DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24134/be.v2i1

Table of Contents

Front Matter

	Brief Encounters at the Borderline Jade Lee	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract Foreword to the second issue of Brief Encounters.

	Acknowledgements Jade Lee	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract Acknowledgements for the second issue of Brief Encounters.

Articles

	‘Making Connections, Changing Lives’: Imaginaries of Commonality and Difference in Artisanal Weaving Tourism Kaitlyn Rabach	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract Prompted by a brief encounter over four years ago in Ifrane, Morocco, this article explores the contradictions involved in the industry of weaving and feminist tourism, a type of travel where tourists, mostly women from Central Europe and North America, visit weaving cooperatives in Latin America, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. Though searching for solidarity and connection, these tourists simultaneously retain enough separation from weavers that they continue to feel both entitled and obligated to ‘help’ the artisans through the power of their purchases. These tourists, then, push forth two narratives: one of commonality and the other of difference. This tension is not isolated within the weaving tourism industry, but is rather situated between a larger framework of uneven global processes and the commoditisation of women’s bodies and development. However, current literature surrounding tourism imaginaries emphasises narratives around difference, often failing to recognise commonality as a motivating factor for tourists to choose certain destinations and types of tours. This case study, using my own experiences on a weaving tour, as well as a discourse analysis of tourists’ pre-tour narratives and post-tour tales, deconstructs some of these contradictory accounts to better understand imaginaries around global solidarity, gender identity, and womanly obligations within touristic encounters.

	Neal Stephenson and the Franchise-State: Questioning Preconceptions of Nation-States and Borders from a Legal Perspective Steve Crawford	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract Migration and borders have been placed at the centre of recent political movements. Populist right-wing candidates in countries throughout Europe and in the US have built momentum by demonising migrants and calling for the institution of strong borders. Much of this political rhetoric is driven by agendas of cultural preservation and domestic prioritising of so called indigenous national populations. The maintenance and preservation of the home country is privileged above any consideration of wider humanity. The concept of the nation-state, with its inherent notion of borders, seem embedded in these ideas. By looking beyond the conventional arena of state theorising – law, politics, international relations etc. – can a new perspective be found to move past this impasse? Using Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash this article seeks to find a new conceptual position from which to consider prevailing narratives surrounding borders and migration. Attempting to conceive of an alternative way to frame questions stemming from considerations of national identity and geographic space, especially from the perspective of the central legal document to these processes, the constitution.

	‘Third wave feminism has led us to want to be EVERYTHING, amazing mothers, incredible professionals, perfect partners’: British Female Academics and the Politics of Reproduction Rebecca Buchanan	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract This exploratory ethnography investigates the everyday lives of British female academics at home and at work to ascertain to what extent they resonate with the feminist critique of the politics of reproduction. Purposeful sampling identified three respondents with a range of experiences and data including auto-ethography was gathered via a short questionnaire. With deductive analysis this was compared with historical and contemporary feminist analysis. The main topics covered include: (1) Reproductive Choices, (2) Marxism and the Second Shift, (3) Biomedical Bias, (4) Binaries in Relationships and the Male Role, (5) Individualism and the Child's Point of View.  The data indicates variability in progress on these issues after more than a century of feminist campaigning. Indeed, increased oppurtunities have materialised as increased pressure as the women aspire to achieve in every area of their lives within an unsupportive culture and an austerity focussed economic policy. The examination leads to a celebration of the individual creative responses to patriarchal restrictions and a recommendation for men to voluntarily make greater efforts towards equality.

	From the Closet of the Mind to Mindedness: Rethinking 'Animism' at the Crossover of Science Studies, Postcolonial Ethnography and Environmental Humanities Fani Cettl	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract Recently the concept of animism has been radically rethought at the crossover of postcolonial ethnography, environmental humanities and science studies. This reconceptualization aims at decolonising western sciences, destabilising an anthropocentric world picture, and articulating an environmental and animal ethics in the age of the Anthropocene. It decidedly abandons the controversial colonial epistemology in which animism was first introduced as a primitive and regressive belief in the supernatural spirits. In this essay I would like to situate this current rethinking of animism into a genealogy of historical discourses, following scholarship that has theorized one aspect of the Enlightenment secularisation processes as the internalisation of spirits and ghosts from nonhuman materiality on the outside into the space of the human mind. Building on this approach, I propose that the current, post-Enlightenment, posthumanist, cross-disciplinary rethinking of animism can be said to mark a certain historical reversal: an externalization of what has been seen as within and of the human mind, which I will in this essay term mindedness, to the outside nonhuman materiality (again).

	‘Her lovely presence ever near me lives’: A Brief Encounter from the Archives with May Alcott Nieriker Azelina Flint	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract This article is a brief account of the professional and married life of painter, May Alcott Nieriker, sister of the author, Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women (1868). I outline the theoretical importance of the current ‘archival turn’ in enabling the recovery of lesser-known female artists, and consider how scholarly bias has obscured the prolific and unpublished life-writings of Louisa May Alcott’s female relatives. The article provides a short account of how I became interested in May’s life, while conducting research for my PhD thesis on her sister at the Houghton Library, Harvard. It highlights the events and episodes of her life that stood out to me in her unpublished papers. From these materials, I provide an imagined projection of her personality, as there is yet to be a full-length biography written on her. I discuss her studies at Master Krug’s atelier in Paris and her rebellious act of painting a semi-nude African model in the classroom, while speaking out against racial prejudice. I emphasise her independence in coordinating her studies and travel, as well as her critical responses to the American art scene and Concord literati. The relationship with her mother, Abigail, is highlighted as a key influence on her life. May’s marriage to Ernest Nieriker is discussed in light of the negative reception she received for moderating her independent lifestyle, as well as the unpopularity of her husband with some Alcott-family biographers. The correspondence of May and the Nieriker family reveals the deep love between May and Ernest. Biographers are divided over the cause of May’s death, and this is discussed in light of the Nieriker correspondence. I conclude by providing a short analysis of May’s character, in order to show that she is a figure who deserves more attention within the field of nineteenth-century women’s history.

