celerman

Polish Hands

2011-09-06T00:23:00.001+01:00

Body, a photo by celerman on Flickr.

Part of a collection of Heads, Hands and Feet of people close

Panel 3: Isaac Triptych

2011-09-04T22:44:00.003+01:00

Body-3, a photo by celerman on Flickr.

Panel 2: Isaac Triptych

2011-09-04T22:44:00.001+01:00

Body-2, a photo by celerman on Flickr.

Panel 1: Isaac Triptych

2011-09-04T22:43:00.001+01:00

Body, a photo by celerman on Flickr.

2011-07-11T22:14:00.001+01:00

(Our bodies will return to the dust of the earth, and the breath of life will go back to God, who gave it to us. The Bible: Ecclesiastes, Ch. 12 V. 7)

The man dreams in his chair.

Runs home from the fields

to present this trophy

to his mother.

A living gemstone;

a Painted Lady.

Its life tickles his palm.

Lightly touches for air

in his fleshhouse hand.

He holds firm.

A boy's excitement not allowing this life

to flutter away.

Opening his hand for her

he starts at the stillness

of the creature's crushed colour.

He holds his fist tight again.

Tries again.

The butterfly is dead

again.

He can't go back

make it all better.

Opening and closing just pounds the thing

to dust.

An hourglass-trickle dunes at his feet.

He clenches his fist

in anger at the mess he's leaving

but can't stem the flow

no matter

how hard he tries.

The man sits in his chair.

He sits there for several days

in the exact

same

position.

Day after day

he cannot hear

the post that is collecting

for his daughter to reply:

"Unfortunately my father died

some time ago."

In his hands

clasped as tight as tight

she will find the breath

he refused to give back.

Useless

useless to him now.

2011-06-07T21:47:00.001+01:00

Originally posted 4/3/07

The search for an ultimate definition of man has been a primary driving force in literature. The ‘Grand Narratives’ of Truth, History, God, Reality and Self have formed the basis for western literature, as authors have sought to find order and meaning in man’s existence. Whatever the final definition of ‘Man’, and there are many, the literary definition has ultimately been sought for in ‘Grand Narratives’. Lyotard defines Grand Narratives as ‘legitimating narratives’, and whilst they may be grounded in differing ideology like Marxism, Capitalism or Christianity, they all have one goal, and that “is called universal freedom, the fulfilment of all humanity.”i The three books that I am studying for this essay can be shown to reject the ‘Grand Narrative’, and can therefore be said to represent the death of Man as constructed in pre- twentieth century literature, although if we are to concur with Lyotard and accept that the definition of Man must include a search for ‘universal freedom’, then there are ways in which these texts merely supply an alternative approach, outside of universal Truth. ‘Man’ is a polysemic term, but for the purposes of this essay I will confine any definitions to western ideology, as the texts are only representative of western literature. Some of these terms are contradictory, and this list of possible definitions of Man is not intended to be exhaustive, it is merely aimed at highlighting the subjective nature of the concept.

Aristotle said that “Man is by nature a social animal...What is peculiar to men, compared to the other animals, is that they alone can perceive the good and the bad, the just and the unjust.” Christian narrative would define ‘Man’ in one particular way. The book of Genesis, in the old testament relates a creation story, in which “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.”ii The book continues by telling of man’s fall from the garden of Eden. This creation myth would be one aspect to the definition of Man in Western society.

More generally, Man is the sum total of all that has gone before him. He is the culmination of history, tradition, culture etc., and this tradition is recorded through language: “Language allows humankind to possess knowledge of its own origin - the most important knowledge of all, and the content of the holiest texts, since the origin of human life and the ground of meaning are both presumed in (from) God.”iii Man has been defined as the “talking animal.”iv

The expression‘The King is dead, long live the King.’ acknowledges the natural cycle of life and death, and the continuum of society in which the individual is seamlessly replaced by another individual. The present instantly becomes the past, and the King is always the King, under the terms of this discourse. If the phrase is re-written, for the purposes of this essay as ‘Man is dead, long live Man’, then we can see how one construction or definition of ‘Man’ can be exiled to the past and a new definition appears in its place. The context in which a sign is used is crucial to its meaning, if the context is changed then the meaning changes also. This opens up all writing to almost infinite interpretations and destabilises its relationship with reality. If all writing becomes a fiction, and forms the context in which we define ‘Man’, then it can be said that ‘Man’ is a shifting paradigm, an amorphous term that responds to each new text. In this way all writing is about the ‘death of Man’, not just twentieth century writing.

What is apparent from this brief examination into the definition of man is that ideology affects the interpretation of ‘Man’ by prioritising certain interpretations of history over others. All definitions of Man can be challenged through the discourse of alternative ideology. For instance, Phillip Thody says, in opposition to Christian ideology, “The same principles of textual analysis which had been used for writers such as Homer or Thucydides, showed that few of the books presented as canonical by the church could possibly have been written in their officially received form by the authors to whom the church attributed them.”v He goes further by saying, “At the same time, there was no way in which the description of creation in Genesis could be reconciled with the evidence on which Darwin based his theory.”vi

Christian ideology and the existence of God provide the basis for a significant amount of western literature, and the search for meaning. Christian teaching defines western constructions of Truth, Self and History. Man is created by God, in his image, and can ultimately find everlasting life by following his word. Christian morality has been the foundation stone upon which western democracy and western law have been built. The Holy Bible of the Christian faith can be said to have defined western Man. Jean-Paul Sartre says of The Outsider however, “Since God does not exist and man dies, everything is permissible. One experience is as good as another; the important thing is simply to acquire as many as possible.”vii The main character in The Outsider, Mersault, who is on trial for murder, refuses to accept God, even when faced with execution. For him God simply does not exist, murder is a Christian tabooviii, and the law court in which he is tried is founded upon Christian ethics. “According to [the Priest], human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out that it was the former which had condemned me. He replied that it hadn’t washed away my sin for all that. I told him I didn’t know what a sin was. I’d simply been told that I was guilty.”ix Camus himself remarked on the absence of universal meaning, “I do not know whether this world has a meaning that is beyond me. But I do know that I am unaware of this meaning.”x In The Outsider the main character is isolated from, amongst other things, the western definition of Man. He is an atheist and therefore his behaviour is not governed by the principles of Christian ideology. Mersault is a man without a creed, without roots, and this freedom allows him to act, even murder, without regret; “I’d never been able to regret anything. I was always preoccupied by what was about to happen, today or tomorrow.”xi Ultimately Mersault only looks forward, and thus has no history to define him.

In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando we have another example of a text that questions previous definitions of ‘Grand Narrative’ and Man.

“Aspects of Woolf’s well-documented life have by now attained the status of intertexts, which interweave with her fiction and influence our interpretation of it. There is a kind of precedent for this interweaving of life and art in Woolf’s own blurring of the boundaries between them; in her production of diaries, letters and memoirs Woolf created a kind of interface between life and text, and herself questioned the barriers between them.”xii Orlando is a text that is concerned with its own creation. It is a metanarrative in many ways, constantly reminding the reader that it is a fiction with its references to other texts. The narrative, which follows the life of Orlando from boyhood to manhood and into womanhood, covers five centuries of ‘history’ and is called a biography. The text seems to be questioning the authenticity of history, constructed as it is through the texts of historians, and being, therefore, just one interpretation of a reality that is ultimately inaccessible. If all history is thus a fiction then the ‘biography’ of Orlando has just as much validity as any other historical document. “‘I will write,’ she had said, ‘what I enjoy writing’; and so had scratched out twenty-six volumes. Yet still, for all her travels and adventures and profound thinkings and turnings this way and that, she was only in the process of fabrication.”xiii

If writing is thus always a fabrication, then the Truth is unattainable. It is the words “The Truth” that awake Orlando, from the second of his/her sleep-like trances, and she has become a Woman,xiv in an ironic juxtaposition of interpretations of Reality. The longevity and the gender swapping construct a text that defies the usual perceptions of Reality. The novel could be described as magic-realist, in the way that extraordinary events are portrayed as accepted phenomena. Whatever the genre, the novel challenges the western definition of ‘Man’, particularly the very use of the word ‘Man’ to represent woman.

The novel constantly reminds the reader that our perceptions of history are constructed from works of fiction. When talking of the society of Pope, Swift and Addison Orlando is unable to give an example of their wit but says, “They were all very witty too, (but their wit is all in their books.” xv The reliability of memoirs is also challenged; “Was this life quite so exciting, quite so flattering, quite so glorious as it sounds when the memoir writer has done his work upon it.”xvi Woolf constructs an alternative history and, by using literary intertextuality, is able to argue its worth against traditional interpretations. Her character Orlando, further challenges western construction of Man by turning him into a her whilst continuing the construction of the character in the same fashion. “Orlando had become a Woman - there was no denying it. But in every other respect Orlando remained precisely as he had been.”xvii The patriarchal construction of Man requires Woman to be fundamentally different, inferior. Woolf quite clearly questions this assumption.

Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy takes the questioning of Grand Narrative a stage further. Like the Woolf novel, this text is a metanarrative and draws attention to its own literary construction. It is also intertextual and creates a fictional character ‘Paul Auster’ who is also the real author. In fact the use of names is particularly important to this text.

The New York Trilogy is in many ways a text book example of post-structuralist theory. Within post-structuralism the signifier and the signified are linked in an infinite chain of meaning and counter-meaning. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, that is there is no intrinsic reason why ‘cat’ should denote the animal in reality. Meaning is derived by way of the sign's difference from all other signs and ultimately there is no Truth. The meaning of a sign can only be expressed in terms of other signs, and the referent is thus unattainable. In The New York Trilogy Paul Auster explores this theory: Quinn introduces himself to Peter Stillman as Peter Stillman. Peter Stillman replies, “‘That’s my name,’. When Quinn says he is the other Peter Stillman, Peter Stillman replies “Oh. You mean my son. Yes , that’s possible. You look just like him.”xviii The arbitrariness of the relationship between the signifier and the signified is layed out here. Peter Stillman as a signifier refers to two concepts, and only looks like Peter Stillman on the page. The characters do not exist except as letters on the page. The novel is unfathomable, with layers of narrative voice piled nine or ten layers deep. Each section begins under the pretence of a detective novel but the answers are never exposed. In this novel the Truth is categorically not out there. Reality has ceased to exist in the fictional world and the text deconstructs western Man.

Western literature, before the twentieth century, has searched for ultimate Truths, Reality, a definition of the Self, God, and knowledge of Historical fact. The examples of twentieth century writing examined here challenge the idea that there is any intrinsic meaning to be found, and can therefore be said to be concerned with the death of Man as defined in pre-twentieth century literature. If post-structuralist theory is taken up however it could be said that all writing redefines, in however small a way, ‘Man’, and is therefore also concerned with the death of Man. If reality is always mediated through language, and one type of language is no more valid than another, then all writing forms part of the body of evidence from which an individual will construct a definition of Man, and so all writing, not just twentieth century writing, is concerned with the death of Man.

iJean-François Lyotard (1992), The Post-modern Explained (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press) p.25

iiThe Holy Bible: The New International Version (1984), (London: Hodder and Stoughton) Genesis Chapter 1 verse 27

iiiArt Berman (1994), Preface to Modernism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinios Press) p.90

ivJonathon Barnes (1982, Aristotle, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,) p.17

vPhilip Thody (1996), Twentieth Century Literature: Critical Issues and Themes (Basingstoke and London, Macmillan Press) p.6

viibid p.6

viiJean-Paul Sartre (1955), Literary and Philosophical Essays (London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd.) P.27

viii

The Holy Bible: The New International Version (1984), (London: Hodder and Stoughton) Exodus Chapter 20 verse 13

ixAlbert Camus translated from the French by Joseph Laredo (1982) The Outsider (London: Penguin Books) p.113

xJean-Paul Sartre (1955), Literary and Philosophical Essays (London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd.) P.34

xiop. cit. Camus (1982) p.97

xiiClare Hanson (1994), Virginia Woolf (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press) p.1

xiiiVirginia Woolf (1993) Orlando: A Biography (London: Penguin Books) p.124

xivibid p.97/98

xvibid p.147

xviibid p.148

xviiibid p.98

xviiiPaul Auster (1988) The New York Trilogy (London and Boston: Faber and Faber) p.84

2011-06-05T08:16:00.002+01:00

Returning to an Abandoned Village

(three)

no thing
.............. ex cept
the should be
but isn't
di ..... vide be
........................ tween
too long ago
...................... andnow

A trick of the
me mory

or a lapse of the
............................ light
perhaps

No .............. thing
............................... certainly
to match a re ................ collection
of child
.............. hood

(two)

a familiar sense
of geo
............ graphy

an aware ............. ness
of pointing
in the right direct
................................ ion
of be ing aligned
true
turning the right
............................. way
to face
what is not
.................... now
but was
............... then

A notion that this space is

still

...................... that space

(one)

a dark patch
a once wet
stain on stone
proof of the exist
............................... ence
of it all
of
every
........... thing

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2011-06-03T10:48:00.001+01:00

TRANS… (York 9)

now then

you asked me

to respond

not ex

plain de

scribe

tell

the truth

lies

between the road’s

surface

lieslieslieslieslieslieslieslieslies

and its verge

ing on the herenow

of …fixed moments

--------------------------

…ported

to the present

fixed point

each conscious of an ex

act

location

heldholding you then to now

now to then

york 9

--------------------------

y our me

mories blink

patient

ly in

untime to the beat

ing

cars

you exist

now

only in the gaps in traffic

you exist

then

through the windscreen

across the bonnet

all over the metalled

arterial sur

face

that exists now

and then

now

then

nowthen

now then

there

therethere

is that better now

then

Click here to comment

2011-05-31T21:57:00.001+01:00

Click here to comment

2011-05-31T16:46:00.003+01:00

TRANS…

now then

you asked me

to respond

not ex

plain de

scribe

tell

the truth

lies

between the road’s

surface

lieslieslieslieslieslieslieslieslies

and its verge

ing on the herenow

of …fixed moments

--------------------------

…ported

to the present

fixed point

each conscious of an ex

act

location

heldholding you then to now

now to then

york 9

--------------------------

y our me

mories blink

patient

ly in

untime to the beat

ing

cars

you exist

now

only in the gaps in traffic

you exist

then

through the windscreen

across the bonnet

all over the metalled

arterial sur

face

that exists now

and then

now

then

nowthen

now then

there

therethere

is that better now

then

Click here to comment

The Red Letter

2011-05-30T19:33:00.001+01:00

Right from my first encounter with her, from the moment she became present to me, a sense of ending has eclipsed all beginnings. She dies, naturally. Or rather she was always already dead, long before I ever heard myself speak her name. This is the only fact I have for certain. The only clear sighting of her. The closer I get to her self, her body, the further I fall into her story, the closer I get to losing this.

It was 1864 when I met her. That's how I know she's dead. People just don't live that long. Even so I ended up having to prove the fact to myself. I know she's dead because I have stood at her grave. Her death only real in the experience of the moment. I looked at her simple inscription and read the words of yet another voice trying to recreate her in my imagination. But as I stood, attempting to put her decayed flesh back on her muddied bones, I realised there was nothing of her there. Nothing beneath my treacherous black shoes save for trace elements and a few bones. The future's archaeological exhibit, my digging was to be done elsewhere. Standing on her well-fed grass I read an inscription so out of date it is now a lie.

* * *

HERE LIES THE BODY OF

ANN WILSON

1845-1907

R.I.P

* * *

We moved into this house, my wife and I, just over two years ago. I'd been working for a magazine in London but, for one reason and another, had decided to devote more time to my own writing. City life had its advantages, its convenience, but a hurried sense of completion had begun to overtake me. I felt as if life was geared towards destinations. I felt as if I was careering towards the end of the road. The question was always there, waiting to be asked: "Where are you going?"

