The Argonaut mini-printed edition Winter Term 2024

March 2024

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THE ARGONAUT Radical Thought at the LSE.

By engaging with comment, culture and fieldwork, The Argonaut is committed to challenging hegemonic narratives and broadening radical discourse.

A banner at Kew Gardens, at the ‘Queer Nature’ exhibition. Photo taken by Mahliqa Ali. More on page 7.

A poster for a march attended by Soufyaan Timol in Barcelona. More on page 3.

Poster by Hat Collins from Queer Roots Collective, Manchester. More on page 15.

Welcome to The Argonaut's Winter term 'mini' print edition! This past term has welcomed exciting new pieces from our students, ranging from fieldwork writeups to exhibition musings. This has come amidst a moment of mourning, violence, and disillusionment, highlighting the importance of spaces for critical engagement and radical thinking at the LSE. This edition showcases some of what we've been working on in the past weeks. We hope you enjoy; and if you do, please don't hesitate to contact us and contribute - we welcome pieces in the categories of Comment, Culture and Fieldwork, in written, visual and other form. Funded by LSE's Social Anthropology department but led by students for students, we welcome submissions from everyone. This is a space for the anthropologically-minded community of LSE to express themselves and cultivate a much needed community.

Much love, Iacopo, Ishani, Pia, Carli, Lucy

THE MEDEA

The Little Argonaut has eclosed as The Medea, to illuminate the margins of patriarchal narrative.

Each month we curate a sensorium of music, events, community action, and recipes all foraged for The Argonaut reader.

Join us as we navigate London together via the QR code below:

www.the-argonaut.com Anthro.Theargonaut@lse.ac.uk Instagram: theargonautlse Twitter: @LSEArgonaut

In solidarity

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The genocide in Palestine has been ongoing for 165 days, with the death toll standing at 33,499 (at time of writing). The destruction is incomprehensible, but we must comprehend it and sit with the difficulties of emotionally relating to the scale of human suffering, for it is empathy that drives action.

Naomi Klein delivered a pertinent speech at ‘And Still We Rise’ festival, hosted by War on Want, emphasizing the difficulty in feeling hope in these times. Beyond Palestine, this year is the biggest yet in terms of elections – but our generation has been defined by elections and events that have disappointed. Modi was elected in India in 2014, re-elected in 2019 and predicted a landslide in elections this year. 13 years of Tory party rule in Britain. Trump elected, and likely to be re-elected this year. Climate inaction and breakdown. This is to say that for us, it is difficult to imagine what the world looks like if things went right. It is difficult to have hope.

Naomi Klein suggests instead we need to muster resolve – not hope. Resolve, commitment and might, in the face of unprecedented global unity among political elites in defense of not just a single state, but ‘a shared supremacist vision of safety and security for the few’. Israel has united elites across the spectrum so that alliances form between those typically posited antagonistically – Trump with Biden, Sunak with Starmer, Macron with Le Pen. Israel is a model and pioneer of a system that is built on logics of colonialism, and designed to be exported elsewhere. Their global entanglements with authoritarian regimes highlights this.

So what we have remaining for us, if hope seems facile, is a commitment to each other and collaborative survival (Anna Tsing).

Anna Tsing in ‘Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet’ also speaks of weeds – wild stories of attempts to stay alive, and weedy hope that comes from from ongoing endings. Weeds are strong, persistent, and always turn up, deliberately and determinedly, where they’re least wanted. It reminds us to look for the cracks and fight our way through them. This is what real solidarity looks like; it’s active and determined.

And we have seen fantastic active and determined activism on our campus since October 7th. There have been almost weekly rallies, persistent organizing from students and staff, and some vital campaigning led by LSE SU Palestine Society and others. The divestment campaign is ongoing, and supporters disrupted LSE’s investment board meeting this month to deliver some information and demands on LSE’s investment portfolio and links to arms trade and fossil fuels.

Commitment and resolve requires ongoing engagement. Some resources we have found helpful recently include work by Branwen Specter (UCL) who delivered a talk at the Anthropology third year away day in January. She writes about the infrastructures of occupation in the West-Bank, and how settlers and Palestinians engage with them. ‘5 Broken Cameras’ is a powerful documentary shot and co-directed by Emad Burnat with Guy Davidi as he found himself on the frontier of settler expansion in Bil’in, where non-violent protest and resistance ensued. Mohammed El-Kurd’s poetry and journalism is inspiring, and for other anthropological engagements, the Journal of the Royal Anthropological institute has brought together various works under the title ‘The attack on Gaza and the role of Anthropologists’, published 19th December 2023, with themes of ‘space and anthropological analysis’, ‘on the everyday experiences of occupation’, ‘on coloniality and Israel/Palestine’, ‘humanitarianism and conflict’ and ‘challenges and ethics of advocacy and engaged anthropology’.

In the following couple of pages, we have published work related to Palestine written by members of our own community.

Love, The Argonaut.

Collage by Nazli Adiguzel. For more of her work see @nazliadiguzel.

Poems for Palestine Christmas in the Anthropocene

By Carli Jacobsen It’s raining in Scandinavia, and it’s warm, I reminisce the harsh and cold droplets on my skin.

Even more, I miss the snow.

Three Yule’s ago, the lake froze over, and i bought a pair of ice skates from an old man in the newspaper.

Nevermind, that was in March, actually.

They predict a wind storm soon, so I walk every day at this lake.

Some days, you can see auroras, but it should be too far south for that.

Most days, there are too many clouds clouded judgement, clouded thoughts, They’re only hoping our holiday gifts arrive in time from straits that only hear bombs, only see smoke.

The light is taken at three, I am guided by gold tinsel hanging on forest trees and mushrooms, still lush on December seventeen. like it’s a Christmas in the Anthropocene. or is it a Capitalocene? I don’t seem to recall the difference as I stroll through the market and I think “sustainable Christmas?” where crayfish* invade the fish monger stalls at astonishing prices for my wallet, and for the planet.

And this Christmas, we listen to music, War is over? I think twice; of the ard asli [the original land], about a birth of a boy in Bethlehem trapped under the rubble, of the Christmas shit I want, not need of the BBC instead of Love, actually. *crayfish is an invasive species in Denmark - reference to a prominent debate about the ethics of killing off invasive species.

Free Palestine Graffiti in Nørrebro (Copenhagen). Photo taken by author.

Friday drying day in Balat (Istanbul). Photo taken by author.

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A Catalan Christmas in Times of Genocide

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by Soufyaan Timol One of the first images that strikes me as I lug my sister’s suitcase through the roads of Central Barcelona, mere hours after our plane landed, are the words chalked on a wall near a children’s playground: ‘Gaza no estás sola’. Only few meters away, marked in red across a traffic sign, is the emblematic ‘A’ of anarchism, surrounded by a circle. A feeling of the transcendent breathes through the streets of Barcelona, of the unspoken, the unspeakable. I notice it again and again; a tradition that should be dead, buried; plastered all around the squares, featured in the display windows of bookshops, graffitied on walls and shop shutters, and all over the buildings it has appropriated. This tradition, anarchism, though repressed and suppressed, shunned from the mainstream, survives 87 years since its flag was raised against the rise of fascism in Spain.

Waiters and shopwalkers looked at you in the face and treated you as an equal…There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.”

Over three years of civil war, Franco’s forces, aided by fascist Germany and Italy, tolerated (and sometimes supported) by the Allies, vanquished the revolution, conquered city by city, until even Barcelona crumbled. What remains today are the mass graves, holding over 100, 000 bodies of Franco’s victims. The subsequent effort to erase from Spain’s memory — not just the anti-fascist resistance, but also the revolutionary moment, whereby for a few years the absolute reality of capitalism stood defeated, dumb, unable to rely but on its most reactionary bloc — was total, hegemonic. But the anarchist tradition lives on.

In the spring of 1939, after 3 years of a civil war that left half a million people dead, the Spanish republic fell to Franco’s fascist forces. 36 years of a sadistic military dictatorship followed.

Franco banned democratic elections, crushed unions, voided progressive laws, sent refugees to die in Hitler’s death camps, and established his own concentration camps where hundreds of thousands would be imprisoned. The dictatorship only ended in 1975 with his death, and a new democratic republic was established. Franco’s generals made sure that along his body, they buried the memory of his massacres, sweeping them under the rug of history. A minor blip in the country’s evolution, a time you don’t speak about, distorted, erased.

