently unreal (because it cannot be captured on camera)? I have struggled to find a term for what it is that these theorists reject, and yet is still claimed by a very large majority of the human population. ‘Non-empirical’, my chosen term, is far from satisfactory, but I am not sure that ‘non-photographable’ is any better, although it may be more accurate for what I am talking about.

Deep fakes and other forms of digital manipulation of images may well have challenged some of a certainty about the truth of the image, when that is created mechanically or in certain forms of the digital, but it has not fundamentally changed what has become common across Western society: that what is not photographable does not, and cannot, exist. I am not sure about this, and we should, perhaps ‘must’, change some of our assumptions, but it is very difficult to change our perception of reality, and that, I fear, has been changed irretrievably by the camera and the images it produces.

Saying and Not Saying

A recent email request has got me thinking this week. This was from a site that monitors published articles, and they wrote to ask if I had written the paper ‘Listening to the Language, Listening to the Words and Listening to the Spaces between the Words, Rhetoric and Pragmatics in the Performance of Christian-Muslim Relations’ (not one of my shortest titles). This paper analysed the rhetoric at work in an interreligious conference I attended in Iran almost ten years ago. In my opening speech, transmitted live on Iranian television, I had to speak to numerous audiences simultaneously and, in the light of the recent controversy over the cartoons of the Prophet, I had to tread a very careful path if we were not to be arrested on the spot. That paper made the point that it was not what was said that was most significant. Rather, it was what was not said, what was implied, the spaces between the words, that were just as important as what was said.

Some months ago, another web site asked to interview me about my work as a PVC. At the end of the interview, they asked a few general questions, including ‘what book has been most influential?’ I think my answer surprised the interviewer as I immediately said Michael Taussig’s Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man. Ever since Taussig came to speak to the anthropology department at Manchester when I was doing my PhD, way back in the mid 1980s, and I began to read his work, this book has lived with me, informed almost everything that I have written and continues to haunt me today.

The immediate use I made of the book related to the second half of the text where Taussig develops the Brechtian understanding of montage to understand and engage with drug induced healing rites in Columbia. Taussig draws particular attention to the way in which montage breaks up reality and allows us to look into the spaces between the parts and to recreate new perspectives. There are other elements within this second half, including the different ways in which the narrative structure of the dreams/visions of different racial groups play out in their lives, and this is something I will explore further in my current book on myth.

However, it is the first half of the book that I was particularly thinking of when I answered that question. This begins with the horrors inflicted by the British subjects who owned rubber plantations along the Putumayo River in Columbia. The way in which the native peoples were treated was truly horrific and one of the most shameful episodes of British colonial history. The point Taussig draws out, however, is the way in which different commentators at the time related this horror to the people of England. Roger Casement, a civil servant, wrote a government report, with a coldly factual account of the numbers killed, and the methods of torture used. Joseph Conrad wrote a novella. Each had impact, but each used a different kind of rhetoric to make their point, and for Taussig it was Casement’s cold factuality that was the most devastating and ultimately led to a change in policy.

Interestingly, I have also been reading Dan Hicks’ The Brutish Museums, a work about the restitution of African art, and particularly the Benin bronzes, written by a senior curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The book has some very interesting and important things to say, but it is not the content that I wish to pick up at this point (I will no doubt come back to that in other blogs), but the tone of the book, or rather the choice of rhetoric that is used. Hicks is just so angry. He makes a point of expressing his outrage and offence at the horrors that, in his view, the museums of the West are still perpetrating on the people of Nigeria by exhibiting the looted items from the sack of Benin. This is a choice. He is clearly angry and that is an appropriate response. He chooses, however, to use an excessive rhetoric of anger and outrage in his book, and to pile that language on top of itself in long purple passages, creating and manipulating words, not to say anything in particular, but rather to get across to the reader just how angry he is and just how outraged and offended he has become (the second half of the book does, however, set out the facts in a very clear and factual manner, that is particularly helpful).

Hicks’ opening rhetoric is part of a common approach used in social media, and in society more generally, where the language of offense, and the taking of offense is used to make an emotional point that almost negates the need to argue a case. It is well attested in so many areas, not least those that certain sections of society call ‘woke’. We constantly live with this heightened, excessive use of language that simply closes down any response and all reasonable conversation. At one level, such language appears to demand a response, but the only response that is acceptable, at least to the speaker, is to share the offence. To disagree is to put yourself into the world that is being condemned, the world of the colonial, the racist, the capitalist, whatever the particular bug bear actually is.

Of course, as with rubber plantation owners referenced by Taussig, there was real violence and horror in the way in which the British expeditionary force planned, sacked, and looted the royal palace at Benin, with the death of many local people (a number that is never recorded) and the destruction of a culture. However, what Taussig is asking and what I am asking in my paper, is what rhetorical response to such horror generates the most favourable response, and how best to express that in written (or oral) texts.

Hicks follows neither Casement or Conrad. He simply choses to shout and to express his outrage and his offence. My first response, on reading the first few pages of Hicks’ book, was that this was a perfect example of what some have called ‘cultural appropriation’. What right does Hicks, a white, western educated, curator of a British museum have to be outraged and offended to such a heightened level? That offence belongs, if that is the right word, to the people of Nigeria. The response of the western academic should, perhaps, be one of humble apology, remorse, the seeking of forgiveness. By taking offense Hicks effectively distances himself from those of his predecessors who perpetrated the crime. However, one of his points is that the crime continues to be perpetrated just as long as these items are displayed, and he is implicated in that as much as any of his predecessors, however much he chooses to express his outrage and offence.