"So where do you see yourself five years down the line?"

"Well, I suppose part of the answer depends upon the company's response to my recent success. I feel I've displayed the correct approach and my work has been of a high standard. I think that if I were not invited to join the senior management team within the next eighteen months, I would have to look at my options. In the longer term I'd like to be able to invest enough to ensure an early retirement, possibly at fifty-five."

Eventually, that kind of communication, always selling yourself or buying others, tired me out. I became uneasy about my own complicity in a system that encouraged such mapping. My life had become a commercial orienteering course, with a time limit and controls. My position, me, I supported all this.

I sold my shares in the company, a bonus following a good year, and then sold our three-bedroom terrace. The profits, and the relative price of rural housing, enabled us to but our dream family home in the country.

The house was, and still is, full of rustic charm and original features, but it needed some renovation to suit my purposes. The roof space had clearly been used in the past. It had a complete staircase to it, not just a loft ladder, and it was boarded and panelled. It had no windows however, and following a readjustment of the designs at the request of the local authority, work began installing a westward facing dormer window. The views across the fields, away from the village centre and the distractions of rural gossip, would be inspirational.

It was during the construction work, knocking a hole out of the roof to be precise, that my involvement in her affairs began. That room's first natural light since the original builders had incarcerated it poured in. In a whirl of fresh air, papers stirred. Discovered under the panelling a newspaper cutting from the Hampton and Westbury Post, dated Tuesday 6th December, 1864. The light had given up a secret, a story waiting to be told.

* * *

Standing proud at its very heart, St. Swithin's church dominates the village of Stourton and its surrounding parish. The church tower stands out from the countryside, commanding a position like the great cathedral at Chartres, only smaller. Reverend Thomas Hardy, the parish Rector, liked to remind his attentive flock on a Sunday that, "the Lord, our Shepherd" kept watch over all of them from that tower. He Himself had been to the top of it and had "seen into every household in the village." There could be no secrets from His gaze.

* * *

My wife rarely ventured upstairs to the attic. My writing had nothing to do with her. I suppose that's what she thought. She wouldn't have understood anyway, and a row would have broken out over those annoying questions: "Is that meant to be us then?"

She seemed to be content to keep house and visit friends, although many friends had too many children and too little time for people like us. She managed to busy herself though and was always in bed long before me. This allowed me the chance to take this project seriously, to become more intense. Pretty soon I didn't even notice her footsteps not mounting the stairs.

* * *

Living in the shadows of candlelight for most of her days, the kitchen was in a windowless basement, Ann usually resented her place. On Sunday evenings, following Hardy's sermons though, she was glad she had a room in the attic. Windowless, and only imaginatively looking out over the fields, she felt protected from this intrusive stare. She would climg the stairs, remove her Sunday hat, her dress, her corset, and lay aside that overtired, overworked and overlooked Ann. Away from the gaze of that ancient building she felt free to explore her own body. She would hold her swelling belly and feel her child moving against her flesh. Her secret gave her an identity, prevented her being consumed. She would sing to it, old field songs her grandmother had sung. And she would love it. Love it without knowing it. Love it without needing it.

This was not a room of her own, though. Ann shared it with Jane, Jane Preece the housemaid, but this didn't interfere with their liberties. Ann in particular felt very lucky to find someone to relate with. She had heard many stories from her sisters of overbearing generals and the loneliness of such company. Even without the complications of her confinement it was common for girls in small households to be isolated. Mrs. Sutton's was certainly a small household. She knew how lucky it was for her to have found a friend in Jane, and how they were both lucky that the only other servant, Tom the gardener, was amiably disinterested in everything bu gardening. The situation meant that Ann had been able to conceal her predicament, free from the rumours of a larger household or an older colleague.

On these Sundays Jane would often lie naked alongside her and they would wish the world to stop. The incessant growing of Ann's belly, the ever-stronger kicks and convulsions, her painful breasts and darkening nipples, reminded her of her position. She was aware of an impending doom, an ending that could not be prevented. She wanted to remain pregnant. She didn't want to have, couldn't have, a baby.

* * *

"Jane," Ann ventured one night. "Will you promise me something?"

"Well, you know, my dear, it all depends. But I will try. Of that you can be sure."

Ann fiddled with her belly button. It looked like the knotted end of a balloon. In recent weeks it had begun to protrude and itch. She looked intently at her companion.

"I hope I never ask you anything you are unable to do. I should hate myself if I ever gave you cause to compromise yourself. I ask only that you write to my mother for me, if anything should happen. I have such very bad feelings at times, such dark thoughts, and I should like for her to have another chance."

Jane smiled and placed a hand on the younger woman's thigh.

"Of course I shall, if you wish it. But please, consider writing yourself, now whilst you can. I should think you far more able than I. Please, write yourself. I shall fetch you some paper.

Jane began to rise, but Ann snatched her hand, preventing her withdrawal.

"No. I fear it would do more harm than good. Perhaps some dreadful news will work instead."

* * *

It didn't take a lot of research to find out that the house we had moved into was the same house that Ann Wilson had lived and worked in so many uears ago. A morning's work at the church records was all it took to trace Ann to Rose Cottage, our Cottage. There were times when I felt so close to her the room would fill with pain. Her screams muffled to avoid attention, invading my privacy.

As close as we were though, as much as I breathed life into her, I could do nothing for her daughter, who never lived long enough to be recorded. It is here in this place that in fear, next to me in space, if not in time, her delicate little spine was almost broken in two. An attempt to hide her from prying eyes.

Out of compassion for her mother, to alleviate Ann's suffering, I gave her Jane Preece. There are no records of her either, but what else could I do?

* * *

Midnight. Pitch dark. She sits, awoken by a sense of unease, an almost unnoticeable anxiety. She fumbles her hand in the direction of the dressing table, finds the candle and takes the edge of the room's blackness. It is as cold as the air outside. Her breath, clouding in great pillows, searches out and flees from the draught-cracks in the panelling. Her bulk is alien to her for the first time. And the the first realisation of the wetness, brought to light as it cools around her buttocks and thighs. The shiver is followed by a faint and yet distinct contraction. It is beginning.

* * *

When Jane finally awoke, woken not by the rising sun but by a sense of its rising, she rolled over to see Ann clutching at her knees, as if to bring them to her chest, but impeded by the enormity of her distended self. She was rocking slightly, and no words were needed. Jane's comprehension was instant and complete.

Dressing quickly, Jane mapped out a plan. She would begin the hidden chores. Lighting the fires, boiling the water, preparing the breakfast. She could leave Ann in bed until the household, until Mrs Sutton came downstairs. But Ann would have to make an appearance, to fit the plan. She must be seen around the house, behaving normally. If her absence were noticed then there would be questions, and as illness could be the only acceptable excuse from duty, the doctor would be called. Mrs Sutton was careful her staff should be treated correctly. If the birth could be kept secret then the baby could be hidden until nightfall, and then, under the cover of night, it could be taken away. Jane already knew where to take it.

Initially everything went well. Ann's contractions were only mild at first and well spaced. Just once did she have to positively lie, as she winced and instinctively grasped her stomach.

"No, ma'am. A little indigestion, nothing more."

She had quickly retreated, promising to take a little time to drink a glass of milk.

"Milk is by far the best thing for digestive complaints my dear. Be sure to take a glass. But mind you don't neglect your duties."

* * *

With me busy writing and my wife doing whatever it was she did, we had less and less time together. We hadn't been physical since we moved in to the cottage. Something had come between us and yet everything we had was part of the plan, mapped out from the day I had proposed to her. I asked her once if anything was wrong.

"Just a little run down." That was all I could make her say, but I knew there was more.

* * *

By mid-afternoon, following a difficult luncheon period, Ann found it hard to continue the performance. She desperately wanted to find a quiet corner, to roll up like a cat and wait to be discovered with a delightful litter by eager children. Twice she had to answer the doorbell. Jane had forced her to.

"You simply must. It will help later, you'll see. It will stop them asking questions of you. Carry on as normal. I shall follow and wait in the scullery. I shall wait and help you back upstairs. Now quickly, there's the bell again! Mrs. Sutton will soon want to know why you have taken so long."

After the second of such trips, Jane realised that the time was close. They would have to hop that she was not required again.

* * *

There was no fear in the room that afternoon. Each had experienced childbirth at home. It was all a natural part of life in an industrial town. But just as there was no fear, there was also no excitement, no expectation. Ann squatted on all fours on the bed, her face buried in her pillow. Jane assisted, rubbing her back, cooling her head with water. She would run her fingers inside her feel for a head, to prevent a tear.

Ann, her buttocks spread apart, bearing down, her vagina stretched white, expelled a girl in a ruch of wet and blood and excrement.

* * *

Dressing as soon as she could stand, a towel beneath her underwear, hidden by her uniform, she answered the door again, only half an hour later.

Reverend Hardy didn't make the connection between the desperately pale and tired servant who opened the door for him and the story he heard as a magistrate much later.

When she returned to her room she wanted to lie down and dream of a full belly that moved of its own accord. When she finally made it to the top of the stairs and enteredf her room she barely noticed the clean sheets, the fresh smell of incense and the absent child. She caught a glimpse of Jane sliding a box beneath the bed and she knew enough.

* * *

She struggled through the following days, taking time off only to replace her bloodied towel. She continued to leak constantly from a wound that could not heal. By Tuesday she was drained and Jane was forced to ask Mrs. Sutton to call a doctor. Ann had been unable to rise that morning, she had a fever, and at times she had failed to recognise her. Still Jane felt she was letting her down, somehow betraying her trust.

* * *

Doctor Scott lifted back the bed covers and felt Ann's baggy stomach. He knew. Touching her was his proof. Ann followed his commands. She lifted her nightdress and unpeeled another soaked towel. She lifted her nightdress and exposed herself to him. The doctor pushed her knees further apart and entered her, his fingers inspecting, cleaning and stripping. He had to satisy himself that nature had taken its course.

The doctor stood back and wiped his hands clean while she looked on. She had seen a man do that before, or so she thought.

"You have recently been delivered, Ann, have you not?" The doctor's tone was soothing, mesmerising.

"No, sir. I am just a little drained." Ann avoided his eyes. She looked all around, blinking hard.

"Now, my dear, you can't hide the truth from a man of science. I know everything. Now, tell me what has become of the child?"

When she gave him the key she felt as if she were betraying Jane. She wondered what would happen to them, but the doctor's words gave her the idea.

"Was she dead when you put her in here, Ann?"

When you put her in here.

"Yes. Yes, of course," she answered and added rather distractedly, "when I put her in here."

Doctor Scott prised the baby from the chamber pot and Ann saw her for the first time. She wondered how something so tiny could have made her so large, left such a hole. She hugged her stomach and imagined the movements she had once felt. She looked at this doubled baby, clutching itself.

* * *

"I'm leaving you," she said.

"But where can you go without me? It doesn't make sense." Her voice was decided. I knew then that I had been waiting, from the beginning, for this. We had reached the end of the road.

"Anywhere. I have another life out there. There can be me without you."

"No, you belong here, your place is here. I've given everything that could be given. What more could I do?"

"But it's a gift that takes. You only gave me what you wanted me to have. You pictured me here. You created this life for me here."

"I don't understand. What happens next? What happens to you now?"

"I'll go to my mother's for a while, then I'll disappear. I'll go far away, out of sight."

"But you were nothing before I found you."

"No. I was something, something you didn't know. Something you have never known."

"I won't let you leave."

"You can't stop me now."

* * *

She answered concisely in court, although her words had huge import for Ann. This was her was of reconciliation. She had not replied to Ann's letter and had therefore allowed Ann to maintain a picture of their relationship based upon her sending away, upon her disgrace. Now her testimony erased that divide. Her mother's presence and her plain answers, answers that conealed much but did not exactly lie, warmed Ann briefly, hopefully.

"I reside in Grantchester, and am the mother of the prisoner. I don't know exactly how long my duaghter has been in service with Mrs Sutton. I last heard from her about three weeks ago, when she told me she was well, and comfortable, and had a good situation. She also said she hoped to be with me at Christmas."

Mother and daughter surveyed each other, warmly. Somewhere she remembered Jane's letter.

* * *

Reunited with her mother, she disappeared from my world. A chapter in her life, in our lives, was over and I imagined I wouldn't see her again. Often I find myself, alone now, looking over the fields at a scene identical to the one she could have seen had she been here now. I try to picture her not as she really was, but as I like to remember her.

The End

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Voicing Concerns

2010-10-11T18:49:00.004+01:00

Rob Cooper

Postgraduate Certificate for Educational studies:

Education for Citizenship

Module 2

Voicing Concerns:

From exclusion to engagement

Citizenship Education for SEN Students

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Roy Leighton, of Independent Thinking Ltd, who at a training conference four years ago reinforced my faith in a creative approach to teaching and as a consequence of this made me realise that I was in the wrong job.

Contents

Abstract………………………..	4
Introduction……………………	5 - 6
Literature Review…………….	7 – 10
Methodology………………….	11 - 13
Action and Findings………….	14 - 16
Analysis and Discussion…….	17- 21
Conclusions………………......	22- 23
Bibliography………………......	24- 25
Appendix 1 – List of Learning difficulties and Disabilities
Appendix 2 – Student participant literacy levels
Appendix 3 – Intervention day activities outline
Appendix 4 – Video activity questions
Appendix 5 – Student response transcripts
Appendix 6 – Citizenship topic images
Appendix 7 – Full data sheets
Appendix 8 – Action research project framework

Abstract

My Action Research Project aimed to discover the local, national and global Citizenship concerns of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) using creative teaching strategies based on Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.

Data was collected through a non-verbal, interactive questionnaire, teacher observation, witness statements and video.

My main findings are that my students are significantly more concerned with global rather than local or national issues. They are interested in technology but are worried by diversity. They regard politics as boring. They are able to engage thoughtfully with issues if material is presented appropriately.

Introduction

I am Head of Citizenship at a Special school. All students have a statement of Special Educational Needs (SEN). For a full list of their Special Needs, see appendix 1.

It has been said that action research starts as a “’living contradiction’; that is, feeling dissonance when we are not acting in accordance with our values and beliefs.” (McNiff, Lomax and Whitehead, 2003 :59) This seems especially apt.

There is a clear contradiction between inclusive education and special needs education. I am acutely aware of the tension between my role as Head of Citizenship where I represent the values of diversity and inclusion and have a responsibility to promote community cohesion, and our status as a special school where potentially we are a contributory factor in the marginalisation of our students from mainstream society.

Social Exclusion and its impact upon the local, national and global citizenship concerns of my students is therefore the first conceptual framework of this research project.

There is also contradiction in the concept of student voice for students with communication difficulties. If teachers are to respond quickly to contemporary issues and deliver relevant lessons for the students in their classes, there has to be some kind of dialogue between themselves and young people but with SEN students this dialogue is difficult to initiate.

I regard myself as an advocate for the Special Needs Students that I work with, speaking on their behalf, but I also have a duty to ensure they are given the skills and opportunities to speak for themselves.

Consequently, Student Voice is the second conceptual framework of this research project.

I was fortunate to attend a conference recently at which Roy Leighton was the guest speaker. I was very much looking forward to hearing him again, as the first time I heard him speak had a profound effect on my career pathway. He opened with a point that can be easily lost amongst all the day to day practicalities of teaching in a busy school: “It’s the brain, stupid!” (Leighton, 2009)

I find it incomprehensible that as a PGCE student I received no training in brain structure and how we learn, despite the fact that this incredible organ should be the teachers’ single focus of attention. The workings of the brain and in particular how people learn, takes on extra significance in my working life when we consider two facts: Traditional teaching uses language as the primary means of communication; and the students at my school have significant language and communication difficulties.

