-
94 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2014
Hello. Thank you all – colleagues, friends andfamily – for
coming here this evening and thankyou John2 for your generous
introduction.
I plan to use this lecture to reflect on mytwenty years of
working at London MetropolitanUniversity and to speak about the
many oppor-tunities I’ve had, as well as the ideas and
part-nerships that have mattered to me during thistime.
Before I go on, I’ll just say that I also did somethings before
coming here. I grew up and went toschool in Salisbury. I studied
history and sociol-ogy at the University of East Anglia as part of
aBA in European and Social Studies. I studied foran MSc in Medical
Sociology at Bedford College,London and I completed my PhD in
CulturalStudies in Australia, at the University of Tech-nology
Sydney. I worked as a social researcher ina health centre and was
engaged in numerousactivities – discussion, writing, campaigning
–connected with health politics. Broadly, thataccounts for 20 years
of academic life beforeLondonmet. And so, Londonmet…
In January 1994, I started work at LondonGuildhall University
(LGU), later to merge withthe University of North London to form
London
Metropolitan University. I joined a small team,teaching a BA in
Communications and Audio-Visual Production Studies that was
quicklyexpanding. Almost immediately, two things hap-pened that
have profoundly influenced my workever since.
First, I was asked by course leader Mo Dod-son to teach a module
entitled ‘Cultural History:Methods and Perspectives’ and to include
a sec-tion on oral history. Second, I met fellow new lec-turer
Deidre Pribram with whom I began talkingabout the unrecognised but
nevertheless palpa-ble influence of emotion on academic and
cul-tural political life. In part, this was connectedwith the
pressures of coming into a fast-changingsituation, with a rapidly
increasing number ofstudents. As it happened, I was also
connectingwith two shifts in academic thinking in thehumanities and
social sciences: a turn to biogra-phy and the beginnings of a turn
toemotion/affect. Later, it became clear that therewere significant
tensions as well as resonancesbetween the two.
The focus on oral history was exciting andnew to me, although I
was familiar with qualita-tive interviewing in my job as a social
researcher
Looking for trouble: exploring emotion,memory and public
sociologyInaugural lecture, 1 May 2014, London Metropolitan
University
by Jenny Harding
Abstract: This article is a verbatim record of an inaugural
lecture,1 reflecting on twenty yearsof working at one university.
In this lecture, I discuss the ways in which academic inquiry,
teach-ing and community engagement have been linked in specific
oral history projects. I focus onopportunities for working across
disciplinary boundaries. I discuss culturalist understandingsof
emotion and memory and their implications for oral history
research.
Key words: emotion, memory, oral history, public sociology,
cultural studies
REFLECTIONS
-
Autumn 2014 ORAL HISTORY 95
and through my doctoral research. Oral historyinvolves working
with memory to produce newunderstandings of the past. Oral
historians inter-view people about the past as they have lived
itand now reflect on it. As oral historian Alessan-dro Portelli
wrote over thirty years ago, oral his-tory ‘tells us less about
events than about theirmeaning.’3 More often than not, oral
historiansfocus on the everyday experiences of subordinategroups or
political minorities unrecognised inofficial written records. Oral
history is part ofboth academic inquiry and a
community-basedmovement directed at democratising history
(byincluding more people in knowledge production)and empowering
subjects (by recognising theirexperience). As Katharine Hodgkin and
Susan-nah Radstone suggest, oral history offers a frame-work for
‘contesting the past’, that is, rethinkingwhat the past
‘contained’, who can speak aboutit and how it can be
represented.4
My interest in emotion at that time alsotouched on something
seemingly unrecognised.In the mid-1990s there had been little
investiga-tion of emotion within Cultural Studies. This
wassurprising. Cultural Studies is particularly con-cerned with
studying meaning and power rela-tions. Stuart Hall defined culture
as a set of his-torically specific practices,
representations,languages and customs, ‘concerned with the
pro-duction and exchange of meanings’. Culture, hesaid, is about
‘feelings, attachments and emo-tions as well as concepts and
ideas’.5
There had been earlier indications of howemotion might be viewed
as cultural (as well aspersonal) and linked to power relations: in
fem-inist philosopher Alison Jaggar’s conceptualisa-tion of
‘emotional hegemony’ (in the 1980s) andcultural theorist Raymond
Williams’ concept‘structures of feeling’ (in the 1960s).6 Jaggar
wasone of a number of feminist philosophers andcritics of science
writing in the 1980s who soughtto disrupt a series of (gendered)
conceptualdichotomies underpinning Western thought:specifically,
culture and nature, mind and body,reason and emotion, objectivity
and subjectivity.7
Reason was considered necessary to the pro-duction of objective
and reliable knowledge andemotion as likely to subvert inquiry.
Jaggar usedthe phrase ‘emotional hegemony’ to describe aprocess
whereby dominant political and socialgroups (usually white,
middle-class, male) werealigned with reason and objectivity and
subordi-nate groups (usually black, working-class,female) with
subjectivity, bias and irrationality.She argued that being
understood as essentially‘emotional’, where this is equated with
beingirrational, disqualified subordinate groups fromacademic
inquiry and political leadership andjustified their continuing
subordination.
Williams’ concept structure of feeling refersto ‘the felt sense
of the quality of life at a partic-ular place and time’.8 Williams
was trying to
address the phenomenological question of howone lives the
complex historical articulation ofmaterial, social, economic and
cultural elementsthat make up culture ‘as a whole way of
life’.9
Williams does not explicitly link structures offeeling to power
relations or hegemony, but suchconnections have since been made,
for example,by Lawrence Grossberg in his writings on ‘affec-tive
economies’.10
In the mid 1990s, these concepts - ‘emotionalhegemony’,
‘structure of feeling’, ‘affectiveeconomies’ – were important
starting points fordeveloping a cultural analysis of emotions.