As well as the 36 years of dictatorship, the new state excised from Spain’s history the anti-fascist resistance. In Barcelona, no monument stands, no museum salutes, no day celebrates, perhaps one of the most momentous events in the West’s political history: the Spanish revolution.

When, in Catalonia, after the collapse of the republic and the initial attempt at a fascist coup, workers, organized in massive syndicates, armed themselves and brought down the fascist attacker, and, with the republic frozen, incapacitated, erected their own stateless society. Then Catalonia was run, not by the Spanish state, not by any political party, but by its working people, through a variety of anarchist and socialist syndicates.

They collectivized production, introduced free healthcare, legalized abortion, and led a relentless war against social hierarchy. For three years, Catalans undertook the most radical of social experiments. George Orwell, who, like the tens of thousands of international volunteers, travelled to Spain to fight the fascists, wrote, in one of his most beautiful works, Homage to Catalonia (1938): “It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags and with the red and black flag of the Anarchists… Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black.

‘Gaza no estás sola’ - ‘Gaza you are not alone’ on the walls of Barcelona (Catalonia). Photo taken by author.

Walking around central Barcelona, I feel the libertarian spirit, alive and uncompromising. Street art abounds, with a character more left-wing than punk, more anarchist than anti-system.

Posters calling for radical political action decorate every other wall along the streets of the historical old town. Massive squats skirt the edges of Central, where anarchist groups organize free dinners, clothes drives, reading groups, movie screenings, vigils, protests, occupations. Red-black manifestos dot the notice boards of Barcelona’s castle-like university. At the very heart of the city survives a bookshop run by the same syndicate, the CNT, that led the liberation of Catalonia in 1936.

In times where Israel’s ethno-fascist regime visits incessant destruction upon Gaza, at a rate of 300 deaths a day, it is impossible to stroll around Barcelona and, unless one confines herself to the tourist-chosen spots, to miss the support for Palestine. I feel safer, less secluded, knowing I am not alone in standing against genocide, unlike in Rome and Florence, which I also visited over the holidays, or in Mauritius, where friends tell me the subject is alien to most, or in London, where, despite the massive protests, the indifference, the silence, of academics, of universities and student unions, of the so-called ‘progressive’ left, deafens.

Through one of the numerous plastered posters - of which I manage to swipe a stunning one for my room, at the cost of a few angry looks from passers-by — I learn of a march for Gaza on my first day in Barcelona. The gathering, of a few hundred people, begins in front of a center for Catalan independence.

The faces are young. Dozens of candles are passed around, and we light each other’s.

The chants throughout the march echo the feeling of those one would find in London. ‘Des del riu fins al mar, Palestina lliure’, (‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free) ‘Israel asesina, Europa patrocina’ (Israel murderer, Europe supports).

One resonates a bit more with me: ‘Gaza no estás sola’. Gaza you are not alone. Even when the world’s major powers support and finance your martyrdom, when the global intelligentsia baptizes you a home for terrorists, when most remain indifferent to your oppression, Gaza you are not alone.

Image on poster promoting a march in solidarity with Palestine in Barcelona (Catalonia). Photo taken by author.

At the end of the march, some speakers share a few words about Palestine, mostly in Catalan, which eludes me, though two or three deliver their speeches in Spanish, which I can somewhat understand. They state the death toll, standing then at 20,000, of which 8,000 are children. A woman, her back draped with the Palestinian flag, mentions how even the pope condemned Israel for its war crimes after Israeli snipers shot dead two Christian women in a church. His words, too late, too soft, fall short of addressing the gravity of the situation. Even the term ‘ceasefire’ leaves one’s moral sense wanting, when what people are calling for is simply an end to genocide.

A young woman, probably a university student, describes with poignant thoroughness the man-made hell that the IDF has fashioned of Gaza: the bombing in the north, then the bombing in the south, the wholesale destruction of hospitals, refugee centers, schools, churches and mosques, the assassination of journalists, the parading of men naked in the streets, the coldblooded murder of its own hostages, the eradication of entire families and the starvation of survivors, the denial of water and electricity, the harvesting of organs.

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Picture of the march the author has taken part into. Photo taken by author.

She accuses Israel of being of being a fascist settler colonial project, the West’s monster, crafted in its own image, shaped by the legacy of the white man in the Americas, in Namibia and Ethiopia, in India and Australia, who, in his time, would enact ‘punitive expeditions’ against the uncooperative colonial subjects. When, calling upon the military might of his state, the colonizer would respond to an act of rebellion, real or invented; maybe the subject had burnt a settler alive, or tortured and raped women, or beheaded infant children.

Simply uttering the name of the crime would make it true, a crime so horrific, so barbarian, so savage, committed against civilisation, that the boundaries of law could not accommodate the response. Biblical extermination was called for; a violence so complete it would extinguish any hope of liberation. When Netanyahu asks the people of Israel to “remember what Amalek has done to you,” and to fight accordingly, he means that, as the bible verse he quotes says, the war of extermination waged upon Gaza is to spare no man, woman or infant.

There is anger, terrible fury, in her voice as she concludes, but so is there hope. Barcelona’s memory of resistance resonates loud in her anti-fascist rhetoric. She closes, not by calling for a ceasefire, but for an end to colonization and imperialism, for a world free of borders, free of ethnic hatred, free of fascism.

Over the next few days, while the city lights up with preparations for Christmas, I walk around with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. One cannot escape the reality of the genocide in Palestine. Millions displaced, entire neighborhoods levelled, their very social reality destroyed.

But here, I cannot escape the pro-Palestinian movement against this genocide either, uncompromising, libertarian in spirit and in action. I already feel nostalgic; I know that I am barely scratching the surface of what this anarchist tradition holds over these few days. Knowing that it exists, though, that it lives on, is comfort enough. If European fascism, in a metastasized, ethno-religious form, survives into the 21st century, so does the resistance to it, and so do the radical possibilities that this resistance offers.

Poems for Palestine I Will Raise You Pillars

by Sarah Ali Oh mighty and tender siblings You who hold each other beneath the rubble Who will erect pillars in your name?

When they pile you underground Wrapped tightly in bright blue body bags Then destroy every record of your peoplehood?

You whose graves remain unmarked Whose tombstones, too, they will reduce to dust No soft and downy earth to cushion your resting place No fresh grass to sprout from your body

Photo taken by Ishani Milward-Bose.

Just blood to dampen the sand When will the moss be granted liberty To grow across your epitaph Or the ivy to turn yellow, then amber, then Brown?

I dream of the day your gravestone grows so Weathered your name becomes illegible When the only force wiping away your Existence is time And sun And wind And rain I will raise you pillars. I raise them every day.

Detail of Glasgow Necropolis. Photo taken by author.

I will plant you greenery and flowers. Water Them with every breath I will honour your martyrs and I will embrace, Embrace, embrace the living. Like my own. My Own. *I wrote this at the top of Glasgow Necropolis (from the Greek ‘nekros’, dead person, and ‘polis’, city), a beautiful Victorian cemetery in Glasgow where over 50,000 people are buried. It’s one of the few cemeteries that keep a record of the professions, sex, and causes of death of those buried in it. As I walked among the intricately sculpted, centuries-preserved gravestones, the images I haven’t stopped seeing since October of martyred Palestinians, buried under rubble or dumped unceremoniously in mass graves, wouldn’t leave my mind. This poem is an effort to honour those Palestinians, and my commitment not to let their memory fade.

Detail of Glasgow Necropolis. Photo taken by author.

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Queer Nature: Anthropological reflections from my summer at Kew Gardens

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by Mahliqa Ali ‘Isn’t this wokeness gone mad, first plants are racist, and now you’re saying plants are gay?’

