Sara Ahmed - Uses of Use – Diversity, Utility and the University

ladies and gentlemen I think we'd like to start I'm going to thank you all for braving the snow freezing weather to come to the crash impact lecture crash impact lectures are a seriously hold each year at we can which designed to link together intellectual activity with social activity and social process and the last couple of years we've been focusing in particular on race and gender and anyone who's video Cambridge for a while will know why that seems like the topic and it's an extraordinarily big pleasure for me tonight to introduce Sarah Ahmed from non institutional context who is one of the feminists so it's I hope you will join me in welcoming Sarah Thank You Ann it is a great achievement to all of you to be here I hope you get home safely I'm already worrying half people's exit routes they Thank You Simon and I'm a pleasure to be kind of fresh and the impact series so I'll be talking tonight about uses of use diversity utility and the University on February the 9th 1825 the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell published a letter in The Times addressed to Sir Henry Brougham a liberal member of the House of Commons this letter was followed up by another piece published in the April edition of the monthly review both pieces of writing call for the formation of a new English University to be based in London which was to offer a secular alternative to Oxford and Cambridge that University originally called University of London now call University College London was founded a year after publication of Campbell's letter almost of the day on February 11th 1826 Campbell's letters could be considered the first attempt to give a written expression to the Tartarian principles upon which the modern university was to be based though his role in establishing the new University has been largely forgotten a painting by Henry Tonks the four founders of UCL does however place Campbell at the founding moment the painting is described thus kneeling at the right is the architect William Wilkins who presents his plans of the building to Jeremy Bentham standing the center of the composition and the poet Thomas Campbell who first conceived of the idea of a London University the painting places Bentham himself as the recipient of the plan he did not however play any such role in the setting up of London University he was over 80 at the time although he's often called the spiritual father of the UCL by the UCL and I think this description is apt this imitation of a certain kind of paternity we could consider for instance the influence of Bentham's own plan for a school that was to be for the children of the middle classes entitled chrestomathy on a school that was to be organised under the rubric of useful knowledge Bentham described the classical squalor maybe better qualify for decorating his speech with rhetorical flowers but the christen ethics collar after familiar and thorough acquaintance has been contracted with things with things of all sorts will be in a more useful and efficient way qualified for the general course of parliamentary business now Betts's plans for the school rather like his plan for a prison did not come about but I think they did influence the shape and direction of the new university indeed Robert Young has described the University of London as the quest term ethic University during this period of the early 19th century many utilitarian thinkers were involved in educational projects of different kinds some of those involved in the setting up of London University such as James mill and Lord Henry Brougham were also involved in the Society for the diffusion of useful knowledge the SD UK which was established in the same year its core mission was to make knowledge more accessible in part by producing a series of pamphlets such as a penny magazine which was intended for middle-class and working-class readers the materials they produced formed what they called a library of useful knowledge we can learn from the sheer volume of what was left behind by this organization how useful knowledge was not simply an idea that was in circulation but how it involved administering organizing meetings and minutes words and concepts do not travel on their own they are picked up and put into papers that are passed around creating trails for us to follow I will not be addressing the history of the idea of useful knowledge today though I do think it's a fascinating history and it's one from which I have learned a great deal but I wanted to open my lecture by referring to this history as it helps us to challenge any notion that utility arrives late to the University or that utility is a foreign policy imposed upon universities from elsewhere and that I think it's important to remember that the modern University was conceived as a utilitarian project my argument will eventually lead to a discussion of utility as a policy but I do not start there to start there would not would allow us not to witness how youth shapes what is already here and who is already here so I start not all utility but with use indeed one of my projects is to put youths back into utilitarianism which tends to be understood in a rather restricted way as a branch of moral philosophy or as a mode of economic rationality and by youth I include youth as an ordinary and dynamic activity use is how we take hold of things of all sorts to use Bentham's own terms so when I say I want to put use back into utilitarianism I acknowledge that youth is already there utility is a use word of course albeit one with an arrow philosophical pedigree use is already there in the archives perhaps it is there in part because of how it went missing in a letter sent to the SD UK by William Adamson in 1830 the word Youth if you can see it here is double underlined and he's making a point that useful knowledge must involve youth as an activity Adamson writes the art of reading is taught but not its youth he argues that there is a lack of attention to use as an activity within the materials that are circulated by the Society for diffusion of useful knowledge he gave emphasis to use as an activity because he thought that youths had not been emphasized enough we can share an emphasis I picked up that letter because of how it picked up on use so my task in today's lecture is to think about diversity and universities by starting with use a small word that has a lot of work to do greater false key has called use workman like a small word with a big history use has had and does have many uses I'll be drawing ideas I've been developing in a new book called what's the use where I'm following you surround the way I followed happiness in the promise of happiness and the will in wilful subjects to follow youth is to connect bodies of work that are usually kept distinct such as literature's in design psychology and biology that make use of use to explain the acquisition of form my arguments about diversity and youth including the use of diversity build upon work by genre top ahaed mohanty gloria veca jackie alexander and heidi Mirza who have offer powerful critiques of diversity in the Academy as a way of building feminists of color and black feminists counter institutional knowledge so this first section