Ofcourse, emotion had been extensively studiedwithin various
branches of psychology and psy-choanalysis. But, there was a
tendency in thesedisciplines to locate emotions primarily in
theminds and bodies of individuals and treat them asuniversal
entities. The turn to emotion in thehumanities and social sciences
was to bring otherconcerns into the frame: investigating how
emo-tions vary between cultures; how they changeover time; how they
are shaped by social struc-tures, institutions, ideologies and
power relations.
When I started at LGU, I was publishing arti-cles and a
monograph based on my doctoralresearch on feminist theory and
embodiment.11
From the late 1990s, Deidre Pribram and I wereco-writing
articles on emotions12 and co-editinga book, which aimed to bring
together emergingliterature – from cultural anthropology,
history,sociology and cultural studies – and to define anew field
of emotion studies within cultural stud-ies.13 So, oral history and
a cultural analysis ofemotion shared some intellectual territory:
afocus on something un- or under-recognised,experience and
meaning.
Oral history in teaching and researchOral history as part of the
undergraduate cur-riculum presented opportunities and challenges.It
generated learning opportunities for studentsand possibilities for
collaboration with agenciesbeyond the university as well as linking
teachingand research. It also raised questions about thenature of
participation, memory and experience.
There was already a commitment to oral his-tory at London
Guildhall University when Iarrived in the mid-1990s. Colleagues Mo
Dod-son and Karen Goaman were running a moduleentitled
‘Communication History’ in which theyasked students in their first
semester of study tointerview a family member and write the
inter-view up in both an academic and journalisticstyle. One of the
important things about thismodule was that students were invited to
par-ticipate in producing knowledge and, it washoped through this,
discover the university to bea less alien place. That our students
were mainlyfrom local London boroughs and often the firstperson in
their families to go to university wasa major factor in the success
of this initiative. In
-
Jenny Harding,Inaugural lecture, The Graduate Centre,London
MetropolitanUniversity. Photo:Steve Blunt.
those days, around 400 students took this mod-ule each year.
This initiative inspired me and, I think, manyof our students.
In my second year module, ‘Cul-tural History Methods and
Perspectives’, stu-dents learned how to critically analyse an oral
his-tory interview, reflecting on the research processand comparing
oral history with other historicalmethods. Many students
interviewed a familymember or neighbour. Often their stories told
ofmigration and settlement, work (often in nurs-ing, the catering
industry or transport), child-hoods lived in other countries, and
also, but lessfrequently, the un-swinging 1960s and variousforms of
political activism. In the early years,around 200 students a year
took this module.
In 1997, keen to find new learning opportu-nities for students,
I met with the oral historycurator at the Museum of London. We
arrangedfor cohorts of second year students to work withsections of
the museum’s oral history collection:for example, one group
listened to, analysed andwrote summaries of interviews about early
twen-tieth century housing conditions in the East End.Gradually,
others got to hear of our interest inoral history and a number of
collaborations fol-lowed.
In 1998 the LGU chaplain, William Taylor,approached me about
developing a project whichinvolved students in talking to local
‘disadvan-taged’ people and used storytelling to createimages of
London from its margins (as an alter-
native to more glamorous images produced tomark the millennium).
In response, third yearstudents taking a module entitled ‘Oral
History’worked as a team with me to: first, volunteerweekly for a
month at a day centre for homelesspeople in Aldgate; and second,
interview peopleusing the centre about their experiences of
home-lessness. Two small cohorts of students (eighteenin all) were
involved in ‘Talking About Home-lessness’ (2000-2001) and
seventy-six peoplewere interviewed.14
Around this time (1999/2000), I met JohnGabriel, who was also
very interested in oral his-tory and this was the beginning of many
years ofworking together on projects. Connections withthe Museum of
London and ‘Talking AboutHomelessness’ led to two new projects:
‘CareStories’ and ‘The Refugee Communities HistoryProject’. Julia
Granville, a family psychothera-pist and social worker at The
Tavistock Clinic,had heard about ‘Talking About Homelessness’and
invited us to develop a project with youngcare leavers. ‘Care
Stories’ involved seven thirdyear students getting to know seven
young careleavers and interviewing them about their expe-riences of
being in care. Postgraduate studentsfilmed interviews and these
were edited to makea twenty-minute film highlighting the voice
ofthe young person for use in professional train-ing.15 Our
partners in the project went on to pro-duce a further film and
booklet contextualisingthe first film, as part of a resource pack
used,
96 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2014
-
Autumn 2014 ORAL HISTORY 97
nationally and internationally, in the training offoster
carers.
In 2000, thanks to the Museum of Londonconnection, we became
partners with the EvelynOldfield Unit, the Museum of London, and
fif-teen refugee community organisations (RCOs) inan oral history
project documenting the eco-nomic, social and cultural
contributions made byrefugees settling in London since 1951.
‘TheRefugee Communities History Project’ (RCHP)endured a long
period of gestation, but eventu-ally secured funding from the
Heritage LotteryFund (HLF) and Trust for London. Between2004 and
2007, John Gabriel and I were involvedin the project steering group
and training fifteenfieldworkers (one from each RCO) to
conductinterviews and develop a variety of outcomes,including
contributing to a final exhibition at theMuseum of London.16
These projects took seriously the importanceof participants not
only of getting to speak abouttheir lives but also being heard by
an audienceboth in the present (through interview) andimagined
future (through exhibition, broadcast,publication, theatre and web
pages). In otherwords, different forms of cultural productionwere
crucial to how the ordinary voice was notonly elicited, but also
amplified and heard by(disparate) others.17
Training for the RCHP was delivered via twoMA-level modules,
which became the buildingblocks for an MA in Life History
Research,which I later developed. We also delivered someof the MA
course content as short courses sup-porting other HLF-funded
collaborative projects.For example, we worked with Eastside
Commu-nity Heritage on ‘Working Lives of the ThamesGateway’
(2008-2010), which documentedexperiences of working in the
disappearingindustries of east and south-east London. Weworked with
IARS (a youth-led organisation)and the Women’s Library (2011-2012),
to makea documentary film focused on Muslim women’sparticipation in
sport since 1948. Sporting Sisters:Stories of Muslim Women in Sport
is on YouTubeand has had 15.5 thousand hits.18 We have beenvery
fortunate to work with Suzanne Cohen, whohas made an invaluable
contribution to audio-visual production in recent projects.
