“Where are you from? Your accent?” This is a question that has followed me around in my working life. Occasionally, and with the same accusatory tone I am asked, as last year by someone who knew nothing about me, when I said that I had studied art history, “at the Courtauld?” (answer: no). Such questions serve to remind me of the complexities of social class, growing up as I did, in a working-class background in the East Midlands, and then living for six years in the North-East, before settling in London and working as a lecturer.
My current positionality was formed as early as my teens by a very strong curiosity and desire to know the world and by the critical pedagogy of secondary school teachers of English and History and a progressive art and design department in a purpose-built centre at the school. I discovered the writing of Karl Marx at the age of fifteen when asked to pick a piece of paper from a hat with a topic to research and got Das Kapital. As someone from a working class background whose parents never went to university this was a life-changing experience and I was formed by the conjunction of Marxism, Feminism and Psychoanalysis in the heyday of polytechnic education.
Moving to London for postgraduate study also generated a shift in perspective, experiencing a cosmopolitan city and being taught by Sarat Maharaj, added a new outlook informed by postcolonial debates. I could see in such debate: continuities with the struggles of feminism against oppression, the finding of a voice, reclaiming visual representations and rethinking the conceptual frameworks of academic disciplines. These experiences have influenced my choice of profession and commitment to education. More recently, as a cancer survivor, my position has evolved further in ways I am still processing.