is called geeses of youth so in affection I want to offer a meditation on youth as a biography as a way of telling a story of things youth when used as a verb can mean to employ for some purpose to expand or consume to treat or behave toward to take unfair advantage of or exploit to habituate or a custom use is a relation as well as an activity that often points beyond something even when youth is about something to use something points to what something is for some objects are made in order to be used we might call these simply designed objects what therefore brings them into existence a cup is made in order that I have something to drink from it is shaped this way with a whole as its heart empty so that it could be filled by liquids we might summarize the implied relation as for is before however even if something is shaped around what it is for that is not the end of the story as Howard Rosetti has noted in a theory of craft usse need not correspond to antenna function most if not all objects can have or use or more accurately be made usable for being put to use a sledgehammer compound or it can be used as a paperweight or lever a handsaw can cut a board and be used as a straight edge or to make music a chair can be sat in and used to pop open a door these users make them useful objects but since they are unrelated to the intended purpose and function for which these objects are made knowing these uses doesn't reveal much about these objects so youths can correspond to intend a function but use does not necessarily correspond to intended function this not not necessarily is an opening I am not so sure of uses are quite as unrevealing about things as Rossetti implies I'm being told something about the qualities of a sledgehammer that it can be used to be a paperweight that a sledgehammer can be used as a paperweight tells me about the heaviness of the sledgehammer something cannot be used for anything use then is a restriction of possibility that is material that is material nevertheless there was something queer about use because intentions do not exhaust possibilities the keys that are used to unlock a door can be used as a toy the hats because they are shiny and silver perhaps because they jangle now also the implication in this quote that use make something usable I think this strange temporality matters what makes something possible can come after and we are perhaps more used to thinking of possibility as presidents use can also make something used when we think of something's being used we might think buying something secondhand like this book which was a book on hands that was handy which I bought as a used book a use book is usually cheaper than a new book and more signs of usage equals less value unless the user is esteemed when the value of a person can rub off on the value of a thing wear and tear usually means a depreciation of value marks and capital discusses wear and tear in relation to machines the material wear and tear of machine is of two kinds the one arises from use as coins wear away by circulating the other from non use as swords rusts when it's left in its scabbard mark showed how machinery intensifies rather than saves labor you have to get the most out of the machine before it wears out a wearing that is passed on to workers wearing as passing on and passing out used as used up so wear and tear in this economy is the loss of value determined by the extraction of value to value use might require a change of values to value use would not be to romanticize what is preserved as a historical record signs of life can be signs of exhaustion which is to say signs of life can be signs of how a life has been extinguished perhaps we can think of use as a record of the fragility of a life the marks left behind by youth could be treated there not as the erosion of value but as testimony the scratchers on a table as how a table testifies to a history in writing about youth I've deliberately made use of used books they're part of my archive and with this book in my hands I can tell that others have been here before I think of the reader who circled the word grief I cannot reach you but you left a trace use leaves tracers in places something might be in use or out of use when something breaks it might be taken out of use rather like this cup which has lost its handle a rather sad parting when we think of something in use we might think of a sign on a door occupied the sign tells us the toilet is in use it tells us we cannot use a toilet and to whoever it is using the toilet is finished youth often comes with instructions that are about preserving maintaining social and bodily boundaries or take this image of a post box there is a sign that politely asks that would be posted not to use the post box like posting a letter into the box so in the previous image the toilet was occupied because it was in use in this case the post box is out of use because it is occupied although of course from another point of view it is in use it has become a home for nesting birds so intended functionality can mean who something is for not just what something is for and this means that something can be used by those for which it was not intended that a post box can become a nest is still telling us something about the nature of the object we learn about form when a change of function does not require a change of form but that change does still require something a sign please do not use and use is often used in signs a sign that is in use to stop what be usual posting a letter through the the sign we assume is temporary the postbox will come back into use as a post box when it ceases to be announced back into use use can involve comings and goings take the example of the well-trodden path the path exists in part because people have used it use involves contact and friction the tread of feet smoothing the surface the path is becoming smoother easier to follow the more a path is used the more a path is used how strange that the sentence makes sense without use a path can disappear becoming overgrown bumpy or unusable like this path we know it's a path because of a sign but you can hardly see the sign for the leaves use could be necessary for preservation use it or lose it this is not only a mantra in personal training which apparently it is it can also become a philosophy of life not using not being a path can appear like a line on a landscape but a path can also be a route through life collectivity can be acquired as direction the more a path is traveled upon the clearer it becomes and a path can be kept clear or maintained you can be supported by how a route is cleared heterosexuality for instance can become a path a route through life a path that is kept clear or maintained not only by the frequency of use and a frequency can be an invitation but by an elaborate support system when it is harder to proceed when a path is harder to follow you might be discouraged you might try and find another route a consciousness of the need to make more of an effort can be a disincentive just think of how we can be dissuaded by the patch reminders of just how hard something would be deviation is hard deviation is made hard thoughts and feelings they too have paths with in empirical psychology the path is in use as a way of