i'm not an authority on anything & everything is a little personal (and maybe that's fine)

how trying to be an apathetic cultural authority can limit us

I always thought I just wanted to write academically. I couldn’t tell you why exactly. Maybe because I didn’t think that my unorganized thoughts and words were as interesting or “good”. Maybe because writing academically makes me feel as though I have some type of authority, that I know more, I think more. I am interesting, see?! See how interesting I am, see how interesting the topics I think of are, how intelligent, how obscure! Look!

It would be a lie to say I don’t love writing about specific topics that require me to dive into theory, into research, into someone else’s thoughts, into history. Because I do love that. The process excites me ­– combing through Jstor and Proquest, looking up key words both hoping that someone else in the world has thought of something similar to me and also hoping I am the first, that my connections from point A to point B are new and fresh, but not so new and fresh that they are actually just silly and nonsensical. I save thousands of articles to Zotero, creating file after file, stockpiling sources like a little academic rat, always searching and greedy for more.

I have said that my dream is to publish a book with an academic press that is so obscure that very few people read it. The kind of book that takes the author years to research, that is so specific, about some weird, obscure topic like Judensau in Christian artworks. The kind of books I’ve purchased many times as an art history student and museum enthusiast, the kinds I have so many of but rarely ever actually read through. The issue with this desire is that it has kept me from ever writing. I would have ideas, specific ideas about topics I found interesting, but when I would go to make a blog or write an essay, I would always end up giving up. Why? Because I am not an academic, I do not have the pedigree, so who would read what I have to say?

I remember having lunch with my college advisor/professor back in 2021 or so. She is one of the best teachers I have ever had, and I respect her so much it hurts– a woman with a PhD from Cal and two degrees from Harvard. I was in my early/mid 20’s and finishing up a Master’s degree in Museum Studies and was in some very hypothetical way still imagining getting a PhD, despite being told by my mother, my uncle, and my father, all of whom have PhDs in the humanities, that it would be a huge mistake… there are no jobs, academia is fucking depressing. I sat at the café with her and said something about writing, something about research, how I missed it and had no reason to do it anymore because no one would care about what someone like me would have to without the doctorate to back it up. She looked at me and said “I have a doctorate and still no one cares about what I write. It doesn’t matter.”

Every time I’ve considered how to start writing and sharing my work, I think of this comment. I have tried to remind myself of it time and time again, but could not seem to truly grasp it. I never could get over the imposter-y feeling of it all and believing that no one would read what I have to say because I am not “qualified” to be writing about anything. I was trying to write in a purely academic way, one distancing myself from the topic at hand, where I could become an authority. I would write without mentioning myself at all. There were no “I’s” or mentions of personal experiences. I have written as though I am some invisible narrator– this is fact, this is an idea, this is the theory— but not discussing myself or how I relate to these opinions and ideas. I would write about something acting as if I was removed from the topic at hand. As though you could create something and pretend it was not directly related to how you see and experience the world. I know it is, of course it is. What we create and how we see the work others create is tied to our own experiences ­– how we were raised, what we believe, where we live, our age, and the world around us. But when I’ve written in the past, I’ve removed myself from the equation. I present my position as purely analysis or critique, not personal at all. Very few of the books and articles I read had authors using the word “I”. The types of things I always hoped to write– essays and books that are serious and in scholarly journals — spoke with a voice of authority on a given subject. There are rarely any “I’s” in this type of writing, and so there would not be “I’s” in my writing either.

Earlier this year I finally decided to read a book that has been on my TBR since it was released in 2023, Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. It was right up my alley. I love cultural critique, think a lot about art, and have spent quite a bit of time thinking about the question of separating an artist’s work from who they are as a person. I assumed it would be dry, an academic book full of footnotes and scholarly references with no actual mention of Dederer herself. As soon as I read the first line, I was proven wrong. The book is deeply personal, a mix of philosophical and ethical musings, critique, and personal essay. She writes about her own relationship to the artists and the works she is analyzing, to her own position as a cultural critic, as a female author, as a mother but still cites philosophers, cultural critiques, relevant current events. A book about separating art and the artist who made it purposefully blurs this separation for the author herself. It is all integrally linked to Dederer as a person-- she presents herself as a fellow viewer, not as some unbiased authority figure. “I” statements are used time and time again, discussing her own complicated relationships with culture, how her identity and experiences all tie back to how she views art.