I worked at Kew Gardens last summer, and when I heard that we were hosting an event called ‘Queer Nature,’ this was exactly the kind of comment I expected to hear. Based in Richmond in Surrey, the typical Kew Gardens visitor is reflective of the typical inhabitant of this scenic West London borough; most regular visitors are white, middle-class, middleaged locals, and the area is known for its high number of Tories; unsurprisingly, Richmond Park & North Kingston Conservatives have one of the largest memberships of any Conservative Association in the UK. The day-long 9am-5pm training session held for the Visitor Hosts reflected my fears – we all anticipated a backlash from the average Kew clientele, who might voice similar critiques to right-wing media personalities such as Piers Morgan, who ranted about ‘Kew going woke,’ and angrily questioning ‘Why can’t we just have straight plants?’. From these preliminary responses, Kew management developed a training programme in collaboration with an EDI session facilitator for us to prepare responses to homophobic comments we may receive from Kewgoers who were offended by placards stating that fungal reproduction is often asexual, and that many palm trees have both ‘male’ and ‘female’ reproductive organs.

The combination of the heavy preparation we were doing in anticipation of negative feedback from the event, and what we were hearing about general attitudes from the loudest voices in right-wing media (and the comments on Richmond community Facebook forums), myself and the other Visitor Hosts felt a lot of apprehension for the exhibition. I was almost certain that it wasn’t going to be well received, that we’d have to deal with homophobia every day, and that it would be a disappointment to queer people who would find it overhyped after they travelled to see it because of the adverts all over London.

But when I walked into the Temperate Greenhouse for my first shift at the exhibition, I was very pleasantly surprised to find Judith Butler’s face on a huge poster looking back at me. The entire exhibition had been so thoughtfully curated; it was a genuinely beautiful collection of art, science, and gender theory.

There was a spoken word performance called ‘Reverberations’ about diversity, beauty, and queerness in nature; a flowerbed of pansies in honour of ‘The Pansy Project’ in which artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at sites where homophobic and

The training sheet involved scripted answers to the questions,‘Isn’t this jumping on a woke bandwagon, what do plants have to do with people being labelled queer?’, ‘Why is Kew running a festival just for the LGBTQ+ community?’, and my personal favourite, ‘Isn’t this wokeness gone mad, first plants are racist and now you’re saying plants are gay?’

The standard of the training impressed me – they covered common LGBTQ+ terms, defined labels, covered the history of gay rights and the sensitive history of the word ‘queer’ itself, prepared us to give answers which would shut down blatant bigotry and minimise complaints, and took the time to teach us about the individual contributing artists and their work.

The exhibition involved several installations within the Temperate Greenhouse, in the form of spoken word poetry, tapestries, plant installations, videos, and information boards, all along the theme of demonstrating that nature evidently does not fit into male/female binaries of reproductive parts and processes, and despite scientific aims to categorise plants and their characteristics into bounded classifications, the diversity of nature is not best portrayed by these rigid systems, just as humans are not. The After-Hours events involved music, cabaret, comedy, and drag performances.

House of Spirits - Jeffrey Gibson. Photo taken by author.

8 transphobic violence has occurred; a plant display called ‘Breaking the Binary,’ curated by Patrick Featherstone Gardens, comprising of plants which reproduce in ways that challenge conventional norms of male/female binary reproduction; a tapestry titled ‘House of Spirits’ by Jeffrey Gibson, created with botanical illustrations from Kew’s archives as an homage to the underground ball subculture of queer African-American and Latino communities in New York City; and a beautiful wall of tags where visitors were invited to write how they felt in response to the exhibition.

In particular, what really caught my interest was the way that science, which people have so much faith in as the true confirmer of facts, was used to prove that what people dismiss as unnatural and unscientific is actually a scientifically demonstrable part of nature. As anthropologists, we all know about the politics of knowledge production, and how dominant narratives reflect hegemonic understandings.

I like to think of anthropology as a ‘potentially revolutionary praxis, because it forces us to question our theoretical presuppositions about the world, produce knowledge that is new, was confined to the margins, or was silenced.’ (Alpa Shah 2017) I have become frustrated countless times in the process of trying to explain this to my STEM friends. I felt enlightened by the way the exhibition had harnessed the respect that science receives as ‘the ultimate legitimate authority’ to expand people’s thinking.

The combination of art, science, and nature made complex academic ideas so digestible, concise, and clear while maintaining their richness and not being overly reductive.

Throughout my anthropology degree, I have encountered so many fascinating ideas that I wish were more present in mainstream discourse. As I painstakingly make my way through pages and pages of dense critical theory about gender and sexuality for my course on gender and kinship, I often fear that these ideas, which are so important

Tag written by a visitor to the exhibition saying ‘Where is my lesbian?’. Photo taken by author.

Tags written by visitors to the exhibition. Photo taken by author.

and so potentially world-altering, only ever circulate in academic circles. I often find myself wishing that anthropological theorists wrote more like David Graeber; unpretentious, understandable, and accessible.

I love the work of theorists like Judith Butler and Gayle Rubin, and don’t want to understate or undermine the immense value of their writing for the anthropology of kinship, sex, and gender. But spending my summer watching a range of audiences from queer university students well-versed in countering conventions, to more conservative older visitors, all engaging with queer theory in diverse and open-minded ways, gave me a renewed sense of hope about the power that anthropology contains to challenge the preconceived assumptions that people carry with them in their perception of the world. The average non-anthropology-student is most likely not going to read an extensive, complex analytical deconstruction of heteropatriarchal societal structures, but they can most definitely engage with these ideas if they are made comprehensible and approachable.

I wanted to include a special mention of a contributor to the exhibition: Drag performer and anthropologist, Cheddar Gorgeous (aka Dr Michael Atkins), who focuses on disrupting gender conventions, contemporary urban gay spaces, and using graphic novellas as a form of ethnographic storytelling – Their work has been inspiring to me by demonstrating how an anthropologist can ensure their counter-conventional work isn’t limited to the academic sphere.

During that summer, I lost count of the amount of times I heard people say ‘I’ve never thought of it like that before.’ By definition, any ideas which challenge dominant understandings are going to be initially limited in their reach, and their merit derives from not being mainstream; but gatekeeping anthropological knowledge with complicated jargon doesn’t do anyone any favours. It has become clear to me that embracing interdisciplinary methods of presenting the knowledge that anthropology produces is an effective way to expand the reach of our discipline’s vital insights.

Artistic Conclave: boundary and authenticity in Mayfair auction houses

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by Hugo Hong

“Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Mark, 10:21 I entered Baldwin’s through the entrance at Rabat Street. It acts as the back door, the main being the Casablanca Street entrance.

Walking past the reception and down the stairs, I arrived at the central gallery. The room was full of artworks by emerging and established artists. The place in general was quite empty and there was only one security standing in a corner. It was hard to find him given the dark lighting in the room and the black suit every security staff wore. I walked into a room next to the central gallery.

It was busy with staff – those of whom aren’t part of the security – walking across the place in a rush. On the right is Property Collections, where you can claim the artwork bought. Several items such as an antique-looking candle were on the table with some wrapping paper and a box lying around. People who looked like maintenance staff packed items in boxes.

I headed to the reception in the hope of meeting the specialist behind the auction. A specialist is a title given to the staff who research, collect and market the area of art they focus on. I thought they would know the auction better than anyone else as they manage the auction season. I asked the receptionist if I could see the specialist and told them about my research. They rang someone called Rachel and informed me that she would be down in a minute. While I was waiting for her, I couldn’t help noticing a note framed on the reception desk. It was a warning to bidders to reveal their identity due to UK Anti-Money Laundering Regulations. The note brought up several questions. Is the anonymity of customers essential here? Are artworks treated as assets to invest money – such as income from money laundering?

Soon after Rachel comes and greets me. I explained to her about my study and asked if she could spare some time for an interview.

In an annoyed manner, Rachel tells me that she doesn’t have much time and that if I want to do an interview, I should do it now.

Not wanting to lose this opportunity, I accepted her offer and we moved to the sofa close by. I begin my interview by asking her what the clients are composed of. She tells me that last night, two Chinese clients and three Turkish clients were present. “The participants in the auction vary much from the US to Asia.” She emphasised. I continue by asking if there is a common preference or taste among clients according to their social group. “Asian clients tend to have similar tastes to the Americans, but you can’t generalise! For instance, the Japanese and the Hong Kong buyers have major differences in tastes.”

Suddenly she stopped talking about the note and went back to the earlier conversation.

“Look, I know that Baldwin’s can be intimidating at first. On my first day of working here, I was also intimidated by the grandeur.