thinking about thought John Locke for example once suggested that thoughts once that ago and continued in the same shape they're used to which by often tread and are worn into a smooth path and the motion in it becomes easy and as it were natural used to that which is wearing and worn a history of youth as a history of becoming natural William James and his psychology cites the work of Dumont on habit everyone knows how a garment enamine worn a certain time things better to the shape of the body than when it was new a lot works better at when you sometime at the outset a certain force was required to overcome certain roughness in the mechanism a garment becomes more attuned to the body the more the garment is worn our return to the world use garment in due course the example they lock and the key suggested is through use that things become easier to use and this is how acts of use can be the building block of habit if we took habit as the unit we might miss these smaller steps which accumulate to take us somewhere if used text time you save time less effort is required to complete an action the idea that used to keep something alive or that using something make something easier to use its supplemented by another idea central to the emergence of modern biology that use in making something stronger and disuse in making something weaker shapes the very form of organic life for example Lamarck the french naturalist who first used the word biology in its modern sense offered as his primary law the law of use and disuse a more frequent and continued use of any organ gradually strengthens develops and enlarges our organ and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used or the permanent disputes of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it and progressively diminishes its functional capacity until it finally disappears these acquired modifications for Lamarck can be inherited what is called simply use inheritance now what is used and disused for Lamarck is dependent on the environment use is in other words a kind of passivity it's how an organism receives a mess from the environment about what it needs Lamarck's famous example is the giraffes long neck although he only uses that example once a fact that irritates greatly Stephen Gould who complains about how the the giraffe as an example has taken the place of the general law that lamothe is trying to illustrate his other well-known example is the blacksmith strong-arm which he doesn't use at all so I'm very interested in examples as having their own biographies of use fulla mark the giraffe's neck grows longer not through conscious Felician but as an effect of repeated efforts that had become directional in time he was a theorist of time I think he describes efforts in a particular direction when they are sustained or habitually made by certain parts of a living body for the satisfaction of needs established by nature environment caused an enlargement of the parts and the acquisition of a size and shape they would not have obtained if these efforts have not become the normal activities of the animal exerting them when we could spend a long time with that quote it's got a lot of promise for queer theory I think because it implies that norms become forms in time so when an effort becomes normal a form is acquired and when such form is acquired less effort is needed the giraffe does not have to reach the high to reach the foliage so in other words in my terms youths inheritance translates as the lessening of the effort required to survive within an environment so at certain points the mark does seem to imply that a useful something would bring it into existence and this is one of the reasons I think that Darwin was rather disparaging about lamotte's work because of the implication he heard rightly or wrongly that Nature has a design we can find evidence of this disparagement in another used book Darwin's personal copy of Lamarck's history natural you can't see downs Oh Matt but they are tight for us in digital reproduction over on this side Darwin wrote on the margins because use improves an organ wishing for it or its use produces it exclamation mark exclamation that extra and I'm actually writing about exclamation marks as an interesting example of overuse because there's a lot of very precise instructions about how you should use exclamation marks which really involve using them sparingly so the restriction of use is part of how they function Oh despite her Lamarck and Darwin appear to deviate from Darwin's point of view at least on this question of you Darwin himself often represents natural selection and the law of use and use misuse as working together and it's interesting to note that Darwin offers a reuse of the architect metaphor in describing the mechanism of natural selection despite how that metaphor is understood to risk the implication of design and I'm going to give you this quote because it again is incredibly interesting and I'll be drawing on it when I talk about institutions let an architect be compelled to build an edifice with uncut stones falling from a precipice the shape of each fragment may be called accidental yet the shape of each has been determined by the force of gravity the nature of the rock and the slope of the precipice events and circumstances all of which depend on natural laws but there is no relation between these laws and the purpose for which each fragment is used by the Builder the shape with the fragments of stone at the base of a precipice may be called accidental but that is not strictly correct for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events all of a natural laws on the nature of the rock on the lines of disposition or cleavage on the form of the mountain which depends on its upheaval and subsequent innovation and finally on the storm or earth plate which threw down the fragments but in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put their shape may be strictly said to be accidental so you can make use of stones without cutting them in order to fit a design these stones are thrown up or available according to natural law but the stones were not made in order to be used like that cup which is shaped so that it can be filled by liquids if the shape of a stone is determined by a long sequence of events it events do an accident the shape of this stone fits the shape of that hole in the building of this wall so you are more likely to use a stone that happens to fit that space so use here is accident but also use happenstance use as full of HAP use as happy so I'll return to downs use of the a patek metaphor ng course so this next section is called clear institutional as usual if we're following you we can follow us right back into the university youth allows us to show how universities are assembled as it were brick by brick when I visited the archives of the UCL I was able to witness the history of decisions about how the university was to be built on May the 6th 1827 stones were brought to the building committee Portland stones and Edinburgh stones in order to help the committee decide which stones to use I think of the stones they're on the table they were part of the proceedings these are different kinds of stones and the stones that Darwin is alluding to they have been cut