These projects have involved looking beyondthe university, to
enhance student experience andengage in conversations with
different commu-nities. At this point, I’d like to say
somethingabout the title of this lecture.
‘Looking for trouble’ refers first to my sensethat this is what
academics do (they search forproblems that are complex and hard to
unpick),and second to the idea that ‘memory’ and ‘emo-tion’ are
especially troublesome ideas. ‘Publicsociology’ is another way of
talking about ideasthat matter to me and making connections
withinand beyond the university.
Five or six years ago, John Gabriel and formercolleague Peter
Hodgkinson stimulated debate inthe faculty around the idea of
public sociologyand, specifically, the work of American
sociolo-gist Michael Burawoy. Burawoy wrote that soci-ology is
motivated by a desire to improve society(although this may mean
many things to manypeople). He proposed a fourfold typology of
soci-ology comprising: professional, policy, criticaland
public.19
Public sociology brings sociology into conver-sations with
multiple publics. The traditional pub-lic sociologist investigates
debates within orbetween publics, but might not actually take
partin them. The organic public sociologist works ‘inclose
connection with a visible, thick, active, localand often
counterpublic.’20 Of course, for many,this was not new. Patricia
Hill Collins pointed outthe term ‘public sociology’ simply gave a
name towhat she had been doing for years.21 The oral his-tory
projects I have described, with their focus oncommunity-based
research and ‘subaltern knowl-edges’,22 enacted a kind of organic
public sociol-ogy. They enabled us to engage in multiple
con-versations with multiple publics: first, studentsengaged in
work-based learning as interviewers;second, professionals from
community-basedorganisations; third, a number of
marginalisedgroups; and last, numerous diverse audienceswho respond
to various media outputs from theseprojects.23 At the same time,
these publics werenot discrete and clearly distinguished:
academicswere part of the projects’ steering groups anddesigners as
well as providers of education andtraining. In the case of the
RCHP, the participantswere both ‘students’ and members of
refugeecommunity organisations and, in some cases,refugees
themselves.24
To be clear, I am not trying to subsume oralhistory under public
sociology. But, I would saythat public sociology is a useful term
in so far asit provides a basis for conversations across
disci-plines, within and beyond our faculty. As col-leagues and I
have argued,25 public sociologyframes much of the faculty’s
activity, specifically,through its commitment to: promoting social
jus-tice; widening access to higher education; sup-porting research
that seeks to shape policy andenhance service delivery; and,
finally, workingcollaboratively with marginalised communitiesusing
participatory methods in capacity-buildinginitiatives. Public
sociology is both a descriptionand aspiration.
Now, I’d like to highlight some issues emerg-ing from the oral
history projects I’ve mentionedand to make some critical
connections with mywork on emotions.
Experience, emotion and memoryIn late modernity, things have
turned increasinglypersonal. And, memory, emotion and experienceare
entangled in processes of personalisation.
-
98 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2014
Biographical narratives consist of individualreflections on
experience of the past, with par-ticular focus on meanings and
feelings. Yet, expe-rience as a potential source of knowledge
con-notes authenticity to some and provokesprofound suspicion in
others.
Elizabeth Tonkin suggests that oral accountsof the past are
often social activities in which nar-rators claim authority to
speak to particular audi-ences.26 In ‘Talking About Homelessness’,
sev-eral interviewees clearly staked out theirauthority to tell
based on their own unique expe-rience of ‘being there’ – on the
streets – andhence the impossibility of someone who has notbeen
there fully understanding what it is like.27
… if someone wants to see what it’s like,they’ve got to do it,
then you know what it’slike …28
… I’ll tell you something lass ... never say toanybody ‘I know
what you’re going through’,never say ‘I understand what you are
doing’cos you’ve never done it yourself, cos youdon’t, you
don’t.29
Their statements reveal the limits of repre-sentation, the fact
that tellers’ words are not the
same as the past they have lived30 and, as Spivakpoints out,
that what is known is always in excessof knowledge, which is never
adequate to itsobject.31
Students readily accepted the privileged sta-tus of those same
ontological moments and thelimits to their own understanding (based
on inex-perience) and, thereby, helped to co-produce
theinterviewees’ authority to tell. At the same time,they insisted
that listening to interviewees’ sto-ries constituted significant
‘ontological moments’for them as students. Repeatedly, they wrote
(inthe diaries they kept) that learning (about thelives of homeless
people, voluntary agencies andthemselves) from ‘being there’ – at
the drop-incentre – was superior to reading: because
you‘experienced it yourself’.
Autobiographical narratives communicateauthenticity in so far as
they are understood toexpress unique experience and a genuine sense
ofwho the narrator is. Emotion plays a part heresince, in
contemporary Western cultures, theindividual is imagined as a
bounded private selfwith emotion at its core: expressions of
emotionreveal who a person really is (inside and
beneathappearances). Expressions of emotion are seen
assimultaneously expressions of individual identityand
authenticity.
The Graduate Centre,Holloway Road,London MetropolitanUniversity.
Photo:Steve Blunt.
-
Autumn 2014 ORAL HISTORY 99
Now, there are some sticky issues here. Theentanglement of
experience with identity andemotion in the individual story
potentially threat-ens to personalise social issues. So, work
needsto be done to link individual biographicalaccounts with social
patterns and change. I thinkthis requires radical
contextualisation. How?
If we view biographical accounts as a meanswhereby the subject
makes sense of his/her jour-ney through history, and change, then
we mightalso acknowledge that ways of giving meaning –language,
norms and systems of judgement –have their own histories.32 And, we
mightacknowledge that individual stories are affectedby social
relations, cultural narratives and dis-courses in the present.
Indeed, a number of the-orists (Bourdieu, Stanley, Steedman,
Ricouer)claim that the concerns of the present – one’splace in the
world and relations with others –inevitably insinutate and shape
the past in story-telling.33 We might also understand
identity(understood as a coherent sense of self over time)and
experience as products rather than causes ofthe personal story.