	Red Trauma: Aleksander Kobzdej’s Informel and the Challenge of Stalinist Past Wiktor Komorowski	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract This article investigates the relation between Socialist realism and Polish ‘matter painting’. By taking a closer look at the use of red hue developed by Aleksander Kobzdej for his informel compositions, it attempts to uncover psychological challenges Polish post-war artist had to face trying to emancipate from the Socialist tradition. A major work that only distantly approaches the topic of psychological stigma came to light along with the exhibition Nowoczesni a Socrealizm, which took place at the Starmach Gallery in Krakow in 2000. A more developed argument in this matter can be found in Tomasz Gryglewicz’s paper ‘Co zawdzięcza sztuka polska PRL-owi?’ in which he pointed out that the success of Polish ‘matter painting’ was based on the fact that Polish artists managed to preserve the pre-war ideas of Polish structuralism and colourism from the trauma of war and Stalinism. This alleged success became the input of Polish ‘matter painting’ in the development of European post-war art. This article offers an alternative argument to the one presented by Gryglewicz as it points to the fact that the unique character of the Polish art of the 1960s comes not from the ability to rebuild the pre-war avant-garde tradition, but rather from the ability to challenge the distress caused by the Stalinist past.

Creative Encounters

	Alternative Photography as an Ethnographic Method Flora Mary Bartlett	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract In this article I discuss the creative potential of alternative photographic processes in anthropological research. I argue that an experimental, fine art approach to photography can be more effective in fieldwork than the ubiquitous documentary style favoured to illustrate ethnographic texts. Using my own early-stage research, I discuss the potential of using photograms, cyanotypes, and archival images. I discuss the potential of these forms for multimedia interventions, through the inclusion of text into the physical image-objects themselves. This approach to visual methodologies challenges the positioning of the researcher to their participants and allows collaboration and creative engagement in the field. It connects visual practice with phenomenological approaches to experience.

	The Archive: Digital Art and an Unsustainable Future Tallulah Harvey	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract This short story, “The Archive”, grew out of the eco-critical research I underwent during my postgraduate degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. In recent years, literary studies have become increasingly invested in environmentalism. The damaging consequences of human endeavour are now widely regarded within environmentalist and scientific communities, and by environmental literary theory or “ecocriticism”, as a shift from the Holocene (the geological epoch that provided the appropriate conditions for mammals to thrive), to the “Anthropocene” (the epoch in which human activity has become the dominant driving force of climatic change). The ecological implications of the Anthropocene prompt questions regarding human enterprise and responsibility; fuelling dystopian or apocalyptic end of the world narratives and anxieties towards technology, capitalism and post-humanism. This short piece explores the current problems facing climate change activists, namely the inconsistencies between the scientific community’s attitude towards ecological degradation and popular culture’s. Slajov Zizek suggests that public denial and the disassociation from environmental disaster is not caused by a lack of scientific knowledge, but because we as individuals fail to corroborate what we already know about climate change with our sensory experience of the everyday: ‘We know it, but we cannot make ourselves believe in what we know’. The Archive questions this pervasive delusion, one that denies climate change even in the face of dwindling resources, increasing natural disaster and rising sea levels. We as a society consume natural resources excessively, without any regard for the consequences.  My work draws attention to the suicidal nature of this desire, and encourages its readers to take responsibility for their actions, for the sake of humanity’s survival.

	‘… and then you shoot them!’ A Conversation with Filmmaker Jorge Thielen Armand Steven Colburn	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract This paper is a transcription of a conversation between filmmakers and practice led researchers. The conversation took place at the 'Frames of Representation' global documentary cinema festival at The ICA in April 2017. CHASE was the academic partner for this festival. The conversation explores some of the challenges for documentarians and practice led researchers alike and offers a starting point for potentially fruitful conversations about methods, stakeholders, impact and other key issues.

Reviews

	Review of The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities Harriet Barratt	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract A review of The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities, edited by Anne Whitehead and Angela Woods (2016).

	Review of Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions Sana Goyal	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract The TED talk speaker and all-round literary superstar Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie follows her 2014 publication, “We Should All Be Feminists”, with another chapbook: Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017). An epistolary-style exploration of feminism, it echoes the gender- and sexual-politics of our times, and should be recommended as required reading with immediate effect.

	'A Play within a Play’: Why Hockney Still Matters at 80. A Review of the David Hockney Exhibition at the Tate Britain Emilia Halton-Hernandez	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract This is a review of the recent Hockney retrospective held at the Tate Britain in London.

	Review of Splendours of the Subcontinent: A Prince's Tour of India 1875-76 Beth Hunt	PDF | View Abstract
Abstract A review of the exhibition Splendours of the Subcontinent: A Prince's Tour of India 1875-76, 11 March 2017 – 18 June 2017 at the Cartwright Gallery, Bradford.