In the chapter titled “The Critic”, Dederer writes about her use of “I” statements;

I didn’t see it at the time, but this ‘I’ was a reaching for an authentic, maybe even heartfelt, response to the work. A desire to reflect on the page the emotions wrought in me by the work with an understanding that my emotions, my experience, are not yours, and yours are not mine.¹

Our selves, our ideas, our interpretations, our experiences of culture are so tied to who we are, when we are, where we are. For so long I had felt that in order to write “serious” analysis and critique of art and culture, one had to speak as an impersonal authority. This belief screwed me over, it held me back. I did not feel like an authority on anything, I felt like an imposter acting as though I was, and so I didn’t write. I would imagine writing–– picture a home office in the Bay Area full of light, a desk lined with books, papers scattered. The New Yorker is waiting for my submission. What is it about? No clue, because I felt I was not qualified to be an authority on shit. How do I start? No idea, because who will care what I have to say? And so, I wouldn’t ever write. I’d think about writing. I’d imagine being the type of writer a reader would view as a worthy authority, someone worth reading. I imagined the attention and the praise. But I didn’t write because I did not know how to become person that wrote things people would think were worth reading.

In Ways of Seeing, John Berger states, “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.²” This is the case whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. All of us are seeing the world in relation to ourselves, even when we think we are being detached. Yes, there are ways to distance ourselves and see things from other perspectives, to not use “I” in our writing, but don’t we have to be aware of our own thoughts and histories in order to do so properly? Our feelings, our history, our place in the world, all color how we see things. Dederer argues;

…what response, what opinion, what criticism do you have that is not tied up with history? We are subject to the forces of history and the biography we ourselves are living out in the conditions of that history. We think of ourselves as ahistorical subjects, but that’s just not so.³

As I have allowed myself to explore writing with this in mind, I have found that I have been able to get over the idea of being someone “worth reading” and actually write. It no longer feels as though I am writing to just prove a point. Instead I am writing to explore my own perceptions, to challenge myself and my views, to gain a clearer understanding of the world. I am tired of thinking “But who will read this, who is it for?” and letting that uncertainty stop me from actually creating. I am tired of thinking my work can only be academic or personal, of thinking I have to “be on brand” with the standards I set for myself regarding what I write about and how I write about it. Would I like my words to be read? Of course! I put time and effort and thought into the things I write, but I no longer view it as purely a way of proving my legitimacy. Instead my writing, and the process of writing and research, has become a way for me to explore and connect with my own self, the world, and maybe, I hope others.

“…my subjectivity is the crucial component of my experience as a critic, and the very best thing I can do is simply acknowledge that fact… The intimacy––the thrill–– doesn’t come when a critic is acting as arbiter or judge.⁴” Dederer writes, and I agree. I feel empowered and excited about writing in a way I have not in years when I began writing as myself rather than as an authority. It has allowed me to explore new ideas, asking myself why I feel a certain way, how my ideas relate to my identity, my place in history. It has pushed me to research topics and questions I probably would not have if I were trying to use a more authoritative style or stick with to whatever topic I decided was the one I should be focusing on. There is something intimate about this type of work, just as Derder states. When I look at a subject, an artwork, a cultural phenomenon, and see it from varying perspectives all at once and write about it, it feels so personal and exciting, exchanging ideas and exploring it through words. I can write about my personal feelings about beauty and the grotesque, read and analyze texts by Umberto Eco on ugliness, and use drag looks by competitors on “Dragula” as examples, all in one essay. I can unite all the various aspects of my self––the personal/emotional, the overly intellectual/philosophical, and the chronically online–– all in one place because I want to, simple as that.

How wonderful, how stimulating, how freeing!

1. Dederer, Claire. Monsters; A Fan’s Dilemma. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023., 68

2. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 2008., 9

3. Dederer, 73

4. Dederer, 73