Unreal Boys

The Slovene Ethnological Society published a still from Unreal Boys (or Imaginarní fantje as the film is called in Slovenian – I like it!) in their journal Glasnik to represent their article on Days of Ethnographic Film. I love so much in this photo: I’m sitting comfortably on the floor, shotgun mic in my hand, talking to my research participant who is in his office chair at his desk. Solomon behind the camera has captured me, in his unintrusive, intuitive filming style, in the moment of an important insight that became the main finding of my thesis. Fieldwork at its best!

Japanese test

I spent most time this week practicing my Japanese, since I had a personal Japanese evaluation test over Zoom on Thursday morning. The results will go into the application that I worked on last week and which I finished and sent off on Thursday afternoon this week.

I think the test went fine! It was a bit of grammar (particles) in the beginning, but then mostly reading (my weakest side), then listening (to a news reportage), and lastly 20 minutes of conversation. Writing came in naturally as I had to summarise both the reading and the listening with my own words. No multiple choice questions at all! Some kanji reading questions as well, which was superfun, because I love kanji and I’m good at them.

The test was quite similar to the one I took three years ago at FU. Then I “failed miserably”, and that was mainly due to the fact that I couldn’t write kanji by hand! I was used to only writing on computers, where kanji are suggested to you as you type. Since then, a revolution has happened in my Japanese learning, and that revolution is spelled Heisig and his book Remember the Kanji – I started the method in April 2020 and it changed my life. I was bad in other areas too, and ever since that failed placement test in 2019 I have studied Japanese actively and improved. No matter how I did on the test this week, the improvement was real and that felt good.

Schedule

I think it can be seen from the schedule that this week was a bit off. Last week was so busy with the Queer autoethnography course and the SVA Film and Media Festival, which ended with Zoom Q&A’s (where I was the one Q’ed) on both Saturday and Sunday, and writing a great funding application on top of that, so I think I needed to do less this week, and that’s why the days – for the first time! – don’t line up at a nice 8 hours of work per day.

Was invited to O for coffee on Tuesday – good talk. Dinner out on Friday with A, Ale and C. Visited birthday boy P on Saturday. I’ve spent the weekend sorting out stuff, getting lighter. And some very good news from S that means so much.

Lovely walks every day.

Readings

Queer autoethnography essay (QA X)

• Johnson, Amber. 2014. “Doing It.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 3 (4): 366–88. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2014.3.4.366.
• Boellstorff, Tom. 2010. “Queer Techne: Two Theses on Methodology and Queer Studies.” In Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research, edited by Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash, 215–30. Surrey: Ashgate.
  • I liked this one, and especially the importance Boellstorff gives to the anthropological craft. He mocks a bit the contemporary focus on letting people describe themselves (p. 218). Already Malinowski apparently said that there was a difference “between what people do and what people say they do” (p. 216-17).

Michel Foucault

• The Foucault Reader: “The Body of the Condemned” (from Discipline and Punish), p. 170-78.
• The Foucault Reader: “Docile Bodies” (from Discipline and Punish), p. 179-87.

Film

• Josō (screening and Q&A)
• Living While Black, In Japan

Japanese

Anki, kanji, news, and:

• Try N2 repetition (around chapter 3-4)
• Bojinsha N1, N2, N3 book (the N2 part):
  • Grammar, words, reading: 24/31 (50 min)
  • Listening: 4/9
• Bojinsha N2 book (full test, actual time limit):
  • Grammar, words, reading: 41/75 (cause skipped 69-75 when the 105 minutes were up; I got 6/7 on those later but in 45 minutes – my weakness is reading and reading fast!)
  • Listening: 20/31
• Shaman King (episodes 36-40).

TV

• På spåret! E01.

A very intensive week.

Funding application

I’ve been working on the application for an important fieldwork stipend that my supervisor pointed me to. This work included contacting a potential advisor at a host institution in Japan and organising some kind of official Japanese language evaluation. Both worked out! I’ll take the language test over Zoom next week. The hardest work was to write the project description and other parts that demanded brain power. Submission deadline is 1 December 2021. Yesterday (Saturday) I sent off my draft submission to both my supervisors to see if they have any comments.

Queer autoethnography

But the main thing this week was the course in Queer autoethnography at the University of Stavanger, online. We were 22 participants from around the world. An inspiring setting, but I must say the lectures and discussions were a bit of an anticlimax for me. I had gone all in and spent 33 hours (yes, just counted) in the two and a half weeks leading up to the course doing the readings and assignments. I was psyched! And so I think I had expected to engage with the readings more with the lecturers and students, in a way that didn’t happen. On the other hand, the readings were great (curated by each lecturer) and maybe the readings ‘are’ the course? I think most students didn’t take the course seriously and hadn’t done the readings. This makes me want to focus on those who, like myself, go all in. There were a few of them there. As the course convenor put it:

Find your people, wherever they are, and hold on to them.

Despite some complaints, I leave the course feeling inspired. Autoethnography is such a powerful method, especially when laced with queerness.

Now it’s time for essay writing (deadline in January 2022). I know exactly what I want to write about and I’ve already done one reading for that purpose.

SVA Film and Media Festival

And then it was the SVA Film and Media Festival – that’s the Society for Visual Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association. And they had selected my film Unreal Boys for their programme! Yesterday (Saturday) I participated in a little Q&A:

Schedule

Yes, I kept up the walks: even when classes started at 9am I had a brisk morning walk for an hour through Hasenheide!

On Friday I met some friends at a bar, which demanded I took a fresh Covid test. Such a surreal feeling to be in a bar packed with dancing people. I was only there for an hour and don’t have any urge to go to a bar again anytime soon. But it was good to be a bit social, cause otherwise I didn’t meet anyone except J very briefly for an administrative matter.

Come to think of it, I’ve been a PhD student for two months now.

I forgot to mention last week that my application for a student visa to the UK has been approved. Took eight days and was an all-online experience. So I should start packing!

Readings

Queer autoethnography session 4 (QA 4)

• Elliston, Deborah. 2005. “Critical Reflexivity and sexuality studies in anthropology: Siting sexuality in research, theory, ethnography, and pedagogy.” Reviews in Anthropology 34(1): 21-47.
• Vanderbeck , Robert M. 2005. “Masculinities and Fieldwork: Widening the discussion.” Gender, Place & Culture 12(4): 387-402

Queer autoethnography essay (QA X)

• Blinne, Kristen C. 2012. “Auto(Erotic)Ethnography.” Sexualities 15 (8): 953–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460712459153.

Japanese

Anki, kanji, news, and:

• Shaman King (episodes 30-35).

TV

• Hackad 6, on SVT Play.
• Taskmaster, S10 E01. British culture! On SVT Play.