Opinion: A Humble Attempt at Self-Ethnography

A photo from our studio

Our small studio is filled with coins that travelled with us from different places: Turkish Liras from home, Euros from here, and Swiss Francs from a random trip years ago. For some reason that is unbeknownst to me, I found myself pondering about these coins on this random yet typically cold Belgian night after having just finished a chapter from Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. Why were they all here, laid out on the counter like that, when only one had any use for me if I needed to buy something? I then started questioning their value, but who was to determine that? Does the value come from the power of purchase it equips me with, or rather the thoughts that wander in my mind when I see them laid out on the counter? If for the latter, the coins from here would be worth the least, as they constantly remind me of the uncertainty my future holds and the intense feeling of being unwelcomed unless I possessed them. However, at the same time, having them often fills me with more pain than joy, as if the faces on the coins bore into my eyes, with a similar disappointment; people had the moment I started speaking any language other than theirs or they saw the weird letters in my name. Their bare presence was enough to make me self-aware and worry about the sheer amount of pressure to work harder than most to accumulate enough of them to show the government I had money to finance all of my next year just to be able to stay here. On the other hand, my presence meant nothing to them, except maybe a threat.

Failing to find satisfactory answers to my inquiries, I began to feel like my anger was slowly taking over the pain and contemplation. It was due to the simple fact I needed to consider this while the others did not. Others do not have to know what their coins are worth in comparison. Others, whose coins would not become worthless once they moved countries. Others were free to stand out and not afraid of being stereotyped as ferocious. What value could they ever hold when they constantly reminded me of my worthlessness in this country? Then, reality, which I was constantly reminded of, hit me again: I was the other.

With a need to put out the fire, my anger ignited, and I moved my attention to the Swiss Francs standing next to the Euros. At least they would mean something more, as their nostalgic value would remind me of a time when I got invited to a foreign land, where I would not be seen as an intruder who would seek refuge there but a simple visitor who was passing by - as long as I did not over welcome my stay, dictated by a 2-month Schengen I had stamped on my passport. It was the most ornate coin in my humble collection, which looked unreal compared to the others. It almost acted as a metaphor for the experience of being a tourist. You are, in fact, there, but your presence is not necessarily factual to the others, not it is for you. It is a period of escape, where you become a nobody in a liberating way without any roots until you return. But in the end, it was a fleeting experience, and it was the same case with my thoughts. 

I tried to renavigate myself as my glance shifted to the Turkish Liras. I had no clue about what they could afford anymore, whether it was worth anything for anyone. Nevertheless, looking at them filled me with a yearning for a time when I was wistfully unaware of my otherness, a time when I was not painfully aware of how my every movement took up some space in the public realm, and a time when I could understand when someone was talking about me. The coins might not be worth anything anymore, but there they lie, as the evidence of a reality where I was worth more, at least as much as the others that surrounded me. I would not be tossed away if my exchange rate fell below a certain level. But if that was really the case, why was I still here and not there?

Overburdened by thinking about my past, I was done with my freakishly long stare at the coins. I went back to my seat, but my thoughts would not settle. I was still trying to find a way to sort my qualifications into these coins. I came up with this bright idea of making up a hypothetical scenario where I would have the chance of only picking up one of these coins from the street if I found all of them at once. Without thinking too much about it, I decided that I would pick up the Euro. I was ashamed to express this even to myself. After all, I chose to come here, because I could not be myself in the place where I come from. I wanted to become the type of person who would not be anxious to check the news every day. I wanted to feel safe and secure about my future, my opinions, and my identity, like the Europeans I had met before. I would have loved to relate to the idea of wanting to grow old in the country I was born in, but I just could not. It was not a privilege I had. I was the other in all places! The painful irony was that the very battle I fought to be myself otherised me and tried to alienate my reality from who I am and who I want to become constantly, while at the same time, the more I fought, the more it subjectified me.

There is a Turkish proverb that goes as follows: Yukarı tükürsem bıyık, aşağı tükürsem sakal (which roughly translates into “If I spit above it is the moustache, if I spit below it is the beard.”), Even though I do not possess either, I was relating to the feeling of impossibility, which it conveyed truly, madly, and deeply. Unable to spit, I decided to write my thoughts down instead. At that point, I had no intention for this piece to evolve into one of my reflection notes for the class. I would not dare send an output that diverged significantly from my academic writing style. I was inspired by the way Fanon defended his experience and opinions so daringly and vigorously. I almost gasped when he began his introduction by claiming that “black man is not a man.” (Fanon 1952, 1). I was both excited and confused by this blunt statement. What did it mean, and why were we reading it? But the more I kept reading, especially the fifth chapter, titled The Fact of Blackness, the more I started to understand and relate the underlying reasonings. An object in the midst of other objects, Fanon explains the impossibility of being a black man through the different experiences that the I gets exposed to in their journey to situating their black identity in a framework that does not dehumanise their reality only to find out that their blackness is nothing but a shape-shifting tool for the coloniser to sustain their superiority and power (Fanon 1952, 82-108). In my opinion, this intricate position of being and non-being simultaneously could not be explained any better in an academic form. It was freeing to see that it was valid to express my feeling of being chronically allochtone everywhere in a way that did not necessarily expect professionalism and arguments based on existing literature and theoretical concepts. That is what encouraged me to put these reflections into words, but not as much to consider it a form of writing to submit for a class; after all, Fanon was also rejected by his doctoral supervisor.

It was not until a couple of days later I found the necessary courage in one of the background readings for the course by Yassir Morsi, titled Using “Auto-Ethnography” to Write About Racism.” In his words, this chapter is on racism, on stripping oneself free, through the snaps of the keyword and clicks of the mouse. The chapter is on writing, on the act of writing about, despite of, against, and to make sense of racism (Mossi 2021, 506). He saw the inability to present the truth in an objective way as a splendour (Mossi 2021, 507), and auto-ethnography as a method to overcome this inability as it allowed him to think and reflect through writing. Simultaneously, on a more meta level, Morsi argues that he finds it more fitting to write in a style that is outside the norms of Western academia when talking about the experience of being (un)seen under the white gaze. Morsi describes this as writing as a de-colonial act and a way that would allow him to speak outside the script in which he is always-already written as the other (Mossi 2021, 507-510).  The same was the case for me, the more I kept writing, the more I was able to put that alienating feeling of being outside my body, trying to see myself as the other into words; and that was also how I freed myself from it because it was an act of taking over my narrative in my own terms. I would like to think that it was also how Fanon felt, when writing Black Skin, White Masks: liberated. 

At that point, amongst all the stress and anxiety I had accumulated in the past couple of months with the approaching reality of graduating and not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, I felt joy: A joy that sprung from my choice of studying anthropology despite being endlessly confused about the future it held for me, and itself. I took a leap of faith a year ago, leaving my home for a new one and choosing a discipline unknown to many, but here I was, feeling more powerful than ever. That is how I decided to do it once more, by sharing this extremely personal account.

References

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press, 2008 (1952).

Morsi, Yassir. “Using “Auto-Ethnography” to write about Racism.” In Handbook of Autoethnography, edited By Tony E. Adams, Stacy Holman Jones and Carolyn Ellis, 505-512. New York: Routledge, 2021.