Sally Pirie

It’s always fun when, late in the summer, just when we are starting to feel the dread/excitement/thrill/terror of the coming fall semester, something delightful appears in your email inbox. Today I learned that my newest publication was out—this time starring lots of velveteen rabbits and the skin horse, which were fun to draw and also ekphrastically necessary for the message of the text.

This chapter appears in Margaret Eisenhart’s beautiful edited volume from Edward Elgar titled, Research Handbook on the Anthropology of Education: Practices and Methods. You can learn more about it here.

My contribution,“Straight work and the skin horse: Drawings and comics and how to use them in the anthropology of education,” like any piece of CBR scholarship, took bloody forever to draw. Like, forever. Wesley Osum says making comic art is like dragging oneself up a hill, a hill upon which one might imagine the delights of just writing something in Microsoft Word, the simplicity of typing, the ease of text. However, I keep drawing because I believe this is the best and most useful way I can communicate the worlds of culture, science and inquiry. And as always when producing this kind of work, I’m constantly learning about new ways to improve my craft—usually mid-draft. So, it was fortunate that Margaret and the people at Edward Elgar were incredibly patient.

The chapter itself is about how to do comics-based research and drawings in anthropological research, and specifically in the anthropology of education. I make the distinction between looking and seeing, between the work and the job, between the ‘real’ and the performative, and the whole idea of side hustles and straight work masquerading as ‘real scholarship’ while the art, the drawings, the fieldwork doodles and the comics-based approaches are equally if not more real. The skin horse from the doomed nursery presides over the proceedings, reminding us of the real. And of course there are pages and pages of examples of how you might explore using drawings in your fieldwork, and lots of different entry points for beginners and master artists alike. I loved writing this piece—it brought together things I have been thinking about for a long time and gave me the opportunity to explore how these ideas fit into the histories and contemporary practices of anthropology.

The book itself is crazy expensive–so ask your librarian to purchase it for your institution! And, here are a few tasty previews of my chapter to tide you over in the meantime:

Well, folks, it has been a busy month, so let’s get caught up!

I am just back from a bit of a whirlwind trip to England, a place where I have so many friends and colleagues and where I always feel at home. On this particular trip, I gave a lecture and mini-workshop on comics-based research and zine-making at LSBU, attended a book launch at King’s College along with colleagues and co-authors, learned about indigenous storywork and its connections to art-making with Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara at the Tate Modern, had some planning and writing time to begin work on my new CBR book with my longtime conspirator and co-author Professor Marie-Pierre Moreau, and finally attended and spoke at the London Center for Arts Based Research conference at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge. I also had lots of time to indulge a bit in my love of 14th and 15th century English history and art. This included making my usual pilgrimage over to the National Portrait Gallery to visit some of my favorite folks, including but not limited to Margaret Beaufort, a brilliant 15th century badass if ever there was one. If you want an example of a resilient and strategic survivor who navigated an era of brutal chaos like a boss look no further. She is pictured above.

It was delightful from start to finish and I learned so much. I must also thank CBIKS for supporting all my work so generously.

The book launch was particularly important. I was lucky enough to be included as a chapter contributor in The Modern Guide to Education, Gender and Sexuality, edited by Professors Marie-Pierre Moreau and Kate Hoskins. My chapter in the book is the fourth, positioned next to two chapters by my heroes Carolyn Jackson, Vanita Sundaram, and Hannah Retallack, though they are by no means the only heroic authors in the volume. My chapter, titled, “Break Glass in Case of Emergency: The Case for Arts-Based Research Methods in Gender Diversity”, makes a case for how arts-based research –broadly defined—may be an apt blade for the total, wholesale, scream-the-place-down emergency we find ourselves in at the moment, both in the U.S. and elsewhere—but especially in the U.S. And let it be said that when I wrote the chapter many months ago (remembering that the gestation period for an academic publication is a bit longer than we might imagine) things were nowhere approaching as dark as they are today. The editors wrote of my chapter,

“Sally Pirie’s chapter challenges the academic cannon and is written as a piece of comics-based research. As Pirie reminds us, the US is one of the deadliest places on earth to be a woman, particularly for trans women and women of color. Current policies are brutally affecting any progress achieved in terms of equal rights for women and other minorities as a new anti-equity agenda is implemented. As she observes, ‘While the work of the social scientist once involved uncovering and exploring hidden systems of oppression those systems quote are no longer hidden.’ In conditions such as these arts-based research strategies question conventional methodology and have the potential to facilitate the dissemination of robust research in ways which are accessible and democratic.” (p 3).

I really, really believe this is true.

