DIY PhD
Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene
Decolonizing Doctoral Level Arts Research
inclusivity, power, agency, and social anarchist theory in learning
Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene is a 2-year serialized performance and mixed methods research project in which artist Kara Thorndike will research locally with(in) ancestral lands while part of Do It Ourselves (DIO) global, independent arts research communities. Through this project, she intends to show (an)other path to deeper arts research for parents, especially lone parents. The experiment will challenge the unsustainable and exclusionary nature of the “model” doctoral research trainee that insists on hypermobility, inadequate (if any) funding, and offers no childcare support. The DIY performance will increase her sense of well-being by tapping into holistic and diverse global communities of practice that connect ancestral knowledge experiences with modern experiences; where learning is social, involves the whole person, and integrates all aspects of life. The outcome will be reclaiming learning as the practice of freedom to be wise.
The problem, the proposition
There is a well-documented problem of women and single mothers being excluded from careers in higher education, arts, and doctoral research. Fewer women on whole are in doctoral research programs, and even fewer single mothers, (HESA, 2020) for exactly the reason I am proposing Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene. Looking at Why the Academic Pipeline Leaks, van Anders (van Anders, 2004) found that - “Instead, women self-select away from academia because of issues related to parenting and mobility.” (van Anders, 2004, p. 518) - “…the perception of academia as less appropriate for individuals with children significantly predicts women’s, but not men’s, plans to enter the professoriate.” (van Anders, 2004, p. 519) - “On the basis of the evidence from the present study, it is reasonable to propose that the lack of quality childcare, unequal/ uncertain access to paid parental leaves, and geographic hypermobility are institutional barriers specific to women.” (van Anders, 2004, p. 519) These barriers likely explain why although Ph.D. mothers are now faring better after graduate school, mostly in social sciences, it’s still rare to find many in graduate school. (Kulp, 2016) For mothers who do go on to successful careers, flexible working lives makes all the difference between thriving successfully and dropping out of the workforce. (Hewlett, 2007) Unfortunately, universities and art schools have yet to catch up to the words they claim to live by. This project is a step toward changing the future as a performance of protest, and example.
Anarchism invites us to see educational activity as a site of social transformation.
Judith Sussa, (2017) “Anarchism in Education Studies”.
The Anarchist Imagination, Levy & Newman ed., Routledge, p. 203
Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene is a serialized performance and mixed methods research project that challenges the unstated and often denied, yet pervasive, ideal of a “model” doctoral researcher. I will set an example of (prefigure) learning and growth that is equitable, inclusive, and interconnected. By performing a Do it Yourself (DIY) Ph.D., I will tap into ancestral knowledge embodied in my person and global, diverse research communities to heal the trauma not only of my paternal Scottish ancestors, but of mother artists excluded by neoliberal art school policies that insist on hypermobility with no provision for care, despite the detrimental effects on families and the environment. Since moving to Scotland in 2018, I've noticed visceral responses to specific areas, as if I’ve been there before. An unexplained attachment to the River Tay, a fugue state while in Dundee, the curious joy of being in Kyle but not Skye, and the familiarity, longing, sadness I experience when in and around Glasgow feel related to the horrible sinking feeling while in the Pennsylvania mining town my maternal great-grandfather was born in and later mined coal. Indeed they are.
The experiences of ancestors passed down epigenetically have a lasting impact on the well-being of generations to come. Starvation, forced migration, and callousness perpetrated for profit in and by a system that insisted on one way to be… profit at any expense. This very thinking has caused the current climate crisis and continues to exclude other ways of thinking and being, ways that might heal the trauma and get us out of the mess we are in, sooner rather than later. Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene is a crucial critique of how doctoral research training happens and is funded. The current paradigm presumes that a “model” researcher is mobile, financially flexible, with no caring responsibilities and no disabilities or learning differences. It presumes a specific set of circumstances that are not true for a large portion of the world’s population. My research proposal "DIY healing with(in) ancestral lands" was initially accepted and funded by Falmouth University, * but only if I moved to Cornwall as a requirement for funding… to do extensive field research in Scotland… where I currently live.
The stance lacks wisdom. Insisting on multiple research trips to Scotland while living within commuting distance of Cornwall, ignoring the carbon impact of traveling back and forth as well as the toll it takes financially and developmentally on a single-parent family, perpetuates the very global problems the university claims to be working against. Falmouth's policy of only funding researchers living within commuting distance of campus is not only unnecessary in this day and age of remote working and studying, it also excludes mothers -especially single mothers- from field research. (as well as carers in general, people with learning disabilities, and other disabilities) Why not live in the place I am researching? It would be wiser, more inclusive, and less detrimental to the environment and social fabric to do so. The policy also enforces a hegemonic culture relying on a western philosophical canon that presumes deep, impactful, and serious research only happens with(in) the mind. The focus on intellectual knowledge devalues knowledge of life experience, animistic, epigenetic, and the impact of witnessing experiences. All valid non-linear paths of learning, understanding, and wisdom.
