P-Prompt: Spaces for discomfort - Recognition
In this prompt, which is based on the public conversation “First Times do not exist” with friend, colleague, artist and curator Nkule Mabaso in Göteborg we ask how to deal with discomfort when encounters and inspirations are not formally acknowledged. An artistic book Nkule (co-)produced was the crucial inspiration for another peer's work, but despite the shared understanding of the politics of recognition, this act of reuse was not formally credited. In this conversation, Nkule insists on the importance and the willingness to take time and be in conversation to acknowledge and sit with this space of discomfort, so the tensions can become tangible and be addressed together rather than looking for punitive gestures or corrective quick fixes.
When we encounter something that catalyses our thinking, how do we make this encounter legible? And when we have reused work without recognising one another sufficiently, what can we do?
A conversation and practice report
Nkule Mabaso (NM): So we had this call, where I said to her: “Hey it's a wonderful publication, well done, but I am uncomfortable that there is no stated relationship between this [our] publication and your publication.” If citation and referencing are about signalling how you come to know something and when, then what happens in these moments where it is not acknowledged. The space of discomfort means for me working through how to talk about it, how to deal with it. After some time, I had a call with her to present my discomfort, also considering the conversations we've had in other instances, and the shared understanding around the politics of recognition, the politics around citation and what acknowledgement does.
When you encounter something, and that thing catalyses your thinking, how do we then cite and make space for that moment of encounter? How do we make an acknowledgement? What would be an adequate way to signal that? Yes, the handwritten dedication in the book is a signalling: “Thank you for being an inspiration. We are majorly indebted to you. Your book was a lodestar for the making of this one, and for many more creative publications.”
But this homage doesn't exist anywhere else, just in this one copy of the book she gave to us. So, what would be a sufficient signal?
Eva Weinmayr (EW): You seem to make a distinction between a signal towards you, such as the handwritten acknowledgement in the book – and a signal which is legible to others?
NM: Yes, both publications follow particular conventions. Both got copyright declarations, Creative Commons licences and ISBNs. Both want to participate in the matrix of what it means to be visible or invisible in these registers and be accounted for within the academic or other contexts. There has to be a trackability of the impact of the contribution. Clearly, the publication was impactful, it contributed to the production of something new – but this impact remains unstated. It's problematic if it is not registered in the systems that provide certain kinds of recognition.
EW: It seems we are mostly talking about the registers of academic recognition?
NM: We are in academia. This is happening in the context of her now being at the University of Basel, and we were at the University of Cape Town. So there is a particular regime, particular practices of how to make things visible and make connections clear.
It was not an invisible act in an obscure location. It was a “moderately obscure act”, but at least we signalled it. We sent an e-flux announcement, like “Hey everybody, we did it”. So it would resonate, and it would somehow exist. But if all this effort of communicating the release broadly, the labour of disseminating, of getting it in front of people still means that its impact is again not acknowledged, then why disseminate? Why participate? Why produce?
EW: But there is a difference! It is being disseminated, and it has impact. It inspires people, as the handwritten note is already saying. And if you wouldn't be within this regime of needing citations in order to have a career in academia, then that would have been a really important acknowledgement: This book has been an inspiration. Outside academia, this gesture and acknowledgement would have probably been enough, and wonderful. Only once we move into the strict regimes of academia, then this informal gesture is not enough, and you'd need to count your the citation score in order to make a living. Quite cruel!
NM: It's absurd that those systems exist and there are a lot of people who are already for the longest historical period outside the benefit of those systems. That's one thing to be aware of. And I would still caution and say, even within artistic practice that is outside of the academy, it’s still a crucial exercise to perform. To say, who has inspired you, and who the work departs from if it was catalytic to your thinking significantly. What does citation actually do? Citation is about making yourself legitimate, but legitimate to whom?
EW: Yes, of course, one big question in our project about decolonial feminist practices of reuse we are asking how to make the conditions of reuse explicit. How to put these relationships in writing so they are recognizable and legible for others.
Nkule 22:41 How would you cite a relationship? What would be adequate? In our case, we don't want an apology, we don't want a statement to stick on the website. It's not adequate, something else is going on. It's a conversation that I'm trying to enter into. We need to talk in different ways to arrive at something else. But this something else is not quite clear. We don't need a quick standard corrective... it's about something else.