And, considering how things have shifted even from the time I wrote the chapter, the editors asked me to make some brief remarks at the launch. As many people asked me for my written remarks, I’m including them below. But be warned: they are intemperate. They include a bit of profanity. However, if anyone ever lived in a time that warranted intemperate profanity, it is us, and it is now.  Here’s what I said, trying my best to channel good old Margaret Beaufort and her imposing portcullis.

First of all, I want to thank the publishers in the series authors who were so wonderful. Comics-based research is awesome of course but it can be difficult to fit into standard volumes and they really went above and beyond to help me with this piece. I’m very honored to be included in this volume with so many of my heroes.

And I’m so glad that I was able to be here at this launch having traveled from the United States, where, at the moment, we find ourselves at the intersection of stupid and evil. It’s a bad place to be. I fully expect that when I return to the US on Monday with my 15-year-old daughter who is here with me tonight, the SAVE act will be on its way to passing. This piece of legislation will bar the vast majority of married women, trans people, and anyone who–like me–has changed their surname from voting. This group is overwhelmingly made of up women. We know what this means and this — as my chapter title suggests —is an emergency. One of many relentless ongoing emergencies that come like waves upon waves to drown us.

My chapter is about this state of emergency in the United States. But it’s also about how arts-based research provides an avenue to fight back by telling true stories from research and arming others to use unruliness, art and stories to resist the systematic and relentless symbolic, political, legislative and literal violence against women that characterizes everyday life in the United States.

When I wrote this chapter, I deliberately made it a provocation. Partly because I learned when I was a newspaper cartoonist that the best way to fight any tyrant is to make fun of him. But also because every story I told is true, and I’m not afraid, and frankly I’m a badass who survived the newspaper industry in the 90s so this is pretty much what I trained for — and we all, here, scholars standing here in this room, and the people whose stories we tell—are pretty goddamn badass too.

And my chapter names Donald Trump as an alleged rapist. I drew him and wrote the words in my own handwriting. And that was before we knew that he was something much, much worse. The publishers were very, very worried — and rightly so—that they would be sued by the Trump administration because of what I wrote. Remember he sued the BBC. But at the end of the day, they helped me find a way to write it anyway. Because, in the words of John Oliver, giving a bully your lunch money only makes him come back hungrier each time. The bully is never going to stop. So when the bully tries to make you shut up, to deny the evidence of your own eyes and ears, and to stop writing the things that are true —the only response that works are the magical four words: fuck you, make me.  There’s so much gaslighting and post truth nonsense circulating in the ether right now that people are told not to believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears. But as scholars we are about telling them YES you did see what you saw and it is true AND WE SEE IT TOO. And we are in the business of seeing.

I would encourage everyone, especially those of us who do work in gender scholarship to continue telling stories. We need to move into a documentary and testimonial phase where we record and speak truthfully and relentlessly about what we see around us. Stories are powerful. Art is powerful. More people should do it. We should help them do it. On the walls and on the floors and on the ceilings and in every book and in every class, and in every word we speak from now until this regime is on its knees. Which brings me to my favorite quote of all time from actor Pedro Pascal, who like me, first came to the United States as a child and who, like me, is an advocate for the transgender people so relentlessly and needlessly targeted by the regime. He said,

“Keep telling the stories, keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are. And fuck the people that try to make you scared, And fight back. This is the perfect way to do so in telling stories. And don’t let them win.”

And then I took a deep breath. 

Meanwhile, back home, my students made paintings and zines.

And this month I will be speaking about Comics-Based Research in Sweden! (well, on zoom in Sweden, but still!) I am so excited to be a part of the Everyday Comics Network. Stay tuned for more good stuff, friends. Keep drawing, keep making art, keep producing critical scholarship, and don’t let the bullies win. As Gerhard Richter says, art is the highest form of hope.

In which I appear quite heroic indeed.

I gave a little guest lecture to some wonderful students at the University of Galway and received the best thanks ever. The instructor wrote,

“Thank you so much for joining our comics class yesterday! The students were absolutely thrilled and thought you were amazing. After you left they all exclaimed over how cool you were to keep doing the work you’re doing despite all the old crusties. (They also said “she’s sooooo American!” haha. This is a compliment, if tinged with humour).

And at least one of them has since changed her final project to be a non-fiction comic looking at adultism in school lunch programmes.

I attach a scan of their check-out cards (for attendance) which were drawn on the theme of “inspired by Sally” for your enjoyment. As you can see, they really were inspired:”

I am not sure how heroic I really am in real life but this was just the boost I needed! Let’s hope I can live up to it!