Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine: a tale of becoming... a working-class academic (researching environ(mental) health)

Mcphie, Jamie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5290-1685 (2014) Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine: a tale of becoming... a working-class academic (researching environ(mental) health). Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge (27).

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Abstract

...knowledge is not classificatory. It is rather storied. (Ingold, 2011, 159). The semi-fictional story of Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine (which you may eventually come to, although it may be read without reading this preface-epilogue) traces the journey of a working-class child who slowly transforms into a transclassed young adult to become a lecturer in higher education. During his time teaching and studying/researching at university he is transformed yet again into a middle-class academic (by Mr. Neat and Mr. Tidy who want nothing more than to 'straighten him out'!). Eventually, however, this enclassing has the reverse effect on him as he has a moment of existential clarity and becomes a working-class 'haecceity' in academe, finally accepting/realising that he/she [3] has no 'fixed' form as an organismic 'subject' (although a story never finishes at 'the end'). This preface-epilogue is messy. It introduces-concludes the story of Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine by taking a nonlinear route across a wide plane, assembling themes of children's literature, gender (in)equality, environmental (in)justice, psychiatry/psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, schizoanalysis, happiness, academic elitism, suicide, flat caps, myceliums, extended minds and entangles them together within the assemblage of social class and inequity; because they cannot be separated. You, the reader/performer, will have to do some work. You are not merely a passive observer or audience member. By your very actions (or 'intra-actions'), of reading this you are implicated and imbricated in the story. You are changing it as we speak; because you cannot be separated from it. This is not symbolic. It means nothing. It is always a becoming...

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge
Publisher:	Bowling Green State University
ISSN:	1555-9998
Departments:	Institute of Science and Environment > Outdoor Studies Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas (CNPPA)
Depositing User:	Jamie Mcphie
Date Deposited:	26 Jun 2015 14:12
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2024 09:07
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/1782

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