However, to come back to my own article, and to the interview and the choice of a book that has been so influential for me. It is the attention to language, to what is said, and to what is not said, to how we say what we choose to say, and the tone and attitudes we adopt as we say it, particularly in the written text, that still says important things to me. This is particularly important in relation to the difficulties we face as Universities in the culture wars and the concerns over free speech. It is suggesting that the written text is also a performance, just as much as the speech I gave at the opening of the Iranian conference. Of course, it is a performance, and we can always choose how we perform the text through the words we choose and the tone we set in our writing. We can choose to perform ‘offence’ or ‘outrage’, we can choose to perform the objective setting out of the horrors we witness or experience, or we can choose to perform the horror through other voices, playing out through fiction, through narrative structures, and the appealing to emotions, seeking empathy as opposed to expressing offence or outrage. These are all choices, and they are all part of what free speech actually means in practice.

Self, Myself, and I

I had the honour recently of attending a roundtable conference hosted by an ex-PhD student at the Buddahpadipa temple in Wimbledon in recognition of his recent appointment as Abbot. It was a very inspiring event in which monks alongside lay members and visitors to the temple were all asked to reflect on four questions that had been prepared in advance. There was no sense of experts, or those with more important things to say, and all those who wished were able to contribute their own thoughts on each of the questions under consideration. There was clearly a Buddhist flavour to the whole event, but participants brought contributions from their own reading of Buddhist scriptures, stories and reflections from their own experience, and reflections from their worlds of work as therapists, teachers, students or whatever.

It was not even that the monks were given a privileged position. All participants were given due respect. Even a four year old boy who told us that he thought the temple was beautiful outside, that the temple was beautiful inside and that he liked the people who gathered at the temple. The more informed, or well read, members of the community were listened to, but so were those who were new to Buddhism, or had simply accompanied another person and had not intended to contribute at all. I was asked to add my own thoughts and reflections, but as one who had supported the Abbot in his studies, not as a particular expert, and my own Catholic position was respected alongside that of all the others in the room. This was an unusual, and very special, event with an openness that is difficult to find in today’s world.

The questions ranged around responding to criticism, forgiveness, justice, detachment and the purity of mind, but it was the conversations and contributions that followed that were more interesting than the questions themselves. However, across all the contributions the theme of the self, of the I, and of the relationship of the self to others and to the world were a constant thread. One of the statements that remained with me throughout the session was the observation that it is not selfish to manage the self, to find inner purity, before reaching out to help others.

I have always lived by a position, inherited from my Grandfather, a priest of the Church of England, that every individual is unique and we should respond to each with respect and love, whoever they are, or whatever they bring. This is linked in my own thinking to the statement Margaret Thatcher made to the Methodist Conference back in the 1980s where she said that there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families. I am not in full agreement with that principle, but I am sure that we often underplay the importance of the uniqueness of the individual, or of the self. However, I would always claim that the self that matters in not myself, but the self of the other. This I would link to a deep Christian tradition of selflessness and a reaching out to the other that sees its roots in the actions and words of Jesus in the Gospels.

To suggest, therefore, that we should concentrate on our own self first, even if this is as part of preparing us to reach out to others, is something that I initially found difficult. However, the statement does make sense, and does reflect very clearly what I have always done, even if it is not expressed in the values that I say that I live by. In inter-religious dialogue it is well accepted that we cannot reach out to those of other religious traditions unless we are confident in our own position, however open we might be to change. There is something of common sense in this proposition, but it did get me thinking more broadly around the questions of self, myself and, what the Buddhists present suggested was something subtly different, I.

The first question we addressed had to do with responding to the opinions of others, especially when they were offensive, and hence about forgiveness. The standard answer to this was to stress the importance of detachment and to recognise the criticism of others, especially offensive criticism, as a problem in the other, rather than the self, not to take offence and effectively to rise above it. The responses were more subtle and complex than this, but that was the essence. In the light of this, however, and in reflecting on the question of the self, the I, and the other that I have already addressed, I could not help thinking, as I drove home, what all this has to say to contemporary identity politics and the ease with which so many in our society give, and take, offence, especially in the wake of social media.

Identity politics is essentially about taking pride in our identity when others discriminate against us. It inevitably places the self first, but also latches on to specific elements of the self that can be categorised and treated as a social type. Even if we acknowledge the importance of intersectionality, to claim the importance of our identities, and to expect others to recognise that as a social, or even human, right, places the self in a very difficult position, especially in traditions that ask us to deny our ‘selves’. By highlighting, celebrating and fighting for my right to be ‘gay’, ‘dyslexic’ or whatever, then it is possible to argue that I am standing alongside all those others who claim that identity and I am not doing this for ‘myself’ but for all those who are oppressed, discriminated against or abused because they are ‘gay’, ‘dyslexic’ or whatever. To claim the identity, however, as the most significant fact about myself is, I would suggest, placing self above the other, and going beyond the position that I would want to hold for myself.

Does the suggestion, however, that we need to be selfish about sorting out our own self, and being comfortable in that self, before we can help others, make any difference to this initial position? There is certainly some potential here. It is important to be comfortable in one’s own skin and confident of one’s own ‘self’ before being of any real use to others. But that is only half the story. If I take what I heard to be the distinction between the ‘self’ and the ‘I’ that was being proposed, then the self is that which is eternal, fundamental, and travels from life to life towards enlightenment. The ’I’ is the current being, the impermanent, the transitory, perhaps even the illusory, and it is the ‘I’ that is ‘gay’, ‘dyslexic’ or whatever. In this view, one’s identity (as defined by identity politics) is part of that which we need to become detached from, not something to celebrate for itself. Only in this way can we rise above the offence that is inherent in the culture wars and other discourses on identity.

Perhaps, or perhaps not?!? I am not sure that I am really making very much sense of this, and inevitably, any such reflection leads to masses of further questions, to contradictions and to intellectual dead ends, as well as to moments of enlightenment. It is this, for me at least, that makes events such as this roundtable conference so inspiring and why I would always say that we do not have nearly enough of these events, events at which people can simply share their thoughts and reflections on the bigger issues without any fear of offence and with the knowledge that their views, however unusual, will be respected.