they have been made to fit but the stories however fitting still have a story to tell if bricks become walls Stones become steps Jay dolmage in his work on academic ableism describes how steep steps and material but also create an idea of the university the access to the University is a movement upwards only the truly fit survive the climb so I want to draw in section on my research into diversity work that I first presented in my book on being included and which I returned to in the middle section of living a feminist life when I returned to this research while writing about youth I realized how much diversity practitioners in reflecting on their work also reflected on youth and in particular on institutional youth and this is not surprising diversity workers are trying to transform institutional habits there does trying to intervene in how things usually happen to stop the flow of things to deviate from the world trodden path diversity work often then becomes requires becoming conscious of use confronting or bringing to the front what is often reproduced by receding into the background and yet at another level diversity seems to be the way things are going diversity as a word seems to offer a rather world traveled path becoming an arrow even which can be an instruction and thus a direction go that way indeed practitioners often use the word diversity because that is the word that is being used I will say this is one practitioner I would say that the word the term diversity is just used now because it's more popular you know it's in the press so why would we have equal opportunities when we can just say it's diversity we can just say is diversity if diversity is just used now so here use becomes a reason for use the circularity of a logic transformed into at all many practitioners suggests that diversity is just use now because of its effective qualities as a lighter happier more positive term another practitioner describes diversity obscures the issues diversity is like a big shiny red apple right it all looks wonderful but the inequalities aren't being addressed diversity might be used because of what it allows organizations not to address diversity as a smile sometimes you have to use words more because of what has not been done another practitioner notes I think it equity became a tired term because it was thrown around a lot and I think well I don't know because our title is equity and social justice somebody the other day was saying to me I know there's equity fatigue people are sick of the word equity oh well okay we've gone through Equal Opportunity affirmative action they're sick of equity now what do we call ourselves they're sick of it because we have to keep saying it because they are not doing it such institutional wisdom we use a word more because we are not getting through we keep saying what it is that they do not do words here seem almost the opposite of muscles the more you use the words of floppier they become looser less tight less precise less sharp this argument contradicts what has been called the law of exercise which was lamotte's first law were to use is to strengthen this contradiction is to matter to a theory of use that is robust enough to explain different uses of youth so diversity does less because it is used more or diversity is used more because it does less I think this or is probably an act so the overuse we might say of diversity how it is used more can be a sign of the difficulty of getting through another practitioner describes its banging your head against a brick wall job so here a job description becomes a wall description if you keep banging your head against a brick wall but the wall picks its place it is you they get sawed and what happens to the wall all we seem to have done is scratched the surface and this is what diversity work often feels like scratching the surface scratching at the surface and even if you've only scratched the surface you can still be liable for damages so let me share with you an example of an encounter with an institutional wall this example is from a practitioner who developed a new policy on academic appointments and this is her story it is a wall story and like all wall stories it's long when I was first here there was a policy that you had to have three people on every panel who'd been diversity trained but then there was a decision early on when I was here that it should be everybody all panel members at least internal people they took that decision at the equality and diversity committee committee which several members of SMT were present at but then the director of Human Resources found out about her and decided we didn't have the resources to support it and I went to Council that taken out and counts were told that they were happy to have just three members only a person on council was an external man with the Diversity Committee went ballistic and I'm not kidding went ballistic and said the minutes didn't reflect what had happened in the meeting because the minute said the decision was different to what actually happened and I didn't take the minutes by the way and so they had to take it through and reverse it and the council decision was that all people should be trained and despite that I have then SATA meetings where they just continue saying that it has to be just three people on the panel and I said but no council changed our view and I can give you the minutes and then just look at me to them saying something really stupid this went on for ages even if the council minutes definitely said all panel members should be trained and to be honest sometimes you just give up so it seems as if there has been an institutional decision but individuals within the institution must act as if the decision has been made for it to have been made if they do not it has not a decision made in the present about the future is overridden by the momentum of the past the past becomes that world warm path what usually happens still happens so in this case the head of personnel did not need to take the decision out of the minutes for the decision not to bring something into effect I've called this dynamic non performativity when naming something does not bring something into effect or where something is named in order not to bring something into effect the wall is that which keeps standing I think of the wall as a finding let me summarize that finding what stops movement means in other words the mechanisms of stopping something are mobile which means when we witness a movement we can miss the mechanism and I think this is very important as organizations are good at moving things but creating evidence of doing something is not the same thing as doing something this is why I've called diversity workers institutional plumbers they have to work out not only where something is blocked but how is blocked so in our example what stops something from happening could have been the removal of the policy from the minutes and if that had worked the director of Human Resources would have had a hand in what did not happen but that wasn't what happened because it was noticed so what stopped something could have been not noticing that the decision had been taken out of the minutes or it could have been The Fairly to put the decision back into the minutes but it