But you must realise that Baldwin’s is open to all. For instance, on Saturday, a schoolteacher who was looking around asked me if he could bring his students here. And I said sure, why not?”

Describing the auction houses as open to all stuck in my head for a while. I imagined an auction house to be somewhere open to the exclusive few. Exclusive few as in wealthy, influential individuals often from privileged social backgrounds. Is it open to all people as Rachel asserts? Anyone can indeed come in through the door and look at the artwork.

However, as she admitted it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by the grandeur and feel unwelcomed. The famous quote from Shelley’s Ozymandias, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”, resonates. How can I explain the two contradictory feelings of being welcomed and unwelcomed? Trying to answer the question, I undertook my fieldwork with a focus on interpersonal interactions and visual images.

Chinese antiques auction exhibition. Photo taken by author.

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An Old Masters’ auction exhibition. Photo taken by author.

The Maze Leading to the Centre Auction houses can be like a maze, especially one that changes often. If you walk past a corridor to reach a room one day, the next day you may find it blocked. Such a confusing and mysterious layout makes it difficult to navigate, but a route to the centre exists.

The centre is where all the major events occur and where the auction house puts the most effort. On my many visits, I once found myself in a centre.

Browsing Twitter, I saw that Baldwin’s was auctioning a portrait by Gerald Beaufort. Beaufort, the famed British painter of the 20th century, is one of my favourite artists. Excited by the news, I paid a visit to the auction house soon after. When I entered Baldwin’s, however, I couldn’t find the painting by Beaufort in any of the galleries on the ground floor. Furthermore, many of the rooms which were open the last time I visited were now closed. I asked one of the security guards where the artworks for the upcoming evening sale were. He told me that they were upstairs. So, I went up the stairs heavily decorated with wallpaper promoting the evening auction. The painting by Beaufort greeted me as I entered the upper-floor galleries. Compared to the empty rooms downstairs, it was bustling with people. It seemed as if this was the main party in Baldwin’s. I couldn't help but notice the loud chatter coming from the room on the left. Inside were several white women in their 30s in fashionable, expensive clothes. Among them was a specialist – whom I could tell as she was wearing a dark-coloured suit in a formal attitude.

In Baldwin’s and Fitzalan's, another auction house I conducted research at, the staff had various titles and distinct roles accordingly.

For instance, auctioneers organise auctions and stand on the lectern with their hammers in auctions. Specialists, who specialise in an art genre, mainly deal with clients, trying to sell artworks they oversee. Compared to these roles, registrars dealing with shipping, and technicians handling the physical artworks are not so visible and lower in the hierarchy. The more visible one is to the public, the more importance is given to them. Nonetheless, their presence shouldn’t exceed the visibility of their clients. Hence, the general dress code for all employees is formal dress with dark colours. Such a specific dress code enables them to blend with the dark atmosphere in auction houses. On top of that, most specialists stood as a group chatting with their colleagues rather than being scattered across the room. The colleagues with whom they interacted were always their fellow specialists. No attention was given to security guards or object-handling people. Such distinction had elements of race also. The auctioneers and specialists were mostly of White and East Asian backgrounds. On the other hand, the not-so-visible workers – such as security, and cleaners – were from Black or Ethnic Minority backgrounds.

Going back to the auction house, the specialist was explaining some artworks in the room to the ladies. The group appeared to be enjoying a private viewing organised by Baldwin’s. A private viewing is the occasion where several influential individuals are invited to an exhibition before it opens to the public. As soon as the explaining ended, they marched to a bright room hidden deep in the corridor on the right. I decided to follow them and stumbled upon Baldwin’s Preferred Members’ Room. The room was like no other. The sunlight from the big windows facing Casablanca Street made everything shine. Moreover, an afternoon tea was served by a waiter as the ladies sat on the fluffy sofas. At that moment, I realised that not all visitors are treated the same in auction houses.

11 Most visitors wander around the gallery trying to make sense of the place on their own. Some selected few, however, will receive special treatment. This notably includes an exclusive private group tour led by a specialist followed by afternoon tea. Perhaps themaze-like structure of the auction houses is intended for the not-so-welcome visitors to be stranded. Trying to figure out my way around the auction houses, I once asked a receptionist if there was any map with the layout of the place. I asked this as I couldn’t find any floor plan or map on their website. The receptionist apologised and said that they didn’t have any. Instead, she suggested taking a picture of the exhibition map shown next to the reception. This was frustrating as it only showed the small number of rooms open to the public at that moment. All the rooms not used for the current exhibition weren't shown. Furthermore, the map on the screen didn’t have any floor plan for lower ground. From what I know, the lower ground is reserved for the catalogues of all artworks they sold from the 18th century.

Fair Warning!

“We have to prioritise bidding clients and collectors.” I was shocked to hear the response from Baldwin’s. My application to attend a live auction was rejected. I tried to make sense of why and how by thinking back on what happened beforehand. I needed a ticket to attend the live auction, so I emailed them. They asked me several questions in the reply such as whether I needed a paddle, and what my client number was. Looking back on the process, I realised that this is when things went wrong. I told them I didn't need a paddle as I wasn’t intending to make a bid. Moreover, I haven’t linked a bank account with sufficient money to my Baldwin’s account. All this would have given the impression that I am no valuable client who will bid. But this still didn’t make sense, because, for Fitzalan's, another auction house I did fieldwork at, I was offered a seat in the auxiliary viewing room. It would be worth mentioning that they also said in the email that they prioritise confirmed bidders in their auctions. The viewing room is unique to Fitzalan's, and I was lucky enough to at least be accepted into that.

A live auction is the main highlight of an auction house. It is what makes an auction house an auction house. Artworks worth millions are sold in the event and many wealthy people take part in the process. To capture the scene, the press releases news articles about million-dollar paintings sold in an auction. This enables an auction house to be turned into a theatre for the day.

People dress to show off and talk with the few they want to. Some laughter, some applause, and some jokes are also essential in this play. The play also acts to draw the line between the main actors and the supporting actors. Of course, I haven’t had the slightest idea that it would be like this before attending in real life.

The auction day at Fitzalan's was terribly busy with the greatest number of people I saw in the place. I went up the stairs and looked around the main hall. On the right, there was a large table with beverages. Next to it was another table with cardboard paddles.

Some staff sat around the table looking at a paper which seemed like a list. In an adjacent room, a muscular security guard was standing in front of the entrance. Inside the room were several cameras, filming staff and chairs in rows. Compared to that, the West Room was empty and quiet.

I went into the West Room – the auxiliary viewing room – and waited for a few minutes before the auction. Soon the TV showed the auction room and zoomed into the auctioneer for the evening, Charles Villiers. Villiers announced on the lectern that the auction would be filmed. He also added that some faces may be seen in the recorded videos.

The atmosphere of the room changed as the auction began. The auctioneer called out the names of the specialists who stood to the left, and right side of him and asked for bids. It seemed like they all knew each other well and felt comfortable being named to bid.

The specialists were busy talking to their clients on the phone.

The men were in dark-coloured suits and the women wore relatively varying clothes but all of them luxurious. Some hid their mouths with their hands when on the phone, trying to hide the identity of their client.The early bids skyrocketed and stopped at £350,000. As if this wasn’t enough, Villiers repeated the price looking impatient. Out of luck, he suddenly spotted a specialist who was willing to bid more – signalling with a little hand up looking at Villiers. Filled with excitement, he yelled “Going on!”.

It was eventually sold at £730,080 with a “Goes!”. As the auction continued, I could see a pattern in the process. Villiers called out the specialists by their names or a title such as The American colleague.

An empty exhibition room after an auction. Photo taken by author.

A tense and dynamic atmosphere was also created as he said things like last chance or fair warning. Not only did the statement mean that an artwork is sold to someone but also you can’t have it even if you want later.

12 Those shouting acted as encouragement for the bidders to bid more. The use of various hand gestures and the act of leaning on the table were also involved. In one instance, a specialist was on the phone with a client unsure whether to pay £100,000 more for an artwork. Noticing the reluctant client, Villiers proposed to only increase by £50,000. This was enough to convince them to continue bidding more for the artwork. For him, increasing the price sold even slightly is better than not getting any higher bids.