Reflection on Some Waves of African Scholarship

I have been reading three books recently, all of which have reminded me of something I knew perfectly well, but like so many others, had actually forgotten. Alongside the independence movement across Africa there was a flourishing of confident African writing, both literature and scholarship that began to have a significant impact well beyond Africa itself. When we talk about the decolonisation of our teaching then we often forget that this is a process that has been going on since the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The fact that we do have to continue to talk about decolonisation, however, shows just how little lasting impact this particular wave of African scholarship appears to have had.

The most obvious book that picks this up, from the three that I have been reading, is Kwame Anthony Appiah’s In My Father’s House. This work is from a subsequent wave of African scholarship that began in the 1990s and Appiah, like so many African scholars writing at this time, was in a university in the States (others were in Europe, a few established in African universities). I turned to the book in part because Appiah was rooted in the life and culture of Kumasi in Ghana, where we travelled last autumn. Appiah’s father was a key figure in the independence movement and the early years of the independent government, and Appiah himself was a teenager at the time of independence. He is discussing the possibility of a pan-African position and, by implication, questioning the literature and scholarship produced at independence, where Ghanaian scholars were at the forefront of Pan-Africanism. Interestingly Appiah notes that colonialism had a marginal effect on many rural Africans, particularly in British controlled areas, and questions the Western expectation that all Africans should feel humiliated and scarred by colonialism. However, it is the diversity of African writing, and African approaches, rooted, as I say, in a very specific time and place, that forms the basis for his position.

The book that drew my attention more specifically to the confidence and visibility of African scholarship in the 1960s and 70s, and, incidentally, provided the most convincing argument for why we still have to talk about decolonisation, was Bénédicte Savoy’s Africa’s Struggle for Its Art. This is a very detailed account of the debates around restitution and the return of African art that developed following independence. We sometimes think (if we bother to think about it at all) that the restitution debate, and the demand for African art to be returned to its country of origin, is a recent phenomenon, associated with identity politics and Black Lives Matter. This is far from the case, and, as Savoy shows so very clearly, the call for the return of art, and other cultural artefacts, was one of the first acts of many independent African nations. For some, like Nigeria, this was led by the museums and was seen as ‘cultural’. For others, and Ghana is a very good example, it was a request for the regalia of kings and chiefs that had been taken as spoils of war.

Savoy is particularly interested in the European response to this request and looks at it primarily through a German lens, not least because the archives and records in Germany are so much more complete than in France or the UK. What Savoy demonstrates is not that the European museums constructed strong and convincing arguments against restitution. They struggled to come up with anything remotely convincing. Essentially what happened was that despite all the requests from Africa, and the subsequent debates and setting up of committees at UNESCO, the European museums simply stalled. They did nothing and, on the whole, refused to engage in the debate. Where they did engage, particularly once the press began to pick up the African nation’s cause, they deliberately misrepresented the request (only ever a request for a small number of key items) as the request for the total return of all items, from everywhere, and the emptying of the European museums. It was this stalling, and refusal to engage, demonstrating a level of arrogance if nothing else, that eventually led the African nations, and most others involved in the debate to give up in despair of ever seeing the results they were seeking. The debate simply fizzled out in the mid-1980s and was forgotten to such an extent that we think this is something new in the 2020s.

As with the debate about the restitution of art, I would suggest, so with much of the work in other areas of African scholarship, and the development of African culture (writing, art, music). The third book that I have read is Ekow Eshun’s catalogue for his exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, In the Black Fantastic. I was very sorry that I was not able to get down to London to see this exhibition, but the catalogue is a fascinating document in its own right. What this reminded me was that the growth of what is now known as Afrofuturism, which I have heard discussed in many different contexts recently, was a movement that emerged in the 1990s. Once again, however, we can see a pattern of movements, intellectual and artistic, that are referenced in Eshun’s text. There was a flourishing in the 1920s and 30s (mainly in Paris, partly in New York, and this is the work I am most familiar with), a resurgence in the 1960s and 70s (that Appiah is discussing), a further wave in the 1990s (including Appiah and his colleagues and Afrofuturism) and then we might perhaps be seeing another significant flourishing in the 2020s. In each case (we cannot talk about the last just now) the emergence of black scholarship, or art, or literature, is feted at the time and treated as something ‘exotic’ and new. However, as with the debate about restitution, the response from the European and American mainstream was muted to say the least, and often simply ignored, or failed to give any real space, to this black scholarship and so it dies out and is largely forgotten (apart from those in the know).

One of the things that struck me on reading Appiah’s work was that while he focused on the role of intellectuals and novelists, he largely ignored the place of artists and musicians. Eshun rebalances this to some extent in his emphasis on the visual arts, and he also recognises the importance of some popular musicians, such as Sun Ra, in the development of the arts, and includes many album covers as examples of the Black Fantastic in art. There is also a brief reference to film in both Appiah’s and especially in Eshun’s accounts and this is something I know very little about. In the capitals of Africa, however, and other major cities, there was through this period, and especially since the 1960s, a flourishing on popular music. This addressed many of the issues of the intellectuals and the artists, novelists etc., even if the medium was very different. This body of work also reached a much wider audience within Africa, and perhaps among black populations beyond Africa, than the academic or literary work ever managed. I think it would be important to include this in any reflection on the development of African thinking and expression in the 1960s/70s, the 1990s or in the contemporary world.

Shostakovich, Leningrad and Ukraine

I first heard Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony at about the age of twelve, played by the Halle orchestra on one of their seasons of concerts in Sheffield City Hall. I was absolutely bowled over, particularly by the first movement and when visiting Bedales, the public school attended by Princess Margaret’s children, as part of a school exchange with our radical comprehensive in South Yorkshire, I rather shocked some upper-class youths who asked me what my favourite music was, only to be told Shostakovich number seven. I was immediately whisked off to the music suite to listen to some LP played at top volume on what must have been state of the art hi fi! It was amazing.

