Performance

"Part of Post-Modernism's appeal surely is that it allows us to display, if only to ourselves, our knowledge of prior aesthetic and cultural pluralism, our own astute awareness of ironies and paradoxes."

–– Zurmuehlen, Marilyn, 'Post-Modernist Objects: A Relation Between the Past and Present', Art Education, 45 (1992), p. 14.

This quote comes from an article that I was reading yesterday for an essay I need to write for my Antiquity After Antiquity class. I found it so great that not only did I write it down in case I need it for my essay, but I also took a photo of it and put it on my Instagram story.

I find it really good because it points out such a big part of not only post-modernism but academia as a whole, or even just generally society. It's really easy to be pretentious these days because we're in a post-modern age and the whole point of post-modernism is to question everything and uncover the layers of irony. It made me think about performative intelligence and how prevalent it is. We like to display our knowledge and sophistication.

First of all, I posted that quote about performative intelligence on Instagram. Why did I do that? Was that not to show my friends and followers that I: a) am reading about Post-Modernism; b) understand Post-Modernism; c) am sophisticated enough to criticise Post-Modernism? Granted, I also share a lot of other aspects of my life, and I know that I have this weird compulsion to share (or not conceal) where I am, which is why I continue to location mark my posts (despite Instagram removing its very amazing photo map feature a few years ago) and put location filters on a lot of my stories –– and when I post non-studying photos I genuinely care less about other people seeing the pictures than about just passively uploading my data onto the Internet, where it will likely stay forever, despite stories only being viewable for 24 hours. I don't know, it's weird. I'm just trying to say that the reasons why I posted that quote onto Instagram probably isn't because I'm an asshole who needs everyone to know how smart I am in order to cover for my crippling imposter syndrome in the IRL Oxford environment.

It's definitely something I want to consider though. Building upon my last post, I was thinking about how much of my exterior projected persona has to do with performative intelligence.

Something I really remember from high school is when Mr Smith looked over my extended essay and said that academic essays shouldn't be about displaying knowledge, but exploring and idea and doing research, in the same way that doing a lab in school about something where you already know what the results are going to be, just for the lab experience, is pretty much useless. That's the main difference between high school and university. In university, the things you do are so much less cookie-cutter certain; you never really know what's going on anymore. By the time I do my PhD, my dissertation is gonna be on something that nobody else has ever researched before, and undergrads might be reading it.

I struggle a lot with trying to be academic: coming up with original, interesting arguments that shine new light on a topic and that are unique to my own perspective. Not just reiterating what the authors of my sources are saying and not sticking to the script. To do that, I'm learning to write beyond the "introduction - point 1 - point 2 - point 3 - conclusion" structure, and learning to actually write out detailed essay plans (I used to literally just have 1-2 words per paragraph) so that I can formulate my thoughts before setting them to paper. Everything I've ever known has been to fill out the right boxes and take the tests well, reading the criteria and syllabus so I know exactly what's wanted from me.

I don't really know where this is going. I've been writing this with only half my focus. So I'm just going to publish it!