Writing as Uprootedness

Among the many suggestions given to scholars regarding how to engage with post-qualitative inquiry, including to study post-structuralism, feminism, philosophy (Western), and “the history and politics of social sciences,” “read, read read,” and to “not skip Derrida,” perhaps the most striking aspect of post-qualitative inquiry is how it offers very few suggestions about how to write post-qualitatively (St. Pierre, 2019, 2020). To be sure, some scholars have written about the non-representational aspects of language, or about how writing with theory involves an on-going process in the making designed to help learn it, but conversations about how the onto-epistemological foundations impact the writing up of such research is quite absent from the literature (St. Pierre, 2019; Ulmer, 2017). For example, take the concept of an ontology of immanence, which is a main concept of post-qualitative research. Instead of just writing about or explaining what ontology of immanence is and its implications for qualitative research, how might one write as an ontology of immanence? Another example of how concepts get written about, or explained in post-qualitative inquiry, but not used as a modality of writing is the concept of difference. It is usually explained through the work of Jacque Derrida, in the “plane of immanence is always differentiating, always becoming, never static” (St. Pierre, 2019, p. 5). Many scholars in the field of post-qualitative inquiry explain concepts, but they don’t show how to write as that concept. For example, how might one write as difference as the never static difference of something? Finally, what about the concept of “invention,” which is described as “making it up”? How does one write as an invention? Again, instead of explaining or using propositional language to explain these concepts, how does one write with these concepts in mind? These thoughts and questions have me thinking about my friend Tommy. I have been thinking a lot lately about my friend Tommy. Tommy grew up in a big, traditional Italian family in Buffalo, New York. Born the youngest of a large family of older brothers, to a working-class home, Tommy became a mama’s boy from a very early age. Unlike his older brothers, Tommy didn’t become a star-athlete or a rowdy womanizer, but instead took interest in more girly things and knew from an early age that he was gay. Girly things and gay do not necessarily go together, but in Tommy’s case, they describe how different he felt from both this family and his environment. His mother was his safe space, his resort, his refuge. When Tommy was old enough, he left Buffalo for the sunny beaches of Los Angeles and began to build a life there volunteering and running local political candidates (mostly gay) and marketing at one of the large movie houses. He nurtured a large community of friends of queers and built a life for himself based in community activism and steady, disciplined work. He became an active addict and lost most of what he had built: addiction took it all away. After getting sober, much of his life was restored as did his health and vibrancy. Throughout most of his life, he had a rather distant relationship with his family, especially his brothers, who continued to bully him even from afar. Tommy and I met close to 20 years ago when I was traveling to Los Angeles on vacation. I believe I was walking back to my hotel with a friend when he stopped me in my tracks. My first words to him were, “Oh my God, you are so beautiful.” Muscly, jet-black hair, beautiful face and physique. Gracious in his response, we exchanged phone numbers—not cell-phone numbers, mind you. I gave him my friend’s number and he returned with his home phone number. Later that evening we met at his place and to my surprise he ate so much candy! All types of candy, Butterfingers and Milky Ways, but Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were the favorite this night. It was impressive that he could eat so much sugar and still be in such great shape. We realized that we had so much in common and became fast friends. So much so that he flew to New York City, where I was living, teaching, and attending graduate school, to spend time with me and later I flew back to Los Angeles and we traveled to Laguna Beach together. We have had some wonderful times. Our lives have been intertwined. He later relapsed and became homeless and has since rebuilt his life again, and I was able to make it through the difficulties of graduate school and building a career in academia. Both of us as queer men have had our share of trying times and self-doubt and a prove-it attitude has hovered over everything we have done. We shared a cigarette or two over the years, but he had to reconsider his smoking habits when he got cancer. The operations were brutal and the recoveries even more so, but not as brutal as when his mother passed away and his brothers shut him out of her memorial. He learned early on that he was “released” from his community, which had not changed after many years. Those of us who live in a world of vibrant difference and not sameness tend to be dehumanized, disposable, and easily dismissed. Tommy, in terms of his biological family, understands those feelings very well. But, I was so proud of him when I recently received a text message from him stating that he was almost through a rather long and arduous process of becoming an HIV counselor. Reflecting on the many years we have known each other, I was just so inspired and truly amazed to hear this news. He has been compelled to build a life, to move forward despite the many obstacles put in his way, despite the difficult starts and setbacks he moves forward helping others, helping his community, seeking spaces of joy and commitment even when he has been uprooted his whole life. Uprootedness, the Cuban queer writer Renaldo Arenas reminds us in a New Yorker article sometime close to his death, is a universal experience of people living where they are not supposed to be living. Like most queers of my generation, I think we would have liked to have maintained a close relationship with our families, or even lived close to them, but “released” in Lois Lowry’s sense of the word, we became uprooted. That experience afforded great freedom to develop and experience friendships, a sensual life, and a body based in exploration, experimentation, and unapologetic liberty—and presented its share of challenges. Living an uprooted life looking for a place to land can be very confusing and disorienting. Speaking of cancer, there is some really exciting work being done in cancer research these days. Jason Fung, a nephrologist based in Toronto, Ontario has developed a new paradigm of cancer, which is starting to drive much of the research in this area. In his view, there have been three prevailing theories of cancer each of which build on each other. The first paradigm asked the question, what is cancer? In this particular view, we learned that cancer is unmitigated growth of certain cells. In this paradigm, the cells grow too much to be useful to a certain part of the body and actually actsagainst the function of the organ. For example, cells in the lungs begin to grow uncontrollably, damaging the lungs and inhibiting its ability to function properly. Therapy under this paradigm involved surgery, or removing the cancer, radiation, burning the cells, and chemotherapy killing cells in the