We must not forget the art of everyday life
When she lived in Beirut, Marie always drank her morning coffee on the balcony of her apartment. From there, she watched a huge mosque being built in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It was one of those mornings, as she sat on the balcony with her coffee, that she took the picture of the young man balancing on the insubstantial scaffolding at the front of the mosque, high above the city roofs.
“He was doing something to the raw concrete wall, almost dancing on the scaffolding, 10–15 meters up in the air,” Marie recalls.
“I like to hope that what we see at first glance may overwhelm us; that the sheer amount of concrete seems almost brutal – but that we then stop and look at what else is going on in the picture. I hope we appreciate the man’s dance, playfulness, and willingness to take risks, juxtaposed against the structure of the mosque. I hope that we see it as a symbol of something we need to practise and constantly refine.”
Make the big stories part of daily life
This “something” that Marie believes we need to be better at also lies at the very heart of her research. It’s about seeing the potential and the opportunity spaces that we may not notice right away, in all kinds of situations– spaces that we all create, in which we construct our everyday lives as best we can. Marie explains that these small, everyday spaces often reveal the direction in which society is moving.
“Our stories also need space. We need to take the time to be conversant with them, so we can tell them in ways that spark identification, and show that we’re not that different.”
Playing dangerous games with boundaries
Marie has spent over a decade studying the spaces created by artists and activists in Amman, the Jordanian capital.
“These are artists who describe themselves as queer, or who have a queer quality,” she says. “By this, I mean they play and experiment with the limits of what is possible in their society. It’s not just about gender and sexuality.”
She explains that it’s often about pushing boundaries, which can be risky for various reasons, as it may involve breaking the law or social norms.
“Some of the artists may want to bring about social change, while others are interested in experimenting with individual idioms. Social criticism doesn’t always involve political protest or taking to the streets and making a statement. It’s also about small, queer experiments that show what the world can become. This is where anthropology has a special role to play, by zooming in on these opportunity spaces, seeing what is actually going on, and documenting them so other people know they exist.”
Cherish the unknown
Artists in the queer milieu have an eye for opportunities and idioms that may be overlooked in the bigger picture. Their skill lies in revealing subtle nuances and on their insistence that we remember the person.
In a society in which human life no longer appears to be the most valuable thing, Marie insists that we should keep telling stories – and not just the ones that reinforce what we already think.
“It can almost feel a bit hopeless,” Marie says, “because you’re trying to tell these smaller stories in a vast and overwhelmingly polarized world, which spins in ever-faster circles.”
That is why it is also important to support research that doesn’t necessarily address the questions we think are the most pressing right now, she concludes, and insists that the most important questions are those of which we are not yet aware.