22/07/23: Notes on the Way to Skye (Is it possible… + Anna Kavan’s Ice)
09:21. Currently on the train to Skye: from Doncaster to Edinburgh, then to Inverness, and then to Kyle of Lochalsh.
Is it possible to be both slow and productive at the same time?
June concluded with a conference: my first in-person one. It was successful and conflicting; an appropriate foreshadow for July. The idea of networking as this intrinsically self-serving or inhuman practice is a cynical inward take, and if academia has taught me anything, it is that inward cynicism is the antithesis of healthy intellectual curiosity. I think most problems come more from the terminology itself— ‘networking’ — which feels like a particularly commercial form of phraseology. There is something crude and faux-collective about it, and its importance in the modern professional lexicon betrays the individualist centrality that the word signifies. Bill Lewis claims to have originated the term back in 1985, applying it to the world of consumer telecommunications. Regardless of whether we believe Lewis or not, his claim only supports the structural mythology associated with the term.
Digression over.
As feels like the norm now, July has provided little in terms of substantial written work — but plenty in terms of ideas and notations. I have been wrestling with this idea of ‘anti-nostalgic’ nostalgia for a while now, using it as the overarching framework for my thesis’ second analytical chapter on The Great British Bake Off. It felt regressive and incorrect of me to allow the concept to become an overarching framework. In doing so, the nuances and ambiguities of any given text risk being ignored. I’ve also not felt that the term itself has much in the way of a foundation within film and television discourses. The main work which I have been using as a discursive foundation is Francesca Melhuish’s article ‘Euroscepticism, Anti-Nostalgic Nostalgia and the Past Perfect Post-Brexit Future’, which — whilst not the only text to address the issue of ‘anti-nostalgic nostalgia’ — is certainly one of the most thorough I have encountered in its investigation of the concept’s presence within reactionary discourses. My desire is to go beyond the boundaries of Melhuish’s conception, beyond Euroscepticism and Brexit, and see the phenomena within the multiplicitous avenues that neoliberalism — from its centrist apologia to its far-right manifestations — creates. As of yet, I have not produced anything substantial on this — although an upcoming research conference with my funding body AHRC Midlands4Cities will hope to provide some substance to this argument. But we’ll see.
I will think about writing an elaboration on ‘anti-nostalgic nostalgia’ in the future.
Anna Kavan’s Ice: Quick Thoughts.
[CW: sexual assault]
Decided to read this after getting through Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s first book in the My Struggle series. Neither particularly gripped me. To be brief about it: Franny and Zooey I found funny and infuriating in equal measure, whilst Knausgaard’s confessional reflections on adolescent masculinity just didn’t keep me engrossed.
Throughout Ice, I was reminded of Angela Carter’s short story collection The Bloody Chamber (an A-level English Literature classic)— with both text’s channelling fantasy and fable to communicate the entangled structures of misogyny and sexual violence. Yet where Carter’s collection is more explicit, more ready to display raw violence and hurt through the actions and desires of its fantastical characters, Kavan is far less descriptive. This is not so much an act of euphemism or authorial repression, but a product of its first-person expression whereby a nameless male protagonist discusses rape and violence towards the object of his strange desire, an unnamed silver-haired girl, via a phrasing which attempts (but crucially fails) to disguise it. Though often marketed as a quasi-science-fiction novel, it is more akin to a subversion of the adventure format, with the protagonist in relentless pursuit of this silver-haired girl across nameless borders, through an impending icy apocalypse, and amidst endless war. The protagonist occasionally seeks to question his motivations, but in having his desires unnamed and uncategorised, he finds the pursuit all too easy to rejustify. Categorisation— or its abundant lack — is part of this struggle. In addressing things namelessly, reducing descriptions down to surface-level interpretations, the individualised ‘pursuit’ itself becomes the structural locus. It allows the slippages between characterisation — of the protagonist and the “antagonist” warden who harbours the silver-haired girl, and to whom the protagonist reluctantly begins to relate— to exist in the realm of the structural; rendering them equal via the fantastic.
It is difficult to separate the silver-haired girl from Kavan and her experiences, who — after two marriages and a suicide attempt — shed the moniker of Helen Woods/Ferguson/Edmunds and became Anna Kavan. And whilst this constant description of the silver-haired girl as wrought with internalised victimhood may express some truth, Kavan knows that the girl — and likewise herself — cannot ultimately be reduced to this. Its primacy in the protagonist’s interpretation of the girl displays a false concern, designed only to prop up his role as saviour and to justify his relentless objectifications. Fascinating then that Kavan’s conclusion to this narrative is not so obviously cynical, as she may otherwise have every right to be. The girl eventually explains the protagonist’s wrongdoings, partially forgiving him when he acknowledges the pain he’s done. Comfort can be found in genuine self-reflection. But the apocalypse is nigh — and whilst she can finally seek some (perhaps naive) comfort in his presence, he — in that famous final line — cannot help but grasp his gun. He remains, on some level, wedded to his unnamed principles. It is a daunting end, and one which could be described as cynical. I find that hard to believe — if anything, the apocalyptic scenario is angry in its insistence that work needs to be done before its too late. In that way, it is potentially hopeful. Those final moments also provide the girl with agency. Her ‘tragedy’ is rendered only via the protagonist’s gaze, and in her subverting of his driving forces, the ‘tragedy’ — such as it is — is reflected back onto him.
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To end: I intend to make, at the end of each month, a list of the various media (and meals, maybe, because why not) which I have enjoyed throughout that month. If energy permits, I’ll also accompany these lists with a quick commentary.
