3arabi-mapping...
mapping?
i have always tracked my footsteps, walking around blocks.
always lived internal lives, making mind maps (long before virtual realities of blogs and second lives).
always made lists on bits of paper, kept books to write things in.
now, cool people do this electronically in their pockets (including cross-referencing!)
some friends have laughed at the obsessive tendencies.
the odd person understands through their own habits.
unfortunately my horizontal filing (physical, electronic, virtual and mental) has become way too horizontal...
js said she wants to photograph my densely configured work diaries. she thinks they are amazing. that's a bit too public for me. i have to make sure i burn everything before i die. (i can just imagine my final list. ha! reminds me of when i was packing up to leave after a few years in ramallah. bb said to add 'leave' to my list of things to do.)
i remember a late night auburn street cafe conversation with oq. he told a story of piles of legal documentation stacked in a room, needing to find one phone number on one piece of paper. he could visualize his handwriting and the colour of the paper. he visualized where this was amongst the piles. and he found it. i remember asking our short blacks: why do we keep things on paper? why do we document? we looked at each other and simultaneously said: evidence.
not in the legal sense.
existential.
i remember a loungeroom conversation with ah, who said: 'you seem to accumulate things'. intonations of judgement. i said that every piece has a story related to who it came from. that habits of writing on paper were not merely descriptive of what's happened, but what is underneath, and how it feels. he said that he wants to leave no traces.
in a recent discussion with bh, we excavated ideas about why we document (whatever and however). he talked about the greek roots of the word 'archive' being 'house of the lawmaker'. he mentioned derrida's concept of 'archive fever'.
i remember one night in the bush near the campfire, a brief intersection of conversation with a woman, who said that in buddhist practice, writing reflections and realizations is not really encouraged, especially when you are still learning, as it brings too much conceptualization, and it does not encourage you to be in the present moment... (i later went to my little tent and wrote that down. ha!)
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Alissar,
It's a bit late in your discussion timeframe, but perhaps there is still time to consider the significant questions which might arise from your piece on evidence. For your readers, I should declare that I am not considering that question of an Arab-centred approach to research.
But I am thinking about "leaving traces". These days, this seems like such an environmentally-based statement. "I carried in all my water and food. I took out all my rubbish, I stuck to the path, you wouldn't know I had been there." I've said in the past about my travels that I have wanted to tread gently, meaning I've wanted not to be remembered for being clumsy or rude or aggressive. But leaving no traces, that's a different matter.
Leaving no traces, for me, means having had no interactions with other people. I can understand that there would be times when it would be inappropriate to write letters or take photos or make diary entries, but that doesn’t mean that we leave no traces. You see your notebooks as evidence – I wonder of what? Evidence of having had a thought? Evidence of having done something? Evidence of having known something? Traces of emotions? I agree that a single piece of paper can evoke memories of times long past.
“Evidence, but not in the legal sense” – evidence that we were there, that we know something, that we might be accountable, that our movements or our purchases can be traced. That we are under surveillance. I can sympathise with not wanting to leave traces in a climate of surveillance.
So, how do we balance the consequences of our interactions with others, the private externalisation of our thoughts and emotions, the potentially public actions and records?
Hilary
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