For reasons that I cannot quite identify I have always wanted to sketch out a ballet to the music of the seventh symphony. It is not dance music in any sense, although the core theme of the first movement, repeated bolero like with increasing power and violence, does demand some kind of martial dance, however demonic. It was only on listening to the symphony in the light of the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine that the full nature of the ballet hit me. It was reflecting on the current plight of Ukraine and the link, across time and across enemy lines, as it were, that the link between Leningrad in the 1940s and Kyiv in the 2020s became obvious and the ideas really came together.

If I don’t really stand a chance of ever writing an opera, the possibility of choreographing a ballet is absolutely beyond me. The steps, the actual movement, is not something I could ever articulate, although I can see much of it in my mind’s eye. This is a fantasy, but something that I think would give a real twist to the symphony, and its original meaning. There is some irony in the music of a Russian classic being used to commemorate and highlight the suffering of a people invaded by Russia. However, I have no doubt that Shostakovich would approve, he would be no friend of Putin.

The version I was listening to was that of Bernard Haitink, as part of a boxed set of all the symphonies (I loved his rendering of number four!). It was all a little too slow, especially the first movement, but this is not a critique of the performance which I could listen to repeatedly. This is the outline of a ballet, very corny, as much grand ballet has to be, but it does sum up my current response and thinking around Ukraine, and, in my view, fits the music perfectly…

 The look of the ballet, or at least the dancers and their costume, is inspired by Soviet poster art of about the period of Shostakovich’s symphony, the 1950s or thereabouts. This is set, however, against a series of images, mostly projected onto a screen, or screens, at the back of the stage, of the destruction of Ukraine. The blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag dominates the colour scheme of the set. I like the idea of archetypally Soviet Russian elements, Shostakovich, Leningrad, the communist poster aesthetic, being used to critique the contemporary Russian regime.

First Movement: The City. Opens with the full corps de ballet, some in military uniform, some as peasants or city dwellers, dancing together to the opening chords. This disperses and there is an idyllic scene, a picnic, people going about their business, older citizens walking across the set etc. Within this a boy is playing with kite. As the central theme emerges the stage is overtaken by soldiers dancing and driving the civilians out, bombs explode and as the theme grows the film takes over from the dancers (who are silhouetted in extreme forms of the martial dance and of death) with the destruction of apartment buildings etc. The movement ends with the ruins smoking on the screen, a few old people emerge to search for food, and the boy with the kite returns, now looking lost against the destruction that sits behind him.

Second Movement: The Negotiations. The screen shows the inside of the negotiating or signing room in Istanbul. The movement opens with cleaners and flunkies preparing the space, as one watches for the dignitaries to arrive. The middle section is a parody of negotiation and signing, dancers in suits, dancing past each other, each self-absorbed and focused on their own image, leading to a botched signing after which the dignitaries leave, and the cleaners and flunkies dismantle the set and clean everything up.

Third Movement: Support for the Nation. The set is more rural, the agricultural fields of Ukraine coloured in gold and blue like the flag, perhaps with a map of the country coming in and out of focus, with the progress of the war over the first year. The dancing starts with one male dancer representing Ukraine, alone and exhausted, he is moved between other dancers with costumes reminiscent of the flags of Europe and the US etc. The dancer is supported and helped, offered gifts (weapons) and slowly grows in confidence. The middle section is a rallying of the troops led by Ukraine and drawing others to him, slowly bringing coherence out of the chaos. The final section of the movement represents, in dance, a speech by the president, in his trademark uniform, and perhaps with words from his speeches emerging from the screen behind. It is largely a solo, but he also dances with Ukraine and with the other nations as appropriate.

Fourth Movement: Premonition of Victory. There are the ruined apartment blocks at the back again, as at the end of the first movement, but the colour is changing, the sun is slowly emerging, and they take on a certain beauty as the movement progresses. The dance begins with soldiers waiting for orders, playing games, and perhaps joking with each other at the edge of the stage and still confined by barricades. As the music progresses into the open expansive middle section, civilians come in ones or twos, to join the soldiers, they all emerge out of trenches and cellars into the open, entering into a joyous victory celebration, waiving the flag and all moving as one. As they disperse, towards the end of the movement, we are left with a single boy, against a sunset and the ruins, following a kite, in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, alone and in rapture as the symphony and the ballet ends.

Walking Across London

There is something wonderful about walking through a city. Don’t get me wrong, I love walking, full stop, rural or urban. However, there is something about walking in a city that is unique. There is also something extra special about walking in London, I am not sure what it is, but the intellectual heritage of Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau and others as urban wanderers, albeit in Paris, Berlin and wherever else, is part of my own academic background. It is the surprise, the variety and the ever changing street scape that always appeals to me.

The other week I was in London at the time of the rail strikes. I had travelled down by bus, certainly an experience in itself as I have not travelled on inter-city buses in this country for many many years. However, it also meant that a number of my appointments were also cancelled as others had not been able to get into London. I therefore found myself with most of a day to kill. I was staying not far from Liverpool Street Station, almost totally unrecognisable amidst all the new building. The bus was leaving from Victoria, and there were a few places that I wanted to visit, a gallery just north of the Barbican, my favourite French restaurant for lunch in Seven Dials, a coffee shop in Soho, and somewhere to buy some new shirts. It made sense, therefore, to spend the day, simply strolling, from east to west, across the city.

I began heading a little further east, to the Whitechapel Gallery, that did not open till half an hour or so after I arrived. I walked down Brick Lane and pas Spitalfields Church to the market. Just beside the church I passed a street of old Huguenot houses. It was the first time I had seen these streets, and had no memory of even seeing them on screen. They were amazing in their solidity, elegance, and uniformity. A beautiful surprise, which is exactly what walking through the city is all about.