But, does this line of thinking – radical con-textualisation –
diminish the potential signifi-cance of individual biographies to
history, andagency? Not necessarily. Anna Green suggeststhat we can
both acknowledge the significance ofcontexts and discourses and
re-assert the value ofindividual remembering and capacity of
individ-uals to critically assess and contest these.34 How-ever, I
would tend to view those capacities as alsosocially generated.
Contexts‘Talking about Homelessness’, ‘Care Stories’ and‘The
Refugee Communities History Project’ gen-erated many hours of
recorded interviews cov-ering a great many topics, but had some
themesin common. Interviewees spoke at length (andmovingly) about
loss, home and (a sense of)belonging. Questions that interested me
partic-ularly were: how do people come to tell partic-ular stories,
in particular ways? How do partic-ular stories come to matter to
others? So, inwriting about these projects, I have focused onthe
cultural, historical and discursive contexts inwhich
auto/biographical stories were told.
Contexts include the problematisation of cer-tain social groups
(homeless, looked after,refugee) and certain ways of understanding
andtalking about topics. Context also includes (relat-edly) the
aims and agenda of a project, researchrelations (between
interviewer and interviewee)and the interview process and
questions. It alsoincludes cultural narratives, which insinuate
theinterpretation and articulation of experience ininterview and
subsequent forms of cultural pro-duction.
Retrospectively, I came to see that emotionwas entangled with
all contexts, processes and
relations: that specific emotions might be part ofthe dynamics
of unequal relations, working (asSara Ahmed has argued) to ‘align
some subjectswith others and against some others’.35 Forexample,
‘The Refugee Communities HistoryProject’ was conceived against a
backdrop ofgrowing hostility in policy debate and media cov-erage
towards asylum seekers, refugees andimmigrants (all conflated).
Critics had identifieda change in the nature of discourse on
asylum,involving a withdrawal of sympathy for forcedmigration and a
focus on the problem of asylumseekers in terms of increased volume
and itsimplications for British society and the econ-omy.36 This
discourse identified asylum seekersas a source of public fear and
anger among dis-advantaged groups (thought to perceive them-selves
to be in competition for resources and ser-vices, and presumed to
be less tolerant). In thisway, a cultural politics of fear was
enmeshed witha politics of inequality.37
‘The Refugee Communities History Project’had some ‘emotion work’
to do in contesting neg-ative public images of refugees as bogus, a
drainon national resources and a threat to nationalidentity and
security, by producing a counter-dis-course based on refugees’ own
words.38 Thedesign of the project – through its aims, selectionof
interview subjects and interview questions –encouraged the telling
of certain kinds of narra-tives. These emphasised authenticity in
seekingasylum and the positive contributions of refugeesubjects to
the history, culture and economy ofLondon. A strong focus on
contribution, in theproject agenda and in individual interviews,
cre-ated the idea of the successful or ‘good’ refugeeas someone who
gives something back.39 But,‘giving something back’ meant different
things todifferent people.
For some it involved success in mainstreamsociety through
conventional achievements: highstatus and/or well-paid occupations,
or gainingUK qualifications. Others described sacrifices –such as
low-paid work, more than one job, work-ing long hours as well as
caring for family – madein order to support their children’s
‘success’ inconventional terms. Some described working inthe areas
of paid/unpaid refugee sector work.Many of those interviewed
articulated a sense ofthemselves as passionately committed to
socialjustice, community and helping others. Theyelaborated an
ethics of existence that focused lesson individualism and
individual attainment andmore on collective political action. For
example,a woman who arrived in 1975 from Chile (at theage of
twenty) talked of the importance of beingpolitical:
… as a political animal, in, in a way, you, youknow I would
always find a way to be political,in, in that sense. So, in a way …
because youare driven by, by, by it somehow, it doesn’t
-
100 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2014
matter whether you end up in Kathmandu,or Kenya, or wherever,
you know, you willfind, what your place is, you know? So interms
of, my personal gain, my personal posi-tion, I didn’t have any
intents. Of politics Ihave a hell of a lot, yes, and in that sense
Iwould, yeah, participate in everything thatwas going …40
So, interviewees offered a critical take on‘contribution’. They
were also critical of the idea(underpinning the project) that
‘refugee’described an identity. The project invited indi-viduals to
speak about their experiences asrefugees, positioning them as
‘authentic sources’by virtue of a pre-existing (refugee)
identity,which was further consolidated and reinforcedthrough
speaking. But, some sought to distancethemselves from the label
‘refugee’, on thegrounds that they felt it stuck to, diminished
anddisempowered them. They felt subordinated byrepresentations of
the refugee both as bogus andgenuine. Acknowledging the realities
of perse-cution and the need for protection, some felt thatdominant
understandings of ‘the genuinerefugee’ as incapacitated by ‘sadness
and loss’took over, making them into perpetual victimsand objects
of pity. Instead, some emphasisedtheir anger at the circumstances
in which theywere forced to migrate: ‘What I had was rage – Iwas
very, very angry’.41 Unlike pity and compas-sion, perceived as
subordinating, anger and ragewere considered empowering, providing
aground for collective political activism. Here,emotion provided a
vocabulary for talking about,enacting and contesting unequal power
relations.
Interviewer and interviewee relationsThe research relationship –
specifically, thedynamic interaction between interviewers
andinterviewees – also helped to shape the narrativesproduced. In
‘Talking About Homelessness’ and‘Care Stories’, students were
apprehensive aboutinterviewing: specifically, they were
concernedabout being able to respond adequately toaccounts of
(potentially) distressing experience.But, they were prepared in
seminars, throughbackground research on homelessness and thecare
system, and learning interviewing andrecording skills. They had a
chance to get to knowinterviewees and develop rapport in
advancethrough volunteering at the day centre (‘TalkingAbout
Homelessness’) and through meetings andsocial activities (‘Care
Stories’). Project partnersalso set up support systems for
interviewers andinterviewees, so that they could talk to
someoneabout issues that came up in interviews.