How a creative approach to teaching and learning enables Special Needs students to access the Citizenship curriculum represents the final conceptual framework of this research project and is the third of the contradictions that have led me here.

Not only do my students face the everyday concerns of typical teenagers living in Britain today, they also have to face the specific concerns related to their disabilities and learning difficulties. I am committed to ensuring that our Citizenship programme should allow them to identify and explore those concerns but I am not disabled, I do not have learning difficulties and I am not a young person growing up in 21^st century Britain.

Clearly, I am not the best person to decide what my students concerns should be.

Literature Review

Social Exclusion

Social Exclusion is, “a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health, poverty and family breakdown.” (www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk)

The specific effects of Social Exclusion on young people are wide and varied but generally, “it can significantly damage their physical, mental and social development.” (Ruxton, 2001, p.71)

I would contend that Social Exclusion should also include a more general acknowledgement of the marginalization of young people that we witness today.

The Times newspaper recently published an article under the headline, “Most adults think children ‘are feral and a danger to society’.” (www.timesonline.co.uk) and The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) suggested that the UK government should be, “Taking urgent measures to address the intolerance and inappropriate characterization of children, especially adolescents” (UNCRC, 2008).

There is clearly a danger that young people are increasingly likely to be marginalized from society simply because they are young people. In fact Goldson goes one step further and talks of the, “Demonization of Children.” (Goldson, 2001: 34)

Lansdown lists specific examples of how young people have been excluded from mainstream society: “The introduction of powers to impose child curfews, the refusal of many shops to allow children in and the decision by the Millennium Dome to refuse entry to the under 16s if they are not accompanied by an adult.” (Lansdown, 2001: 92)

Learning Difficulties and Disabilities are also a factor in this wider sense of marginalization. As Ruth Marchant points out, “Disabled children face major barriers to being included as equal members of society.” (Marchant, 2001: 217)

My students all have Learning Difficulties and Disabilities and are, “more likely to be brought up in poorer socio-economic households than non-disabled children.” (HM Treasury, 2007: 8) They are also young people. For these reasons, I conclude that the students I work with are at significant risk from Social Exclusion and I believe that Citizenship Education, especially through Student Voice, has a special and significant role to play in helping them to identify and face up to the challenges posed by their status, or lack of it.

Student Voice

On the status of children in society, Wendy Rogers identifies two dominant political discourses at play: The discourses of welfare and of control (Rogers, 2001: p.30). Each frames social and educational policy as being done to children.

These ‘traditional’ discourses are being challenged by a new discourse which sees the status of children shifting from that of recipients to participants (Roberts, 2001: 64). In this new discourse of participation, “children do have the right to be heard” (Thomas, 2001: 105) and it manifests itself in schools as Student Voice.

According to Jean Ruddock Student Voice is, “the consultative wing of pupil participation” (Ruddock, 2005: 1) and is born out of Article 12 of the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that:

“States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”

Whilst Benton et al (2008), Roberts (2001) and Thomas (2001) all identify this shift, Student Voice is still very much in its infancy. In their response to the UK’s 3^rd and 4^th reports on The Rights of the Child in 2008, the UN expressed concern that, “Participation of children in all aspects of schooling is inadequate, since children have very few consultation rights” (UNCRC, 2008: 1) Clearly, this policy shift has not yet translated into practice.

Ruddock argues that Student Voice provides an opportunity, “to hear from the silent – or silenced”. (Ruddock, 2005: 2) Given that my students are at significant risk of being silenced through social exclusion, the potential benefits are great. However, Ruddock also points out that it, “assumes a degree of social confidence and of linguistic competence” (Ruddock, 2005: 2) and so in my professional setting, the challenge is to find a way to listen to students who either have no voice or they have a voice that is difficult to hear.

Creativity in the Classroom

Education has been a key public and political issue since at least the 1944 Education Act when Education became one of the three pillars of the new welfare state (Tomlinson, 2001: 9) and as such it is always subjected to pedagogical challenge. Everyone, it would appear, has an opinion on education.

Sir Ken Robinson verbalises one such opinion which seems to be gathering momentum: our education system fails to prepare children for the 21^st century world that they will grow up in (Robinson, 2006 and Robinson, 2008). Something needs to change and recent government policy reflects a desire to affect this change.

The genealogy of this desire begins at policy level with the government green paper, Every Child Matters (ECM) in 2003, and the New Secondary Curriculum (2007) and The Children’s Plan (2007) that emerge from it.

With its five outcomes: be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic well-being, ECM directly informs the New Secondary Curriculum which, “should enable all young people to become: successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve; confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives; responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society.” (QCA, 2007: 7) Significantly, embedded within the New Secondary Curriculum as a cross-curricula dimension is creativity, which Sir Ken Robinson identifies as the central vehicle for affecting change: “Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” (Robinson, 2006)

Whilst, “The literature in the area of ‘Creative Learning’ generally, is patchy and emergent” (Craft et al, 2006: 35), Peter Woods defines it as being “characterized by innovation, ownership of knowledge, control of teaching processes and relevance to the learner” (Woods, 2001: 75). In government policy, Creative learning manifests itself as Personalised Learning, which has, “Achievement, aspiration, inclusion (…) and accountability” (West-Burnham, 2008: 8) amongst its components.

Personalised Learning is at the heart of the government’s vision for education in the future: “We intend to create a system in which no matter what level a young person is learning at, and no matter what their preference for style of learning, they will have access to a course and to qualifications that suit them." (DCSF, 2009: 4)

“Style of learning” is a key element of Personalised Learning. David Milliband talks of Personalised Learning as requiring strategies that “accommodate different paces and styles of learning.” (Milliband, 2004) Both cases refer to pedagogical principals rooted in the theory of Multiple Intelligence developed by Howard Gardner in his book Frames of Mind (1984)

Whilst Multiple Intelligences and learning styles, or the “crude reductionism of specific learner types” (Milliband, 2004), that leads to the VAK activities commonly seen in lesson planning, are not automatically synonymous with creativity, Gardner’s is a key text within this particular framework.

Methodology

Howard Gardner notes that, “Much of teaching and learning occurs through language” (Gardner, 1984: 78) which is a problem for students whose literacy levels are very low compared with national expectations (See Appendix 2); the traditionally dominant mode of education actually represents a barrier to learning. Therefore the main feature of my methodology is the restricted use of data collection methods that make linguistic demands of my student.

Instead of using traditional student questionnaires which would have been both too difficult for students to complete independently and too unwieldy to manage if administered with one to one support, I designed a series of activities which can be regarded as a non-verbal, interactive questionnaire. Each activity represents a single question where students respond to a set of images via mainly non-verbal means based on Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. For fuller details of the intervention activities see appendix 3.

A class of 10 year 9 students took part in the questionnaire which was administered on an intervention day held in a gym with appropriate audio-visual facilities. The class was chosen as being representative of as wide a range of socio-economic backgrounds, and learning difficulties and disabilities as possible within a single class.

Of the 12 activities planned, only 10 activities were completed due to time constraints. 6 asked the students to identify sets of images as being positive, negative or neutral. 2 asked the students to rank order sets of images. 1 activity asked the students to match images to pieces of music and a final activity asked students to match emoticons to statements about their local, national and global communities. Of the ten activities run, all but one asked for non-verbal responses.

For most of the activities students were asked to respond in terms of whether they felt positive, negative or neutral about the images presented to them. Positive was introduced as an image that they would like to learn more about. Negative was an image that scared them. A neutral image was an image that bored them or one they had no opinion on. These terms were simplified further to good, bad or boring.

In response to some sets of images, students were asked to rank order the them according to levels of interest, but these responses were framed in a similar way: Good through to bad.

The simplicity of the terminology was intended to reduce to a minimum the possibility of misunderstanding but misunderstanding could not be eliminated entirely. One reason for this is that the citizenship topic to which each image was attached was open to a degree of interpretation.

Student responses were recorded by the Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) on data collection sheets specific to each activity.

One potential weakness of the data collection methods comes from this necessary simplification in that it denies the possibility of any alternative, appropriate responses. To counter this, I chose to collect additional data through staff reflection, video recording and photographs.

Students were encouraged to use a video camera and an LSA was assigned to help them operate this. This gave individual and paired students the chance to respond either to a range of predetermined questions (Appendix 4), or to respond to the activity just completed. This data would also help me to determine the effectiveness of the teaching methods not just through the content of their verbal responses but also in the non-verbal signals of their expressions, gestures and body language. These kinds of responses would also be recorded via reflections from the staff involved and through photographs. Cameras were made available for staff and students to use. Examples of this ‘soft’ data can be found in appendix 5.

Students were also provided with drawing equipment and encouraged to draw their responses to the activities. Whilst this proved to be an effective classroom management strategy between activities, the data it provided was less useful, being too difficult to decode.

In working with students with Learning Difficulties, there were clearly ethical issues to consider. In the planning stage, I consulted with our Assistant Head to check that my proposition was reasonable. I spoke directly to the class about the intervention day prior to the event, clarifying what they would be doing, why they were doing it and giving them a clear opportunity to withdraw themselves. I also sought written permission from parents and carers via letter using simplified language as many of them also have learning difficulties. One student was withdrawn from the event at the request of the parents.

Our students very often find a change of routine difficult to cope with and so whilst I was keen to design an inspiring and creative intervention day, I was also well aware that I would have to carefully manage the stress and anxiety that such a day may cause.

I designed the layout of the gym area so that each student would have an identified intrapersonal area. This would give them a refuge to return to and it was made clear that they could sit out any of the activities if they felt they were too challenging. Several students took up this option and this explains the varying number of responses recorded for each activity.

As well as these private spaces, I also provided interpersonal spaces with activities and distractions related to the day. In the setting up period between activities, students were encouraged to sit in these communal areas and interact with each other in this space. The drawing and video activities were located here.

I also made it clear on the day that students could return to timetabled lessons at any moment if they chose to do so. One student on the day took up the option to return to class, finding the day too difficult.

Action and Findings

Each activity had two aims. Firstly, it aimed to find out the global, national and local Citizenship topics of interest to the students both in positive and negative terms through consultation and participation. The results would hopefully allow me to identify areas of interest, fear and anxiety and these results could later be used to revise the key stage 4 curriculum to make it relevant to the students.

Secondly, the data would allow me to analyse which delivery methods were most engaging and that enabled the students to participate in a dialogue about the future content of their Citizenship programme most effectively.

The majority of activities were based on sets of 9 images that represented one of each of the chosen Citizenship topic areas; Environment, Animals, Technology, Poverty, Law, Freedom, Politics, Diversity and Conflict. These represent a broad a range of citizenship topics but I acknowledge that they are largely arbitrary and not comprehensive. The images used can be seen in appendix 6.

I was clear from the start that I wasn’t simply looking for the images that elicited a positive response. The negative responses to images might reflect common concerns and misconceptions that would need to be addressed in curriculum time.

The full data sheets showing the results from all activities can be seen in appendix 7.

Main Findings

Whilst the activities simplified student responses as much as possible, the different methods for collecting responses seemed to affect the outcomes. In the 6 activities that asked students to decide whether they thought images were positive, neutral or negative, technology was clearly perceived as being positive. Images of law and diversity were seen as equally negative. These results broadly matched my expectations of the attitudes of typical teenagers.

In the 2 rank order activities, politics was perceived most negatively with diversity also seen as negative. Freedom was seen in the most positive light in these activities. Some of the findings from these rank ordering activities seem to contradict each other and suggest that the activity represented something of a barrier to the students understanding.

In the musical intelligence activity, animals and politics were chosen most often, although whether any conclusions can be drawn from this will be discussed in the next section.

The final activity shows that students are clearly more concerned by global issues than local and national issues and may reflect a lack of engagement with communities closer to them as a result of various forms of social exclusion. Alternatively, students may be influenced by high profile international news stories in the media at the time of the intervention.

In terms of the activities and teaching methods, it was clear that the students responded positively to the day as a whole and were boosted by the sense of empowerment that came from being consulted in this way. The day was very demanding on them however, with most students exercising their right to sit out at least one activity.

Students were engaged by the use of interesting and challenging images. The kinaesthetic activity where students expressed an opinion through body shape proved to be the most difficult for students, challenging the perception that SEN students respond best to kinaesthetic activities. Other practical activities were popular however.

it is clear that proper consultation of SEN students makes extraordinary demands on the school in terms of resources and time. This was in essence a 12 part questionnaire that could be administered to large numbers of mainstream students in a very short space of time. With SEN students, the 12 questions had to be reduced to 10 questions and took up an entire day and required a huge amount of planning and extra resources. This is also very demanding on the students who were actively and energetically involved in learning for 5 hours in total. In the case of one student, the demands were too great and they returned to class. These are important considerations for teachers and senior leaders to take into account.

Analysis and discussion

Figure 1 shows all student responses from activities 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 12. Negative responses were given a value of -1, positive responses +1 and neutral responses 0. The totals for each topic image were then added together across the 6 activities. The adjusted total represents these totals minus the highest and lowest scoring images from each topic. Removing the extreme results helps negate the effect of strongly emotive images.

Figure 1 suggests that students are interested in technology, are bored by politics and have a negative attitude to freedom and diversity.

Figure 2 presents the average results from activities 2 and 4 where students discarded images in rank order, with the intention of retaining the image that was of most interest to them. This image was given a value of 1. The first image discarded was given a value of 9. Therefore, the lowest values represent images perceived most positively. Here, freedom seems to be the most interesting topic to students. This contradicts figure 1. Similarly, whilst politics is clearly boring in figure 1, in figure 2 students seem to have a strongly negative response to politics.

There are two possible explanations for these contradictions. In rank ordering activities like activities 2 and 4, where 1 represents a positive response, a value of 9 can be interpreted as representing either a negative or a boring response. So, whilst low numbers can be regarded as being a fairly accurate reflection of an overall positive response, the meaning of higher values is less clear. So, figure 2’s results may support the findings from Figure 1 with politics again being regarded as boring rather than negative.

The second possibility is that a rank ordering activity is much more complex and students with dyslexia and similar organisational difficulties may be disadvantaged by this learning activity.

In figure 2, poverty, which is seen as very positive in activity 2 and either boring or negative in activity 4, produces conflicting results within the same data collection method. This may be because the students were more interested in the image representing poverty in activity 2 because a child was depicted in it. If more rank ordering activities had been conducted then it could have been possible to eliminate the extreme results as done for figure 1 and the effect of over emotive images could have been countered.

In activity 8, students were given a choice of images after hearing each of 6 pieces of classical music. The music was intended to represent either positive or negative moods, with the pieces alternating between the two. However, during the activity it was clear that students interpreted the moods differently and therefore the data from this element of the activity has been ignored. Figure 3 records how many times each image was chosen. The music seemed to influence which images were chosen – no student remained rooted to one image – but how the music was interpreted by each student is difficult to say. The data does however indicate which subjects students were moved by, either positively or negatively.

What is interesting here is that technology, which was seen as the most positive topic from figure one, seems to be the least interesting here. This is surprising as the specific image from activity 8 is of a futuristic mobile phone, a subject that would be expected to appeal to stereotypical teenagers. The image of a mayor (politics) was the most popular choice during this activity. These responses appear to contradict expectations. It is possible that the students perceived all of the music, which was classical music, to be negative or boring and that therefore these results should be interpreted differently. Unfortunately, this method was only used for one activity and to make any concrete claims one way or the other would require further investigation.

Figure 4 shows the results of Activity 11 which was an interpersonal activity. Pairs of students interviewed each other, asking their partner to point to one emoticon on a sheet of 30 such images to represent their feelings towards statements read to them. The clear conclusion from this chart is that students have a far more negative attitude towards global issues. More investigation needs to be conducted to ascertain exactly why, but this may in part be due to media coverage of global issues at the time of the intervention: Conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Swine Flu were the main stories in the weeks leading up to the event. An investigation into the relationship between media headlines and current student concerns on the next action research spiral would be interesting.