The market was a good place for coffee and a chance to look at the craft stalls etc. And then heading West, across Finsbury Square and out to find the gallery. This was another part of the city that I had not known, a collection of streets north of the Barbican and south of Old Street. Here I met the first of a number of street food markets that I was to discover as I walked across the city.

The gallery was amazing, and more of that in a future post. The area around it, however, the Golden Lane Estate, was also interesting. Mostly old East End warehouses and more recent flats that still had a bohemian feel (murals adorned the walls alongside the street food stalls) and interspersed with typical East End pubs and small shops, miniature village communities tucked into the city. From here it was down Old Street, through Farringdon, on to Clerkenwell Road and Theobalds Street. It was an easy enough walk, and some parts (St John’s Gate and Hatton Gardens for example) were well known. Others, particularly Grey’s Inn, were new to me. From Bloomsbury, through Seven Dials, Soho, Piccadilly, and on down to Victoria were all familiar ground for me.

One of the things that always thrills me on a walk of this kind is the subtle transformations. There are some points where the change is dramatic and immediate. There are always buildings and/or other features that stand out, that shock and that demand attention. For much of the journey, however, given the pace of walking, the change is gradual and the transformations only apparent when you find yourself suddenly immersed in a new part of town, and new series of shop fronts or building forms. The walk is slow and while the change over longer distances is always dramatic, especially in London, the experience is surprisingly restful.

Another feature that always appeals to me, and is as true of walking in rural landscapes as it is in urban contexts, is the layering of the landscapes. In rural walks it is often the long view, the vista that is conjured up by the landscape as a whole, that allows you to reflect on the layering and how the past has influence and moulded the present. When walking through a city, or at least one with limited hills, as central London, then the long view, the wide vista, is rarely seen (although looking back at the buildings bordering the train line as I crossed just north of Farringdon station, or looking south across Hyde Park towards the skyline of Victoria are both significant long views with incredible points of interest). It is primarily the immediate, and the transition from building to building, the layering that is both horizontal and vertical (always lookup when traversing the city, many of the more interesting features are above the shop fronts) and that speak of histories, of the many different forms that this city has taken. I love the work of Peter Ackroyd, and that always speaks to this layered nature of the city, with the older cities, the lower levels, always pushing to break through into the present and the current vision.

One thing that I did miss on this walk, however, were the people. Even in the more crowded areas around Soho or Piccadilly, the people did not impose themselves as much as they might. Perhaps I had already phased them out, had entered into my own head, and I was meditating as I viewed the architecture and the streetscapes through which I was travelling. One point where people did interrupt the walk, in a very surprising way, was a series of photographs in the window of Grimshaw Architects. These were by a Nigerian photographer and showed ordinary people in their domestic spaces in either London or Lagos. Amazingly powerful images! But that is what walking across a city is all about, the unexpected, the original and the emotionally powerful. Highly recommended.

Community Building for Students

I have been slowly re-establishing links with local universities here in the Midlands over the last few weeks, and catching up with friends and old colleagues. As part of this I have been contacting the chaplaincies at various Universities and have had some very interesting conversations. One of the things that has come through from all these conversations is the real difficulties faced by students, and I guess by young people generally, since the COVID lockdowns.

We were well aware of the growing mental health issues among young people. The head of a local school in Swansea told me some years ago that we should expect a tsunami of mental health problems in subsequent years, and that has been born out. Much of this has been associated with the prevalence of social media and the levels of anxiety and paranoia that this has generated. This was only exacerbated by lockdown, and was added to as young people were unable to socialise and could only maintain contact through various forms of social media. Linked to this was the observation that in many cases the lockdown period also led to a restriction in the growth of social maturity among young people.

There are probably many other factors involved, but the two consequences that we have seen, and are repeated through my conversations in many different types of university here in the Midlands, are first a growth in the numbers of students seeking counselling, and second the high levels of absenteeism in relation to lectures. Universities moved fairly quickly, on the whole, to provide some element of face to face engagement in learning and teaching, despite all the complaints by government ministers and others, and students generally said that what they wanted was face to face teaching. The reality, however, is that with a level of hybrid delivery still in place students are choosing not to turn up to lectures and are engaging, so far as they can, online, or perhaps not at all.

What came out of my conversations around the chaplaincies, however, was the recognition that this is not just to do with lectures, where alternative means of gaining access to the information might be available. Across the chaplaincies, and in other areas of collective activities (clubs, socials etc.) there is also an apparent lack of willingness for students to leave their rooms and to turn up. This is not true of all students, or of all activities, but as one chaplain told me it is a calculation that the students are making, as to whether the anxiety and stress caused by going out is worth the gain in attending an event. Students will sign up, they believe these are things they want to do, but when the moment comes, the stress is too high and, if they do not see the outcome as great enough, they will choose not to leave their room.

Again, the anxiety, as it has been expressed to me, is two-fold. There is a fall-out from lockdown and an unease about simply being in a group. Socialising in person is a stressful activity in and of itself. However, there is also the social media element at play. In this case that expresses itself as a fear of saying, or doing, the wrong thing. The levels of potential ‘offence’ that might be caused by an inadvertent remark or unintended physical contact is perceived to be so high that students are reluctant to put themselves into a position where they might cause offence and suffer the virulent backlash that they see so often coming as a consequence. It is therefore easier to do nothing, to go nowhere and to remain within the confines of their own rooms and their own, known, circle of social media friends.

This is a very sad situation and I have been told that chaplaincies are quieter than ever. These are places where offence is easily given and easily received. They are voluntary. The rewards of attendance and engagement are not overly high in most young people’s reckoning. And so, while levels of one to one engagement, counselling and online activity, is still very high, and perhaps growing, the buildings are practically empty, a shadow of their former selves.

