(Pre)Occupied Locations: Subverting Marginality—Reply to Commentaries

In my response to commentaries by Hartman and Sedgwick, I examine the positions from which each chose to speak. Hartman's rather light approach performs a particular function: the mentalization of anal erotic and homoerotic desire through the introduction of surplus meaning. I explore the relationship of this approach to the absence of rigorous theoretical critique in his essay. I question Sedgwick's decision to limit her critique to the confines of queer theory; this results in a constriction of meaning rather than the expansion she purports to offer. I challenge her notion of growth through mutual recognition with a model of change that is based in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Contrary to her assertion, I do not jettison danger or gender destabilization from the discourse on anal eroticism between men, but I question these as obligatory or constitutive to its meaning.     

Paying Forward and Paying Back

Twenty years after the conclusion of a fieldwork study, a member of the family that once served as my informant came to live with me. This reflexive account of Ari's stay in our home juxtaposes his socialist kibbutz life with that of my own hypercommodified individualistic urban life. His experiences of working in the illegal economy raise questions about my own hiring practices. In short, we confront ourselves through our respondents' cultural vision. Ultimately, in revisiting a study I had thought complete, this account raises the question of what we owe those people who help us to gain knowledge about their culture, the currency of our careers.     

‘So Much We Still Don't Know’: An Interview with Averil Earnshaw

I was independently told about Averil Earnshaw by three different people in the same six month period. Each of them had heard, or heard of, Averil's presentations on the theme of time-linked intergenerational repetitions, and knew of my own interest in repeating patterns in families. Averil very willingly granted me the interview that follows, and in the course of talking with her, I began to realise that Averil's was yet another story of someone who had formulated an original hypothesis based on repeated clinical observation, and had the courage to present it to gatherings of her peers, only to encounter skepticism, lack of interest, or charges of ‘idiosyncrasy’. Despite Averil's best efforts to show that her hypothesis was consistent with the direction of Freud's own thinking, the psychoanalytic movement had greeted it lukewarmly, and it seemed to me that perhaps it might be of more interest to readers of this Journal, since the older and more psychoanalytically-influenced generation of family therapists (e.g. Bowen, 1978; Skynner, 1976) recognised the general principle of repeating patterns across generations, although not the very particular temporal law that Averil has suggested. The Earnshaw hypothesis is simply enough stated: the emotional and intellectual crises of adults’ lives (including onset of mental and physical illnesses, creative break-throughs and creative blocks) are time-linked to major events in the lives of their same-sex parents at the same age. Often, though not always, says Averil, one experiences a crisis when one is the same age as one's same-sex parent was at the time of the birth of one's next sibling, or even when one is the same age as one's parent was at one's own birth. Averil's short bookTime Will Tell (1995) illustrates this hypothesis with some fifty brief case studies based on biographical data from the lives of famous individuals, as well as with a number of cases from her clinical practice, and examples from her own life. Averil herself recognises that her hypothesis needs to be rigorously tested on a wider sample, but to date, those who have criticised it as ‘merely anecdotal’ have not been willing to undertake such a study.     

My Father,His Psychiatrists,and Me

My father is at an age when the body breaks down beyond repair. This essay describes my attempts to sustain what little sense of autonomy is left to him within the constraints of his physical limitations and to contain the anger generated by them. As I negotiate with a host of medical authorities, the most vexing of whom is the all-important psychopharmacologist, I am reminded of earlier interactions between my father's psychiatrists and me. These memories allow me to tell the story of our fraught, if loving, relationship. For a gay man, this telling is marked by the homophobic attitudes that funded many of my ostensibly therapeutic interactions with psychiatrists, as well as by a celebration of the queer genealogies through which I feel at home in the world.     

Objectivity and the Bell-shaped Curve

“There's one good piece of advice my Pappy gave me which I've never forgotten:

“‘Son,’ he said, ‘always make sure that your own chicken coop is in good order before you go offering to help others fix theirs.’” —Anonymous.     