Figure 4 also shows that students appear to be bored with local issues. One possible interpretation is that the students feel excluded from their local communities and are therefore disinterested as a result of this lack of ownership. This is a disturbing finding that demands further investigation.

In terms of the soft data collected through video, photograph, observation and witness statements, it is clear that students were motivated by the intervention day. Students enjoyed most activities and whilst a lot of fun was clearly had, the thought that students put into their responses and the incidental conversations and comments that students made clearly suggests that they were actively engaged in their learning.

Conclusions

The predominantly negative response to depictions of diversity, whilst not surprising, is nevertheless worrying. In video responses and in conversation, it was apparent that there is confusion and prejudice, particularly with students using the terms terrorist and Muslim almost interchangeably and also in the use of homophobic language. This action research has highlighted a need for the new Citizenship programme to address these misconceptions and prejudices.

Another finding of this research is the mainly disinterested attitude of the students towards politics. If Citizenship Education is to engage students with local, national and global politics then this also needs to be addressed.

This research suggests that SEN students have little interest in their local communities and that this lack of engagement may be a symptom of social exclusion resulting from their status as young people in special needs education.

On the positive side, it was clear following my intervention, that students could be challenged to think and were enthused by teaching methods that activated all of their intelligences. It was interesting to observe that kinaesthetic activities were not widely enjoyed, with many students finding using their bodies too embarrassing. Kinaesthetic activities are often regarded as a panacea for students who struggle with literacy, but this seems not always to be the case.

Visual Intelligence activities were very successful and all students responded positively and thoughtfully to the images presented. Future schemes of work will need to make much more use of visual resources to initiate discussions.

I can foresee two possible challenges on the next spiral of research. Firstly, effective Citizenship teaching for SEN students requires that students are given the time to express opinions and have an input into the direction of their own learning The students who took part in this intervention expressed their appreciation at being involved in the planning of a curriculum and their attitude and behaviour reflected this. There may be a clash with senior leadership in terms of what planning for this style of teaching and learning might look like. Lesson plans that are less descriptive in terms of actual content, because the point of the lesson is to allow the students to direct the learning, may well be at odds with school planning policy.

Secondly, consultation with SEN students places huge demands on schools in terms of resources and time, and in the current economic climate these demands pose a significant threat to that consultation process.

Students came up to me for a week after the event thanking me for the day and saying how much they enjoyed it. I conclude that SEN students do have views that need to be heard, but senior leaders will need to make the appropriate resources available and this requires their full commitment to Citizenship Education.

Bibliography

Benton, T., et al, 2008. Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (CELS): Sixth Annual Report – Young People’s Civic Participation in and Beyond School: Attitudes, Intentions and Influences, Nottingham: DCSF Publications.

Craft, A, Cremin, T, Burnard, P, and Chappell, K, 2007. Teacher stance in creative learning: A study of progression. Journal of Thinking Skills and Creativity, Open Research Online: Open University

Goldson, B., 2001. The Demonization of Children: From the Symbolic to the Institutional. In Foley, P. Roche, J and Tucker, S. (eds.) Children in Society: Contemporary Theory, Policy and Practice. United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan

HM Treasury, 2007. Policy Review of Children and Young People: A Discussion Paper. London: HM Treasury

Lansdown, G., 2001. Our Bodies, Ourselves? Mothers, Children and Health Care at Home. In Foley, P. Roche, J and Tucker, S. (eds.) Children in Society: Contemporary Theory, Policy and Practice. United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan

Leighton, R., 2009. (9^th July) The blocks to lifelong learning. The Derby Conference Centre

McNiff, J., Lomax, P. and Whitehead, J. (2003) You and Your Action Research Project. London: RoutledgeFalmer

Milliband, D., 2004 (18^th May). Choice and Voice in Personalised Learning. DfES Innovation Unit Conference

QCA. 2007. The National Curriculum. London: Qualification and Curriculum Authority

Robinson, K., 2006. Schools Kill Creativity. http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Robinson, K., 2008. The Education System Needs a Radical Shake up. New Statesman; 28^th July: 4-5

Ruddock, J., 2005. Pupil Voice is here to Stay. London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority

Stainton Rogers, W., 2001. Working with Disabled Children In Foley, P. Roche, J and Tucker, S. (eds) Children in Society: Contemporary Theory, Policy and Practice. United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan

Tomlinson, S., 2001. Education in a Post-Welfare Society. Buckingham: Oxford University Press

United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2008. Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 44 of the Convention: Concluding Observations – United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.

West-Burnham, J., 2008. Leadership for Personalising Learning, National College for School Leadership

Woods, P., 2001. Creative Literacy. In Craft, A, Jeffrey, B, and Liebling, M, (eds.), Creativity in Education, London: Continuum, 62-80

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/social_exclusion_task_force/context.aspx 26/09/09

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5167811.ece 17/11/08

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Trans...

2010-10-11T18:43:00.003+01:00

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Returning to an abandoned village

2009-02-24T22:46:00.006Z

meme

2009-01-05T21:26:00.001Z

Between hatred and violence lies the hope of something else

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meme

2009-01-03T10:01:00.001Z

Between the reality of the thing and the imagination of the thing lies a blurred edge

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meme

2009-01-02T11:59:00.001Z

Between a look and a gaze is the transfer of a lifetime

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meme

2008-12-23T13:47:00.002Z

Between me and you is a minuteness of infinity

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Meme

2008-12-18T22:04:00.000Z

Between anxiety and excitement is the memory of an event

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Meme

2008-12-17T01:21:00.000Z

Between now and then is a squeeze of an arse

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Memes

2008-12-02T09:58:00.006Z

Happiness is being unhappy in a community
Happiness is community
A meme is an illocutionary act
We are not what we are
Linguistically, hopeless is not the absence of hope
Everything you do has already been done
Whatever you are doing at this precise moment, chances are you are wasting your time
We have to overdo everything in order to know when to stop.
Social policy that discourages young parents contributes to the breakdown in society
You have to have been there to care
Life only seems fast and hectic when you try to slow down
The police pay tax on petrol
True crime prevention is undesirable
Crime prevention is possible only on a genetic basis
Wanting to live in another country because immigrants have ruined this one, is an irony that no one else seems to see
Nationality is only a name
Describing myself as English is the only thing that defines me as being English
Learning is biological
Only the imperfect demand perfection
The rights of the individual should not be placed above the rights of the community
Learning is pretending
Life is a path and you need to keep your eyes open to avoid the cracks
A student's experience is limited only by its teachers' ambition
Mothers' Day is about remembering; Fathers' Day forgetting
Things get their names in exactly the same way as people
History is the record of our battles to form communities
The urge to buy new things or to travel is motivated by the same desire
Technology deconstructs the boundaries between human and not human.
I have never doubted my own importance
6 billion people can be wrong
Out of a world population of approximately 6 billion and rounded to a reasonable number of decimal places, the percentage of people who think I am important is zero
Cosmetic surgery makes us less human
Clicking on "NEXT BLOG" is a cry for help
Germans know the shape of their country as clearly as we know the shape of ours
Religion is a porn
Porn is a religion
All churches are theme parks
He may not exist, but the power of God is still awesome
Criticism is never constructive. It is simply that some people are able to turn criticism into a positive
The more autistic I allow myself to become, the more the world makes sense.
I always wanted to be alone.
What we want is rarely what we need; rarely what is good for us.
You have been so very good for me.
I have lived on Tennyson, Victoria, Church and Turner streets
Never underestimate the influence of history
It's still a man's world
A man with a body to die for will probably live longer than expected
A woman with a body to die for, will probably die for it
The length of just one second varies according to your age
By definition, things that run like clockwork, don't run like clockwork
The longer things run, the more they lose direction
Seeing is believing
Striving for a comfortable life is striving for a flatline
When I think of Christmas, I can't help wondering why we don't have a special holiday to celebrate the birth of Snow White.
When I watch football I long to be a footballer.
I would have liked to have formed a White Stripes tribute band. I would have called them The Shite Wipes.
I find the word governemtn really difficult to type at any speed
The number 356 is rarer than both 355 and 357
Sometimes governments get things right
Describing myself as a teacher describes every particle of my being
I am a teacher
I used to say I teach, rather than saying I am a teacher because I wanted to be more than just a worker
Wet shave your head at least once in your lifetime
Some children, even if they have a loving, heterosexual pair of middle class parents who read to them every single night, attend parents' evenings and have an annual family membership to the National Trust, will not attain the targets set them by government
Children don't attain government targets just because they are set
Getting drunk is a symptom of an illness, not the illness itself
Not everyone drinks to get drunk
People don't drink because it is available
People don't drink because it's cheap
Abusing your own body is harmful but not illegal
Being good doesn't guarantee success
Failure doesn't mean you are bad
Bad people fail. Eventually. Always.
Shopping is the product
There is no cure for death
Watching a child cry can be pleasurable
Hearts don't break
We are the perception of ourselves
Cutting yourself can sometimes take away the pain
How you feel about yourself shapes how others feel about
We throw away countless things that we once
Elvis sounds like an Elvis impersonator
Having a religion is a disability
Something experienced on television is not experienced at all
When one thing goes wrong it doesn't mean another one will
Without doctors, people die younger. Without teachers there are no doctors
You can't ever save a life; you can only defer death
If you are an addict, the treatment you receive will depend upon the drug to which you are addicted. If we applied the same logic to other illnesses, then people with lung cancer would be imprisoned but people with skin cancer would all go out on a Friday night for a sunbed
Addiction to one drug will lead to prison. Addiction to another will make you one of the crowd.
Getting drunk on a Friday is not as bad for your health as getting drunk on a Tuesday
You become a new person once something is said
Forgetting is a matter of choice
The people we know best will always have the capacity to surprise and appall
The Internet can be pared down to 5 favourites
The promise of a loving kiss can move you to commit any crime
I can't know who I am while I'm worried about who you are
You have to be strong to let a kiss chain you
We are all disabled
Inability is disability
As soon as someone is better than you, you are disabled.
The space we occupy dictates who we are
Species evolve beyond perfection
Species evolve beyond protection
Evolution is a revolver
Species degenerate
Most of what we learn we already know
Gifts take
The word boring is meaningless. It is merely used by the lazy to describe something else.
The things that can change the world for the better have all already happened
As with ants and wasps, most humans are workers
A Freudian strip is much more revealing than a Freudian slip
You can tell lies but not truths
Beauty has to be learned
Truth: Don't look for it, make it
The memory of an event is the reality of an event
Truth cannot be handled
Truth is more than one thing
Bigger is not better... but it is more important
Personal gifts are personal colonialism
New is very easily confused with better
Plants have had a greater impact than people on the planet
We share experiences but what we experience can not be shared
Small communities will shrink to nothing
1 person on the Internet can't say anything important
Total agreement between people is impossible
The Internet is a feminine space, spoiled by men
Where you were born is more significant than who you were born to
Being born in Europe is more significant than who my father is
Being asked to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, is being asked to achieve the impossible
Being asked to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, is being asked to lie
Truth is not law
When society says that something is bad for you, they actually mean something is bad for society
The concept of god doesn't provide answers, it merely imagines life as a question
Sometimes a bad copy is a better copy
Copying is imitation not cheating
You are the only person with true authority over yourself
Mantras are hypnotic
You may tell the story of your life, but your life is not a story
Seeing is not believing
People who believe in God may be right
State education is the process of forgetting
Wealth does not equal success
Indoctrination is fundamental to parenting
Change happens in people's minds
The shortest distance between two points in time is not the only distance between two points in time
Symbolism begins with imagination
Communities take power from individuals and give it to the species
God is the equivalent of the mathematical term x
The desire to live forever is natural but not universal
The desire to live forever is biological not spiritual
The desire to live forever is not a justification for religion
Nothing can be better than something
More but less often, is better than less more often
Being first is not the same as winning
Truth and fiction are like chickens and eggs, only worse. At least with chickens and eggs you can tell which one is which
Truths begin with a fiction
Fictions begin with a truth
The tastes and styles of marginal groups will always be absorbed into the mainstream
The power holders would like you to think that emotional neutrality is aspirational
Suburban living desensitizes you to sensation
Emotions are reactions to sensations
To be precise with words, less is definitely more
Don't do things just because it's your job
When I say, "you", that is different from when you say, "I"
A single reality is finite, but there are an infinite number of realities possible
My reality is not the same as your reality
It's never your job to save someone
In English there is often one word for two things, but never two words for one thing
The sensation of fear betrays a fear of sensation
Reality is not the same as existence
The sensation of reality only proves the reality of the sensation
Asking, "Why am I here?" is a psychological problem, not a spiritual problem
Reality is pointless
Reality is just a sensation
The reason why some people's minds are closed is the key to opening them
Only in their perception are ugliness and beauty different things
Reality is a state of mind
Conform on your own terms
Feelings are more important than ideas
Apathy is death
There is nothing without language
Fire? No. The Wheel? The bicycle, the petrol engine or atomic energy? No, language is our greatest invention
It takes courage to control anger
Thinking is where we exist
We write our own future as surely as we write our own past
Treat the weak and the strong equally
Nationality becomes less and less meaningful the further back you look
Reality is a state of mind
A good teacher has the questions and not the answers
Once started, a relationship can never be ended
Aim to live a deep life, not long life
Never tell anyone to "cheer up".
Walking under a ladder will not bring you bad luck, but it can be dangerous
Masturbating will not make you blind
Talking to yourself is not a sign of madness
All behaviour is addictive
To have self-respect you have to be alternative
To be respected you have to be mainstream
"In the beginning was the word" is true, but it is not how the bible begins
Because the human brain is infinitely more powerful than the human body, frustration is the underlying emotion
Social order comes through submission, disorder through rebellion
The gap between laws and behaviour is the size of societies problems
Selling anything for profit, not just your body, is vulgar
The idea of prison should be enough
Rules don't exist until you break them
Be your own god
God is good means god is an adjective not a noun
Somewhere in time god lost an 'o'.
Always ask yourself, "Why are you telling me that?"
All language is metaphor
Check that you are in control by abstaining
Technology ties you down
The word "sin" is derived from the word "truth". So what was the original sin?
Getting into a stranger's car is as dangerous as climbing on a bandwagon
Language makes you powerful.
You were born to live, not to look after your parents.
Don't get too wrapped up in your own self-importance because in the universe even the big things are tiny
You are addicted when it's the substance and not you that chooses your friends
Terrorists manufacture two things; bombs and racists
Nothing is real? No, even nothing is not real
Meaning is created; It doesn't exist outside of you.
Don't ask what is the meaning of life, ask where is the meaning of life.
Anyone who gossips to you, undoubtedly gossips about you
I don't have the answers
If you solicit for readers you prostitute yourself and your writing becomes pornography
Wherever you settle, live closer to the edge than the middle
Consumption has two meanings. It is both the purchase and use of goods as well as a wasting disease
Shopping is a disease that has to be managed
A simple spelling mistake can render your words meaningless
It's sometimes honourable to lie to protect others but never to protect yourself
Learn to do one thing well
English and Maths are not the only indicators of intelligence
Education is not taught in schools
You wouldn't want everyone to be the same as you, so don't be afraid of anyone who is different to you.
The fear of difference is socially engineered
We are all traveling through time at the rate of one second per second
If you have to say, "I can't" always add "yet" to it.
On a flat piece of paper don't let anyone tell you which way is up.
Question everything
Fat is fucked
I love you.
Cosmetics are made by chemical companies
What you write can always be rubbed out but what you say can never be unsaid.
Don't worry after dark
As a default setting, if you can't decide between your head and your heart, follow your heart.
Regret nothing
Make your decisions based on the information at hand
If you are giving to charity, give first to the environment, then to animals and only then should you give to people.
North is better than South
Learn to enjoy your own company. That way you can be alone without feeling lonely.
The only things of value you will leave behind, are memories and children; work hard at making them good.
If you are always moaning about work, leave. If you can't leave, stop moaning.
Take risks
You are responsible for your own safety
Financial compensation doesn't make things better
Accidents happen
Vote at every opportunity
All language contains magic powerful enough to bewitch you.
You are shaped by the voices you hear and the voice you hear the most? Your own.
It's worth saying, even if no one is listening.
Have no time for religion
Intuition is better than logic
Red is better than blue
Intelligent people are often dysfunctional
Dysfunctional people are often intelligent
Once a day, tell someone how you feel.
Seeing a pattern doesn't mean it isn't random
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate is the same for everyone.
Don't believe statistics
Most people have more than the average number of legs
Don't be afraid of pain.
The pain of true love is well worth it.
Delayed pleasure is better pleasure than instant gratification.
Don't confuse knowledge with intelligence.
Learning is living.
If you wouldn't rent it, don't buy it.
Never forget that old people were young.
Always apologise but never take it back.
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
Everything you need to know about advertising is summed up in this one fact: New York Bagels are made in a town just outside of Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
Scared is another word for excited.
Eating butter can make your breasts hurt.
If you believe in something you are bound to say it.
To take the path to blind faith you must first put your blinkers on.
Those who trust in blind faith are blind to the truth.
If the only reason you're doing it is because Nike told you to, don't Just Do It.
Remember, when people knock on your door, show you the sign of the cross and start talking about religion, that if they came to the door, showed you a light-sabre and started talking about The Force, you would close the door, gather your children close to you and call the police.
Owning a big, expensive car declares to the world that you are selfish and have no regard for the environment.
You are going to die.
The ultimate achievement of medicine would signal the end of the species.
Watch TV: Don't watch TV.
To feel confused is to feel normal.
When you're ready, other people will come first.
Being hungry is not the same as starving.
Wanting something is not the same as needing something.
However much life hurts, however much it gets you down or lets you down, it is never as bad as the alternative.
Disagreeing with someone is not the same as disliking them.
How you feel about yourself shapes how you feel about others.
The difference between fiction and non-fiction is similar to to the diference between flammable and inflammable.
If someone says, "Follow me", you don't have to go.
Learning to be selfish is the first step on the path to altruism.
History is fiction; that's why the word story is in it.
Ordering, classifying and categorising, being methodical, are all so deeply satisfying, I imagine cavemen lined up their flint arrowheads, largest down to smallest, before they went hunting.
The history of words can make the hairs on the back of your neck prickle.
Rituals are always obsessive and always compulsive.
Funny is more attractive than pretty.
Writing is drawing, drawing isn't writing
Everyone likes a drink, no one likes a drunk
God is not.
If the inner voice says something you've not heard before, listen.
Weakness can be a strength.
Strength can be a weakness.
Sometimes, and only sometimes, it is alright to do as you are told.
You learn more, and more quickly, by being wrong sometimes, than by always being right.
Don't trust reality.
It's not always wrong to sell things.
Flocking and herding should be left to sheep and cows; if it's a best seller, don't buy it. If it's busy, leave. If it's common, reject it.
American foreign policy is analogous to Victorian Englishmen who spoke English loudly and clearly in the belief that foreigners would understand them better.
From the point of view of the authorities, work is a purposeful distraction from living the life you really want.
French is just English in another language
Atheists are right to hope they lived a good life.
Saying "I Believe..." is not the same as saying hearts are trumps.
Curtains are not as important as you once thought they were.
The phrase "throw it away" is nonsense - there is no 'away', only alternative somewheres.
Anyone capable of blind faith is capable of any atrocity
You should be wary of anyone who feels the need to promote their goods through advertising
Staying can be as brave and exciting as going
Religion is the result of a faulty meme