Here, I’ll say a bit more about ‘Care Stories’.Interviewees and
interviewers had more in com-mon: age, shared leisure interests, as
well as someaspects of social and cultural background. Theygot on
very well with one another and engaged in
mutually-reflective conversations about what itmeans to be a
young person and the emotionalresources needed to develop a sense
of indepen-dence. In all the interviews, interviewee andinterviewer
communicated with warmth, enthu-siasm and openness. Project
partners felt that thestories told were very frank and the result
of aspecial chemistry in the interview relationship.42
Young care leavers were asked about theirexperiences of being in
care. They described lack-ing stability, love, support, a sense of
belongingand trust. One consequence of moving fre-quently between
foster carers and social workerswas that young people had to begin
new rela-tionships and tell ‘their stories’ over again. Sev-eral
said they were reluctant to repeatedly ‘openup to’ and trust yet
another professional and anx-ious about the growing number of
people whoknew a great deal about them. They were con-cerned that
they had little or no control over howinformation about them
circulated. One youngwoman spoke of the notes written about
her,unseen by her, which preceded her in every newplacement,
shaping in advance each new carer’sexpectations of her:
… When you leave a house and you’re pack-ing your clothes and
you’re packing yourbooks and you’re packing everything in yourlife.
You’re also packing, em … an in ... whatis it called? An invisible
package there aswell, which is the piece of papers that youcan’t
see that is obviously floating aroundyou and everybody else is
reading about youand they know about you, they’re doingcourses
about you … coz like it just ... youdon’t know what to say or what
to do aboutit. Coz like if it was in front of your face youcould
just say ‘look, yeah, I don’t think that’sright.’ But they don’t
show it to you, theyshare that information among themselves.43
Obviously, our project also placed the youngpeople in the
position of being expected to telltheir stories again in interview.
Ironically, thevideo made from the interviews was to be shownto
people ‘doing courses’ on looked after chil-dren. Perhaps, the
difference here was that theyoung people chose to participate and
criticallyreflect on their experience of foster care, andwere given
an effective medium (film) for doingthis and access to an audience
of relevant pro-fessionals. They were keenly aware of
potentialaudiences beyond the interview. One young mansaid
forcefully: ‘Those kids in care they want tobe heard’ and, turning
to camera, ‘Whoever isgoing to look at this [film] please sit down
andlisten and try to understand.’44
Listening to the voices of the young people –how they speak as
well as their words – conveysa sense of the intensity of feeling
and how muchthings mattered. It is possible to sense the
elusive
-
Autumn 2014 ORAL HISTORY 101
chemistry of the interview and the entanglementof
self-confidence, authority and vulnerability.
Anne Karpf has argued that the embodiedhuman voice is sometimes
ignored in oral history.Instead, voice is treated as an instrument
orresource, as illustration or figuratively (as polit-ical or
authorial).45 Analysis often fails to takeaccount of what the voice
– through intonation,tone, rhythm, volume and so on –
communicatesbeyond the words spoken. But, it is possible tothink of
emotion in relation to oral history asboth topic (in the design of
projects and contentof interviews) and texture (in the
chemistry,intensity and inflection of interviews).
Cultural theorists (such as Brian Massumi,Lawrence Grossberg and
Elspeth Probyn) dis-tinguish ‘affect’ from ‘emotion’ (in part, as
aresponse to a perceived over-emphasis in culturalstudies on
representation and meaning).46 Theyunderstand affect as intensity
or energy that isbeyond conscious knowing and organising sys-tems
of representation; that is, as unstructuredand a-semiotic. Affect
is not linked to identityand is pre-personal. Emotion, on the other
hand,is equated with the quality of an experienceachieved through
semiotic processes: it is narra-tively structured and organised.47
That is, emo-tion is intensity recognised, owned and made
per-sonal: it is biographical. Emotion is, perhaps,more amenable to
analysis.
Recent work on emotionRecently, I have been working on a
monographentitled Media, Emotion and Identity. This hasproved very
challenging, not least because itbrings together three major
concepts, informedby an increasingly large body of academic work.In
this book, I examine emotion as a cultural phe-nomenon through
close analysis of selected mediatexts and technologies. Much of the
book focuseson meaning, working with the idea that mediatexts
participate in the production and circulationof meaning and
creation of everyday culture. Ianalyse texts which have helped to
give promi-nence to individual emotion: for example, medi-ated
debate on an economics of happiness; exam-inations of loss and
grief in the Danish crimedrama The Killing; the negotiation of
intimacy inUS drama In Treatment. I explore the culturalpolitical
implications of an intensifying focus onindividual emotion.
Excessive focus on individual emotion may bea matter for concern
in so far as individual emo-tion becomes the prime lens through
which toview the world and our relations with others48
and the source of social problems: that is, wherenegative
feelings of self-worth and unhappinessare seen to impact on social
and economic, as wellas personal, life.
In Media, Emotion and Identity, I also analysethe ways in which
emotion has been talked about
The Graduate Centre,London MetropolitanUniversity. Photo:Steve
Blunt.
-
102 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2014
as a more collective phenomenon in recent mediacoverage and
academic discussion of the UK riots,the Olympic and Paralympic
Games and newsocial movements. There has been limited acade-mic
inquiry into collective emotion and media. But,Stephanie Baker has
written about the UK riots49
and Manuel Castells has written about the emer-gence of new
forms of protest, from the ArabSpring to Occupy Wall
Street.50Broadly speaking,these two academics argue that protest
starts withthe emotions of individuals, angered or outragedby
specific (unbearable) events, who connect andshare feelings with
others via an effective (in thiscase, digital) channel of
communication. Mutualrecognition of shared emotions – cognitive
empa-thy – made possible through the internet engendersfeelings of
togetherness and possibilities for acting.
