Institutional Imprisonment Part II

There comes a time in life when you begin to value precision and simplicity above all else. This does not mean that other things are of less importance. It simply means that something within you — the thing that has managed multiple realities, desires, circumstances at once — can begin to prioritize. And that is difficult to articulate. Am I losing you? Well, let’s make it clear.

I’ll use a personal example first and then one that contrasts yet complements that example. You know by now that that’s how I like to do things. 

So out of necessity, but not only — it was also largely to do with immediate environment and the need for survival — I found it incredibly easy to disconnect from mainstream entertainment and media because I didn’t own a TV or have constant Internet access at the age most people do, and that has continued into adulthood. Not because I lived somewhere where those things didn't exist, but because my access to them was limited deliberately and by choice. I also had to survive due to specific life circumstances, which made me suddenly appreciate certain things that at my age may not have been typical - I gained a tremendous newfound appreciation for the basics: safety, good food, clean water, quiet, calm, enough sleep, and a comforting kind of predictability. I say this was survival instinct because as you know — for the trillionth time — I am Bipolar I, so I needed to be in a safe environment. But as you also know, I grew up fast. I value these things because even if I sometimes act like I’m 8 years old, and look like I’m 24 years old, I think like a 56 year old. That’s just how it is.

This does not mean I devalue anything else. I’ve grown up. Aside from recognized crime, I know the innate moral superiority of things is non-existent. Someone needs to sell coffee, someone has to be a heart surgeon, someone needs to teach children history, someone needs to make art, and someone needs to prevent crime. Whilst the heart surgeon seems most vital it is also true that when you’re not in need of heart surgery you probably want to learn about history, drink coffee, and live in a safe neighborhood. And this would be a good time for me to address the obvious: why am I thinking like this?

There is opportunity, capacity, skill, aptitude, power, and then responsibility. And then there’s just being human. I'm trying to answer the question of being human. Why not? What else is there? What's our purpose?

This journal is about art and recovery so to bring it back to that I would say the most important thing I’ve learnt from art is the importance of truth not just within art but within the self. That’s complicated but the fact that art has to survive within artifice makes the entire project seem ever so slightly self-defeating. I'll go into more of this later but essentially, like every business, there's a selling of the product and whatever great truth is being explored in the art - or rather entertainment - it has to be sold. The selling is where sometimes the deep meets the shallow. The truth meets the lie. I apologize for my honesty if it offends, but I do not apologize for it being honest.

And then the most important thing I’ve learnt from recovery is to reject false humility and self-erasure. Being chosen can be a burden, but it is a burden that must be acted on regardless of how imperfect those actions may be, because it is the most human thing to do. To do nothing in its place is to say that you are simply unable to justify your existence and that does not honor life. I have repeated this over and over again because - it's dark - but mental illness does mean you have to deal with becoming suicidal and that really makes you question the meaning of your life if nothing else ever did. I just ask for the whole truth to matter, and I emphasize this as someone who knows exactly how painful it is to be silenced. The silence is termites in wood. It makes you hollow from within.

And finally, the greatest realization is that all of this is so much easier said than done, for everyone, including me. 

I said how the purpose of institutions can be name-dropping, which is more like self-defense. To defend ideas by mentioning the institution that certified the knowledge is not actually name-dropping, it's the purpose of epistemic capital. The use of its symbolic authority. That’s kind of where the imprisonment factor comes in and you can sort of get on a space ship and float up into the sky and see it from above and come to the conclusion that prisons and institutions of learning don’t look that different. The Universities are usually much more beautiful, at least the ones I had the privilege of attending, but the point I’m making is it’s not all just pure cynicism. There is a correlation here.

A human being that is proven guilty of committing murder ends up in jail. A student who is trying to create new knowledge is also proven guilty of trying to have a voice, and therefore they commit themselves to institutions because that is what we have agreed must be done for them to claim credibility — just like crime and punishment: if they are not in the jail then it's not a crime that is being punished. We've all agreed. Now the crime, so to speak, that the student makes is wanting to contribute to society through learning and cultivation of new knowledge and the punishment is to prove that worth by being judged against the best, and within structures that preserve epistemic capital and symbolic authority, but which are also not actual microcosmic utopias, as some may like to believe. The good intentions are not free from being tested, which is fair, but they are also not free from human warfare. These institutions have not been egalitarian safe havens: not historically, and not even how they function currently. Improvements are constantly being made and that’s not because something can be improved endlessly, which it can in theory, but because even places that are built to benefit humanity can do that work imperfectly. That’s why I said self-defense. Like a citizen belonging to a country isn't guaranteed safety, neither is a student belonging to an institution guaranteed - well, anything. You have to state your rights out loud and remember what they are to challenge the authority of the state. Institutions are not very different. Just because you gain admission does not mean you gain acceptance - not in every sense, and just because your ideas are brilliant does not mean you get acknowledgement. That's the cold harsh truth a lot of people don't realize and it has multiple variables, which we are all too familiar with by now because they exist in the outside world as well.