Click here to comment

Reflections

2007-05-30T11:35:00.000+01:00

Reflections

Thought waves
beams of ideas

Intelligence
brightness

Illuminating

Beams of ideas

Light
Dark

Shadow
Umbra
Pen umbra

The subject

my words strike you

The object

of my gaze

Their illumination
casts a shadow

creeps over you

From the darkness
brightness
beams emerge from behind
the hard-edged solidity
of me

My words
reflected back to me
meaningless

My words
laser guided
aimed at you
at your eyes
bulls eye

The enunciation emits
focussed
precision guided meaning

hits
but is missed
missed by you

reflected
refracted
casting umbra and penumbra
lightening the darkness
by the merest fraction

a refraction of words twisted into
near darkness
meaningless
meaning less

A photo taken by a poet without a camera

2007-03-26T13:48:00.002+01:00

[A woman] gone to twist wire/into bouquets/distributed to passers by.
Peter Rumney

In the frame
a stuffed human hand
the perfectly preserved
hand i work
of a taxidermist

It is gloveless
and ringless

Pin sharp
finger print
life line
detail

The ungloved hand clutches
tight in its fist a twisted bouquet
of wire

each stem
...................serrated
each bloom
...................barbed
each thorn
...................pointed

The perverse garland
punctures
...................the palm
slices open
...................the thumb
stabs
...................the sides

of fleshy fingers
revealing stuffing

The bare hand
........................bleeds
hyper real
fake blood
........................weeps
from open wounds
wide enough
........................to stick
your fingers in

In the urban dark
Hopper backdrop
colours of rain
and neon

and yellow lines
reflecting
chopped-off-at-the-knees
feet and legs of passers by

Keenly in focus
galvanised petals
lie in puddles
discarded

a first stone’s throw
from ........................us

Me memes 1-25 key

2007-03-25T17:14:00.000+01:00

1. 10 words that I use to describe myself
2. Names of people I know
3. Places I've lived
4. Old Girlfriends, excluding Carolyn who I forgot completely
5. Teachers
6. Favourite bands at the time
7. Old bikes
8. Things I'd like to live without
9. Best friends
10. Funerals
11. Things I get told off for
12. I don't like...
13. Old mobiles
14. An a-typical breakfast
15. Things people said to me today
16. In the sack
17. Important films at the time
18. Rob Coopers around the world
19. My Christmas presents
20. My new morning routine
21. Previous employment
22. I wish I was responsible for...
23. Things that stop me going
24. British holiday destinations
25. Why I like The Matrix

Me memes 26-50

2007-03-25T17:12:00.000+01:00

List No.26

France

Spain

Italy

Switzerland

Canada

Australia

New Zealand

Antigua

Bermuda

Guyana

Uganda

Kenya

Singapore

Hong Kong

Dubai

Abu Dhabi

List No.27

Baggio
Davis
McEnroe
Borg
Connors
Case
Fowler
Botham
Fowler
Ballesteros

Me memes 1-25

2007-03-25T16:57:00.001+01:00

List No. 1

teacher
father
husband
drinker
talker
listener
son
forgetful
frustrated
excitable

List No.2

Deb
Emily
Jack
Isaac
Bill
Ted
Justin
Ness
Callum
Isabella
Felix
Joss
Nick
Lydia
Elizabeth
Pete
Jeannie
Mark
Nikki
Tess
Louis
Martyn
Yanina
Eva
Ruth
Nick
Gin
Jonny
Jess
Jethroe
Lorenzo
Milan
Remi
Glenda
Gary
Gareth
Steve

List No. 3

Lancaster
Hornby
Melton
Syston
Queniborough
East Goscote
Loughborough
Loughborough
Loughborough
Mountsorrel
Loughborough
Swinton
Loughborough
Loughborough

List No.4

Michelle
Amber
Emma
Sarah
Jane
Katrina
Nina
Suzy
Deb
? (I'm sorry, I forgot your name)Karen
Viv
Deb

List No. 5

Mrs Nixon
Mr Osbourne
Mrs ?
Mrs Rushby
Mrs Freshwater
Mr Wilson
Mr Dyson
Mr Sargeant
Mr Haynes
Mr Smith

Lost No. 6

Showaddwaddy
Madness
The Police
AC/DC
Kiss
Iron Maiden
Duran Duran
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Depeche Mode
Bryan Adams
Prince
U2
Oasis
Radiohead
Arctic Monkeys

List No.7

Raleigh Striker
Raleigh Grifter
Raleigh Stratos
Raleigh Mustang
Marin Bear Valley
Orange Clockwork
Saracen Killi Flyer Comp
Giant 880 ATX

List No.8

microsoft
apple
ipod
tesco
beer
cars

List No.9

Mark
Guy
Jared
Russell
Jon
Paul
Justin
Mark
Martyn

List No.10

Dad
Granny Turner
Uncle Eric
Mr Merrall
Grandma Joan
Great Grandma

Great Grandad Frank

List No.11

shoes in the house
sitting at the computer
coming to bed late
not getting up in the morning
working
not working
not knowing what goes in which recycle bag
drinking too much
supporting liverpool
going the quick way
walking slowly

List No.12

Spiders in the same room as me
the telephone ringing
the dustpan and brush in the cupboard under the sink
being late
talking on the phone in the same room as other people
unanswered questions
comedy that relies on embarrassment
tight t-shirts
things that should be in the fridge when they are not
talking about money
saying no
boxer shorts (unless worn as pyjamas)
trousers without belts
trainers with jeans
eye contact with women
dog licks
being around other people when they are arguing
children not behaving in public
rule breaking
asking for directions

List No.13

List No.14

1 pint Cranberry Squash
4 Toffees
1 handful of chocolate raisins
1/2 pint water
1 Glocosamine Sulphate tablet
1 Cod liver oil capsule
2 paracetamol
1 mug of tea

List No.15

1. Have we got any milk?
2. Or bread?
3. Is it bin day?
4. How exactly are we going to pay the mortgage this month?
5. Do I really need another pint?
6. Shall I get Deb some flowers?
7. I'll give them a call.
8. Would you like a cup of tea?
9. No.
10. Are you looking at me, pal?

Lost No.16

List No.17

Star Wars
Grease
Dirty Dancing
Dances with Wolves
The Blues Brothers
ET
The Matrix
Fight Club
Trainspotting
Shallow Grave

List No.18

Director of Public Health Education
robcooper.com
Osiris games
Former fat guy
Renowned calligrapher
Ubisoft MD
Director of compliance and training
Local artist
A-channel reporter
Chiswick 1st team hockey
On-line editor
Football poet
Halloween sounds
Vintage blues and jazz
Wright State Raiders Head Coach
Honorary Canadian Citizen
Aircraft Photos
Eastern College Athletic Conference Men's Gymnastic Championship

List No.19

3 pairs stripy socks
1 bracelet
4 DVDs: City of God, Betty Blue, Dead Man's Shoes, No Direction Home
2 CDs: The Best of The Pogues, The Best of Squeeze
2 books: Lolita, a collection of travel stories (The Middle of Nowhere)
2 tins for collecting money, each capable of holding £500 pounds
A tin of pub magic tricks
A stripy jumper
A Hong Kong Phooey T-shirt

List No.20

6:30 Classic FM
6:35 Stove top whistling kettle on
6:37 Brush teeth, listen to kettle whistle
6:40 Take tea to Deb
6:42 Put clothes in dryer to warm
6:45 Drink tea, eat cereal
6:52 Dress in the kitchen while kettle boils again
6:55 Drink cup of coffee
7:00 Put on shoes, helmet, gloves
7:05 Get bike out
7:07 Set off for work
7:45 Arrive at work

List No.21

Shop work
Construction
Painter and Decorator
Child Care Officer
Child Care Officer and Climbing Instructor
Child Care Officer and Climbing Instructor and Night Duty Warden
Teacher
Painter and Decorator
Painter and Decorator and Play worker
Painter and Decorator
Painter and Decorator and Teacher
Painter and Decorator and Teacher and Night Duty Warden

List No.22

the bicycle
Pi
The concept of nothing
The Alhambra
One
The End of the Affair
Star Wars
Relativity
Nighthawks
Gerrard's FA cup goal
The four minute mile
The Internet
Digging
Bread
The wheel
Fire

List No.23

friends
inertia
fear
friday nights
loyalty
mum
work
familiarity
money

List No.24

Betwys Y Coed
Ambleside
Cromer
Sheringham
Bowness
Bedgelert
Port Isaac
Scarborough
Morecombe Bay
Whitby
Calver
Buxton
Skegness
Croyde

List No.25

Trinity's outfit
The references to Baudrillard
Alice in Wonderland
The use of generic conventions
The storyboards
When Morpheus fights Neo
When Neo says, "No"
The short wild west scene
The Deja Vu
The ending

Lola

2007-03-24T14:51:00.001Z

In my years working with children, students have done many things to me. I have had things thrown at me - accusations, insults, paper, pen lids, books, rubbers and blu-tack. I have been told to fuck off. I've been threatened with fists, knives, steel bars and bike chains. I've been punched, kicked and head-butted.

Working in Special Needs Education, inner city comprehensive schools and in areas of social deprivation, these incidents are an occupational hazard. They are not acceptable but they happen: They are imaginable.

But what if I told you that a student once pissed on me? Is that imaginable?

For obvious reasons, I'll change her name. I'll call her Lola because I am playing with you. A student, a girl student, gave me a golden shower. And the name I choose for her is Lola. Imagine that.

Lola was not a nymphette. In fact she was as far from a nymphette as it is possible to imagine. I want you to imagine that. She was tiny, stick thin, painfully bony. That is my anti-nymphette. Yours might be different.

She did have a crush on me though, and around school she would invariably be attached to my arm.

My role in school was varied. I was a counsellor, a social worker, an amateur speech therapist, a play therapist, a drama therapist. I was also a climbing instructor.

We took groups of a dozen kids climbing two or three times a week. We climbed outdoors in the Peak district, North Wales, the Lakes and around the county. We did day trips and residentials. We hostelled and climbed, we camped and climbed.

If the weather was bad we climbed at a local wall. I also worked there at weekends, and the familiarity I had around the place helped the students to feel secure.

The whole point of the climbing was to build self-esteem. All of our students had been rejected by schools; thrown out for bad behaviour. They had been labelled bad. Many of the children had suffered from abuse and those that weren't abused were neglected. They all had language and literacy problems, found communicating a problem. And when adolescence hit they were struck down with depression; depressed because they recognised they could not be like their 'normal' friends.

Lola was all of these.

Louis Sachar wrote that, " if you take a bad kid and make him dig a hole every day, you come out with a good kid." This is a bad mantra. This is how you break people. These kids were already broken.

We took painfully shy, emotionally delicate kids, with a Statement of Special Educational Needs and medical files as long as the arm to which they clung. We took those children and pulled, hauled, dragged, cajoled and persuaded them to the top of vertical walls and cliffs. And the more we did it the stronger they became, physically and emotionally.

The climbing wall was cold that day. Our breath hung in the air. It was indoors, but the ceiling was 20 metres above us and the heat sat up there somewhere. In every way this was an indoor wall, the anti-crag. Outdoors you get colder as you climb higher. At the indoor wall the temperature is proportional to your height. Many of our students never noticed. They remained in the cold air, near to the ground, because despite our coaxing, some children would not let go of the security of the cushioned floor.

We explained that they were safer the higher they went. That it was the landing on the floor that hurt, not the falling. That, in fact, falling felt a little like flying. It could be fun. That, yes, I was qualified. Yes, the knot was right. Yes, the equipment was safe.

Every one of them had a go that day. Although the concept of having a go varied significantly. That is what we call differentiation in education. Every one of our students had a go. For Lola, this meant they climbed and reached the top. For others, it meant that they had got off the ground without us pulling on the rope. Others were hauled like a sack on a crane. For several, having a go meant taking their hands out of their pockets and allowing someone to put a harness on them, fit a helmet and then remove them again. Every time we took students climbing, every single one of them had a go.

