visctrix

visctrix is an important name for me, and now seems the right time to say something about it. As I explained on my Wikipedia user space, a visctrix is a space of creation of bodily affects that cannot be put properly into our usual words or names. I use it as my email address and as my online identity, especially in web forums, ICQ and games.

This comes from the Latin viscera or visceral - relating to feelings, affecting the internal organs - and playfully mixed with the end of the word matrix which is Latin for womb (a space of creation).

This name was created about six years ago when I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to run a 'cultural studies of the internet' course in the Fine Art dept of Leeds University. It picked up on a range of themes that can be found explored both in internet based spaces, but also in various discourses around art and identity politics (I prefer the word ethics to politics).

It is a name that doesn't like the concept of naming, a name that is constantly, hopefully, in progress or transition. Right now I'm certainly in a process of transition, and this needs to be managed carefully somehow - the aim is to be able to sustain myself and to be able to create... Part of this is a re-evaluation of where I find myself and where I'm going - a process in itself that people often write about in journals, diaries, and today, blogs.

So I am going to try to remember and rethink what the name visctrix means to me. The aim is to bring together some of the previously sustaining pathways that are beginning to diverge and disappear, and to try to reinvigorate them. I do think that this will be relevant to readers as it's also another way of naming my approach to life and philosophy, and hence my work, my thinking about advocacy, and this blog.

1. The Name
It seems Plato bears a lot of responsibility for this one, which has dominated the way we think in the West. Many people, including myself, think that the Name (with a capital N, meaning that it is somehow special, and Known, and a sort of fixed thing) is damaging and restrictive. Writers and artists and mystics and all sorts of people who fall outside the mainstream economic system have instinctively realised this and used pseudonyms and false names throughout time. The Name comes from the tendency towards control, originally from the wish of various people in history to control power, money and knowledge, now prevalent as the managerial and bureaucractic system we're all so familiar with.

Three examples will be quite grounding and constructive here. The first is about Joanne Bloggs whose community care assessment identifies eligibility for substantial access to care services. Unfortunately Joanne presents as a very angry young woman, so angry in fact that services are beginning to be withdrawn or withheld. I'm sure most advocates have met some people in similar situations where social care professionals simply seem to have labelled them 'Joanne Bloggs' - meaning aggressive, demanding and difficult. Of course they are demanding and difficult because their lives are demanding and difficult, but 'Joanne Bloggs' is well documented and she just can't sit down quietly and gratefully accept the help we offer. Often, not documented, there is joanne, or jo, or josey, or... These others don't have capitals, and in some ways they may feel they're better off without all that paperwork and managerial pressure. Outside the realm of paperwork and benefits and housing they put a brave face on life, have a laugh with their friends if they have any, and work their way through various problems in between. But then people come along and call them Joanne (even if they say 'Jo'), and ask horrible questions, and don't seem to listen, and they get upset and angry, and then the police are called or they get sectioned and everything goes even further downhill. Joanne is a Name, jo is a person, and tomorrow jo could feel much more friendly and pleasant because the sun's out - if only you'd come for the assessment the next day...

The second example is something I touched on in my note about the NAN Conference. This is about the Name of Advocacy (if Advocacy is a proper Name, it gets a capital too). It's a constant question, not just of Rick's, about whether we should rename 'advocacy'. No one understands it, some say. It gets confused with legal advocacy. The definition is too long and unwieldy, or too short and imprecise. To define something is the same as to Name it - once it has a definition we Know what it is, it's somehow special, and it's kind of fixed. This is useful for the legislators and commissioners, even the managers and the trainers: we can give people rights to it, we can manage contracts, and we can construct advocates to do the work. Maybe that's enough reason for you - we have to live in the real world, and if that's the way to get more advocates what's the problem? I would say wait though. Think for a moment about the link between Joanne and advocacy. At the moment advocacy has no capital - it's still a fluid concept, and it's practised in different ways. Without a capital, advocacy is a bit like jo, slightly out of reach of the catogorising tendencies of some of the people we work with. At the same time we seem to be able to communicate better with jo and others like her than many professionals. It's a subtle prediction, but something I think many of us kind of feel in our bones (or our viscera), that if we move too far into the realms of Advocacy, everything will become more defined and controlled and we'll end up only being able to communicate on Joanne's level again just like all the other Names. I think it's also important to remember that most of the people like jo seem to cotton on to what advocacy is pretty quickly after they start working with a good advocate. They don't need paper definitions, they need feelings, and I think many advocates, and many other people too, also work very productively in this space: let's celebrate and protect this slight vagueness and stop talking about burying advocacy under the tyrrany of the name.

My final example is just a quickie. Of course Social Worker, Psychiatrist, Police are all names, all names which are used to limit, constrain and abuse ordinary jos and johns who are often trying to give something back to the world, who often do extraordinarily sensitive work, and who are not described in my examples above. We are stuck with this tyrrany in some ways, and stereotypes are always breeding other opposing stereotypes. I am just trying to indicate the positions we find ourselves in as advocates when we meet the clients of some of the less accomplished practitioners.

Now this has already got long enough for one post. The other things I wanted to write about are listed below (they will become links as I write them up, hopefully soon). Feedback welcome as always.

2. Creation
3. Communication and movement
4. Community
5. Spirituality