This is interesting work and important. How-ever, I am critical
of it on the grounds that itassumes a highly self-aware subject,
and imaginesindividuals as separate from the social environ-ment to
which they respond and the technologiesthey use. I have sought to
question establishedbinaries: such as rational/emotional,
individ-ual/social, human/technology. Also, a focus on
theself-aware individual tends to neglect thoseaspects of lived
existence that are not yet recog-nised and clearly articulated, but
may neverthelessinfluence lives.
In exploring ways of conceptualising emotionas both individual
and collective, personal andcultural, I have turned to a number of
differenttheorists. I have also returned to RaymondWilliams’
concept ‘structure of feeling’. Structureof feeling is not quite
the same as emotion oraffect. Apart from anything else, it suggests
some-thing more enduring. Structure of feeling refersto lived
experience, which is simultaneously per-sonal and social.51 It
refers to ‘the felt sense of thequality of life at a particular
place and time.’ It islived at the historical intersections of (I
think wecan infer) unequal – social, economic, material,cultural –
relations and at the limits of semanticexpression.52 Williams
developed and appliedstructure of feeling as a class- and
period-basedconcept in the analysis of literature, proposingthat a
pattern – of feeling rather than thought,consisting of impulses,
restraints and tones – isdetectable across a range of otherwise
uncon-nected works.53 He argued that a structure of feel-ing –
unacknowledged in official records – is tan-gible in a set of works
as an articulation ofexperience, which lies beyond them and
findssemantic recognition.54 But, he acknowledged,‘an articulate
structure of feeling’ is not neces-sarily equivalent to ‘an
inarticulate experience’,and the difference reflects uneven access
to themeans of cultural production.55
Structure of feeling signals what is not cap-tured by
representation, drawing attention to agap between ‘what can be
rendered meaningful orknowable and what is nevertheless
liveable.’56
Structure of feeling might be used in the analysisof
auto/biographical accounts. For example, thereflections of
participants in the UK riots (col-lected as part ofReading the
Riots, a collaborativeundertaking between the Guardian
andresearchers at the London School of Economics)can be analysed
for what they might tell us aboutthe felt sense of the quality of
life in austerityBritain for some sections of the population.57
The co-produced accounts highlight specificemotions such as
anger at the shooting of MarkDuggan and euphoria linked to a sense
of empow-erment through interviewees’ participation in law-lessness
that the police struggled and failed to con-tain.58 A
seventeen-year-old young woman said‘People were just passing fags
from the counters’and ‘You know what? For once it felt like you
hadso much power.’59 But, the narratives also (poten-tially) tell
of longer term structures of feeling con-sisting of resentment
towards the police, large cor-porations and the government. Those
interviewedresented police practices of stop and search,harassment,
disrespect and humiliation. Theyresented big business, advertising
and media cor-porations for fuelling a consumerist culture
fromwhich the jobless felt excluded. They resented thegovernment
and its austerity policies, which hadled to benefits cuts and
unemployment; lack of jobopportunities; removal of EMA; and
increasedtuition fees. They resented the disparity betweenthe
jobless and bankers receiving huge bonuses.60
Using structure of feeling as an analytic tool iden-tifies an
affective dimension to unequal relationsand a potential arena in
which to contest inequal-ities and dominant understandings of
events:potentially challenging the idea that rioters wereacting
mindlessly and the de-politicisation of theprotest at the shooting
of Mark Duggan.
I have argued that we need to pay more atten-tion to emotion in
academic inquiry and culturalpolitics. I have been wary of an
apparent over-emphasis on individual emotion in
contemporarycultural life. I am not against individual emotion– far
from it – but this has been extensively stud-ied in the ‘psy’
disciplines61 and I think we needto also investigate it from other
perspectives. Weneed to be critical of how emotion is thought
andtalked about. A cultural analysis of emotionfocuses attention on
the broader contexts – his-torical and hegemonic – in which emotion
fig-ures, or not, and how it helps to align subjectswithin unequal
power relations. Ideally, it inves-tigates specific emotions and
troubles bordersand distinctions: between the individual and
thesocial, the articulated and the unarticulated.
Other connectionsI have spoken about some of the
collaborationsand ideas that have been important to me. I’d liketo
(briefly) mention some on-going associations.I have been fortunate
to work with colleagues SueAndrews, Mick Williamson and Dipti
Bhagat in
-
Autumn 2014 ORAL HISTORY 103
the CASS62 to establish a digital photographicarchive.
Initially, we worked with local photog-rapher Paul Trevor to edit
his vast collection ofphotographs of everyday life in London’s
EastEnd in the 1970s-1990s and curate a collectionof 250 images
deposited with VADS (an onlineresource for the visual arts).63 From
there, theCASS East End Archive developed, collectingbodies of work
by photographers variouslyengaging with the idea of ‘the East End’.
I nolonger lead the project, but am still associatedwith it and
hope soon to get to grips with one ofits original aims: to develop
a related oral historycollection.
Despite the regrettable closure of the MA LifeHistory Research,
some of its content and con-cerns – with oral history and community
engage-ment – have survived in a new module – ‘Mediaand
Communities’ – designed and taught with mycolleague Peter Lewis, an
expert in communitymedia. Students work with local
communityorganisations, interviewing them about their activ-ities
and histories in order to make a radio or filmdocumentary. We’ve
yet to see what this year’scohort will come up with but last year
studentsproduced some very good films: for example, onthe
independent cinema The Phoenix and, work-ing with Rowan Arts, on
religion and homeless-ness.
Since 2007, I have been associated with theOral History Society
as a trustee and one of theeditors of the Oral History journal.
This has beenan important connection and a source of inspira-tion.
Here at Londonmet, we hosted and co-organised with the Oral History
Society two con-ferences on ‘Community Oral Histories’ (in 2001and
2007).
FinallyI hope this lecture has given you a sense of what Ihave
been up to over the years at Londonmet. I’vemoved across
disciplines and departments. Some-times, I worry that I’ve been too
nomadic, notputting down deep enough roots anywhere. But,this has
been a fascinating journey and, I think,often productive. With
modest funding (from theHeritage Lottery Foundation, Higher
EducationActive Community Fund and the King’s Fund)we’ve developed
some interesting projects andcontributed to some engaging outcomes
(not onlyacademic papers but also websites, films, exhibi-tions and
so on). And, I have greatly valued theopportunity to combine
research, teaching andengagement with local communities.