Lola was a good climber. She was the weight of a balsa model and she had the flexibility of youth. She was also brave. Unfazed by the height, she would push and pull and reach to her limits. She would fall off. At the time, my youthful ego put her success down to her trust in me. I believed that she trusted me, that I was the only person she trusted. If I told her she was safe, she believed me. That is what I believed.

Looking back now it could just as easily have been different. She was abused as a younger girl. Emotionally damaged beyond repair. She clung to me physically because physical relationships with adult men were the only relationships she knew. She was offering herself to me. She would have let me because that was her learnt behaviour. And she fell off not because she trusted me, but because her self esteem was so low, she valued herself so little, that falling of didn't matter.

Each student had a go, and that takes a while. For Lola the experience was frustrating. She was the only one climbing, the others simply held the wall, wore a harness, hung on the rope. Each of these attempts taking up more and more time. Lola wanted another go. She wanted to climg high, feel the warmer air, get away from the ground to where she was safer. Looking back I can see why she liked it. Her natural instint was to give herself to adult men, like me. We taught her a different way. We didn't abuse her trust. But this made her uncomfortable. It destabilised her world view. It made her nervous and embarrased and hurt and rejected. No wonder she wanted to climb out of that world to a place where the air is warmer.

We gave her one last go. The others were ready to leave quickly. They watched Lola climb while they stood by the door with their helmets and harnesses ready to hand in. Lola climbed easily, gracefully. She had a rope that attached her umbilically to me, but the rope was loose. It was her own strength, her own will that took her up, up and away.

And while I stood beneath her, barking instructions to the group to make sure we were ready to go promptly, Lola pissed on me. From a height of 15 metres she emptied her bladder onto me with no word of warning, no shout of "below" that we had taught, the climbing equivalent of the golfers "fore!". No one said a word.

I stood aside and she continued to shower the matting where I had been. It splashed my shoes and it was in my hair. And no one said anything because it would have been like asking a stab victim why they were bleeding. She couldn't help it. That's what I believed then. Now, I'm not sure she wasn't getting me back in some way.

My Father

2007-03-24T14:50:00.004Z

If I were to make a list of the people who have influenced my life, an inventory of my own invention, then I don't think my father would be included.

I only recollect him as the victim of a stroke. A gentle word, stroke, that packs a powerful punch; a wolf in sheep's clothing.

My earliest memory is being taken to a relative's house, in the middle of the night, whilst my mother fetched him from a long way away. A bank manager had noticed his strange behaviour and called her. He would probably have died that day if this stranger had not bothered to look at his records and make that call. I wish he hadn't.

I remember him in hospital, visits after school. And I remember him at home. I don't remember the day he actually came home, but one day he must have come home.

Physically, the stroke had left him more or less as he was before. To look at him you would not have been able to guess at his cruel affliction. My father, by all accounts an intelligent man and an accomplished pianist, had lost his ability to communicate; he couldn't write, but he could read. He couldn't talk but he could listen. When he played the piano, whatever tune was in his head wasn't the tune he played. He was a frustrated man, an unwilling mute.

He lived with us like that for nearly ten more years.

I remember him walking in the garden with baked bean cans on his feet, or at least I remember being told that story. I was very young and the difference between stories and memories is blurred.

He started to smoke, and for ten years of my childhood I became the man of the house by day and a frightened little boy by night. I wondered if strokes ran in the family. Every headache became a tumor. As I grew up, I began to blame him.

I resented how he clung on for so long and led my mother to a breakdown. I despised the way he chewed his food. He was the reason we never went on holiday like other kids.

When he died I was sad. Sad and guilty. I lay awake and apologised to his ghost for shouting at him, and for hitting him. When, on the count of three, the door creaked in the dark, I knew he could hear me.

Some months later my mother told me that he wasn't my real dad after all. He was just a man she had been married to for thirty years. A man who had never wanted children.

I began to lie awake and worry about all sorts of hereditary conditions after that, not just strokes.

The Red Letter

2007-03-24T14:50:00.003Z

Miss Love

2007-03-24T14:50:00.001Z

I can't believe I got drunk last night. The whole point of staying in was to keep a clear head for today. I simply didn't want a hangover when I had a twelve hour course to get through.

Walking to the train helped a little. The fresh air and the exercise began the process of shifting the alcohol and toxins from my head, my stomach, my joints...

The course was being held in a city centre hotel, a short walk from the station. I didn't feel too bad when I arrived, maybe a little drunk still, but I was OK. I knew the worst was yet to come. I asked at reception and was directed to the conference room.

People were already mingling, filling the room with polite chatter. I ignored everyone and headed for the hospitality coffee. One cup, two cups. I walked towards the water cooler with my third cup nearly finished. One cup of water with a hint of coffee. Another water, clearer now. The water that is, not me.

“Shall we make a start?” The voice of a gentle, white-haired lady.

The room becomes more ordered. People file to chairs. Everyone seems to be with someone. They're not really, it's just that I'm the only one who has spent the past fifteen minutes rehydrating. Most people have at least said hello to someone, shared a little small talk and then naturally, sat down next to someone.

I seek out an unoccupied chair. I take a look around the room, paying attention to the faces of the people I will spend the next 12 hours with. I find it hard to focus. It's not quite 9 in the morning. I should be in bed. My hangover arrives, right on cue.

“Let's begin with a few introductions. I'm sure the older students here will be used to this kind of format but for some...”

Why did she look at me? I'm sure I was looked at, looked at with a knowing smile. Has she labelled me as older?

Never mind. It doesn't really matter. I'll never meet any of these people again. I mean, look at them. I take a closer look at the faces sat on conference chairs laid out in a semi-circle.

“Hi, I'm Sara. I'm 21 and I live in London.”

Oh my god! How did I miss her? I really must be drunk still. Sara is lovely. Shabby chic, slim, confident, for a girl of 21. She makes eye contact with everyone in turn as she speaks. She smiles charmingly. I find myself staring at her. I'm still staring at her when she makes eye contact with me.

Fuck. It was obvious I was staring. I look away quickly and my thoughts scramble as my vision blurs, knocked off balance by the sudden swirl. I'm not paying attention. The fog of the night before doesn't let me.

I become aware that the room is quiet. I realise, slightly too late for it to go unnoticed, that it's already my turn. Six people have gone since Sara, and I haven't listened to a word they've said.

“Sorry. Umm. I'm Rob. I'm thirty-seven and I'm a painter...a painter and decorator.”

“Thanks Rob”, says the course leader, whose name I must have missed.

Shit. A painter and decorator. Why did I say that? That's what I do. It doesn't describe who I am. I look across at Sara, just to check my first impressions. She's gorgeous. And she's not looking at me.

The course leader introduces the first task. It's a getting to know you task. Ask 8 people the same question, a question that begins with, “Have you ever...” I try to think of a question that might suggest more about who I am not what I do. I want to avoid questions like, “Have you ever emulsioned a ceiling?”

“Have you ever been skiing?” It's a good question. It suggests financial success, foreign travel and adventure. It shows I'm fit, coordinated. I'll ask seven people quickly and then Sara. She'll answer yes, I'll ask her where and before you know it we'll be laughing and touching each other's forearms.

Courseleader checks that we all have a suitable question. She picks someone at random. It's a good teacher technique.

“Helen, what question are you going to ask?”

“Have you ever been skiing?”

Bollocks.

..................................

“Okay, time's up. Let's see what you found out. Rob, what did you find out?”

“I found out that 6 people have emulsioned a ceiling and 2 people haven't.” I don't know if Sara ever has, because I never got the chance to ask her. Probably just as well.

“Thanks Rob. Sara, what did you find out?”

“I found out that no-one has learned to juggle.”

I have! I can cascade and reverse cascade three balls. I can do the same with three clubs. I can do four balls. I can catch a ball on my foot, hold it there, and then flick it up and carry on juggling. I have learned to juggle. I've even taught people how to juggle. Why didn't you ask me?

..................................

I survive until the coffee break, although coffee is used here euphemistically. There is no coffee. The course fee only includes the reception coffee.

I go to the toilet. My urine is orange and smells. I wash my hands, then my face. My skin absorbs the moisture. I don't need the hand dryer.

I return to the room and the water cooler. The plastic beakers are too small. They make me look greedy. I can't circulate. I can't talk to anyone. I take a step back from the water dispenser to allow someone else to use it, then I step forward, cup empty, for a refill.

Sara stands with a group of people. She is neither the centre of attention nor in the background. She listens with her eyes, and speaks with a smile. She has nice teeth.

“Let's start again shall we?”

I wish I knew her name.

..................................

The period up to lunch is difficult; Full-blown hangover with associated thumping head, stiff neck and growing nausea. I hear next to nothing, I volunteer nothing and I contribute less than nothing.

Sara asks a thoughtful question, relates the lesson to a personal experience and makes the room chuckle.

When lunchtime comes I head for the toilet again, piss bright orange liquid and leave the building to seek out food and fresh air.

I crave bacon. The salt and animal fat is what I need. I sit on a street bench with the pig in a bap and a bottle of Lucozade. The nausea grows but I know this is good, what I need. I use every remaining minute to walk the back streets. I try to exercise, to exorcise, the nausea. <

I step back into the conference room as Brown Owl is beginning.

..................................

My head slowly begins to clear. I make my first contribution. It's intelligent and subtle. There is a moment's pause and I can sense I have made people think. I've made my first impression. I notice what other's are saying. I figure out that Brown Owl is in fact Dorothy. I continue to stare at Sara, but now when she sees that I'm staring, I can cover my tracks.

At times I play the hungover card and continue to stare as if through her. I out-stare her, looking away only after she has. I make sure that she notices me staring in the same vacant way at others in the room. At other times, I simply smile and look away quickly, as if our eyes met by chance.

..................................

By evening I am feeling normal. I still haven't spoken to her and the longer this goes on, the more I know that I never will.

The class is into two groups for our final task of the day. We have to prepare to lead a short session. I deliver my session to my group with enthusiasm. I make my audience laugh. I am engaging, charming even. Sara is in the other group. I knew she would be, even before Dorothy put our names on the wall.

The evening session draws to a close. Dorothy calls us together in our semi-circle one last time. We are to receive our certificates. Dorothy reads out our names and we step forward to shake her hand and collect the piece of paper. Each person gets a round of applause from the group.

One by one, Dorothy calls our names. It's interesting because we only know each other by our first names.

“Rob Cooper.” I step forward and receive my certificate, signed by Dorothy Prince.

I sit back down and wait for one other name.

“Sara Love.”

A Photo Taken by a Poet Without a Camera

2007-03-24T14:34:00.003Z

Meme - A Dictionary Definition

2007-03-24T14:33:00.001Z

I know what you me
an

one me
imitating another me

you are me
multiplied

by me

one me
aning

replicated
in a cultural equation

where me
is me
mory

over

the me
ssage contained in the me
mory

of an in
finite

recurring

me
me

The Woman in the Red Dress

2007-03-24T14:32:00.002Z

Were you listening to me, or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?

Dressed

in men

struation red

the woman

in the red dress

full

fills

a filthy promise

of a bare

ly revealed

vile

thread

teased

to a

threat

that runs

red

dread

fully

woman

dressed

turns

to womb

man

Weblog

2007-03-24T14:32:00.001Z

we blog
gers we

ave text
our soft

wares we
are web

loggers
logging

webs chop
ping trunks

chunks of
sol id

web in
to man

age ab
le web

port i
ons logs

of webs
w oven

wood rolled
over

re veal
ing un

veiling
woo den

lice spi
ders creep

ies craw
ling the

rot ten
world wide

web log
we blog

we re-
cord re

cord chord
a gain

sea (a)rch
for un

ity
harm on

y dis
each o!

ther we
blog prod

uce of
the posts

we blog
use less

beauty
log of(f)

webs vis
ible

stick vis
ibly

sticky
the stu

pid est
get stuck

we ran
(we're an)

dumbly
catch our

selves in
logs of

web stu
ped bi

peds sear
ch out

log webs
ab out

(a bout)
wobbly

legs goll
ywogs

well y
gogs blogg

ers webb
loggers

we blog
gers set

traps tag
t raps

post signs
in di

cat ing
dict at(e)

ing we
blog this

way use
ing pig

eon
Engli sh!

re gurge
it ate

it gauged
gorged on

a gorg
on of

views held
tig htly

in our
own we

blog

Kite

2007-03-24T14:31:00.004Z

My son sheltered
in the ark
of my arms
holding my hands
to get a feel
for the kite
that fights
like a fish
flying

He is frightened
the kite will drag him away
from me
high into the air

I am frightened
the kite will drag him away
from me
high into the air

we hold hands
for security
our hands holding
the handles
harnessing
our feelings
tieing us together

as the kite fights
for the freedom
of the skies
it does not want.

Before you go

2007-03-24T14:31:00.003Z

Before you go I must:

Guzzle the poison in your kisses.

Permit the penetration of vein-shafts
that sheathe my bloody liquor.
(Inseminating toxins
in each exchange of spittle.)

Let venom-laced lips infect me,
fix one final kiss on my face.
(Your glands release their load
into my gaping maw.)

Allow kisses, like rain on rock,
to eat at my facade.
(Exposing me to microbes in your drool.
I perish in your saliva pool.)

Beg you don't abandon me,
I crave your malignancy.
(My bottle of booze, darling nicotine,
I need your canker drug.)

Two

2007-03-24T14:31:00.001Z

She is slipping back
And she senses a difference
She will make it harder for me
Then she'll have no one to forgive

She whispers
Two hates
Two deaths
Now she's two wants
At dawn

She has two hates
She gives to keep me
She joins her lover
And she neglects me

She will cheer me
And give a foul look from her eyes
She pretends she always had hate
But she needs me to stay within

Well, she's too early
Today
To pull a present from
out of the dark

She's two
And she's the difference
She gives to let go of every one
Let go of every one

Two

She's gone there for blame
She's gone to bury the living
She hasn't gone there to pretend to be Judas
For a reveller up her skirt

She will tell too little
less than a little
She took my everything
Now it's none she has

She's two
And she's the difference
She heals every one, now she'll do it again

She whispers

Hate is a church
Hate the lower act of God
Hate is a church
Hate the lower act of God

She tells me to leave
Now she makes me beg
But can she be letting go
Of something she hasn't
Now the nothing she's got is love?

Two hates
Two waters
Two deaths
She has not what she should not

Two deaths
Without any one
Mothers
Sisters

Two deaths, and she is identical
She gives to let go of every one

Let go of every one
Two

A Bedtime Story - How Platypus got her Name

2007-03-24T14:30:00.000Z

Once upon a time there was a person. Almost.

She was the most beautiful,

the most powerful,

the strongest,

wisest,

fairest,

kindest,

of all the almost people in His kingdom at that time.

But she was too good,

too everything,

too much.

On the day of her ripening

He called her to His house and stooped

to kiss

His almost daughter

goodbye.

But this was not a father’s kiss.

He forced His tongue into her mouth

led her to kiss Him back

and embraced her

between His

teeth.

His chin dripping with her flapping flesh

as He hawked out the first chuck of her.

The slag

fell in a heap

on stone far

below. Spattered

into worms that turned

rock into Earth.

He took the time to practice his Chinese burn,

twisted flesh from bone.

He spread her by the ankles,

slit her a gash

He made a wish,

flung her drumstick legs

which choppered

gently

to

ground.

Yet where they fell a tree

shed leaves to dress her wound.

And He was angry with that tree,

would not allow sides to be taken

and called out ‘Sycamore!’

which cursed that tree with seeds the spitting

image of her butchered limbs.

The almost person’s sweet chestnut eyes

yielded to the fury of His thumbs,

plopped out and popped

up as another tree

who kept them in a mace from Him

and won

the name

‘Conker!’

from Him.

Little by little her almost body was disposed

dispossessed

No matter

how barbaric his actions

He could not erase Her.