What went through my mind as I listened to this, however, was some of my own experience, many years ago, when I was undertaking church based community work in the isolated and insecure neighbourhoods of East Manchester. I have been trained in community organising in the Chicago school, but always found it difficult to build any sense of community in these neighbourhoods where slums had been cleared, new flats built, and the flats demolished, all in a matter of ten years, leaving small, isolated clusters of housing amidst vast open areas of wasteland. The congregations, within the churches of the area, felt permanently under siege and saw the ‘community’ as the ‘enemy’. My job was simply raising levels of confidence, enabling people to look out beyond their own small worlds to see the bigger picture and to reach out to others.

Part of me thinks, therefore, that much the same has now to happen within our universities, and among our young people. Much of the work that is undertaken so far to meet student mental health issues focuses on the individual, through one to one counselling, or through courses aimed at building personal and individual resilience. I believe that we might have to go back to first principles, however, and begin the process of community building among those who have lost, both the art of socialising, and also the motivation, those who fear meeting and engaging with others. What this might look like I am unsure. I have more listening and engaging to do in order to reflect on that and to see what works. I am very sure, however, that the chaplaincies might be in a really strong position in order to start this work, in a small way at first, but hopefully with increasing confidence over time. I will keep talking and keep listening and see if I have the opportunity to put some of this into action.

Challenging Data and Dominant Discourses in Higher Education

There is a persistent discourse in higher educations, as I am sure there is in many walks of life, that things just ain’t what they used to be. This is in part a nostalgia for a half forgotten ‘golden age’, whenever that might have been. It is also seen in the seemingly ever-present discourse on managerialism, the current state of university leadership which is blamed for all the ills of the sector. What we more rarely reflect on is what exactly it might be that has a changed, and why it is problematic.

The experience of COVID has in very interesting ways provided an opportunity to see some of that change and its consequences in a very stark way. In a very personal sense, it has meant that I have suddenly found myself feeling utterly out of date, particularly in those areas where I would normally claim to be ‘an expert’. That expertise has eluded me, and now I feel that I am out of touch and a new generation is running in an entirely different direction.

When I was at Birmingham University, around ten years ago, I had the privilege of leading in three areas where Birmingham was among the leading institutions in the sector. We established an approach to employability that was referred to at the time as ‘the Birmingham model’ and was copied by several other institutions. I worked hard with colleagues in human resources to transform the culture of Birmingham University, particularly in equality, diversity and inclusion and our approach of working across all characteristics, and across the whole University, are now considered standard practice throughout the sector. Finally, I was among a small group of colleagues who worked, in different ways, to build a new relationship with the community immediately around the University, with the city in general, and with various sectors (education, culture, business) within the city’s economy, what is now referred to as Civic Mission.

Having been at the forefront of the debate, and of action, in each of these three areas of work, I know feel very strongly that the debate has overtaken me, and I am left behind, trying to argue for an older, and often somewhat outdated approach that nobody is really interested in listening to. What is more, in each of these areas, there are many more ‘experts’ who can use contemporary, fashionable language within each discourse and carve a career for themselves as leaders in their field.

So, what has changed? Is it simply that I have been asleep during COVID, too interested and focused on running the university and making sure that we all survived the colossal shift in teaching, student support and work practices, that I have simply missed what has been happening elsewhere? That I am, quite simply, left behind?

I am not sure that that is all that there is to this situation. When I come to look at each of these areas – employability, EDI, and civic mission – I can identify a very similar structure of development, something that must be more than simply the changes of fashion in particular discourses. There are, I would suggest, two – perhaps contradictory – forces at work within each of these areas of work within the university sector.

Data

The first dramatic change has been the use of data. This has been seen across the work of the university from student analytics through to many different areas of human resources. When I was initiating the work in employability and EDI at Birmingham, data was central to our approach. It was the ability to engage with individual schools and departments, programme by programme, about their employability rates that enabled us to bring them on board and to recognise the importance of embedding employability in the curriculum. Likewise, Athena Swann has always had a strong element of data analysis and it was the ability to identify, extract and manipulate the data, not just on gender, but across the protected characteristics, that gave us the lever through which to influence the wider structures and processes of the university. Data is, in both cases, evidence and data was used to support a narrative that was aimed to persuade those who had other priorities to put employability or EDI up there with all the other priorities that needed to be addressed.

The priorities of the University more generally have now changed dramatically. It is not that research and teaching are no longer priorities, they are, but they sit alongside skills development, student mental health, EDI, ethnic minority attainment gaps and civic mission (to mention only a few) as core priorities, and often as key performance indicators of the University. This is in large part due to the fact that the data around these key areas is being collected and the evidence that is generated from this data is being publicised (and compared between institutions in league tables) in a way that is demanding action, if not directly from senior leadership teams, then from those most directly affected, and by the leverage of ‘evidence’ to the senior team.

Discourse

While much of the narrative and discourse around data stresses the idea of evidence led behaviours and decisions, this is, I would suggest, only one half of the change that has occurred. The other element of the change relates much more directly to some of my own research into the role of discourse in religion. It is particularly the concept of ‘discourse’ and Gerd Baumann’s idea of a ‘dominant discourse’ that I would suggest links these two very disparate worlds.

I talked earlier about the rise of experts and one of the changes that has occurred in all the areas that I have mentioned – EDI, civic mission, employability (skills), and others such as student mental health, student analytics and so on – is the growth in the number of people coming forward as ‘experts’, ‘consultants’ and ‘advisors’ to lead the university through the analysis of the data into action, strategic planning and implementation.

What has struck me, however, is how consistent the language of these experts appears to be. It is an accepted position in discourse analysis that ‘expertise’ is identified, in part, by the ability to use a technical language in a defined way that identifies the particular discipline, or area of expertise. There are, therefore, key phrases and jargon language in each of these areas of work that have become not only accepted, but also essential to demonstrate an individual’s understanding of, or expertise in, that field.

