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On Wearing Three Hats(1996)

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On Wearing Three Hats(1996) Adrian Piper On Wearing Three Hats(1996) These remarks were originally delivered 1. »Do you keep (fight) or escaping (flight). I prefer escap- at a symposium at Brandeis University ing because it is, all things considered, on multi-talented women in March your different more energy-efficient. 1996.1 The organizers and audience of selves separate, And when I was considering having the symposium posed certain questions children, I interviewed friends of mine of the participants, and we did our best or do you integrate who did (they didn’t realize they were to answer them. I mention this at the them?« being interviewed, of course, but they outset because the questions were in were). I like other’s people’s children some ways like the polite query, »How There are no discrete selves to separate very much. But if I were to have children, are you?« and the following remarks or integrate. My variety of professional I would get exactly the children I deserve. like a certain kind of answer to that activities are all different, equally essential I saw, from coming to appreciate my query. Under some circumstances »How expressions of one self. When I am alone parents’ efforts as well as from interview- are you?« can elicit a sudden self- in the solitude of my study or studio, I am ing my friends who had them, that raising awareness of how one in fact is that one completely out of the closet: I move back them properly would have to be any may not have sought; and an over- and forth easily among art, philosophy, parent’s central preoccupation, just as my whelming desire to unburden oneself of and yoga (my third hat). It’s the only time work is for me. I was not even tempted that uninvited self-knowledge, expressed I feel completely free to be who I am. So to try, and feel no regrets for lost options. – at least internally – with a snarl: Oh, I will go to almost any lengths to protect The activities of art, philosophy, and yeah? You want how am I? I’ll give you my privacy. If I lose that, I lose everything. yoga themselves determine the life how am I …! It can thus elicit a kind Often when I describe the dilemmas choices I am free to make – to have and extent of answer the interlocutor I will shortly outline to some individual children or not, to relocate or not, to be did not really mean to elicit; the kind in the helping professions, their first in a relationship or not. But I am not free it would have been even worse manners response is, »Well, you’ll just have to stop to choose to be a different person than to volunteer unasked (and that I, as making art«; or »Well, you’ll just have to I am; so I am similarly not free to choose a well-brought-up middle-class person, cut down on the time you spend working not to engage in the activities that make would never dream of volunteering on your philosophy project.« This response me who I am. Not to be able to realize unasked). So in responding to the sym- makes me see how different from them or express the self I am in action is to die posium questions, I had to choose I am. They view making art or doing a slow and painful death. between indulging my desire to unbur- philosophy the way I view parenting or den myself of sudden and unwelcome relocating – as a choice I am free to make. self-knowledge on the one hand, and What is a choice for them is a necessity 2. »How do other observing good manners on the other. for me, and what is a necessity for them Then I realized that to answer these is a choice for me. Art, philosophy, and people react questions would also be to elucidate yoga are parts of me the way their to your different certain dimensions of my life that many children and their roots are parts of them. people find enigmatic or disquieting, I learned this about myself after having selves?« and so to reduce my risk of getting repeatedly and instinctively resolved burned at the stake. A pox on good conflicts between partnering relationships When I am with other people, I do keep manners, I decided. and my work in favor of my work. these different activities separate, and I instinctively perceive anyone who tries those I am with help me to do that. They to interfere with or compete with my work engage with the activity with which they as an enemy. I think this means that my feel most comfortable, and withdraw work is my self, and that I read a threat from others they find strange. If I insist 1 Originally presented at the Third Annual Tillie K. Lubin Symposium, Who Is She? to my work as a threat to my existence. on presenting more of myself than they Conversations with Multi-Talented Women I defend my self against such threats prefer, their withdrawal may turn to (with Mary Catherine Bateson, Perri Klass, instinctively, either by counterattacking resistance, rejection, or aggressive attack. Kristin Linklater, and Sherry Turkle) at Brandeis University / Rose Art Museum on March 17, 1996. 117 On Wearing Three Hats Adrian Piper The first time I remember partitioning philosophy professors who had very mistrust the more advanced practices of the border, I have to decide whether to xenophobia is similarly an instance I find among philosophy students myself in order to accommodate other strong views about a field with which they yoga (although of course they don’t mind change the subject, lie, leave, or say what of anomalophobia. Other instances of and professionals for whom the process people’s needs for an oversimplified other were largely unfamiliar. After a time a good workout). Analytic philosophers, is true and thereby destroy our connection. anomalophobia include a philosopher’s of venturing into the alien territory of an was in the mid-s. Like many others I simply refused to take the bait. like most academics, also tend to be Only the avoidance of connection succeeds experience of anxiety, violation, or author’s mind, by reading, attending to, at that time, I had started doing yoga, and The third time (since there are three hermetically engaged with their particular in avoiding the danger. disorientation in the presence of contem- and analyzing closely her or his written had gotten seriously committed to it – hats, you get three anecdotes) was in order areas of specialization, and so mistrust These manoeuvres, particularly between porary art, and an artist’s experience work is so threatening that they cannot taking classes, doing postures at home, to protect my work in analytic philosophy contemporary art. And the contemporary art and philosophy, make me feel like of anxiety, violation or disorientation in bring themselves to do it at all. Similarly, and reading Vedanta philosophy. During from the art world. The attacks came from art world’s susceptibility to transient an adulterous spouse. Each field demands the presence of philosophy. some artists’ perceptual anomalophobia art school I then developed an interest male artists who had earlier defined their intellectual fashion leads it to mistrust my full energy, attention, and commit- Because philosophers are trained to is expressed in rabid avoidance of the in Western philosophy: Jasper Johns was own art practice in relation to analytic the rigor, discipline and traditionalism ment; each resents my involvement with navigate the highways of abstract logical cutting edge, and in work that celebrates, reading Wittgenstein, so everyone else philosophy. But as I became more deeply of analytic philosophy. the other; each suspects such involvement reasoning, and to clear away the under- replicates, or permutes artistic convention. in the art world did, too. Both interests involved in it, and particularly after I was I practice yoga, moonlight in art and when I am absent; each feels personally brush in order to pave new ones, the moved me to start taking summer courses admitted to the Ph.D. program at Harvard, hold down a tenured day job in philosophy. betrayed when this suspicion is confirmed; best tend to have a comparatively high 5. »Does your in philosophy at CCNY. My first philoso- they became progressively disenchanted My day job is particularly hostile to my and each is absolutely and uncondition- tolerance for logical complexity and phy instructor, an analytic philosopher by it, and quite vocal in their criticisms work as an artist. But it requires me to ally unwilling to concede any legitimacy conceptual unfamiliarity. But philosophers involvement in in the Anglo-American tradition, made of its academic and class elitism. Some maintain standing self-protective defenses to that involvement, much less make any also tend to have a correspondingly low more than one field disparaging remarks in class about »fuzzy- of them ignored me when we met on the of various kinds against attacks on the accommodation to it. Each field is morally tolerance for sensory stimulation and headed Eastern mysticism«. I responded streets of New York, or made pointed legitimacy of both of my two other outraged by the suggestion that I am a perceptual anomaly. They often live quietly influence your by tucking the fuzzy part of my head remarks about not needing a Ph.D. in essential activities: fighting for institu- resource that might be shared with the and conservatively; prefer traditional perception of each? safely out of sight, under my hard-nosed philosophy to make good art, or dropped tional recognition and support of my role other, to the ultimate advantage of both.
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