Postmodern rural geography? A reply to Murdoch and Pratt

Jonathan Murdoch and Andy Pratt's thoughtful response (Journal of Rural Studies9, 411–427) to Philo (1992) (Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies8, 193–207) is considered. Their suggestions about the engagement between rural studies and the intellectual currents of ‘postmodernism’ are important ones, and offer both an extension of the claims made by me and a critique of my own lack of self-reflexivity. I outline my partial agreement with their analysis, but offer certain qualifications arising from a different understanding of ‘postmodernism’. I indicate my approval of their call for a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ alert to the making of ‘the rural’ as a concept in circulation, but argue that central to this call is the necessity of investigating the senses of rurality held by all manner of ‘other peoples’ beyond the academy. In this respect, then, the approach of Murdoch and Pratt may be more consistent with my own ‘postmodern rural geography’ than it might first appear.     

COMMENTARY (12 YEARS ON) ON ‘THE CONTRIBUTION OF OBSERVATION TRAINING TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIAL WORK’ BY JUDITH TROWELL AND GILLIAN MILES

This article aims to stimulate discussion about relationships between the lives of professionals and of service users. The idea is that when parallels are explored and developed, power dynamics between professionals and social workers are reduced, the quality of interaction and work with service users can be improved, and professionals can also be helped in overcoming difficulties in their own lives. I start with an outline of my own personal background and highlight my development throughout, including my emerging identity as a Buddhist. I discuss a case study involving ‘Sally’ and her family and our work together while I was a social work assistant in a Children and Family's team. I try to show the interconnections between the different difficulties that we faced and how that informed my work. I look at some of the benefits, pitfalls and boundaries of working from the point of view that service user and professional are both working to overcome their problems. I also interweave interactions I had at the time with Carlos, a drug user friend in a crisis and the impact he had on me. Because I include my own situation I have called this article a ‘case experience’.

Throughout I refer to Buddhist and psychoanalytic thinking and particularly to agreement between the two around ideas that inner‐resistance is the main barrier to personal evolution. I argue that faith is the key to unlocking resistance, and that faith should be understood as the development of a belief within people that they are able to progress rather than be destroyed in the face of inevitable problems.     

Searching for Yellowstone1

This experimental, layered, mixed‐genre narrative folds my biographical experiences into a critical reading of Wallace Stegner's autobiographical account of his childhood. This reading allows me to discuss three versions of the midcentury white male middle‐class American dream. I compare Stegner's father to my father and my grandfather, as I discuss a trip I almost made to Yellowstone Park with my grandfather before he died.     

Witnessing Things A Response to Sue Grand

I respond to Sue Grand's “Unsexed and Ungendered Bodies: The Violated Self” from my position as a cultural critic, noting in particular how Grand's case history shows that historical trauma is made manifest in everyday sensory experience. I am particularly interested in Grand's suggestion that trauma produces a “thing-self” that must be witnessed in the psychoanalytic encounter. Exploring the implications of this insight for my own investigations of cultural responses to trauma, I focus on performances of the body in lesbian public culture, ranging from the writings of Dorothy Allison, Joan Nestle, and Shani Mootoo to performances by punk rock band Tribe 8.     

Industrial injuries in British manufacturing industry and cyclical effects: continuities and discontinuities in industrial injury research

An article appeared in The Sociological Review for May 1990 by Steve Tombs that bore the same title as an earlier one by me (‘Industrial injuries in British manufacturing industry’ May 1986) and which took as its starting point my ‘The business cycle and industrial injuries’ which appeared in August 1989. It is argued here that Tombs's analysis does not represent the step forward that might have been hoped. It is for example extremely important in the analysis of industrial injury rates to pay careful attention to what injury rates of different degrees of severity might measure. Tombs's article is shown to be technically deficient in that he makes mistakes both of fact and interpretation in his treatment of the all reported (or minor) injury rate. Moreover, Tombs advances the claim — in the context of reference to ‘a pure “business cycle” argument à la Nicholsw’ — that ‘a generalised discussion of [business] cycles obscures important aspects of the political economy within individual cycles. In particular, the strength of the labour movement is related to the incidence of accidents at work’. For the record, it is also spelt out below that this represents an unwarranted interpretation of my own position.     

