The slash people

I remember having always faced kind of a dilemma since I was young. I always had a hard time when dealing with the question: “are you this, or that?” Of course that when it comes to children, they don’t really pronounce so clearly the need to decide. But always when I would get to a reading book club at school with my posh outfit I would get that look: “so, are you preppy or smart after all”? Probably most of you faced similar things, or maybe not, but as I grew up the questions became more and more strong: so, are you more into history or into maths? An academic or corporative? Communication studies or anthropology? When I finally got to London the question was: So, which department are you from, social anthropology or material culture? “Well, I am kind of both. You see, my first supervisor is from material culture and my second is from social anthropology, and my thesis kind of stays in the in-between”.

Mary Douglas (a very important anthropologist) probably would say that the human being need those kind of classifications – maps to understand how to deal with life – and that’s why people are so against the in-between, what she would call “dirty”. Those maps are classifications that separate one thing from the other and, therefore, make things understandable. Those are “frames” that put each set of things into a different box. And I acknowledge that, as I mentioned in the second post of this blog, we need the frames and so, the separations that they imply. But I just cannot avoid my passion for the “in-between”. For something that is between one frame and the other, one classification and the other. And a few weeks ago, I got what I needed.

One of my PhD mattes was challenged by the same question that I was: So, are you from social anthropology or material culture? “Well I am social anthropology slash material culture”. My eyes sparkled! Is that an answer? Can I say that? Slash something else? And I realised how often they do this here. For example, if you don’t understand an Indian dish, one might say: well, this is a yogurt/drink (yogurtslashdrink), a bread/pancake (breadslashpancake). Or, if you don’t know a place, they might say it’s a pub/restaurant (pubslashrestaurant).

Not so surprising to see that in London. After all, that’s the city where nobody is English but everybody is half Greek/half Danish, half Indian/half American, half French/half Japanese, etc. That’s actually what they answer if you ask them their nationality. And do you know the funniest thing? Mary Douglas was a professor at my school!! The slash people school!! Maybe London has changed, maybe not…

Anyway I am already using it. So… Nice to meet you, I am an anthropologist/consultant/teacher/translator/something else that I am still finding out. And that’s not because I cannot figure out myself but because where you see difference, I see connection. Where you see separation, I see communication. 


                                            Another slash thing: House/school/screen

Jeremy Rifkin lecture 'The Third Industrial Revolution’

The lecture was projected on to the AA building. 

To see more: http://www.aaschool.ac.uk

Photos: TS