What is interesting, however, is that this jargon plays into a wider structure of the discourse such that a specific ‘dominant’ discourse becomes the only way in which to present a subject, a dominant discourse that severely limits what the individual (whether expert or not) can say in that environment. The use of so called ‘woke’ language and values in EDI, especially in debates on race and sexuality or trans issues, is an obvious example, and that particular ‘dominant discourse’ is rooted in a liberal, essentially left wing, sensibility. In relation to the skills agenda however, which is now dominating discourses in employability, or the levelling up debate that has seeped into the discussion on civic mission, then the dominant discourse is more in line with UK government thinking and is essentially right wing in approach (if left and right are still valid distinctions in many of these fields). There is no consistency here, but the presence of a clear dominant discourse that must be spoken, and whose values must be articulated, is a clear feature of all these debates. It is this, I would suggest, that make me most uncomfortable, and makes me, suddenly, feel so terribly out of date.

Contradiction

Finally, therefore, the contradiction. The growth in the use of data suggests openness, especially when linked to the idea of ‘evidence based’ decision making. The growth of dominant discourses, however, with fixed language, values, and expressions, suggests that it is the discourse that is leading the decision, almost irrespective of the evidence. Of course, those who use the discourse will point to data, and to the evidence to support their position. The development of ‘what works’ – building on a pattern that I think originally came from Advance HE’s work on retention – reinforces both the assumption of evidence and the dominant discourse in a particular field. Others have demonstrated that particular actions ‘work’ and they have the data, the evidence, to prove it. So, it is suggested, the dominant position, along with the discourse and the values inherent in that position, are enhanced. But is this necessarily the case.

The problem with a ‘dominant’ discourse is that it is very difficult to speak outside of that discourse and still be heard, however much evidence you might have to support your case. It immediately shuts down debate, not through ‘no platforming’, but simply by the assumption of correctness. The analysis of data very rarely in my experience leads to single answers, or simple solutions. In the hands of an experienced data analysist the data can be allowed to show subtlety, nuance and even surprises, things that go against the dominant discourse. Long term qualitative analysis, listening to life stories, lived experience and the power of individual testimony can often show areas where the data cannot reach. It is not an either/or – data or narrative – it is always a both/and, but it takes more work, more time, and, I would have to say, more openness to really hear what is going on and to challenge the dominant discourses of the field in question, to sustain this position.

So, I suddenly feel out of my depth in areas of work within the university where, at one time, I was among the leaders. I have not kept up with all the new discourses. I do not speak the language of skills, of race, of civic mission, with the fluency of many others who define themselves as ‘experts’. That might not be a bad thing. The new generation will come up with new ideas. Ideas and activities in all these areas moves on and so the world progresses. Yes, but…

It is not just the language, however, but often the values that underpin these new approaches, that I have difficulty with, and which do not match my consistent emphasis on the human. Whether we talk about data, or through data, or whether we use new dominant discourses that are filled with trendy, and often meaning-less, terms and phrases, we almost always manage to lose sight of the real human beings that are the root cause and purpose of these agendas. It is students seeking gainful and fulfilling employment, it is those from a wide range of minority groups (and particularly those who intersect across a range of such groups), it is the people who live around the University and who often feel excluded from it, who need to be put back at the centre of these debates, not data, and certainly not experts.

The Future of Queer

Tasmin Spargo wrote a wonderful little book, back in 1999 tracing the relationship between Michel Foucault’s work and what was then current queer theory. It is an excellent analysis, tracing the positive and negative aspects of Foucault’s work on queer theorists writing at the end of the last century. That, however, was over twenty years ago and queer theory, and what it means to use the word ‘queer’ have moved on considerably. On rereading the book, I was particularly struck by just how dated some of it appeared to be.

So where are we up to with queer? Or, perhaps, more importantly, where does queer go next? What is the future of queer? I am not sure that I, or anybody else for that matter, is really able to answer this question. However, the relating of queer to Foucault, and reflecting on what queer means in the contemporary world, did set off a series of interesting lines of thought.

The first reflection takes me to the debate between essentialism and social constructionism. Foucault was, of course, the prophet of social constructionism. It almost seemed, at the end of the last century, that essentialism was dead and that Foucault’s view, or some version of it, had won the day. That, however, is far from reality, especially in the light of contemporary gender wars.

We all now recognise the distinction between sex and gender, although I still remember a time when even that was controversial. Gender is socially constructed. But what about sex? Gender critical feminists still retain an essentialist line on this, whether they base sex on biology or on legal definitions. What matters is that there is an externally defined, biological, ‘sex’ and that all human beings are either male or female (although even here there is a middle category that is seldom discussed). What is interesting, however, at least to me, is that there appears to be an equally essentialist thread in some trans thinking, especially in the rather glib view that an individual sees themselves as ‘essentially’ of the opposite sex to the one they were born into. Again there appears to be a classification into two categories at this point, male but ‘essentially female, or female but ‘essentially’ male, although the middle ground, those who claim the identity of ‘gender fluid’, is so much larger and apparently growing.

The problem with essentialism, or rather, one problem with essentialism, is that it is so closely linked to classification. It is the attempt to provide clear, non-porous, boundaries to our social categories, whether we accept the category we have been put into or we don’t, that leads to the search for essentialist (external, otherly verified) bases for our classifications. We do this with gender/sex, we still, to some extent, do this with race and we do it with other categories, including disability, religion and sexuality.

Spargo argues, at least in part, that it was a rejection of the category of ‘gay’ that led to explorations of ‘queer’. I remember reading a little yellow book, ‘Anti-Gay’, in the early nineteen nineties, edited by Mark Simpson, and being so excited. I never felt fully comfortable with ‘gay’ stereotypes and this presentation of the idea of being ‘gay’ without having to be ‘gay’ was something that spoke to me. It was out of this ambiguity, and the rejection of the categorisation gay/straight, or even lesbian/straight, that the idea and theory of ‘queer’ emerged.