London Metropolitan University has experi-enced a number of
problems in recent years andthese are well known. Some are common
to thehigher education sector; others are more local.We have lost
undergraduate and postgraduateprogrammes and some experienced
colleagues. Idon’t want to deny or diminish the ramificationsof
these events. But, I would like to say that Lon-donmet is also a
place of great energy, creativityand opportunity (for students and
staff). I havehad opportunities to work in a way that I don’tthink
I would have had in most other institutions:at least, certainly not
when I started out.
I am delighted to be awarded the title of Pro-fessor at London
Metropolitan University andlook forward to many more collaborations
andconversations.
I’d like to say thank you to my family, friendsand colleagues
for supporting and encouragingme over the years. Thank you all for
coming heretonight and for listening.
An inaugural lecture is given to an invited1.audience by an
academic recently promotedto professor. Jenny Harding was awarded
thetitle Professor of Cultural Studies andCommunications at London
MetropolitanUniversity in August 2012.John Gabriel, Professor of
Sociology and2.
Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences andHumanities, London
Metropolitan University.Alessandro Portelli, ‘What makes oral3.
history different?’, in Robert Perks andAlistair Thomson (eds),
The Oral HistoryReader, second edition, London and NewYork:
Routledge, 2006, pp 32-42 (p 36).This article was first published
in Italian in1979 and in English as ‘On the peculiaritiesof oral
history’ in History Workshop Journal,no 12, 1981, pp 96-107.
Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah4.
Radstone (eds), Contested Pasts: ThePolitics of Memory. London
and New York:Routledge, 2003. Stuart Hall, ‘Introduction’, in
Stuart Hall5.
(ed), Representation: Cultural
Representations and Signifying Practices,London: Sage/Open
University Press, 1997,pp 1-11.Alison M Jaggar, ‘Love and
knowledge:6.
emotion in feminist epistemology’ in AlisonM Jaggar and Susan R
Bordo (eds),Gender/Body/Knowledge: FeministReconstructions of Being
and Knowing, NewBrunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp
145-171; Raymond Williams, The LongRevolution, Harmondsworth,
Middlesex:Penguin Books, 1965 (1961).For example, see: Sandra
Harding, The7.
Science Question in Feminism, Milton Keynes:Open
University,1986; Jane Flax,‘Postmodernism and gender relations
infeminist theory’, in Linda Nicholson (ed),Feminism/Postmodernism.
New York:Routledge, 1990, pp 39-62; Evelyn FoxKeller, A Feeling for
the Organism: the Life andWork of Barbara McClintock.New York:
WHFreeman, 1983; Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflectionson Gender and
Science. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1984; Hilary Rose,
‘Hand,
brain and heart: a feminist epistemology forthe natural
sciences’ in Sandra Harding andJean F O’Barr (eds), Sex and
Scientific Inquiry,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987,pp
265-282; Jaggar, 1989.Williams, 1965, p 63.8.Lawrence Grossberg,
‘Affect’s future:9.
rediscovering the virtual in the actual’,interview by Gregory J
Seigworth and MelissaGregg, in Gregory J Seigworth and MelissaGregg
(eds), The Affect Theory Reader,Durham, NC and London: Duke
UniversityPress, 2010, pp 309-338.
Lawrence Grossberg, ‘Postmodernity and10.affect: all dressed up
and no place to go’ inJennifer Harding and E Deidre Pribram
(eds),Emotions: A Cultural Studies Reader, Londonand New York:
Routledge, 2009, pp 69-83;Lawrence Grossberg, Bringing It All
BackHome: Essays on Cultural Studies. Durham,NC: Duke University
Press, 1997; LawrenceGrossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This
Place:Popular Conservatism and PostmodernCulture. New York:
Routledge, 1992.
NOTES
-
104 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2014
Jennifer Harding, Sex Acts: Practices of11.Femininity and
Masculinity. London,Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage, 1998;Jennifer
Harding, ‘Bodies at risk’ in AlanPeterson and Robin Bunton (eds),
Foucault,Health and Medicine, London and New York:Routledge, 1997;
Jennifer Harding, ‘Sex andcontrol – the hormonal body’, Body
andSociety, vol 2, no 1, 1996.
Jennifer Harding and E Deidre Pribram,12.‘The power of feeling:
locating emotions inculture’, European Journal of Cultural
Studies,vol 5, no 4, 2002, pp 407-426; JenniferHarding and E Deidre
Pribram, ‘Losing our cool?Following Williams and Grossberg on
emotions,’Cultural Studies, vol 18, no 6, 2004, pp 863-883 (p 872);
Harding and Pribram, 2004.
Harding and Pribram, 2009.13.Jennifer Harding ‘Talking
About14.
Homelessness: a teaching and researchinitiative in east London’,
Teaching in HigherEducation, vol 7, no 1, 2002, pp 81-95.
Jennifer Harding and John Gabriel,15.‘Communities in the making:
pedagogicexplorations using oral history’, InternationalStudies in
the Sociology of Education, vol 14,no 3, 2004, pp 185-201.
Annette Day, Jenny Harding and Jessica16.Mullen, ‘Refugee
stories: the RefugeeCommunities History Project, partnership
andcollaboration’ in Hanne-Lovise Skartveit andKatherine Goodnow
(eds), Museums andRefugees: New Media, Play and
Participation,Paris: UNESCO, 2008.
Jean Burgess, ‘Hearing ordinary voices:17.cultural studies,
vernacular creativity anddigital story telling’, Continuum: Journal
ofMedia and Cultural Studies, vol 20, no 2,2006, pp 201-214.
Sporting Sisters: Stories of Muslim Women18.in Sport film:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOC7qfv90FE
Michael Burawoy, Amercian Sociological19.Review, vol 70, no 1,
2005, pp 4-28.