The university's singular focus, incomplete in understanding, is rooted deep in ego, ignorance, and fear. Fear of the unknown and the uncomfortable. Ignorance of experiences not "our own". And a need to be in control/charge. What good is knowledge divorced from wisdom that helps us choose how to be together? In the words of bell hooks (hooks, 1994), "If we examine critically the traditional role of the university in the pursuit of truth and the sharing of knowledge and information, it is painfully clear that biases that uphold and maintain white supremacy, imperialism, sexism, and racism have distorted education so that it is no longer about the practice of freedom." The project exposes the hegemony of doctoral arts research programs and research funding to challenge universities to live the values proclaimed on their websites. A DIY Ph.D. performance will serve as an example of what can be; how deep learning can be for freedom, healing, and wisdom. That such research communities can and do exist globally in a meaningful and connected way, exposes hypermobility as destructive to the well-being of families, and the environment. I want to encourage doctoral researchers to stand up and say... No! We no longer accept this marginalizing and ecologically destructive model of research, funding, and practice. Yes! We can be inclusive, truly inclusive, while doing meaningful and important research in a holistic way. And Yes! community is where and how we say it say it is as artists.
This performance and research project is an extension of previous works; Mama! where I perform a story of the absurdities of being a lone parent through photographs and reflection, Freedom where I tell a story of how we fragment from each other through hierarchy and stratification via photographs, Heartbeat on Scotland where I connect survey responses of what it feels like to be living in Scotland in a responsive sculpture and Cherish, a collaborative performance commenting on value. Each work is a step on the path of repairing the damaged social fabric by investigating ways to level the power structure, seek wisdom, and choose how to be together. Researching in a global, diverse, and remote rhizomatic network structure, this performance will demonstrate (an)other way to do research that decolonizes the research and researcher. By tuning into and trusting epigenetic experiences, the ancestral knowledge within my body, the rhythm and pace of nature, witnessing the discovery experiences of others researching in the cracks of hegemony for cyclical unlearning, relearning and healing, this framework will demonstrate a way to thrive in the cracks of an exclusionary and damaging dominant narrative. Like Barbara Kamler and Pat Thomson (Kamler and Thomson, 2008), I “reject transmission pedagogies that normalize the power-saturated relations of protégé and master and point to alternate pedagogical approaches that position doctoral researchers as colleagues engaged in a shared, unequal, and changing practice”.
By practicing learning as freedom and healing for wisdom, I position this performance as prefiguring a wise and interconnected way of being with humans as but one part of a planet ecology; the Ecocene. There is (an)other way. One that reasserts learning as a human right instead of something profit from. One that facilitates knowledge, mastery, purpose, AND agency. One that reconnects us to our ancestral experiences and is based in the knowledge we hold in our whole beings, individual and collective. One that opens the way for parents, and other groups marginalized by the dominant model to work rhizomaticaly and equitably, rather than rely on hierarchy and transmission pedagogy to lead us to a more connected and sustainable future. We just have to imagine, and have the courage to perform.
This performance of a DIY Ph.D. is an extension of the DIY healing research to be conducted during the performance. My paternal great-grandmother’s Scottish ancestors left at the height of famine and clearances in the mid-1840s. The impact of profit above all has played out in my Robertson family line to devastating effect. Abuse, neglect, fear, mistrust, mental health, and substance abuse suffered down through the generations are indicative of the political and sociocultural hegemony of the era. These experiences live on in memory- cultural, family, and personal. And make authority-led healing difficult to impossible, and often undesirable. I want to find a way to liberate and reframe the memories to facilitate healing that empowers and prefigures life for an equitable, sustainable, and healthy future, for myself, my family, and society. Social Anarchist Theory and Anarchist Aesthetics hold clues to how.
Anarchist Aesthetics draws upon Social Anarchist Theory to investigate ways to create art that makes clear there are many ways this is and could have been. Working within an Anarchist Aesthetics framework, the research into DIY Healing asks three questions.
- If place and soil retain cultural memory, family memory, might there be DIY (or DIOurselves) healing and wellbeing in working and making with(in) ancestral land?