was none of those things it was the way in which those within the institution acted after the policy had been agreed with a phlearn agreeing to something can be another way of stopping something from happening and so a diversity policy can come into existence without coming into use so I noted earlier how a sign is often used to make a transition from something being in and out of you such as in this case of the postbox that has become a nest institutions are also postal systems so maybe the diversity worker deposits the policy in the post box because she assumes the post box is in use she's right to make that assumption because she's following a procedure the post box that is not in use without any sign declaring it to be not in use might have another function to stop the policy from going through the whole system the policy becomes dusty rather like marks as rusty sword from rusty to dusty a policy can become unusable by not being used consider also the energy this practitioner expended on developing that policy that did not do anything the story of how a wall keeps standing is the same story as a story of how a diversity worker becomes shattered as she says sometimes you just give up maybe you end up feeling used up limp spent rather like this tube of toothpaste as if you've got nothing left to give or maybe you fly off the handle to a call that broken cup an expression that can mean to snap or to lose your temper to lose a handle on things can mean to lose yourself you become the one who can't handle it you don't have to say anything to be hurt us breaking something another practitioner describes you know you go through that and these sort of jobs where you got to say something you can just see people going oh here she goes we both laugh recognizing that each other recognized that soon the feminist killjoy that leaky container she comes up here she comes up and what we can hear we hear each other in the wear and the tear of the words we share we hear what it's like to come up against the same thing over and over again we imagine the eyes whirling as if to say well she would say that it was from experiences like this that I developed my equation rolling eyes equals feminist pedagogy I think it's important to note that the policy that will stop by not being used was a policy about how academic appointments are made a university is a history of appointments when I visited the UCL archives I got a sense of the shape of that history the secretary wrote letters in response to those who expressed interest in teaching at this new university once he had read one of these letters that seemed like he'd read them all they were standardized as standard as what you create when you use the same form so I was getting a bit tired sweet news letters and then one letter jumped out it was a little sent in response to Professor Johan Frederic McCall in 1827 Lamarckian who was a star professor in his time and what was striking about this letter sent to Mecca was how all of the standards were suspended the letter is long and personal and gushing detailed it can become a standard to suspend a standard I know of many more recent cases where the usual procedures are bypassed to enable the recruitment of such-and-such staff professor even though that by passing is a bypassing of the equal opportunities procedures that are supposed to be compulsory we can begin to appreciate a difficulty here diversity workers might try to develop new procedures to stop the reproduction of the same thing but procedures are what is suspended to enable that very reproduction appointment panels of this cases to go if you want to learn more about how institutions are reproduced about how decisions are made about who is to use a much used term in the British context appoint a ball a person in a diversity training session I attend has shared that people in her department had an unofficial criteria for appoint ability whether someone was quote-unquote the kind of person who could take down to the pub they wanted someone who can inhabit spaces with them being web as being like someone they can relate to drink with I remember one time a woman of color was being considered for a job in my department she worked on raising sexuality and someone said in a meeting was concerned but we already have Sarah as if having one of us was more than enough there was a moment consensus that she replicated me even though our work was quite different there was no concern about other such areas concern no concern how things stay the same by seeing others as the same I want to go back to my discussion of uses of use an institution is an environment and environments are dynamic it is because environments change that use has changed an institution is also however a container technology you can reproduce something by stabilizing the requirements for what you need to survive or thrive in an environment once these requirements have been stabilized they do not need to be made explicit use becomes instead a question of fit remember Darwin's use of the architect metaphor the Builder uses the story that just happens to fit an institution is as we know built so it appears as if the moment of use is HAP that this person just happens to fit the requirements that this stone just happens to be the same shape in the same size as the hole in the wall but once a building has been built more or less once it has taken form more or less some more than others will fit the requirements indeed then HAP can be used ideologically as if they are here just because they happen to fit rather than they fit because of how the structure was built a structure in other words is a gradual removal of hap from use in the determination of a requirement in the marx model youth became inheritance of shaping form it lessens the effort required to do something within a given environment when you fit and fitting here can be formal a question of form you can inherit the lessening of effort so a path let's say in the sense of a career path or even a life trajectory is not simply made more usable by being used some have paths laid out more clearly in front of them because they already fit our requirement in other words it's not just the constancy of you that Eve is a passage use is ease for those who inherit to write form with our brightness means the degree of fit with an expectation that it's often not articulated for as the four acquires a new residence here when a world is built for some they come before others this first section is called occupied people do come to inhabit organizations that are not intended for them you can make the cut without fitting if you arrive into an organization that is not built for you you might experience that for what it's for as tight or as tightening if your other one for whom an institution is intended for might be loose you might experience the institution as open because it was open to you so if use is a restriction of possibility as material as I suggested earlier some will encounter that restriction more than others this is why I think of the institution as rather like an old garment it has acquired the shape of those who tend to wear it such that it becomes easier to wear if you have that shape this is also why I think of privilege as an energy-saving device less effort is