But now I hear you ask: why would a prisoner use the prison as self-defense? A prisoner doesn’t really need the prison for self-defense aside from being able to explain absence from society. That place existed and I was in it and that is why I was not anywhere else. Similarly, an institution with a person in it who has created new knowledge, which is then challenged or celebrated for a variety of reasons — for its content, for its intent, or because of the identity of the person who produced the knowledge — that can also be a prisoner and prison situation, because the person will use the institution to justify and defend their ideas. That’s the whole purpose of symbolic authority. Your ideas are valuable because they are attached to a pre-existing idea of value. That's not freedom. There is no intrinsic value, which when you think about it, is rather absurd. Art is subjective, but even in the pure, natural sciences: if an experiment is conducted according to the scientific method and it is proven correct it doesn't matter where the experiment was done because the result will be proven correct when the is replicated. And yet when we hear: a study from Cambridge University vs a study from Parminster College (it isn't real, it's the name of the fictional town in Doctor Foster) you're more likely to trust Cambridge. And as I said, I don’t mean to be a hopeless cynic or boring idealist. That trust has been cultivated for a good reason. I am just trying to get to the nuance that I feel is lacking because when symbolic authority overrides everything else in my view we lose two important things: the need to humanize and make room for exceptional circumstances, for diverse voices and experiences, and also by doing so recognize how incredibly random and unpredictable it all is because without both of those things the entire point is lost to me and I bet many others, as well. Contribution to humanity devoid of humanity? Recognizing the vast untapped potential but reverting back to old standards nonetheless? Not entirely, but still. At times it feels like pure survival of the fittest, which can be really disheartening. And this isn't good old institutional criticism for the sake of it, anti-establishment because it's fashionable.

There are subtle forms of warfare within these institutions that imitate the wider world, and everyone knows this. As a woman of color, having reached the age or situation in life where I have to refer to myself as a woman of color, this has no doubt been a huge and utterly perplexing learning curve for me in my life. It’s like how children learn history in school. The World Wars happened before you were born but you are not born with their knowledge, and yet it is important you learn about them so that you can understand the world around you. I didn't know about the existence of the Universities I’ve studied at when I was born. And yet they are hundreds of years old and have shaped and influenced the world in ways I was completely oblivious to, and now I am there studying, thinking, what will my contribution be? It doesn't have to be overwhelming and I know it's not exactly every student's feeling, but we never said institutions choose people based on who they truly are.

Coming back to my experience: what I felt was a historical clash. A woman of color in an elite educational institution in the United Kingdom is a political thing regardless of who it is. Could be me, could be a black woman from America - it doesn't matter. I didn’t like to believe this, or think about it, or wear it as a badge — I didn't want it to become a chip on my shoulder as they say. I'm a woman. I'm a woman of color. I didn't even really identify as a feminist at University - at least not in the way many other women did - despite me thoughts and work being radically feminist. Not because I didn't care but because I still didn't want to believe that it was something that had to truly affect me because I had convinced myself and been somewhat convinced that whilst I may not go unscathed I had still earned my place in the world where I couldn't possibly be undermined or discriminated against because of my sex or gender or race. I was young. And I was wrong. There comes a time when it becomes impossible to ignore reality. Even the reality that becomes ridiculed.

People make fun of the #MeToo movement. Women do it as well as men. Some people genuinely believe we live in a post-racial world. And some are convinced that calling out misogyny is political correctness gone wild.

The natural order of things is to have your ideas attacked as a woman by men and women. Men attack each other as well but we don't call that exceptional because violence is their language, and women - we just borrow it. That’s what I’ve learned. The more symbolic authority you have as a woman the more it becomes necessary for people (of all genders) to try to override you, to silence you, to destabilize you, to want to come close to you and at the same time dominate and undermine you. No one has really decided whether it is right or wrong because it's so deeply embedded. It's something that happens. All the time. And it is deliberate. It happens to men too but that's not because they are men. That's because they are powerful. When it happens to women it's because it's a powerful woman. Even though some may not want to admit it. That’s the real power of social conditioning — and I am guilty of it, too.

In a world historically built on violence and hierarchy why would you expect to be humanized as a woman of color? Because we are in the 21st century and you are at one of the world's best Universities? No. I'm sorry, I wish it was like that, but that just does not happen. Not perfectly and not yet.

Why should anyone treat you like a human being who is worth being acknowledged when a as a woman you’ve had the audacity to speak your mind? You must pay for the minority of women who have abused the system, which is so ironic, given that men always remind women that only a minority of men are violent. One is true, the other is not. I’ll leave you to figure out which is which.

As women you must pay for your imperfections twice: once to satisfy the male gaze and patriarchy, and then to satisfy the wrath of other women who see your non-compliance as judgment of their compliance. Or even just your liberation politics.

It's a minefield.

Self-defense in knowledge isn’t about rights, it’s about asserting the right to have rights. Admission and credentials do not actually give you that. One name-drops not because they lack imagination or seek hierarchy but because without it they lose their credibility as they always have, and it’s not like the institution ensures that credibility either. Not without a fight. It has to be invoked.

And it has to be invoked both within and outside, which is where my PhD research comes in. It's a lot I know as always but it's good to do this. This series is incredibly important.

More in Part III.