Spargo tells the story, very succinctly, about how queer theorists cleared a space for themselves within the growing debates around sexuality and gender at the end of the last century. Now queer is itself a contested term, too ambiguous for many, not analytical enough for real theory, and used far too loosely and with very little meaning by so many diverse commentators. It seems to have little content apart from the idea of fluidity and the rejection of the gay/straight:lesbian/straight dichotomies.

It is little wonder, given the vagueness and ambiguous nature of the alternatives, that essentialism is making a comeback. People want something more solid to hold on to. They like order. They crave certainty. Of course, there is more to it than this, especially in relation to gender, where the notion of male violence becomes a central player. In all this, however, queer is getting lost even among those for whom it might appear to be a rather attractive option.

From a personal point of view I am vehemently opposed to categorisation and classification, especially of people. We are each unique, and no matter what identities we may claim, the particular mix that forms our own individuality appears in no other person. I am, therefore, far more on the side of Foucault and social constructionism, but social constructionism has never really been about the individual, or really about identity. We are all more or less male, more or less female, more or less homosexual, more or less straight, etc. We are more or less queer. Classification, categorisation, essentialism, social constructionism, even gay, lesbian, straight, and queer, are terms that have a role in the stories we tell ourselves as a society (and they will also vary from person to person). They have no place in establishing identity. The individual person interacts with other individual persons. Separating the myths (stories) we live by, and our own sense of, and personal expression of, our identity, is, however, a difficult thing to achieve. In all this, despite all this, I do think queer has a place, and it remains a term, a category even, that I am proud to inhabit.

Looking Back to when Religion was Golden

I am currently wading my way through J. G. Frazer’s multi-volume Golden Bough. I always tell my students about the importance of reading the original text, rather than relying on other people’s summaries or even the popular edited versions. So, I am now in the middle of many different examples of May Kings and May Queens and the weddings of the gods to bring fertility on the crops. However, that is not the point I want to make.

On page 123 of volume two Frazer quotes Pliny as saying, ‘the woods were formerly the temples of the deities, and even now simple country folk dedicate a tall tree to a god with the ritual of the olden time’. This simple quote sums up in many ways the message of much of the Golden Bough. All the local European folk customs, the may poles and the various mummer plays etc. are, for Frazer, remnants and reminders of earlier, classical or Celtic rites in which gods were married in rituals that re-enacted the events of heaven, which in their turn are developments of even earlier, and somewhat cruder, magical rites (which are often supposed to include some form of human sacrifice) in which homeopathic magic is enjoined to make the crops, or the cows, or the women, fertile and produce plenty. It is all beautifully written with a wonderful turn of phrase – and blatant racism and colonial privilege – but at its heart is the view that real religion existed only in the past and is now lost to humanity, that it is currently present only in quaint survivals.

Frazer was not, of course, the only nineteenth century writer on religion to think in this way. The idea of the ‘survivals’ as it is more generally used in older forms of religious studies, originates from Tylor who uses the term to refer to remnants of older forms of culture that are still present, but often out of place and drained of their original meaning, in contemporary society. For Tylor survivals can be seen in all aspects of life, not just religion. In the wider discourse, however, it is religion, more than any other areas of culture, that is seen to be the province of the survival.

However, as the quote from Pliny suggest, this view is far from being new, even in the nineteenth century. There is a consistent thread in writing about religion that suggests that real religion was only present in the past, at least in its purest form – ‘the ritual of olden time’ – and the product of more innocent times – ‘simple country folk’. There is a thread of this kind inherent in Christianity that leads reformer after reformer to look back on their particular interpretation of the early church as the epitome of all that is true, and all that is pure, in ‘real’ Christian faith. The fact that we also see this in Pliny, and perhaps in many other writers and traditions, suggests that this is one of those understandings of religion that is not uniquely Christian, or uniquely modern.

What I take from this, however, is a more contemporary reading, and this is perhaps something that I might want to develop further in my book on myth (where, like this blog, I could perhaps relate it to the work of Frazer and his colleagues). We can still find plenty of evidence for a discourse that says religion was better, purer, more prevalent, in the past. However, in a world that does not hold religion in such high esteem there is little incentive to see contemporary religion as particularly corrupt. For much of contemporary society (at least contemporary northern European society) religion has always been corrupt, patriarchal, and extremist. There never was a golden age when it was anything else.

Again, this is not my point, and is perhaps looking at the issue far too narrowly. If the focus is switched to ‘myth’ rather than the wider concept of ‘religion’ then we still instinctively view myth as something that comes from the past. The Greek myths are an obvious, if rather banal, example. But the idea that myth has a hold over society, that people take it seriously, even if they might not have believed it as actual truth, is something that is seen to be true of previous generations, more innocent generations, and something that we have grown out of. Again, Tylor states this explicitly. For Tylor the nineteenth century is the era when poets still allow us to see the potential for believing myth to be true, and science has not yet cut off the older ways of thinking completely, although for Tylor that will happen soon. Tylor, however, is not alone as I am finding in so much of my reading around the idea of myth.

One of the real points of my own book, by deliberately trying to avoid the rarefied concept of ‘myth’ and to talk instead of the ‘story’ or ‘narrative’, is to suggest that this is nonsense, that we still live in a society that is dominated by stories (myths) that we are constantly telling ourselves, primarily in these days through cinema and television, but stories that have a very significant impact on our thought processes and the way in which we structure our lives. These stories are not often recognised by ordinary people as ‘myth’, still less as ‘religion’, but they are, I would suggest, the current form of the ‘religion’ that Frazer sees in the folk customs of nineteenth century Europe, or the woodland rituals of the classical era, or any other form of powerful ritual story telling from any particular place or time in history or from across the world. The idea of a golden age of religion is, of course, itself such a ‘myth’, or it might be if we want it to be, but that is, perhaps, a different story.