- How might working with(in) ancestral lands and family history/genealogy research inform each other? Are there patterns to follow? Is each case unique? Or..?
- And how might we document the work within an Anarchist Aesthetic; i.e. represent the work clearly as one potentiality at just one moment in time?
The overarching goal of the research is to generate theory grounded in experiential data of art practice and build knowledge in an underdeveloped area of aesthetic theory. By working with(in) soil and land as witness to expose hegemony in cultural memory, to reframe narratives that perpetuate trauma we can expect to…
Generate a theory of how DIY healing might work (or not) and why it is appealing, i.e. theory of how to prefigure personal and communal well-being in the cracks of a dominant narrative.
Gain a deeper understanding of the intersection of cultural memory, family memory, and personal memory in artwork.
Have further developed an anarchist aesthetic by generating a how-to represent without static/material emphasis.
One outcome will be completed research of DIY healing ancestral trauma with(in) ancestral lands. The resulting physical output, and documentation, of working with soil and lands of my Robertson ancestors will also contribute to further developing and grounding Anarchist Aesthetic theory in art practice. In this case, my practice. The primary outcome however, will be a sustainable model of communities of practice of meaningful and connected research communities in a world that is increasingly digital. Finally, the overall outcome for my practice will be a profound deepening and solidifying of not only why I make art, but also what it’s for. I talk of my practice as being an Artist-in-Residence in Being. Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene will make concrete exactly what that means, not only theoretically but in practice. In short, I seek to do this performance and research because…
- the dominant western narrative of doctoral-level arts research needs a bit of wisdom,
- the dominant western narrative of trauma and healing also needs a bit of wisdom,
- I can contribute another perspective to counterbalance the dominant narrative, and
- as a mother and artist, I am mindful of the example I set for my son.
The anarchist idea of social transformation is one in which spheres of social action are gradually freed of relations of domination, a process which can go on within and alongside the existing structures… as captured in the phrase ‘Building the new society in the shell of the old.’…
Judith Sussa, (2017) “Anarchism in Education Studies”.
The Anarchist Imagination, Levy & Newman ed., Routledge, p. 203
This performance and research are a launchpad to the next phase of my career - holistic, life-centered independent scholarly arts research practice. My son will watch on as doors that are currently closed due to me open. He will see that there are many ways to deepen our understanding of the world, that wisdom is the goal, and that art is in how we live. The project will be documented online on my own website, Instagram and via the digital presences of the established artist organizations to which I belong, e.g. Spilt Milk Gallery, and Working Class Creatives Database. I look to Instagram takeovers, press releases, eZines, and gallery spaces to share my ideas and work. I’ve also had some success promoting work locally with small sticky photos that have QR codes with links to digital spaces left in strategic locations, e.g. promoting Spilt Milk Gallery online exhibits. When the performance has ended I’ll submit a write-up and documentation of the work to arts journals and alternative publications, along with a scholarly paper on the experience to academic journals.
The main risk for this project revolves around concerns for the Artist Researcher’s well-being while undertaking an autoethnographic study of personal and familial traumatic memories. While the end result is expected to be healing, discomfort arises in any healing process. In the process of healing wounds, it can get worse before getting better. To mitigate the emotional disruption surfacing ancestral trauma can bring, a Person-centered Art Therapist will be consulted as needed for check-ins, about once or twice a month. I have joined the APCCA - Association for Person-Centred Creative Arts Facebook group and contracted with a therapist.
A secondary risk is that the documents I need in the course of research may not be available online. The first recourse will be to call the holders of the documents for copies or scans to be emailed or mailed. If that proves too expensive or not possible, I may need to travel. In the event I do need to travel, it would likely be to Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Perth and can be done by train to limit my carbon footprint. Traveling to remote locations will likely mean travel by car. I will make every effort to limit and combine trips where possible. There is an off chance that I find specific addresses of birth and residence. At that time I’ll evaluate the mode of transport with the least impact on the environment, depending on where it is I’ll need to go and collect soil. A final risk involves residencies and other fieldwork. If there is another COVID-19 surge, we might go into severe restrictions; archives and museums might be shut again. In that event, I can phone, ask for photos, copies, etc. For the residency, it would be coordinating with the onsite experts to make it happen remotely.
Planning the project, updates
Stay tuned to my creative log on this site for performance plans, research plans, and general project updates.