Burawoy, 2005, p 28.20.Patricia Hill-Collins, ‘Going public:
doing21.
the sociology that had no name’, in DanClawson, Robert Zussman,
Joya Misra, NaomiGerstel, Randall Stokes and Douglas LAnderton
(eds), Public Sociology, London:University of California, 2007, pp
101-116.
Burawoy, 2005, p 18.22.John Gabriel, Jenny Harding, Peter23.
Hodgkinson, Liz Kelly and Alya Khan, ‘Publicsociology: working
at the interstices,’American Sociologist, vol 40, no 4, 2009, pp
309-331.
Gabriel, Harding, Hodgkinson, Kelly and24.Khan, 2009.
Gabriel, Harding, Hodgkinson, Kelly and25.Khan, 2009.
Elizabeth Tonkin, Narrating our Pasts. 26.The Social
Construction of Oral History,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992.
Harding, 2002.27.
H interviewed by M, April 1999.28.G interviewed by K, April
1999.29.Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History, London:30.
Routledge, 1991.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak In Other31.
Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, New York:Routledge,
1987.
Nikolas Rose, ‘Identity, genealogy, history’32.in Paul du Gay,
Jessica Evans and PeterRedman (eds), Identity: A Reader,
London:Sage/Open University Press, 2000, pp 313-326 (p 314).
Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The biographical33.illusion’, in du Gay, Evans
and Redman, 2000,pp 299-305; Paul Ricouer, ‘Narrative andtime,’
Critical Inquiry, vol 7, no 1, 1980, pp169-90; Carolyn Steedman,
Landscape for aGood Woman: A Story of Two Lives, London:Virago,
1986; Liz Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, Manchester:
ManchesterUniversity Press, 1992.
Anna Green, ‘Individual remembering and34.collective memory:
theoreticalpresuppositions and contemporary debates’,Oral History,
vol 32, no 2, 2004, pp 35-44.
Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of35.Emotion, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2004, p 42.
Alice Bloch and Carl Levy (eds), Refugees,36.Citizenship and
Social Policy in Europe.London: Macmillan, 1999; Liza Schuster
andJohn Solomos, ‘The politics of refugee andasylum policies in
Britain: historical patternsand contemporary realities’ in Bloch
and Levy,1999, pp 51-75; Miranda Lewis, Asylum.Understanding Public
Attitudes, London: IPPR,2005.
Lewis, 2005.37.Jennifer Harding, ‘Emotional subjects:38.
language and power in refugee narratives’ inHarding and Pribram,
2009, pp 267-279.
John Gabriel and Jennifer Harding, 39.‘On being a “good”
refugee’ in GargiBhattacharyya (ed), Ethnicities and Values in
aChanging World. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, pp135-154.
MV interviewed by D, January 2006.40.MV interview.41.Jennifer
Harding, ‘Questioning the subject42.
in biographical interviewing’, SociologicalResearch Online, vol
11, no 3, 2006.
K interviewed by E, November 2003. 43.M interviewed by T,
November 2003.44.Anne Karpf, ‘The human voice and the45.
texture of experience’, in this edition of OralHistory, pp
48-53.
Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual:46.Movement, Affect,
Sensation, Durham, NC:Duke University Press, 2002; Elspeth
Probyn,‘Everyday shame’, Cultural Studies, vol 18, no2/3, 2004, pp
328-349; Grossberg, 1992.
Massumi, 2002.47.Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture:
Cultivating48.
Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, London:Routledge, 2003.
Stephanie Baker, ‘The mediated crowd:49.new social media and new
forms of rioting,’Sociological Research Online, vol 16, no 4,21,
2011.
Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and50.Hope: Social
Movements in the Internet Age,Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.
Williams, 1965, p 63.51.Williams, 1965.52.Raymond Williams, ‘On
Structure of53.
Feeling’, in Harding and Pribram, 2009, pp35-49 (p44).
Williams, 2009, p 47.54.Williams, 2009, p 47.55.Grossberg, 2010,
p 318. 56.The UK riots took place between 6 and57.
12 August 2011. Reading the Riots.Accessed online at
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdf,
27 January 2014.
Twenty-nine-year-old Mark Duggan was58.shot on suspicion of
handling a gun and waskilled by police in Tottenham, north
London,UK, on 4 August 2011. News spread quicklyand on 6 August
about 300 people gatheredoutside Tottenham police station to
protest atthe shooting and demand justice. The protestlater
developed into a major disturbance astwo police cars were attacked
and set alightand local shops were looted. Images ofburning police
cars and looting werecirculated via social media and more
peoplearrived to join in. Disturbances involvingarson, looting and
destruction of policeproperty followed in other London boroughsand
other UK towns and cities (Birmingham,Manchester, Salford,
Nottingham andLiverpool).
The Guardian, Paul Lewis, Tim Newburn59.and Dan Roberts, Reading
the Riots:Investigating England’s Summer of Disorder,London:
Guardian Books, iPad edition, 2011,p 21.
The Guardian, Lewis, Newburn and60.Roberts, 2011, p 21.
See Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul,61.The Shaping of the
Private Self, secondedition, London and New York: FreeAssociation
Books, 1999. Rose uses the term‘psy’ to refer to psychology and
relateddisciplines and expertise. He argues that psynot only refers
to ideas, cultural beliefs andspecific practice but also plays a
significantrole in contemporary forms of political power(p
vii).
The CASS Faculty of Art Architecture and62.Design is one of the
four academic faculties atLondon Metropolitan University.
VADS [web page]. Accessed online
at63.www.vads.ac.uk/collections/EEP.html, 28 April2014; Jenny
Harding, ‘The Eastender ArchiveProject’, Activate3, 2007, pp
2-3.
Address for correspondence: [email protected]
www.vads.ac.uk/collections/EEP.htmlhttp://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdfhttp://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdfhttp://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdfwww.youtube.com/watch?v=qOC7qfv90FEwww.youtube.com/watch?v=qOC7qfv90FE