required to pass through when a world has been assembled around noon if you arrive with dubious origins you're not expected to be there so in getting there you already disagreed with an expectation of who you are and what you can do then an institution can feel like the wrong shape and that Korean describes how as a working-class girl in a grammar school she felt conspicuously out of place she describes the sense of being out of place by giving a biography of her school uniform a biography of youth how by the time her ill-fitting uniform came to fit it had become shabby and scruffy the word where you originally derives from the Germanic word for clothing it then acquires the secondary sense of use up or gradually damage from the effect of continued use on clothes so it's not just that when something is used more it fits better if you are the wrong shape you have to make more of an effort you sin does not smooth a passage or enable a better fit but leads to corrosion and damage this difference between youths that smooths and enables and use that corrodes and damages is a distributed difference so not fitting can be about the body you have about your own requirements Rosemarie Galen Thompson's important term and misfit helps us to describe if these mechanisms when you don't meet the requirements you become a misfit she describes being a person with a disability in an ableist institution is like being a square peg in a ground home in a round home fitting becomes work for those who do not fit you have to push push push and sometimes no amount of pushing will get you in you can become a misfit given what has become a routine an organization that organizes long meetings without any breaks familiar I'm sure assumes a body that can be seated without breaks if someone arrives who cannot maintain that position they do not meet the requirements so if you lay down during the meeting you would throw the meeting into crisis I think a social justice project requires throwing meetings into crisis if a space has to be modified to enable you to participate it is not just that it is hard for you to participate but that your participation is deemed as being disruptive to do the work of fitting often merely means to fit in you might have to try to fit in when or because you do not fit in a woman of color describes this work I think the personal car there's always a question of what suitum are going to turn out like their move is about appointing people of color into senior positions because if I went in my sorry when a prayer time off and started rocking the boats and being a bit different and asserting my kind of culture I'm sure they take it differently so some forms of difference I heard as rocking the boat as if you're only different because you're insistent on being different I've called this labor of trying to minimize the signs of difference institutional passing trying not to cause a disruption might be about what you have to discard garments asari say it might be what you do not do it might be words you do not say words you do not say I suggested early that the word diversity might be used more because it does less as well as do less because it is used more one woman of color a cleric I spoke to for my project on complaint described to me I was on at the equality and diversity group in the university and as soon as I started mentioning things to do of race they changed a portfolio of who could be on the committee and I was dropped when you don't drop the words difficult words such as race you can be dropped so here diversity becomes the requirement to be more attuned to the organization you have to do the work with a smile by not using the more negative terms I'll return to her important test to me next week we learn from what follows when you use the words you're not supposed to use words like rests words like racism whiteness white supremacy Audrey Lorde described so well how racism is heard as getting in the way of a smooth path of communication any use of the word racism is heard as an overuse of the word braces on when words evoke histories that create friction they catch attention they sound louder abrasive words can evoke histories and bodies too sometimes turning up is enough to bring a history up a history they can get in the way of an occupation of a space a social category can be thought of as a dwelling as that which gives residents a professor can be a category in which we reside some have to insist on belonging to the categories that give residents to others be heir oralists reflects on how as a professor of color he's often met with surprise after I formally introduced myself in class I have undergraduate students who asked me in a surprise tone of voice how you related professor I sometimes overhear them asking their peers is he really the professor really really are you sure being asked whether you are the professor is another way of being made into a stranger being asked where you are from as a way of saying you are not from here brown black not from here not from here not here not you might walk into a seminar room with a white now professor you're both professors but you can feel the gaze land upon him plop plop you don't appear as professor because you are not how a professor usually appears and he is addressed as a professor hello professor and if you were to say hey I'm a professor too he will be heard as drawing attention to yourself diversity work how you end up appearing as drawing attention to yourself so category such as professor are occupied those who are assumed to reside there also benefit from that assumption there are so much you are saved from having to do diversity work teaches us how the university as such is occupied next week I will discuss occupation as a matter of how spaces are being used but you can just be sitting in a lecture theatre and be surrounded by a history and feel that the space is occupied one thinks of UCL where you can encounter Bentham's dead body well - a head or with a wax head or enter a lecture theatre named after Francis Galton I'm sure you will know coin the words eugenics and who donated funds to enable the setting of a program in national eugenics as well as a professorship of eugenics that professorship was first taken up by his student Karl Pearson Pearson who as you can see you can now go to his reading room UCL has removed the word eugenics from the program and professorship they've replaced the word eugenics with the word genetics lose the word keep the thing not using as reproducing they've kept Cotton's name however when asked to justify the continued use of Cotton's name by a member of the audience at a panel why isn't my professor black that took place in 2016 the pro vice-chancellor UCL said in my defense I inherited him use inheritance becomes use as inheritance and as you'll probably know UCL recently housed a conference on eugenics keep the thing find the word sometimes we are asked to reproduce what we do not inherit I've lost count at the number of times when I as a scholar of color have been asked to speak at conferences and then I've read the course of papers and it still only refers to the work of white academics why in this can be so occupying like a phone line that's always busy maybe you were invited to speak because if you