The repetitiveness of the auction made people in the room tired. Many already had ideas about which lots they were interested in following. Some people had a paper with the details of several lots. One by one, the attendees in the West Room left the room changed seats, or simply stood at the back. People who were at the West Room knew that their place wasn’t much of an importance. You didn’t need an opulent invitation to have a seat there. What was easily gained and unworthy to boast about is destined to be abandoned. In this place, not only the artworks but people seemed to have price tags. It is invisible but they are very aware of how much they are worth in this pyramid.

In the following lots, lot 16 was a large Picasso. When the bidding began for this lot, people who left the room came back in and sat at the rear of the room. The bids went up to £16 million and stopped, which was disappointing. The lowest estimate for the lot was £15 million and the highest was £20 million. After the lot was sold, the audience in the room chatted quietly among themselves. Picasso who is one of the best-selling artists to be sold at such a meaningless price must have come as a shock to them.

After all, this auction dictates the trend or how future artworks will be priced in the art market. Like a highly respected company’s stocks crashing, people lost their words.

Furthermore, the work by Picasso stood out from many other artworks by less-known artists. Most clients are not well-versed in modern art trends. Thus, they invest more interest in what they already know and what auction houses recommend. Selling invaluable artworks and topping the headlines, the two auction houses accumulated unquestionable authority. It allows them to decide values and authenticity which are intrinsically related. If they say something is worth a million, it is worth a million. In the case of Picasso, that authority faced a challenge. The price sold – or as they call it, realised – was too close to the lowest estimate made by the auction house. Thus, those who trusted the auction houses didn’t know how to react.

Several hours passed, and I began to feel tired and didn’t feel the need to stay looking at a TV screen. The auction was all about what happens in that exclusive room guarded by security. People outside couldn’t take part and being frustrated took pictures of the inside at the guarded door. Many left the auction house as time passed and the West Room became empty. It seemed as if those people were just the supporting actors needed to support the leading actors. On the other hand, the specialists and bidders inside the room often went out to enjoy drinks with their colleagues from the inside. When done with their break, they went back in and enjoyed the lively auction. The room was often full of laughter when Villiers made a silly joke or shouted his famous fair warning.

Insider/Outsider, Fake/Authentic: Flexible Boundaries Auction houses exclude and include people in manifold ways. Sometimes through space, other times, people themselves drew the boundaries. Despite the boundaries looking clear, they are essentially flexible. Somewhere what stays closed or private one day may be open to the public another day. Similarly for people, one can access an exclusive space such as how I attended an auction, but some form of boundary. Playing with such fluctuating reality and being successful in it are the goals to aim for. This dynamic made me question my first research question assuming a firm insider and outsider boundary. I believe such flexible boundaries are something that the auction houses know already. The existence of an Auxiliary Viewing Room and the Preferred Members’ Room being open with no security, or anything are some examples. However, one must play by the rules and know oneself. Being open doesn’t mean anyone can enter. Different rooms and places exist for distinct groups of people, and one must continue to question and find out where they fit. Being courageous and trying to challenge the rules may end up unfavourably.

Beyond the boundaries, what seemed central to me was the production of authenticity in auction houses. As the value of an artwork largely depends on its authenticity, people use various tools to verify it. Among the opinions given about authenticity, those by auction houses are taken to be the most credible. This is largely from the clients' lack of sufficient knowledge and the fame of auction houses selling million-dollar artworks. Furthermore, the exclusiveness of the auction houses for those with great wealth, and power doesn’t allow new possibilities. Nonetheless, such authority is subject to challenge when their predictions turn out to be inaccurate and as the clients become sceptical.

The Cinematic Universe of Women’s rage

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by Ayomide Asani Female Rage is all the Rage these days. But more seriously Womxn's anger has captured mainstream attention in the form of articles, video essays, and social media. Cinema today is littered with portrayals of Female Rage. ‘Movie Tok’ has also captured our fascination with womxn’s anger on screen. What I am concerned with is how Female Rage and an Anthropology of Emotion intersect today. More importantly, how can Anthropology contribute to feminist discussions of womxn’s experiences?

The urban dictionary definition states that ‘female rage is a rejection of gendered ideas regarding who gets to express anger and in what ways’. Patriarchy touches every element of life and emotions are not exempt from this. Stereotypically womxn are labeled as emotional, spreading the idea that emotional expression can be differentiated by gender. For generations, womxn and femme people have been undergoing systematic modes of oppression that entrap womxn from bodily autonomy, perpetual sexual violence, and economic oppression. Under these systems of misogyny depictions within Film, Music, and Media use rage to collectivise and revolutionise womxn struggles.

Centuries of womxn have felt generational trauma at the hands of misogyny.

Angela Bassett in ‘Waiting to Exhale’ (1995).

In anthropology, we view emotion as a way of knowing and a form of knowledge, which is often painted negatively in comparison to rationality as a post-enlightenment and patriarchal knowledge. This negativity trivialises womxn's emotions and also systematically bars men from expressing any form of emotion for fear of emasculation. Media has been a way of both perpetuating this and a means of expression for womxn. Sad Girl Tumblr epitomised womxn and young teenage girls' sadness.

Lana del Ray, Effie, and Bella Swan ruled Tumblr posts and young womxn began to romanticise their sadness through smoky smudged eyeliner and ripped tights. This time was symbolic of young womxn struggling with mental health who wanted to feel seen and find community through female adolescence and the sometimes turbulent transition from girlhood to womanhood.

This sadness is a direct result of the pressures that come with being identified as a womxn within society.

For many womxn, these platforms weren’t a place to idolise mental health issues but to understand the reasons for these issues and to connect to their gender identity. In retrospect however, Sad Girl Tumblr has been criticised for its fetishization of sadness while creating a toxic outlet that didn’t facilitate the healing of young girls struggling with insecurities and mental health issues but instead pushed them further into the depths of sadness. This doesn’t mean that artists only speak on sadness as a way of demoralising womxn but rather sheds light on the importance of vocalising sadness.

Emotional knowledge was used as a way to consolidate solidarity between womxn allowing womxn to be empowered by their emotions rather than being suppressed. Thus, media has shaped ways of portraying and understanding sadness, but can simultaneously be construed as a platform for female empowerment.

It could be theorised that Female Rage is a reactionary response to the passive sadness that dominated the internet in the past years, evoking womxn and girls alike to reclaim their pain through an ‘agency of anger’(Shanspeare 2023). Sadness became too idle and muted, elegant tears became limiting. The angry womxn was becoming a way of expressing collective feminine rage to the psychological distress of being a womxn.

Female Rage has become synonymous with female autonomy being able to express emotions powerfully and chaotically, rather than fearing the gendered stereotypes towards womxn's emotions. Womxn alike are hungry for raw depictions of anger.

To have their anger seen and made visible rather than hidden behind docile controlled emotions.

The Sad to Angry Pipeline is well documented within music in Aretha Franklin's 1967 Album ‘I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You’ Franklin uses her soulful voice to depict heartbreak through the blues while progressing to an angry jazz sound in her timeless hit ‘Respect’ her strong vocal riffs illustrates the shift from melancholy to fury effortlessly. Speaking to the exasperation that womxn feel in response to constant disrespect. Similarly, SZA, a pop RnB artist, invokes these themes through her vulnerable lyricism in her song ‘SOS’ she raps unapologetically ‘I talk bullshit a lot no more fuck shit I’m done’. The blunt attitude directly juxtaposes lyrics like ‘Only like myself when I’m with you, Nobody gets me’, an emotionally charged track that imploys the slow violin to encapsulate the themes of loss that SZA is expressing. In Fiona Apple's music, she also displays this progression of sadness to anger within her music within the song ‘Paper Bag’ Apple's tonal voice shifts from soft to tense as the song progresses communicating feelings of madness through the quickening tempo. As such, womxn resonate with outbursts of rage at an emotional breaking point. These bursts of fury are usually defined by screaming, yelling, and messy emotional breakdowns, basically what is typically defined as pure anger.

14 However, anger is not only expressed in one way. Linguistic differences mean that many societies don’t have a word directly for anger but instead have words that express some aspects of, or varieties of, anger. For example, anger among Inuit people is expressed differently than in the West where anger is controlled from a young age and aggressive expressions of emotion are minimal. ‘Inuit, social order did not derive merely from following rules of expression, it depended on feeling culturally appropriate emotions. As they saw it, emotions motivated behavior’ (Briggs 2000).