Lastly,

He placed his hands in prayer

around her head and squeezed flat.

His hard breathe in her ear hole

sent sound swirling in all directions

through the now

almost forest.

And where it brushed the tree tops?

Life

And where it clattered through branches?

Life

And where it skimmed the soil?

Life.

Everywhere the almost person parts touched?

Life

For many days her black blood flooded.

But the trees preserved her from the deluge

until her bleed ceased.

Once the flow stemmed the clotted Earth

reformed.

Rising, spreading, the almost person

hauled her nonself to the riverbank and came face

to nonface with a duck’s bill, slapping and slurping

as if Duck had never been.

The once beautiful put it on

and at last voiced what had been tongue less ‘till now:

“Quack!”

And no quack had ever conveyed more

feeling, more

hurt.

He heard and looked, but could not see

that the bodiless bill was possessed:

“Who’s there?”

Duckbill, the almost person

bit her tongue.

He shrugged

his almost shoulders unable

to shrug off the hint of a babble.

Duckbill pulled at clods and sods to the almost water.

Eager and impatient for her very first time

the once too good laid

waste to a pair of swans.

Unable to defend themselves against beak

their beauty was ruined.

The almost person salvaged feet

and although ugly, made better

time, but was

sad.

Finally, a Beaver’s body,

with no chance against beak

feet,

was overwhelmed

slipped on.

Whole now but mad

fantastic,

her shape frightened

her

under the world.

After a long time she was discovered there:

“Tell me creature, who are you?”

Duckbill strained to make words:

“Quack.”

Pitiful.

And her desire to change shape,

to become

Proteus

was misheard as

Platypus.

My Stroke of Luck

2007-03-24T14:29:00.002Z

My first day: I buried him.
I buried him in the first box that wasn't mine.

The alphabetical students obediently
filled out their family details,
emergency contacts,
while I tried to impress
my new master

"Father's Occupation"

I filled in that hole
with the dirt
of the word
Invalid.

Not hurt.
Not retired.
Not valid.

And my Father,
Luckily,
was too slow
to catch me at it.

No Comparison - An Anti Sonnett

2007-03-24T14:29:00.001Z

Shall I compare you to things I admire?
Tie you in bunches of fresh word flowers?
Both of us know that they'll wilt and tire,
But still they place you within my powers.
Why? To compare you is to control you:
If I say you're eternal summer to me,
It follows that this can only be true
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see.

Instead I'll accept your uniqueness
Will live when I have gone,
And might be shared, if you impress
Your lovely self an an other one.
So back to the question, "Shall I compare you?"
I just don't think it'd be fair to.

The Difference between Weddings and Funerals

2007-03-24T14:28:00.001Z

The difference between weddings and funerals is plain.
One is a start,
the other an end,
both playing their part in a well-oiled chain.

At a wedding the women will weep, as they should
The men will laugh and drink
They'll all drink at the funeral,
and also they'll cry, but the men would stop if they could.

In a crowd at the wedding we'll find acceptable faces,
those who the couple will copy.
In black on the benches
the remnants of those who crawled from the dead's darkest places.

At the wedding two lovers display who they'd like to be,
in their choice of gown and buffet.
The dead cannot choose
and we're free to peruse their mistakes and bad company.

I Have Heard Rock Talk

2007-03-24T14:27:00.004Z

Crop circles
U.F.Os
ripples on water
prints on snow

Renounce the mundane
embrace the sorcery of stone
For I have heard rock talk

To invoke
chatter and crack
crimped in sediment
I offered myself
sacrifice
to fossilised sirens
Rock wept
and cursed

Come neophyte
Iwill show you how

Take chalk
powdered rock-blood
virginal white
dust fingers
to open the route

(Through digits the spirits
will speak)

Truss genitals in tight restraint
wear rubber on feet

(Wing of bat and eye of newt are no
longer the acceptable accoutrements of the
21st century pagan)

Approach rock
feel the force
Flesh resurrects
these Gritstone walls

Offerings of skin
torn on craggy face
summon the supervisors
of the single pitch

As you rise

listen

probing fingers become ears

listen
carefully in your head

pause

Protect
with charm of silver

listen
once more

Spiritual sediment beckons
"Go on. Go on."

Then
demonic verse
Omen theme
monks in red chanting
"Be gone. Be gone."

And the atheist cries
"God."

And the rock pagan conjures
"Jesus H. Christ"

If silence prevails
return to Peak
spell book

start again.

Hand me Down Dad

2007-03-24T14:27:00.003Z

He is the man who wore cans on his feet.

Or so I am told. It's a memory
older than my memory could ever be.
A you mory
not a me mory

Imagine the details of her story
that has become hisstory.

Wash away bean juice, grass cuttings.
Reveal slices of Spam flesh
cold, night-damp, his instep
slit by jagged slippers.

And a tin
which I do remember as more dangerous then;
ring-pull less, crudely hacked open;
"Mind the lid! Put it in the bin!"
you warned.

("For Dad to wear?")

He is the man who took the lid off
a mini car.
Had a rush of blood to the head
circular sawed it down to matchbox drawer.
Windscreen less and waterlogged
he drove until concerned police
showed him hard shouldered compassion
escorted him back home.

But this is all second hand memory
of my hand me down Dad.

I remember kicking him in frustration.
And the silence that followed
His and the bruises.

How did something as gentle as a
stroke
stop him talking to me?

Walking

2007-03-24T14:27:00.001Z

I arrive, eye-led along
a rain-gash rut that deepens to earthwork.
I fall from colossal clod feet
into palace-purple sett.

Over wind raining blows
on my wool baffled ears,
confusion shouts
its tussocks of noise.

Fatigue rests in my airway,
stews in the stench
of sheep shit and sweat
tossed into my hotchpot nose.

Cured hands roll wind born
lip-scum morsels. I drink
peat brown earth piss;
my tongue shrinks.

I lie rucksack bent. Search out a stiff
shoulder at bag's bottom,
surface neck-tired, empty
earth-harsh handed.

I rise sorely
rested.

In the stick hungry bog my walking
stick's sunk to pen-size.
My mountain escapes into cloud

and I am benighted.

The Man

2007-03-24T14:26:00.001Z

(Our bodies will return to the dust of the earth, and the breath of life will go back to God, who gave it to us. The Bible: Ecclesiastes, Ch. 12 V. 7)

The man dreams in his chair.

Runs home from the fields
to present this trophy
to his mother.

A living gemstone;
a Painted Lady.

Its life tickles his palm.
Lightly touches for air
in his fleshhouse hand.

He holds firm.
A boy's excitement not allowing this life
to flutter away.

Opening his hand for her
he starts at the stillness
of the creature's crushed colour.

He holds his fist tight again.
Tries again.
The butterfly is dead
again.

He can't go back
make it all better.
Opening and closing just pounds the thing
to dust.

An hourglass-trickle dunes at his feet.

He clenches his fist
in anger at the mess he's leaving
but can't stem the flow
no matter
how hard he tries.

The man sits in his chair.

He sits there for several days
in the exact
same
position.

Day after day
he cannot hear
the post that is collecting
for his daughter to reply:

"Unfortunately my father died
some time ago."

In his hands
clasped as tight as tight
she will find the breath
he refused to give back.

Useless
useless to him now.

Stone and Fire

2007-03-24T14:25:00.002Z

Stone

Stone shivers in its coldness.
Stone shies from its hardness.
Stone reels from the sobriety
of just being a stone,
and whispers, in stone,
to the other stone

"Stone, are you awake?"

Fire

Fire, discovered, cowers from the light.
Fire shrinks from my hand-cradle stroke.
Fire sticks where it is; blenches at my abrasiveness.

I draw near, stroke Fire gently, gently.
A fire warming spark rattles out just
before
Fire
spits at my finger ends.
Fire smothers its rage and recoils to black

To Do List

2007-03-24T14:25:00.001Z

Mind the gap
your head
manners

avoid confrontation

don't talk with your mouth full
like that to me
shit

keep out of reach
out of sight
out of mind

avoid capture

don't run
do that
mess about

stay out of trouble
in control
safe

avoid eye contact

look at me when I'm talking to you
behind you
out

never talk to strangers
accept lifts
do that again

avoid alcohol

stop what you're doing
or I'll shoot
look, listen

sit down and shut up
on that
there

avoid fatty foods

wait just a second
till you're spoken to
till you're called

don't risk it
blow it
do it

avoid counterfeit Viagra

Sam's Strobarees - a little boy's painting

2007-03-24T14:24:00.001Z

Sam's Joosee Strobarees
are red
and joosee
do you see?
do you?
d'ya see?
joo see strobarees?

I see green blobs
on a red splodge
and a green wiggle

Sam's Joosee Strobarees
are redder
and jooseeer
do you see her?
do you?
d'ya see er?
joo see er

I see her
I see her in the red strobarees

Wandering Swallow

2007-03-24T14:22:00.000Z

Cecropis daurica - Lunan Bay, near Montrose

Voice I

I watch hawk-eyed
rehearse the perfect kill
that day dreams

hone generation's senses
twitch
as they did in the beginning

Voice II

Lost
and cold
the Red Rumped Swallow
rests
The blood red
rump steak
target of a
birth-mark
bird
pauses for breath

The push-pull
walk don't walk
Swallow
parks
its red rump

The red rumpus
is watched

Voice I

I am blind
to beauty

colour blind as well
with perfect
talon sharp
vision

Voice II

Red remains
Red Rumped red remains
a smear of red
remains

Up Close and Personal

2007-03-24T14:12:00.001Z

Originally posted 10/3/07

Occasionally politics rouses me. I have ranted here on a variety of subjects. Generally though, I am indifferent to politics and I believe this indifference is not because I am unconcerned. My indifference is because I have analysed the problem and decided that I am unable to engage with politics because I am not part of politics.

Politicians look at statistics. They look at us and make their judgements about us and for us, from a distance. Some cynics might say that they look at us from a distance that is the height of their ivory towers. Or their panopticon.

From a distance the world is statistics, general, vague. It is a world of averages.

Unfortunately, one property of averages is that very few people are average: My wife and her siblings have 7 children between them, at an average of 2.3 children each. None of them have 2.3 children, or even 2 if you round it down.

And did you know, the cast majority of people in the world have more than the average number of legs? And for legs you can substitute hands, arms, eyes, testicles, kidneys, ovaries or any body part we have more than one of. People are simply not average. Therefore, every political decision will upset virtually everyone, and they will be derided for not having met the needs of the individual.

From far away, lines are crisp, colours flat: black is black and white is white.

The people represented by the politicians view the world up close. Up close, statistics become people, and up close, people become personalities. Up close, flat surfaces are mountain ranges.

Politicians make decisions from far away using the rules that apply to far away. People judge politicians from up close. We use the laws of up close to make those judgements. The laws of up close and far away are not interchangeable: they do not describe the other place. They are like the laws of Einstein and Newton. One is better up close, the other far away.

3 texts, "Grand Narratives" and the death of man

2007-03-24T14:08:00.000Z

Identity

2007-03-24T14:07:00.001Z

Originally posted 25/2/07

Mark and Nikki came round for dinner last night. He helped to edit the Weblog poem. I cooked a curry; Aubergine and spinach, and a coconut and sweet potato dish. I drank far too much and was ready for bed by the time they left at 3 in the morning.

Our conversation was very interesting. We spoke about reality and the nature of identity. Identity is always interesting to me, afterall celermansworld is about my interest in identity in a postmodern age.

The text that is most responsible for my interest in Postmodernism is the film The Matrix. It raises issues of identity and reality. It led me to read Baudrillard. It led me to Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick. It is responsible for a lot of my beliefs about the world we live in.

It is not however as radical a film as I first thought. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise, especially when read against the background of my comments on the CREATION frontpage.

Despite this however, it remains a text that continues to touch upon and raise ideas about society and the self that I find fascinating.

What is real? How do you define real? (Morpheus, The Matrix)

Any construction of the self as a coherent entity holds faith in the ability of language to represent, to define, the real object. It implicitly assumes that there is a reality to define, to categorise. Behind the signifier “I”, is a real person with a stable identity. “I” am unique, knowable. “I” am that which “I” was yesterday, and will be tomorrow. In short, “I” exist. Jacques Derrida coins the term ‘logocentrism’ to describe Western culture’s implicit trust in this metaphysics of presence. Baudrillard also acknowledges that:

All western faith and good faith became engaged in this wager on representation: that a sign could refer to a depth of meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange – God of course. (Baudrillard 1994, p. 5)

This conception, it is argued, has been naturalised into our modes of thought since the age of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance configuration of ‘modern’ man. Even today, within the so-called postmodern era, the individual subject maintains a firm hold over modes of thought. The fundamental principle of the Self is overtly asserted even within genres regarded as exemplifying postmodernism. Madonna’s ‘Express Yourself’, M-People’s ‘Search for the Hero Inside’, are examples from popular music. Book’s still bear the author’s name on the cover, even Roland Barthe’s, and at some stage in this essay I will refer to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. But:

Reality is a bitch. (Baudrillard 1996b, p. 3)

Coming from a man described as a “guru” of postmodernism, Jean Baudrillard’s irreverent and aggressive comment would suggest that postmodernism considers this faith to be problematic. Baudrillard draws attention to the complete naturalisation of the concept, the inability of the western subject to entertain the disappearance of the real, the disappearance of the self in terms that validate my own conflation of the ‘Real’ with the ‘Self’.

Say: This is real, the world is real, the real exists (I have met it) – no one laughs. Say: This is a simulacrum, you are merely a simulacrum, this war is simulacrum – everyone bursts out laughing. (Baudrillard 1996b, p. 95)

If we accept the premise that, contemporary science fiction cinema is “a privileged cultural site for enactments of the postmodern condition” (Khun 1990, p. 178), then it seems logical to investigate the validity of the question in relation to science fiction as the most likely scene of the abolished self.

The self has been the “cherished cornerstone of western culture for centuries” and

Our humanist picture of individuality is a product of modern western systems of knowledge. (Ward 1997, p. 133)

These systems of knowledge, or discourses, construct notions of the Self within particular frames of reference such as race, gender, nationality and labour. As such they are not essential but have become naturalised. As Morpheus says in The Matrix:

You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so hopelessly inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it. (Morpheus, The Matrix)

People, according to Morpheus, don’t recognise, cannot accept, that their identity is a social construct, that what they believe to be themselves is the product of state discourses of power, an authorised (legitimate and written at the same time) identity. In the more advanced projection of an imagined technology even living on Earth can be withdrawn from the hegemonic classification of human:

Loitering on Earth potentially meant finding oneself abruptly classed as biologically unacceptable, a menace to the pristine heredity of the race. (Dick 1968, p. 15)

The Self is defined within discourses that are appropriated by an official culture that constructs an ideal hegemonic subject. Any subject not encompassed within these state-regulated definitions is marginalised, cast as Other. It is exactly towards these marginalised groups that Postmodernism looks:

Deconstruction’s challenge to the traditional full subject the cogito of Western philosophy implies a corresponding ideological commitment to minorities in politics, sex and language. (Brooker 1992, p. 13)

Who am I? Within the scientific discourse of biology I am a human being - Homo sapiens. Scientific discourse suggests clear and irrefutable boundaries that determine identity. But contemporary technologised society would appear to destabilise such rigid essentialism. A human being divides into two subsets, male and female, but contemporary surgical procedures deconstruct the differences. The female is the side of the species that gives or is equipped to give birth, but what of the woman who undergoes a hysterectomy to treat cancer? A woman has mammary glands. But what of mastectomies? Surgical techniques to combat serious illness put conventional classifications of gender into doubt. The scientific dependence upon clearly delineated lines is present in these texts. Agent Smith attempts to re-categorise humans:

I’d like to share a revelation I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realised that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move into an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure. (Agent Smith, The Matrix.)