speak then the conference will not be liked the fantasy that you bring an end to whiteness is how whiteness is reproduced as a lion one time when I read such a calls for paper same-old same-old I said something and sometimes you say something because of what they're doing you keep saying it because they're doing it his explanation I try to cater to my more conservative colleagues who I feel my any kind of reassurance achieved by citing people they're well-acquainted with so sexism and racism become a kind of citational practice but also a catering system justified as a form of reassurance we're keeping things familiar for those who want to conserve the familiar a system of acquaintances a friendship network a kinship network something that you do on behalf of others to reassure others at the system in which they reproduce themselves will be reproduced friendly like this is why a famous life I called white man as an institutional category a citation or relational citation is another way of talking about the use of use you might be asked to follow the world trodden path of citation to cite properly as a cite those deemed to already have had the most influence the more a path is used the more a path is used the more here cited the more he is cited we might want to consider how such paths are kept clear through work her occupation depends upon erasure such-and-such white man might become an originator of a concept and idea as becoming similar seminal by removing traces of those who were there before so occupation as ground ground clearing removing traces of use as well as of others when you question such a rage as you're questioning the use of time how much time is occupied in a course to a narrow body of work you're questioning how time is distributed sometimes even a question is treated as damaged as causing damage as damaging the syllabus say but not appearing what or who you're supposed to Revere decolonizing the curriculum as a project has indeed been framed as an act of vandalism a willful destruction of our universals knocking off the heads of statues snapping at the thrones of the philosopher kings we are familiar with this problem from how the important work being done here at Cambridge was framed by the media and it is it is an old problem the question raised about the use of golson's named during the why's that my professor black panel which is a great question why isn't my professor black which led I would add to a wider and meaningful discussion about the role of Bolton's legacy at UCL was represented to the wider public as the goal to must fall campaign whilst we might support such a campaign if it did exist there was in fact no such campaign it was invented by the media to discredit the questioning of a legacy as censorship when it was pointed out that the campaign did not exist small amendments or clarifications were made and what is clarifying for us is how discrediting works to discredit the questioning of a legacy is to discredit the questioner to expose a problem is then to expose a problem to name the problem to become a problem there she is scratching away at the wall the killjoy at work this is my conclusion it's called utility and policy a history of a university is also a history of what and who has been selected as well as what and who has not been I try to show in my lecture today how selection goes all the way down brick by brick paper by paper person by person once selections are made they can recede becoming part of the background when you meet the requirements you become part of the background if you arrive without meeting the requirements you appear intrusive so those who don't meet the requirements are teaching us about your planet we need to confront what is behind us I have found the minute books of London University to be incredibly useful as a way of giving us a record of decisions we learn about stones but also paper how the first prospectuses were put together how the university was given publicity we learn about paper but also persons the minutes from May 20th 1827 report it was resolved that each member of council should use his personal influence to induce such proprietors as he may select a network of influence can be how a university is funded how a university is assembled as a body I'll return to these networks of influence in my discussion of complaint next week complaint has taught me just how much they matter and how much their mattering is embedded in the materials of the organization my task today was to show how institutions are built from small acts of use from uses of youths and how building BOTS put together over time become walls walls that enable some bodies to enter stay put progress others not he complicates how youth can thicken rather like cement to form a wall when you are trying to transform organizations so they are more accommodating or when you enter an organization there has not been built for you one of my projects has been in this work to put ordinary youth back into the archives of utilitarianism as a way of thinking how utility does not simply come from the outside in in other words quite simply use is an inside job it is how the house is built I've been thinking of use as building works a building that is being built for some to use so utilitarianism that we thought there not only as a political technique which it is and it was but as a building project the selection of what is deemed to be of most general benefit been affirmed in his writing on publicity stated the whole Kingdom the great globe itself will become a gymnasium in which every man exercises himself before the eyes of every other man each gesture every turn of limb or feature in those whose motions have a visible impact on the general happiness will be noticed and marked down so if general happiness is the end youth becomes immense you have not only to make use of the limbs but to record that use to cordette use this is how utility then become a measuring and a calculating system so technology such as audit culture impact culture rest then upon the building work provided by use Bentham's ideal might seem either close to our real you are after all invited to record evidence of your own impact even to create evidence by asking for letters from those who have used your work letters that then you use to show where your work has been creating trails so we can tell tales so use is used as evidence when citation becomes an index other things follow the more here cited the more evidence of impact the more value to an organization the more time he is given to do the work the more he bites the more he is cited and so on and so on and so it goes on so when we are talking about being given time for the motions that can have an impact on general happiness we are talking about others doing other kinds of work she does more of a housework the administrative work the pastoral work the work that is less valued diversity work I'm using gender pronouns here for a reason I think sexism and racism in the Academy are also about whose paths are cleared the paths that lead up up higher still they're about whose load is being lightened who becomes usable as a mean means to lighten the load for others a lightining perhaps even a whitening that is assumed to be of general benefit a higher score we all