Female Rage has become a subgenre within cinema as nuanced storytelling surrounding womxn begins to expand. Rage has become cathartic for many womxn to see on screen. Looking at the case of horror regarding female rage, we see how emotions and cinema are both socio-culturally constructed. In ‘American Horror Story’ (2013) Angela Basset plays the titular role of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen, becoming an ensemble cast member.

Marie Laveau’s anger is expressed in a controlled and powerful way, in response to the injustice that black people endure due to racism. Vengeance through violence is a running thread and the audience is enthralled by Marie’s flair for empowering black womxn as Marie uses her powers to exact revenge on those who have wronged her. This anger is displayed through Marie's methods of revenge poisoning and murder allowing the horror genre to be fruitful in revealing black womxn’s rage.

In ‘Waiting to Exhale’ (1995) Basset plays the character of Bernie married to the cheating John here Bernie is shattered by her husband's betrayal allowing the audience to understand her pain, regret, and ultimately outrage about the adultery. Olvia Pope (Scandal) and Annalise Keating (How to Get Away with Murder) also demonstrate the rage of black womxn in response to both betrayal and racism. Portrayals of black womxn experiencing rage on-screen are considerably controlled with mainstream depictions centering around racism, cheating husbands, and intense misogynoir. Due to the ‘Angry Black Woman’ stereotype, media portrayals need to be incredibly careful to not generalise all black womxn as angry and aggressive. Black womxn’s anger is constantly suppressed and monitored meaning that Black womxn's rage is inextricably linked to systematic modes of oppression. Black womxn’s rage is politicised with racial surveillance, with black womxn constantly having to survey their emotions for fear of being labeled as ‘angry’. I and many other black womxn have the shared experience of self-monitoring emotions and behaviors to avoid being perceived negatively and for the comfort of others. This penetrates the media which discourages extreme portrayals of black womxn's rage which disrupts mainstream sensibilities. Contrastingly, in Pearl (2022), we see a visceral depiction of female rage. Indicating rage brewing amid toxic mother-daughter relationships, isolation, and rejection from wider society. Voice is a tool of agency in ‘Pearl’, where she constantly screams and yells. The expression of anger becomes a dream fantasy idolised by commentators on TikTok Edits. People connect to Pearl's rage.

Womxn of colour explore anger on a different terrain than that of white womxn as their anger is even more taboo in public spaces.

‘The Reluctant Bride’ by August Toulmoche (1866).

Racial stereotyping of Angry Black womxn has meant black womxn are under constant scrutiny for how they present their emotions if they are even allowed to present said emotions.

Thus, making the display of anger another privilege given to white people. The emotions of black people are often seen as threatening or demeaning. Furthermore, womxn of colour are at the intersection of racial and gendered trauma. In many ways, their ownership of trauma is robbed from them. They are put in an ‘either-or situation’ making it impossible for them to feel both their traumas and the wider systemic trauma that has been placed upon them. Thinking of Katherine’s bathroom monologue in ‘Hidden Figures’ (2016), where she has to travel off-building to use the bathroom due to segregation and isn’t allowed to wear comfortable clothing as she must also perform femininity in the workplace. Her anger and frustration stem from racist treatment under segregation.

Many depictions of black female rage hyperfocus on black womxn's rage rooting in jealousy of white womxn. For example, in ‘In Waiting to Exhale’ Bernadine burns her husband's car due to his cheating here the rage is controlled and calculated as a build-up of frustration over time. Because black womxn are scrutinised for their rage it must be justified under intense scrutiny within Western media. For, white womxn in Western media, anger is messy and uncontrollable.

Yet, Nigerian film industry womxn’s rage in all instances is common in films both in loud and quiet on-screen performances.

The media itself provides an empowering outlet for womxn to express both anger and sadness. Such expressions can be active forms of resistance against patriarchal systems that invalidate expressions of emotion. The song ‘Kill Bill’ by SZA blends the feminisation of sadness and anger into a Pop RnB hit with over a billion streams on Spotify. Why has the song garnered so much popularity since its release? Artist popularity, strong lyrical and production capabilities, or perhaps the relatability of experiencing anger and sadness during a breakup. Art has always had a way of giving negative emotions agency in a modern world where late-stage capitalism and modern-day patriarchy have simultaneously commodified the expression of emotions and imposed strict gendered norms on them.

Queer Folk: Reflexive Heritage, Temporality and Queerness in Manchester’s Folk Music Culture

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by Rishi Milward-Bose Well, the king has called on his merry men all His merry men thirty and three Saying, "Bring me Willie o' Winsbury For hanged he shall be."

But when he came the king before He was clad all in the red silk His hair it was like the strands of gold His skin it was white as milk "Well, it is nae wonder," says the king "My daughter's heart you did win For if I were a woman, as I am a man My bedfellow you would have been."

Tuhkanen, 2011). My arguments will draw on several key ideas.

Firstly, that folk spaces constitute a democratic, anti-hierarchical structure which appeals to those experiencing marginality.

Secondly, that my interlocutors envision folk music to be a battleground for the politics of heritage, one they can affect by uncovering subversive histories and by encouraging reflexive heritage (Craith and Kockel, 2007). Furthermore, historical reflexivity emphasises the natural synergy between folk temporalities and queerness as an ontological condition. Both subvert chrononormativity (Freedman, 2010) and aid in remedying the disjunctions some of my interlocutors struggle with, by expressing hauntological (Fisher, 2012) concerns about past and current societal wrongdoings.

Willie O’ Winsbury, an old folk song For me and many others Manchester’s folk music culture represents a space of joy, community, and cultural warmth that is a rarity elsewhere. As an immigrant to England, the folk cultures of the British Isles represent no obvious link to my identity, heritage or past, as they may for some. Yet in a short period of time, I found an inexplicable yet very tangible sense of belonging to a community initially so alien to me. Others expressed similar sentiments in our conversations. Within Manchester’s folk community I encountered many queer young folk, unwaveringly proud of their countercultural identity having formed a space of subversion. Folk culture can be deeply weird; simply participating in a wintery wassail or singing a merry song about an old man’s erectile dysfunction can reveal as much. It is in the context of folk culture’s apparent strangeness that a paradox arises; that despite a prevalent anti-mainstreaming sentiment within the community, folk music is currently experiencing a popularity boom (KeeganPhipps & Winter, 2015). It has gone through various revivals and re-emergences historically, yet some of my interlocutors expressed that there is something discernibly different about the way the current boom is being experienced.

“There is definitely something going on, whether it’s full-blown folk revival, or just a cultural moment, that feels very real to us” - Oliver By using the micro-level as a heuristic tool for analysing broader issues, I attempt to assess the questions that arise from delving into Manchester’s folk music scene. Why do parts of Manchester’s folk music community draw in so many queer people? What is the relationship between queer temporalities and folk temporalities?

How do members of Manchester’s folk community understand their relationship to heritage? How do the contents of folk songs reflect the wider ideologies and concerns of my interlocutors?

I use queerness broadly as a term for sexualities that do not correspond to hegemonic sexual norms, where many members of the community experience ontological ‘otherings’ (McCallum and

Poster by Hat Collins from Queer Roots Collective, Manchester.

For my research, I attended sessions (open folk ‘jams’) at Platt Field Market Gardens, the ‘folk train’ from Manchester to Glossop and several gigs with my interlocutors (and one at which I performed). I also conducted folk archival research to explore folk histories.

In the womb Her father, once my true friend Now turns me from the door Her mother owed me worthy Now bids me love no more Why should I not love my love?

Why shouldn't my love love me?

Why should I not speed after her Since love to all is free?

Newcastle by Lankum Clasped within the warm embrace of an octagonal church spire, the clutches of Manchester’s clammy, dark winters are briefly evaded. We are safe in the ambience of the room, transfixed by the ethereal, soothing soundscapes being performed to us.

Performer Lili’s yearning voice resonates within the church walls, now lit up an animate, fleshy red, as she sings to us of the feeling of safety and comfort found amongst gentle bodies of water.