body, including healthy ones. These remain the basis of treatment to this day. This paradigm doesn’t, however, explain why the cells begin to multiply in the first place, meaning why do the cells begin to proliferate. This question leads to paradigm two, which Fung calls the Somatic Mutation Theory. Here, we discovered that cells begin to multiply because of damage to specific genes. Cancer is thus caused by genetic mutations which cause the cells to proliferate and damage the body. Therapy in this instance involved fixing the genetic mutations and, as such, medicine developed personalized, genetically targeting treatments with very little side effects. It also initiated the Human Genome Project which espouses that if we could understand all of the potential mutations for each type of cancer, we could cure cancer; however, the more researchers examined this proposition, they discovered that there were potentially thousands if not millions of potentially genetic mutations for each type of cancer. The possibility of curing cancer with individualized, target genetic mutations became an impossibility. Cancer itself outsmarted the mapping project. It was difficult to develop timely, targeted treatments for every possible genetic treatments. This led to the third paradigm, the one which Fung espouses, which is the Atavistic/Evolutionary paradigm. It builds on the other two paradigms. This paradigm asks the question, what happens to the cell that causes it to genetically mutate and proliferate so that it forces the body to malfunction? His answer is that at the basic level, the atavistic level, each cell’s main function is to survive, and to survive it must compete and destroy other cells. Prior to being a multi-life cell-based, communitarian organism, which allows the body’s ecological system to function properly, the cell’s main purpose was to survive on its own. It was a unicellular life prior to being a multi-life cell. What happens according to Fung is that after sustained, long-term damage to the cell from the environment (e.g. smoking) and continually signaling the body to grow via hormones and other growth factors, the cell regresses to its atavistic state and goes into survival mode and starts to destroy the body. The immune system responds to the cancerous cells as a foreign invasive species. The environment of the body as a multi-life ecology becomes important for developing therapies for cancer prevention and treatment. According to Fung, although the research is emerging and underdeveloped, based on this new, third paradigm, prevention and treatment of cancer would involve fasting, eating a diet low in carbohydrates, sugars, vegetable oils and processed foods because they raise insulin and other growth factors, and instead eat a more ketogenic diet, as well as partnering with the immune system (e.g. immunotherapy) to fight cancer. Thus, instead of giving cancer patients large doses of radiation therapy which kills both healthy as well as cancerous cells, it would be helpful to just target those cancer cells most resistant to other types of treatment. As Fung argues, all cells in the body have the potential to become cancerous, and thus we can never get rid of cancer completely—atavistic forms of the cell are its original shape; however, we can focus on the ecology of the body, such as diet, to help lower one’s chances of the long-term, sustained damage to the genes that cause the cells to revert back to its atavistic state and thus becoming a foreign invasive species, or cancer. Cancer cells become uprooted from their ecological involvement after sustained attack from environmental substances. They leave, turn against the very body that sustained them, and thus become an individualistic, frightened, angry, violent organism. If the body produces enough of these cells in the body for a long period of time, they kill it. The recognition that each individual has the potential to go on a self-preserving rampage with survival as its only goal is instructive. If there is an origin to the human being it is the self-preserving, survivalist, atavistic cell; but as it emerged evolutionarily, it recognized that it could accomplish more as a multi-life entity with each organ supporting and needing the others. What Fung’s research on cancer shows us is that the body as an ecology aims for survival but operates as an organism that needs others, acting as a communitarian organism for its own survival. Every cell has its limitations, its functions, and its possibilities, but it is within these three that the human being seeks others. Human beings are limited in their perspectives, for example, we have limited capacities, but it is the reaching towards others, seeking the help of others, and helping others as a multi-life entity that ensures its survival. The future consists of being tethered; but I have to admit, I haven’t really thought that much about “futures” too much or so I thought. It just so happens, however, in thinking and researching for this chapter, I have realized how much time and future occupy my mind. As much as I want to claim that I live in the moment, I must confess that the future is so much in me. Living in the moment is so in vogue these days that it raises all sort of crises for me because I find myself not there. I’m everywhere but in the present, in the moment. I must confess that writing can be so terrifying for me because it forces me to be present in my body. That’s another topic for another day. The future, the place I spend so much ofmy time, is always a weird place because it is so determined by the enabling constraints of my perspective and of place! Imagination is not unlimited and thus the future remains constrained. It is also a place of delusion because the points of reference are various but restricted. Thoughts or views of the future remain within a constellation of unknowability and thus what gets known is really not what’s going on. Given that our understanding of the future is laced with much uncertainty and chaos, how can we articulate who we are now as a future? This question has a ring of Foucault in it as he asked in his essay, “What is Enlightenment,” the pivotal question at the moment is “Who are we now?” He advocated for a critical ontology of ourselves through a genealogical investigation of power and its relationship to truth. Ethical considerations are equally important for how can one live life as a work of art without an understanding of the free-flowing movements of power/knowledge/truth/resistance. How can one utilize techniques of the self in relation to power in order to produce a subject based on the question of who are we now? How might one style a life as a work of art? To reimagine with Arenas, how can one style a life as a work of art as uprootedness? But, I think this remains an important question—who are we now—how can we investigate the current situation—to diagnose what’s going on now—in a now that resembles William Forsyth’s highly choregraphed dance, One Flat As life in in terms of qualitative research, it to me that work only gets us part of the To at the of us to the think what we to now is not so much who are we now but how can we articulate who we are now as a future? I think that we must diagnose and articulate the current moment as a weird future because as I to think of the future is a weird we must do it even if it is being uprooted. 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