get more so powers into organizations become passed up and through them we are also learning from uses of youth the techniques of what our poor simply general direction Benson wrote about what he called indirect legislation methods other than the law that can be used to direct individuals towards what are agreed to be the most beneficial ends so you reward what would be most useful and I think it's really interesting that the word reward comes from a warden it really reminds us of thinking about happiness unless it to surveillance as a motive for the performance of actions useful to society whilst you punish actions to which we ascribe an interest tendency so to be selected is to be directed to be selected is to be directed towards that which is agreed to be of general benefit you can see how I've actually drawn a lot on Bentham and Robin in describing happiness as a technique in my book the promise of happiness to be selected might require not going in a certain direction and I have heard again and again from students but all certain colleagues how they were directed away from certain kinds of work here in the Academy away from certain stances away from words even don't do a feminist project that won't get you very far don't do race that's too narrow race and gender are often framed as too narrow the universe was given width and breadth speed faster lighter we can and we do refuse these instructions but I think we need to listen to them to learn from what they are asking it is not just that you are directed away from what will compromise your own happiness your career your trajectory but from what will compromise what is deemed general happiness or it might even call institutional happiness so some directions become drains which is to say they drain resources from others so if you cannot show this is where you tell us it becomes policy finally if you cannot show how you contribute to general happiness you become a drain taking energy and resources away from something or somebody else in order to avoid becoming a drain selection becomes unnecessary everyday and even moral activity so selection here could be self selection when you select what you do do from what you could - depending on which direction could be best used as evidence of your contribution or selection can be made by others heads of department or mentors or peers who might want you to do what would contribute most to your own progression so in the end you can end up willingly not doing what cannot be used as evidence of your own contribution these are complex dynamics that I think we need to describe so we could think of all selection as methodical how from a diverse range of possibility some possibilities are selected that is given the support necessary to become actual or how from a diverse populations and bodies are selected that is given support necessary to proceed so not to be selected as not to be supported it is made harder to proceed a project can also be a path if we want to transform the institutions if diversity work brings us to the institution with a desire to transform at we do have a diversity project a feminist project but we also have an institutional project the desire to modify the institution is an institutional project and feminists have described the paradox of that for generations the paradox of requiring the support from the institution you are critiquing so we might use the more use path because frankly we need the resources we might translate the work we do into the terms that are more likely to be picked up but we can be carried forward by what is picked up the more we use the more use path the more we are aligned we are going the same way that others are going if you try to deviate if you change direction you would in fact be getting in the way of other people's emotions so this is the paradox if we proceed on a path in order to disrupt we can end up not disrupting it in order to proceed I think of this problem as a paradox as well as a pain it is a pain it is a problem that we need to keep with the front of our work not because we can resolve it but because we cannot it's a problem I learned about from talking to diversity workers one practitioner spoke to me about not using terms that were in her terms more confrontational to enable her to have more conversations with more staff across the university so she sensed and I think she was right that she could travel further by what she was not willing to confront so if the word diversity is used more because it does less perhaps doing less becomes as much as we can do we might use the word diversity because it is light we might not use the word feminism to avoid a fight we might try not to rock the boat because we do not have a secure fitting although of course sometimes rocking is emotion that seems to have nothing to do with what it is that we're doing but there are risks in doing what is required to proceed and I think we know this if our feminist projects are resourced by our institution it might become harder to confront certain problems as institutional problems to speak out about the role of the institution in enabling racism sexism sexual harassment for example when silence about violence becomes a way of holding on to feminist resources I think we have a problem and that's a problem I turn to next week even if we sometimes do what is necessary to proceed we can still fight to change what is necessary to build an alternative University requires crafting different roots from what is already behind us the fainter trails the less use paths and I think crafting is a good word for this kind of institutional work it takes world work not to create the same old shape and we can all be part of that effort we might for instance experiment with citation cite the work that has had the less impact keep that work alive work that allows us to question what is received as an influence or who is received as an influence but we need to do this but collectively if we are to widen the routes otherwise deviation might simply mean cessation institutional death reaching the end of the line not having enough support to keep going and so we need activism here if we are to stop the same old bodies being assembled doing the same old things a social justice project thus requires making usage into a crisis if we make usage into a crisis if we insist on inhabiting spaces that are not built for us if we try to transform spaces to accommodate those for whom they are not built we will quickly become the cause of that crisis and we can't always afford to be the cause of that crisis so I think building support systems feminist shelters safe spaces even becomes part of what we do how we do what we do we have to find ways of supporting those who are trying to find another route because we know that spaces can be opened up when they are inhabited by those for whom they were not intended and that opening up is work diversity work is work so we can return once again to this image it has something else to teach us disrupting usage and creating a shelter can refer to the same action thank you you

Channel: CRASSH Cambridge

Views: 24,572

Keywords: Sara Ahmed, CRASSH, Impact, Faministkilljoys

Id: avKJ2w1mhng

Length: 65min 37sec (3937 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 05 2018