Keep me inside the hallway home Lay down your head, No thoughts in the way Daughter of mine, lay down inside Uterine metaphors are one of Lili’s ways of expressing longing for belonging and rootedness in a world where Capitalism thrives and social alienation looms, a sentiment that is not irregularly echoed within Manchester’s folk community. It seems that for many, the folk community at least somewhat fulfils this desire.

“I don’t really get unhappy in January [anymore], since doing folk stuff. A lot of people need to go on holiday; I don’t mind it anymore, when I know I can go to a pub to be surrounded by warm people and play some music together. It's made for people, by people”- Jacob Jacob’s hint at the inherent democratic potential of folk music can contribute to our explanation of why queer folk are so drawn to it, and why it denotes belonging and comfort. All musicians were encouraged to play songs they wished to perform, and others would catch-on and support. Participants were free to tell stories and express their sentiments as they relate to songs, and audience participation was adored, contributing to the egalitarian intimacy of the space. My interlocutors prided themselves in creating an unintimidating social environment, in which participants were free to express their non-normative being.

“If anything, Folksoc (UoM’s Folk and Ceilidh Society) is too antihierarchical (laughs). Sometimes we just end up clambering over one another to get our tunes played” - Charlie

Photo taken by UoM Folk and Ceilidh Society.

In this way, queer folk culture is one of many queer spaces which pride itself of both a political and embodied rejection of the hierarchies and power relations that structure queer lived experience (Brown, 2007; Jeppesen, 2010). ‘Heteronormativity is produced in almost every aspect of the forms and arrangements of social life, reproducing itself systemically in nationality, the state, and the law... in the conventions and affects of narrativity, romance, and other protected spaces of culture’ (Brown, 2007: 464). Folk’s queer appeal, therefore, partly derives from its social autonomy and democratic counterculturalism, allowing people the freedom to subvert heteronormativity and express their ‘weirdness’.

“Folk, since the 2nd revival, has been associated with alternative culture

16 we dress differently, and we gravitate towards it as ‘others’. Folk is very queer! I'm used to getting dressed up in my ridiculous gear, every summer, and going and waving my hankies around with my belts attached to my leg (in reference to the Morris folk dancing tradition).

For me its liberating, I love being that silly” - Ellie The spaces were sustained by the active practice of democracy and inclusivity and were therefore accessible to queer folk.

However, my interlocutors recounted experiences of homophobia and general ‘turfing out’ of other spaces that did not prioritize those values.

These spaces were perceived as reifying false notions of what constitutes the proper way of ‘doing folk’, by shunning those who strayed too far from its normative forms. My interlocutors envision themselves, therefore, as opponents to those who constrain folk’s radical, subversive forms and insist on ‘preserving tradition’, as I now explore.

The story surrounding the story Mahsuri is born to a poor paddy farmer and his wife. Beautiful Mahsuri attracts many suitors, including the wealthy village Chieftain, Jaya, who is already married with children. Jaya’s wife, Mahura, vows revenge on Mahsuri, and spreads false rumours about her apparent adultery. Convinced, executioner takes a sacred sword to Mahsuri, and as she is killed, white blood gushes from her wounds, proving her innocence. Before she dies, Mahsuri curses the villagers with generations of bad luck for their wrongdoings, and her spell proves true.

Osman’s (2020) legend of Mahsuri is one that has been told and retold countless times through Malay generations. What was originally a morality-tale, infused with themes of wicked witchcraft and whore-hood, now has been adapted to include narratives of female agency and victimhood; of women misunderstood and erroneously sentenced to death, and creating affect through this wrongdoing. ‘What emerges in this contribution is not just the import of a story in itself but also the importance of a “story within a story” as well as the “stories surrounding a story”’ (Craith, 2007: 11). Folklore, and similarly folk music, are reflexive traditions. Tales and themes evolve dialectically as communities undergo inevitable shifts in ways of thinking and being. There are those who believe folk is a tradition that should be ‘preserved’ or performed in its purest form. Charlie discusses Klezmer, for example, a Jewish folk tradition.

“Klezmer, specifically, is a lot more focussed on historical authenticity than the folk that we play… There’s much more of a focus on looking at old manuscripts and archive recordings. It’s a lot more academic” Charlie My interlocutors also discussed experiencing similar sentiments in folk sessions in England, particularly where the ‘session crowd’ was older. Yet the idea of folklore being bounded and fixed is one that my interlocutors generally ridiculed.

Preserving folk as a historical relic to me is laughable because the folk traditions of England are oral. You can’t fix down and codify an oral tradition” - Ellie “Preserving’ [folk] is a non sequitur, there’s nothing to preserve. There’s no fixed point from where it starts to where it progresses to” - Ainsley My interlocutors exhibited such strong feelings about heritage reflexivity partly because they are engaged in projects to unearth radical and queer folk histories and further queer them, to make their own mark on the culture. ‘Queering’ folk histories involves a process of searching for folk songs that subvert heteronormativity, making them public and sometimes altering the lyrical content to make it more explicitly queer. Ellie, a lesbian woman with a huge repertoire of queer, lewd songs she loves to perform, sings an adaption of a song called “Maids when you’re young, never wed an old man”, about old men with erectile dysfunction: They’ve got no phallorum, fi diddle I orum, He’s got no phallorum, he’s lost his ding-dorum da Maids when you’re gay, never wed an old man

17 sung it. It ties into a belief that I know you (Ellie) share, in immortality. That no one ever really dies, no one is ever really forgotten because you live on in the people after you, who live on in the people after them. We are all products of people who have come before us” - Ainsley Queer Magic “The witch’s family lie dead, slain by their seven deadly sins, and she reaches her transcendentalform, as foretold by her kin. Walking through the woods, she becomes entangled into nature, entangled into cycles of decay and regeneration. Reverberating feminine vocals echo in the background, delayed, decaying into unseen temporalities.” (Celia recounts to me the ending of ‘The Witch’, a film of the folk horror genre)” “Folk horror is about clashing temporalities. Not rational or linear time, [instead] it’s about regression, going backwards, [how] now is not so far from the then. Heteropatriarchal, ‘straight’ time is about moving forwards; life is structured around birth of the child. Folk horror looks at time in squiggly, dialectic lines.”

The word ‘gay’ was altered from ‘young’. When sung by an old man in its original form, this song can feel bawdy and somewhat problematic. When Ellie sings it, however, along with several other lyrical adaptations, the song adopts a cheeky, liberatory potential; it has been reclaimed. At the gig in the church, the whole room cracked up at hearing a raunchy song from Rochdale (2) about a promiscuous old woman that Jacob had heard and re-constructed .

We roamed down spider alley, too tired to stand or sit When I heard somebody shoutin’ ‘mrs Holroyd, up a bit!’

Then she gave a little yelp, as though she were in pain.

She’d landed in a wasps’ nest and I could not help but say: Now, tell me Mrs. Holroyd, can you feel owt? If you can i’d like to know For they say that theres a breeze on down in blackpool, and I think I’d like a blow.

“The Rochdale song comes from politically Labour but morally conservative Yorkshire, so I find it very entertaining that this bawdy song came out. She falls in the wasp’s nest at the end – wasp is a lesbian in old slang, so she’s fallen into some bizarre alleyway where some mad lesbian orgy is going on in Yorkshire!” - Jacob The existence of sexually subversive stories and songs allows us to imagine the existence of queer folk in the past and how they may have lived. Tradition is often cast as the antithesis of ‘progression’ or modernization, yet this is a false dichotomy (Craith, 2007).

Rather, tradition may be seen as the authoritative relationship constructed between the past and the present, denoting an active political process of creating historical meaning. Hence, dialectically imagining the lives of those who came before us is a potentially powerful expression of solidarity and reflexivity regarding our own ways of being.

“By singing these songs, you are connected with everyone who has ever sung them before you and to the people who did work the land” - Ainsley “Who ploughed the fields & scattered the seeds” - Ellie “Time accordions when you sing. It pushes together everyone who has

Photo taken by UoM Folk and Ceilidh Society.