Situating Children's Voices: Considering the Context When Conducting Research with Young Children

I problematise my own concept of children's voices in research by reflecting on certain practices in a study that I conducted in a kindergarten classroom in a city in Saudi Arabia. I examine the cultural and social contexts of my research by drawing on my experience of obtaining children's assent or dissent, my assumptions regarding the possibility of reducing power differentials, and finally, my understanding of the ways children voice their feelings and views. I conclude that voices manifest themselves in multiple ways that extend beyond visual or verbal media. Voices are constructed socially and are shaped culturally to reflect norms regarding how individuals should express their views and feelings within a particular setting and time.     

Mesede and the Limits of Reciprocity in Fieldwork at Kamusi,Western Province,Papua New Guinea

This paper outlines some of the ways I and my research were defined by Bamu speakers living at Kamusi, the headquarters of the Wawoi Guavi logging concession in the Western Province of PNG. These definitions often involved stories about Mesede and other great Bamu ancestors. The stories about Mesede outlined Bamu experiences of colonial and post-colonial development and suggested that Mesede had the power to transform the Bamu's current poverty and marginalisation. The possibility that Mesede could institute a new epoch of development was linked to the Bamu's ability to maintain inalienable ties with Mesede despite his removal overseas. Mesede's story also required me to acknowledge, and productively respond to, past appropriations by Australians, and others, of Mesede. His history placed me in a project of im/possible reciprocity that should have involved me in returning Mesede to his rightful place.     

Censoring the Sexual Self: Reflections from an Ethnographic Study of Gay Filipinos on Mobile Dating Apps in Manila

This paper reflects upon Evelyn Blackwood's 1995 ‘Falling in Love with An-Other Lesbian’ essay on love and desire during fieldwork research as it intersects with the figure of the ‘virtual anthropologist’ in Kath Weston's 1997 essay of the same name. My multiple subjectivities (specifically those nativised) enabled and restricted what I considered bonds and differences between me and others during ethnographic research among gay Filipino men using mobile dating apps. I revisit an experience from four weeks of preliminary data collection between May and June 2015 in Manila, Philippines, where I decided not to include a sexual encounter with a research participant named Wesley. Moving forward with my study, my reflections on censoring sexual encounters with research participants helped me to acknowledge several sources of moral anxieties and ethical considerations that influence how this specific testimony took its shape and to consider how to construct and apply a malleable ethic of honesty for current and future projects especially when intimacies themselves are the focus.     

Response to Commentaries by Mitchell and by Butler

This paper is a response to a discussion of my work by Stephen Mitchell and Judith Butler. I treat number of issues raised by those writers. Chief among the issues raised by Mitchell are the status of drive theory and the interrelation of the intersubjective and the intrapsychic. I clarify that, although I do value the paradoxical tension between opposites in relation to many binaries, I do not aim to preserve Freud's instinct theory alongside current views of Object relations. However, I do believe that intersubjectivity theory should posit an inherent conflict in the mind that is not simply a reflection of Object relations, that is, experiences with outside others. Rather, the inherent difficulty in recognizing the other, and the attendant problems of splitting and destructiveness, are crucial aspects of intersubjective theory. Precisely for this reason I reject Butler's claim that my theory does not see destruction and breakdown as essential to the movement of recognition. I see my own intentions as closer to those expressed by Butler's own statements about the relation of destruction and recognition. However, the faith that the clinical endeavor can overcome destructiveness may be the real point of contention. Another important difference relates to the question of the triad and the third. I accept Butler's view that I emphasize the dyad over the triad and attempt to take up some of her questions about triadic relations and the nature of thirdness.     

Mother Died Today or Maybe Yesterday: Reflections of L'etranger on Team‐Based Forms of Work Organization