His theory is similar to Baudrillard’s and is therefore also within the discourse of the postmodern:

Man, with his humours, his passions, his laugh, his genitalia, his secretions, is really nothing more than a filthy little germ disturbing the universe of transparency (Baudrillard 1988, p. 38)

Is this really challenging though? The agent is so obviously the tool of the state apparatus that he is merely dramatising the function of hegemonic institutions by trying to naturalise a definition through the discourse of science. The narrative logic does not allow for this redefinition to be seen as anything other than an abuse of power by an authoritarian state. Its presence here serves only to reinforce the necessity of Neo’s spiritual quest. Ultimately Neo is “the one”; the ultimate symbol of unified individual. Whilst acknowledging the radical possibilities of postmodernism, the film withdraws into a conventional narrative that explores the power of the human spirit to overcome.

Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep each dramatically explore the boundaries of the species through the representation of the Replicant. For Baudrillard the clone, the exact replica of the human, deconstructs identity by destroying the space between Self and its Other. I can’t be unique if there are more than one of me:

Clone, cloning, human cuttings ad infinitum, each individual cell of an organism capable of becoming the matrix of an identical individual (Baudrillard 1994, p. 95)

Described as “more human than human” (Tyrell, Blade Runner) which clearly echoes Baudrillard’s more

real than real, the hyperreal, the replicant is potentially the technological manifestation of the hyperreal, a

simulacrum, a clone, that cannot be distinguished from the real:

‘Then at one time an authentic Garland existed,’ Phil Resch said. ‘And somewhere along the way got replaced.’ (Dick 1968, p. 109)

The novel questions more rigorously the authority of the Voigt-Kampff test and thus threatens to destabilise Scientific discourse, a discourse used to define the Self. The Leningrad psychiatrists think that a small class of human being could not pass the Voigt-Kampff test. (Dick 1968, p. 33) The simulacrum, the virtual, threatens western culture's perception of the real, of the self. I am no longer, in the realm of hypertechnology, able to define human. Baudrillard recognises that homogenisation which occurs when the gap between Self and Other collapses, destroys the real, the Self as it is conventionally known:

With the virtual, we enter not only upon the era of liquidation of the Real and the Referential, but that of the extermination of the Other. It is the equivalent of an ethnic cleansing which would not just affect particular populations but unrelentingly pursue all forms of otherness. (Baudrillard 1996b, p. 109)

When Deckard leaves to begin a new life with Rachael the gap between the replicant and the human is completely broken down and thus radically threatens the conventional construction of the Self, but the absurdity of the scene, the inexplicable Utopian countryside, immediately undermines this. Ultimately the film remains faithful to a more conventional Self. The Voigt-Kampff test proves to be correct. The discourse of science is re-established as the conveyor of essential truths. In each text a potentially radical challenge to human identity is suppressed through a hegemonic scientific discourse. The replicant doesn’t threaten to de-centralise the human Self, it attempts to be embraced within that centre. When Pris says “I think, Sebastion, therefore I am” (Blade Runner), she is stating her desire to be recognised as the central hegemonic norm. Her desire for acceptance re-establishes the dominance of the traditional Self. The replicants deny their status as Other and thus weaken the text’s radical potential.

Technology deconstructs the once clearly defined boundaries between human and not human. Contemporary surgical procedures transgress earlier definitions of human/non-human or male/female binaries. For Baudrillard we are now in an age where “from a biological, genetic and cybernetic point of view, we are all mutants.” (Baudrillard 1988, p. 51) In The Matrix, Neo has a computer port in his head. Where exactly does the machine end and the human begin? In Neuromancer Molly holds out her hands

palms up, the white fingers slightly spread, and with a barely audible click, ten double-edged, four centimetre scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails. (Gibson 1995, p. 37)

The character Flatline isn’t even alive. He is a computer programme, a fact that challenges Case, the conventional Self:

It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct, a hardwired Rom cassette replicating a dead man’s skills, obsessions, knee-jerk responses. (Gibson 1995, 97)

These science fiction texts certainly bend the rules when it comes to defining identities, but the conventional narratives that construct characters in heroic roles negates the radical efficacy of such an approach. Despite the margins being full of unconventional figures who do indeed challenge conventional notions of reality, of humanity, of the Self, at the centre of each is a human who is successful in the quest posed by the plot.

Man is a "zoon politikon" [social animal] in the most literal sense: he is not only a social animal, but an animal that can individualize himself only within society. (Marx 1976, p. 444)

Marxist discourse constructs identity in terms of labour roles. Man, in its generic sense, is defined by his

role within modes of production. In Blade Runner, Deckard’s identity is almost exclusively determined by

his profession: “Ex-cop, ex-blade runner, ex-killer.” It is an indication of the importance of profession in

any construction of character that this is the first thing Deckard says, and from this much information is

implied. This is a typically modern and not postmodern rendition of the individual. This Marxist

understanding of the individual within capitalist culture is embedded in language. When asked, “what do

you do?” the reply is invariably “I am…” We are what we do. Even the replicant’s identity is constructed

around the Marxist metanarrative of labour: Roy Batty – combat model, Zhora – off – world murder squad,

Pris – a basic pleasure model. Throughout Blade Runner, in its narrative and its visual structure the status of

production, of capitalism is foregrounded. The streets are an open factory floor as well as a market place in

which objects and labour are exchanged for money. One of the key differences for Baudrillard between the

modern and the postmodern era is

The end of labour. The end of production. The end of political economy. The end of the signifier/signified dialectic which facilitates the accumulation of knowledge and meaning, the linear syntagma of cumulative discourse. And at the same time, the end of the exchange-value/ use-value dialectic which is the only thing that makes accumulation and social production possible. The end of the linear dimension of discourse. The end of the linear dimension of the commodity. The end of the classical era of the sign. The end of the era of production. (Baudrillard 1996, p. 440)

At first glance therefore, Blade Runner appears not to challenge the Self in this postmodern way. It depicts a rather reactionary capitalist society of free enterprise, it was after all made during the ultra conservative Thatcher/Reagan years.

In contrast to Blade Runner’s heavily industrialised metropolis, The Matrix presents a post-capitalist scenario. Neo is categorised as a computer programmer. There is no object of production; he is part of a manufacturing process that produces hypertext, a text that has no objective reality. His working environment is almost devoid of the articles of the capitalist consumer society; there is no paper. This is in stark contrast to Deckard's apartment that is littered with commercial trappings. Indeed Deckard rather conventionally requires a hard copy of a photograph, despite the technology at his disposal. Neo may be identified as a computer programmer, but he is not only that, not reduced to the single productive role. Unlike Deckard, Neo’s identity is multiple, despite his name:

It seems that you have been living two lives. In one life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company… The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Neo. (Agent Smith, The Matrix)

The hacker is a symbol of anti-capitalism, the source of viruses like the recent ‘Love bug’ which aims to topple large corporations. It is a social group associated with anti-capitalist rioting, which has been a social phenomenon of recent years. Neo may be defined by his role within the corporation, but he is also defined as radically challenging such structures.

Elsewhere in The Matrix, the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar is also outside of the realms of production. The group are terrorists, freedom fighters. They perform specific tasks, jobs if you like, but these are not conducted within the conventional boundaries of exchange and use value. So does The Matrix represent a more radical postmodern challenge to the self than Blade Runner does?

Hugh Ruppersberg notes that:

The alien messiah has been such a pervasive figure in science fiction films of the last twenty years as to mark some sort of cultural phenomenon. (Ruppersberg 1990, p. 32)

Both The Matrix and Blade Runner invoke such a figure in Neo and Roy Batty but each film does so in contrasting ways. Roy Batty is the anti-hero, the bad guy within the logic of the film’s narrative whilst Neo is configured as the messianic saviour.

Neo is something of a reluctant hero and his reluctance is foregrounded by his other name, (doubting) Thomas Anderson. The text however displays textual and visual clues to affirm his messianic status. The audience is forced to concur with Morpheus’ confidence:

Morpheus: We’ve done it Trinity. We’ve found him.

Trinity: I hope you’re right.

Morpheus: I don’t have to hope. I know it. (The Matrix)

Whilst Thomas may express Neo’s self-doubt, Anderson, his dominant patronym, reveals his ‘true’ nature: Son of man. Choi makes the connection explicit:

Hallelujah. You’re my saviour man. My own personal Jesus Christ. (Choi, The Matrix)

Whatever doubts the text’s narrative may present to the audience there is no doubting that Neo will finally realise the truth of his importance. Given the film’s blatant use of the Christian story, his resurrection at the end of the filming is compellingly predictable. Having been unplugged from social programming in an encouragingly postmodern fashion, Neo ultimately embarks on a quest that leads to predictably humanist conclusions: He just needed the time to find the hero inside. As Ruppersberg says, messiah figures in science fiction are “finally reactionary.” But what about Blade Runner and Roy Batty?

Thomas Byers, in a quote that reinforces the earlier conclusion that Blade Runner presents a modern and not postmodern city, says Blade Runner:

specifically explore[s] the relationship between high-tech corporate capitalism on the one hand, and individual modes and styles of personal behaviour on the other. (Byers 1990, p. 39)

Thus, Deckard’s victory over this anti-Christ, a figure who invokes Christ in every aspect except that he is not good, can be seen as a reactionary retreat back into orthodox capitalism. Deckard, who begins as a series of ex’s, reiterates his identity by establishing the supremacy of the state authority. Roy is a product of industry; he is an object who desires to be a subject. This threatens the internal logic of capitalist discourse but it is a threat that is defeated and order is restored.

Definitions of the self have an intrinsic relationship with nationality and race. National or racial labels come with stereotypical baggage. Attributes associated with race and nation are projected onto individuals whenever someone says, “I am English”, for example. To be English connotes certain characteristics. In postmodern society these attributes are brought into doubt. What am I really saying about my Self when I proclaim my Englishness, when today in England more people work in Indian restaurants than do in the steel, coal and ship building industries combined? In the light of global economies and multicultural communities, definitions of Self are once again challenged.

The Matrix and Blade Runner are American Fictions. Any sense of personal identity is informed by the context of nationality and these texts are no different. Being placed within the cultural context of American cinema constructs a specific backdrop for an audience’s perception of character. For instance Deckard is perceived to be a science fiction equivalent of a private detective. The film noir techniques, the voice over, his penchant for getting beaten up and falling for the femme fatale, clearly associates him with Philip Marlowe, with Robert Mitchum, James Garner, or any number of other actors who have played that role. The characteristics of Rick Deckard are in part a projection of characteristics from a tradition of other American fictions. And yet in what ways is this American. Despite our era being labelled postmodern it is still normal to take the director of a film as the individual responsible for the creation, much as an author of a book still is. Barthe’s declaration of the author’s demise may have been a little premature. So this American fiction is the creation of the English born Ridley Scott?
Whilst the directors of The Matrix are American, much of the film was shot in Australia. Once again, as with

definitions of the species, what was once a clear definition is no longer so transparent. Once we delve into

the narrative of these texts, the delineation of nationality and race become even more unstable.

Blade Runner is set within a futuristic and unrecognisable metropolis, nominally given the name Los Angeles. None of the actual city’s landmarks are obviously recognisable and the population has changed considerably. There are no black people for instance. In fact the film is largely set in Chinatown. Whilst great lengths have been taken to construct a sense of the real environment, these glitches serve only to magnify a sense of unreality. It is San Francisco, LA’s Californian neighbour, and the setting for Dick’s book, that has the more famous Chinatown. Does the film suggest that the city has sprawled to encompass both sites under one name? No, not really. In fact, within the film there is a strange sense of the absence of the wider world. The replicant is portrayed as posing a serious threat to society and has come from an off-world colony. Within the aforementioned tradition of American detective stories, this is out of the local law enforcement agency’s jurisdiction. Where is the FBI? Where has America gone? Blade Runner then is a film directed by an English man that depicts a post-American globalised metropolis and yet is still perceived in relation to America. Principally this is because it is an American financed product(ion), in the same way that Nissan cars built on Tyneside are Japanese. The film may explore postmodern subjects such as fragmented identity in the postmodern metropolis but it still functions within a world that is distinctly modern. Postmodernism may indeed be concerned with the “precession of the simulacra”, with the image, with a hyperreal society, with reproducibility, but film is still firmly established within the discourse of production and not reproduction. It is hard to imagine a truly radical postmodern fiction coming out of the institution of the large corporate film making industry.

As has already been determined, it is not necessary to fulfil all criteria when it comes to definitions. German owned Rolls Royce is still an icon of English manufacturing. A woman without a womb is still a woman. Deckard “ex-cop, ex-killer, ex-blade runner” is still a cop, a killer and a blade runner. So what if I were to contend that all the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar are black, apart from the colour of their skin?

Toni Morrison’s Beloved graphically imagines the fragmenting effects of slavery, of a lost history. As

Baudrillard says “History is our lost referential, that is to say our myth.” (Baudrillard 1994, p. 47) To be a

black American is to define oneself as belonging to a racial group with a particular history, a history of

slavery. It is to place oneself within a fragmented tradition, a tradition under the power of white slave

owners. The past, history, becomes lost, unrecorded in the written documentation of the hegemonic class.

The parallels are clear with The Matrix, which can be regarded as a slave text, a story of emancipation. The

narrative makes reference to a lost history, two centuries of unrecorded time from which a past has to be

reconstructed through stories, verbally passed down to generations who cling on to remnants of this past to

maintain an identity. Hegemonic, white conservative, western culture is reliant upon a teleological history, a

history with a beginning and an end. As Baudrillard says,

Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view. (Baudrillard 1994, p. 10)

This potentially poses a radical challenge. The Matrix dramatises such a collapse and within the context of black American culture. It draws distinct parallels between the two. The film blurs the distinction between black and white. The two centuries in The Matrix is an approximate match of American slave history. If the roots of the crew of the Nebuchadnezer are still doubtful then “dodge this.” (Trinity, The Matrix.): In Neuromancer, the novel acknowledged as informing The Matrix, the crew are “Dreads. Rastas.” (Gibson, p. 127) The ship is called Zion, and the terrorist group associated with them is called the Panther Moderns. The Matrix crew is modelled upon a futuristic black community of freedom fighters who take their name from the radical Black Panthers of the 60’s and 70’s. If a film’s identity is American, then this contextuality effects the identity of characters.

The Matrix occupies a position within a specific social context. For America, the similarities with black slavery and black emancipation and civil rights movements, projects an identity upon its characters. It could be argued that Neo is an allegorical black American. After all Morpheus is described as “a father to us all.” (The Matrix)

But this position, whilst seriously challenging notions of self, is far from radical. One has to ask the question, given the content of the novel, why did the film version of The Matrix cast the majority of the crew as white? Admittedly, the two natural children of Zion, Tank and Dozer, are black, but there parts are minor compared to Morpheus, who despite being literally black, plays a character who is based upon Far Eastern mysticism. He is a Kung Fu master who talks like Confucius.

To conclude:

Into the 1990’s, the human subject has become a blip: ephemeral, electronically processed, unreal. Numerous writers have noted this implosion, the passage of experiential reality into grids, matrices and pulses of the electronic information age. (Bukatman 1998, p. 196)

This may well be true, but these texts, all of which are from a science fiction genre regarded as potentially the archetypal site of postmodernism, are created within an industry of individuals. The novels are still the story of individuals, as are the films. In the films the individual actors hold a particular elevated position within western culture, which still worships the individual. The texts are still the work of an author – God, and the identity of the texts within a national context, is still rooted in the economics of production. Science Fiction, it would seem, takes the best visual images from postmodern theory and reworks them into traditional narratives. Whilst this in itself can be regarded as postmodern style over content, in relation to a Western construction of the Self, these texts are decidedly modern.