Activities and rationale, a quick overview
My paternal great-great-grandfather James Robertson's parents and elder siblings emigrated from Scotland to Wisconsin around 1849/50. The personal details, though shrouded in mystery and glossed over in family history, are part of a broader historical context that has reverberated throughout the generations. The impact of the sociocultural trauma of dispossession and forced migration - abuse, neglect, mental, and physical health repercussions - are sadly not unique to my family. Across cultures, traumatic memories are stored in social systems, family systems, our DNA, and our soils and lands. Connecting family history with sociocultural history will reveal how sociocultural trauma plays out in family systems and then feeds back into cultural memory. This interplay of inherited traumatic memories at the intersection of social systems, family systems, and personal well-being is where I begin.
To reclaim lost Robertson family history and put that history in context, I will be
- Working through the IHGS genealogy correspondence course for particulars on Scottish genealogy,
- While accessing family and cultural history documents online,
- And accessing family and cultural history documents in person at archives in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and elsewhere in Scotland (TBD from research),
- And visits to sites found in the related archives and documents.
Because their emigration from these lands is tied to broader Scottish history, I’ll also seek tangible experiences of historical Scottish daily life by visiting living history museums like Auchindrain Township, Isle of Arran Heritage Museum, Highland Folk Museum, and the Museum of Abernethy. Living with a processing disorder means that I will need several passes through the documents, information, and several visits to sites to fully take in and understand what I've found.
I also will undertake a residency at the Scottish Crannog Centre or a similar venue to experience the relationship Scottish Iron Age people had with the land so that I better understand if/how land and soil layout out in social relations and structures. This targeted residency goal fits into the wider research project goal by tapping into a time before the trauma of my Robertson ancestors. This residency will yield experiential data of (an)other way of being by bringing older genetic and cultural memories back to the surface and shine a light on the reality of a multitude of unrealized potentialities; the reality that things can always be otherwise. Which will give context to and facilitate reframing contemporary memory.
Through these resources and experiences, I’ll get a physical, emotional, visceral, and intellectual sense of the material culture of the different eras and the sociocultural context of that material culture. This experiential knowledge will give context to information in the documents and frame ancestral site visit experiences. I expect outputs involving soil, land, and journaling the experiences, seeking ways to capture the experiential data and metadata that fit within Anarchist Aesthetics. A key part of disrupting inherited memories, cultural and familial, will be tying together what I learn from the experience of tapping into soil as the immortal witness with the family and social history I uncover in genealogy research. The experiences left in the land and soil, the information unknown, withheld or misrepresented will be the space to see, hold, and create potentialities; the multitude of ways things could have been and could be, to (re)frame my understanding of what has happened and what could be. To heal.
References
Cundy, A. (2019) "Taking the credit: Can universities tackle academic fraud?" Business Day. 12 September 2019. https://businessday.ng/opinion/article/taking-the-credit-can-universities-tackle-academic-fraud/ accessed multiple times 2021-2022.
Harbin, A. (2021) "On decolonizing my classroom (and leaving academia to do it)." Post PhD, Allison Harbin blog. 13 January 2021. https://allisonharbin.com/post-phd/2021/1/13/decolonizing-the-classroom accessed multiple times 2021-2022.
HESA (2020) Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2018/19 - Qualifications achieve https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/16-01-2020/sb255-higher-education-student- statistics/qualifications accessed 22 May 2021.
Hewlett, S.A. (2007) Off-Ramps and On-Ramps. Keeping talented women on the road to success. Harvard Business School Press.
hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
Kamler, B and Thomson, P. (2008) "The Failure of Dissertation Advice Books: Toward Alternative Pedagogies for Doctoral Writing”. Educational Researcher, 37:8, pages. 507-514. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X08327390
Kulp, A.M. (2016) “The Effects of Parenthood During Graduate School on PhD Recipients’ Paths to the Professoriate: A Focus on Motherhood”. New Directions for Higher Education, no. 107, Winter.
The Thesis Whisperer (2015) Single Parenting through a PhD. https://thesiswhisperer.com/2015/07/15/single-parenting-through-a-phd/ blog accessed 22 May 2021.
van Anders, S.M. (2004) “Why the Academic Pipeline Leaks: Fewer Men than Women Perceive Barriers to Becoming Professors” Sex Roles, 51:9-10, pages 511–521. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-004-5461-9.
Williams, S.A. (2007) “Graduate students/mothers negotiating academia and family life: Discourses, experiences, and alternatives” Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2412.
*Falmouth University? It's not in Scotland. (I hear you ask.) Because Falmouth was the one program in the UK with the magic combination of faculty with a deep interest in the topic, already researching in the subject area, a compatible approach, and funding. A couple of other programs in the UK had one or two of those, none of which accepted the project, and no program in Scotland had more than one.