One of the most enduring images of late twentieth‐century popular culture was the individualist and iconoclastic portrayal of the ‘grumpy old man’ Victor Meldrew in the BBC television series One Foot in the Grave. Richard Wilson's portrayal of the recently retired security worker is the antithesis of everything that contemporary organizations require from the idealized vision of employee as ‘team‐player’. As one who revels in the way that the epitaph ‘Victor’ is thrown at me at regular intervals both by my partner and children, at times when I think I am behaving normally, I thought it would be interesting for me to reflect, in public, on my relationship to contemporary workplace relations. It is my contention that Meldrew's characterization is not wholly based around the age dimension but is equally based upon his portrayal as an individual ill at ease with the mores of gregariousness. The essay therefore is a self‐reflective piece in which the author places himself in a particular milieu—that of L'etranger and uses this ‘placing’ in order to discuss the relationship between what he defines as ‘the outsider’ and the issue of age discrimination in contemporary blue‐collar environments. It is suggested that whilst the outsider or L'etranger is accepted under certain conditions within the managerial labour process this same level of organizational tolerance is not afforded to older workers within blue‐collar areas. It moves from a reflective, even autodidactic exploration of the relationship between the author and cultural articulations of L'etranger and uses this to inform an analysis of the acceptance of L'etranger within some aspects of the managerial labour within team based manufacturing units. In exploring these issues the essay then attempts to develop a third narrative in terms of now L'etranger, approaching the age of retirement fits in to the new academic labour process.     

The Passagenwerk and the place of Walter Benjamin in cultural studies: Benjamin,cultural studies,Marxist theories of art

This essay is a reflection on the circumstances that led me to a particular research project, on Cajun dance and music spaces, and also on the project's mutations through subsequent phases of development. Above all, this essay attempts to take stock of the difficulties – personal, scholarly, and theoretical – as well as the personal choices that have gone into developing an ongoing scholarly project. While I indicate the importance of the experiences of personal pleasure that originally inspired my research, I also show how the personal and the pleasurable often necessarily encounter tensions and even certain kinds of conflict when linked to a ‘disciplinary’ domain. This essay therefore traces a particular example of how ‘cultural studies travels’ both geographically within a life and disciplinarily within something that has come to be known as‘French cultural studies’.     

Bringing young children’s voices into programme development,randomized controlled trials and other unlikely places

Interventions aimed at improving children's lives are widespread and research evaluating these is central to policy decisions that affect their lives. Although there is an increasing move in intervention and evaluation research to include stakeholders’ perspectives this rarely extends to children's voices. As a psychologist committed to children's rights, this article explores my experiences of working at times on the fringes of my own discipline, drawing on wide-ranging resources and collaborating with other disciplines. The article reflects on the challenges and opportunities of multidisciplinary research and bringing young children's perspectives into these places where they are rarely heard.     

STRATEGIES FOR ENGAGING ADOLESCENT GIRLS AT AN EMERGENCY SHELTER IN A THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP: RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE GIRLS THEMSELVES

Engaging clients is an extremely important part of the therapeutic process. Although there is a literature on adult engagement, few articles discuss adolescent engagement. Those articles that do discuss adolescent engagement have been conducted from the perspective of adults. The purpose of this study was to explore, from the client's perspective, ways to engage and build a positive therapeutic alliance with adolescent girls. A focus group (N = 5) was conducted with residents of an emergency shelter for adolescent girls in an urban area. Clients were asked three questions: ‘If you could tell a counselor anything, what would you tell her/him?’ .‘What do counselors need to know?’ and ‘How can a counselor get you to talk?’ Seven messages emerged from the clients' responses, which focused on a request to be respected, listened to, and not judged. More specifically, themes included ‘Treat me like I'm on your level’, ‘Tell me a little about yourself’, ‘Ask my permission to take notes’, ‘Pay attention to what I'm saying’, ‘Tell me what you're doing’, ‘Don't tell me what's in my file’, and ‘Don't call me names’. Clients provided concrete ways in which social workers and other counseling professionals could better work with them.     

Parting words: Trauma,silence and survival

Abstract

This article examines an enigma at the heart of Freud's work on trauma: the surprising emergence, from within the theory of the death drive, of the drive to life, a form of survival that both witnesses and turns away from the trauma in which it originates. I analyse in particular the striking juxtaposition, in Freud's founding work Beyond the Pleasure Principle, of his two primary examples of trauma: the repetitive nightmares of battle suffered by the soldiers of World War I, and the game of the child, faced with the loss of its mother, who plays fort and da (there and here) with his spool. My own understanding of Freud's insight did not emerge, however, simply through a reading of his text but began, in fact, in my encounter with a real child in Atlanta, a child whose best friend was murdered in the street and who is interviewed by the friend's mother. I thus read together the language of the nightmare and the language of the child in Freud's text, and then attempt to understand how Freud's text and the language of the real child shed light upon each other.