Here, Celia is introducing the final piece of the puzzle as to why queer people are attracted to folk culture; that folk and queer temporalities are synchronous. Under hegemonic power structures, human bodies are organized to maximize productivity, subject to chrononormativity (Freeman, 2010) which conditions us to ‘Cut off the strongest instincts of youth, its fire, defiance, unselfishness and love, at the roots… [and] suppress or regress its desire to mature slowly’ (Nietzche, 1997: 115).Chronobiopolitics’, the process of biological temporal regulation is used to assert ‘teleological schemes of events or strategies for living such as marriage, accumulation of health... reproduction, childrearing, and death’ (ibid: 4). Queer folk experience ontological disjunctions deriving from chronobiopolitics, marked by ‘untimeliness’ and historically associated with failures to ‘harness their drives and to orient themselves properly with respect to the future’ (McCallum and Tuhkanen, 2011: 7). Queer time is therefore the radical process of rethinking temporality through phenomenology, and by participating in folk temporalities, we are embodying a queer defiance to the structures that demand our compliance. There is an almost magical quality to the collective joy we experience when we sing, relate, and reflect on the lives of those before us during folk sessions.

“Magic is deeply political!... [it] doesn’t require you to have a fixed

18 relationship to space and time. Capital and Fordism required a fixed relationship to the clock, whereas magic is ‘irrational’, it doesn’t tell us… that our bodies must be organized in space” - Celia Folk stories and songs are brimming with magic and surrealism, with little relationship to fixity and bodily demarcation. From bizarre postmodern reinterpretations of Cinderella (Morrissey, 2011), to Jacob’s hilarious social commentary in the form of Bonnie and the Goose that laid golden eggs, the folk stories I came across evidently did not limit themselves to reality or narrate time as continuous or impersonal. Instead, they represented time as lived, choice time, the way memory selects it to be (Dolby-Stahl and Newall, 1980). Celia believes that magic and surrealism are popular with queer people, as they reject heteronormative notions of ‘rationality’ and Capitalist normativity, and queer people recognize these qualities in folk culture.

[The gruesome themes of] folk horror is about re-imbuing natural spaces with the bodily pain and violence that we have brought upon it Celia Celia explains how in both ‘The Witch’ and ‘Midsommar’ the final, transcendental form reached by the lead characters is one where plant and human permeate into one, formless structure.

Both are set in locations where nature asserts its agency over human beings.

“Spaces of nature and spaces of “wildness” are outside of Capital control, they are freer and more interconnected; less linked to Capitalist space and time, which is unfriendly to queer people.”

Celia refers to ‘The Green Knight’ a gender ambiguous figure who appears in Arthurian stories. A monstrous, villainous figure, the Green Knight is also gender queer in that its structure is linked to plant regeneration and femininity, despite being a man.

She explains how all these strange, surreal, pastoralbeings are linked to queerness, beyond their mere androgyny.

“Plant life exists of growing parts, parts that have not yet been formed and decaying parts. The temporality of them existing together is why they are related to queer time.

From the Medea 009:

Image: Photograph by Wendy Carrig from her portfolio “Common People” - Fire at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (1982-2000).

They need decay to exist, rather than just moving forwards.”

Folk horror therefore offers explicit warnings about the dangers of forgoing our relationship with the natural environments, and how queerness can subvert these wrongdoings. Similar themes appear in folk music, but in different forms, offering hauntology instead through imagination and escapism Wild Mountain Thyme by the Corries Oh, the summertime is coming And the trees are sweetly blooming And the wild mountain thyme Grows around the blooming heather Will you go, lassie, go?

And we'll all go together To pull wild mountain thyme All around the blooming heather Manchester’s folk community is ‘self-replicating’, according to Charlie. The community has likely produced a space which will sustain its cultural and political tendencies, continuing to aid those who similarly struggle with ontological disjunctions from normative ways of existing. Folk music culture constitutes form of sociality that reflects queer phenomenology, where established temporalities are deconstructed in our performances of solidarity and imagination. For Nietzche, ‘haste... is waste, whether it is the rush to become employable as a [wo]man of science or the rush to become fruitful (and, presumably, multiply)’. By contrast the “cultivated [wo]man”— clearly refined, probably effete, no doubt gay — is operating on queer time, off the designated biopolitical schedule of reproductive heterosexuality’ (McCallum and Tuhkanen, 2011: 5). By operating heritage as a reflexive practice, and by navigating folk music as a space of hauntological and ontological expression, the folk community becomes a potentially powerful source of grounding, comfort and organising for the queer community.

Furthermore, the use of pastoral magic and storytelling can aid us in deconstructing risky, reified notions of rationalism and its relationship with fixity and order, lest ‘the [current] relationship between science and power kill us all’, as Celia warns in reference to the ecological destruction caused by the unrestricted dominion of industrialism over ‘nature’.

After eight editions and having travelled through winters and summers together, this will sadly be our last edition this year. However, we want to leave you with a little memory of us before we go. As in March we celebrate Women’s day and Women’s History Month, we have tried to collect for this edition images, ideas and music that make us all reflect about what is it like to practise feminism between the ordinary and the extraordinary. We wish to have a collective reflection on the evident and subtle ways in which patriarchal narratives infiltrate our daily lives and both the exhausting labour

and the unsubdued resistance that women, non-binary, trans people, and their allies engage into everyday.

AN EXHIBIT WELL WORTH A LOOK: Acts of Resistance: photography, feminisms, and the art of protest @ South London Gallery - 65–67 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH - 8 march to 9 June Tue-Sun 11am-6pm This exhibition sheds light on feminist resistance and its representations in the last 10 years between epochal events and a surge in patriarchal misogyny and transphobia.

Summer Ethnographic Projects 2023 Members of the Argonaut and other 3rd year anthropologists conducted fieldwork last summer. The publications can be found by scanning the qr code at the bottom.

Nazli - My research is on the Armenian and Greek communities spending summers in one of the nine islands of Istanbul, Turkey. Through my ethnographic account and analysis of memory, emotion and nationalism I intend to complicate the topography and architecture of Istanbul that its dwellers take for granted. Is an island isolated from the social production of space in mainland Istanbul? Or can it be a geographical focal point through which certain symptoms of nation-state as a violent project be explored?

I return to my home city the summer when the Republic of Turkey celebrates its 100th anniversary, to explore how imagining peoplehood, while creating unity, is invalidating the presence of Others in its rigidty.

Ishani - I conducted fieldwork in rural West-Bengal, India, over 6 weeks last summer.

My research was titled 'Envisioning the self: dispossession and ontological precarity', and concerned indigenous youth in a context of changing land use in agrarian WestBengal. I wanted to understand how young indigenous people conceptualised their futures in environmentally and economically precarious situations. Against typical frameworks of dispossession, I tried to take a personal, ontological one, to truly understand the place of imagination, and to link the material with psychological effects of rapid change. I paid special attention to quiet efforts at collaborative survival.

Iacopo - This summer I spent the month of July doing an ethnographic project in La Habana (Cuba). What I looked at was urban farming in La Habana, and how people practicing urban farming make ends meet under very difficult circumstances. In Cuba there is food scarcity due to the ongoing blockade from the U.S. and, more recently, the post-COVID economic crisis. This was an incredible experience that taught me how doing ethnographic fieldwork can be challenging at the beginning but also extremely rewarding as I established amazing relationships that I hope will carry on through time.

Lucy - Living in central London among the abundance of hidden and stigmatised social housing, London had felt to be to be an increasingly hostile home. I decided to spend time collaborating with my local community garden to see how the commoning of such a space could provide futurities and a politics of togetherness at the margins of temporal and spatial austerity. The garden constituted an economy of care that traded in currencies of hydration and of sustenance, which rewilded time through the sharing of long communal lunches and in its dedication to cultivation cycles. The project provided an anthropological training you cannot teach in the classroom – the challenging, moving, and exciting reality of conducting my own fieldwork was invaluable.

Wange - I conducted my summer ethnography project in China, focusing on the challenges that patients with rare diseases face in accessing necessary medicines within the medical bureaucracy. Over four months, I observed their interactions with health bureaus and hospitals, noting the affective intensity during their engagements with street-level bureaucrats. A key finding was that they would often have to gradually become ‘informal insiders’—a process where patients learn to navigate the system by blending formal procedures with informal tactics. This involves building personal relationships and employing strategies like flattery and intimidation to align with the motivations and interests of individual bureaucrats.

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March 2024

THE ARGONAUT

Our team is parting ways... Look out for fresh new members for the next academic year.

“And that in itself is worth a toast”

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