Radboud Philosophical Facutly Journal

Categorie: Charlie Chowdhry

  • An Interview with Herman Westerink on Hopes, Freud and Dreams

    Herman Westerink is Associate and Endowed Professor of Metaphysics and Philosophical Anthropology at Radboud University. A significant portion of his research is dedicated to Freudian psychoanalysis, alongside his studies in the philosophy of religion. Following his participation in a public lecture at Radboud Reflects, titled ‘What Are Dreams Made Of’, we decided to interview Herman and discuss a Freudian approach to own our theme, ‘Hopes and Dreams’. While the lecture was very informative, we had some remaining questions, especially since terms like ‘hope’ and ‘dream’ are often used interchangeably. Herman was happy to join us and further discuss these matters.

    Sophie: Thank you for joining us today. We’d like to ask you about your thoughts on dreaming, especially since the theme of this Splijtstof edition is ‘Hopes and Dreams’. Given your recent work, particularly with Radboud Reflects, we thought it would be interesting to explore the topic more.

    Herman: Excellent.

    Sophie: For the uninitiated, could you tell us a bit about the relationship between your work on Freudian psychoanalysis and dreams?

    Herman: Well, the ‘dream work’ of Freud is his most famous text, certainly among a larger audience. The Interpretation of Dreams is not necessarily in the centre of my research, but again and again, I am confronted with his dream analysis. Again and again, various texts refer to The Interpretation of Dreams, and to the dreams of patients, which are always very important in his clinical writings, as well.

    For Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams is not his only work on dreams; it is a topic that comes back again and again. Notably, the topic appears in his clinical writings, and sometimes also in his metapsychological writings, because dreams are supposed to give us an insight. That’s the first important thing to say about Freud’s interest in dreams: they tell us something about an aspect of our psychic life to which we normally have no access. To this, even dreams only grant us access to a certain extent, because there is also a kind of censorship mechanism. So, it’s also always in a filtered and indirect manner that dreams give us insight into unconscious mental processes, but nevertheless they do.

    Having said that, according to Freud, dreams also give us insight into the fundamental principles that organise psychic life. Since dreams give insight into unconscious processes, they also help us detect when certain mental principles are no longer at work, like consciousness or perception. For instance, this is the case in our ability to organise impressions into a spatial or temporal chronology. They function not only as an insight into certain principles that organise mental life, but also show what psychic life looks like when these when these principles are shut down, or partly shut down.

    Sophie: Do you think there’s much overlap between Freud’s perspective and your own? What do you think about dreams?

    Herman: I don’t have much opinion on dreams, but what intrigues me is the cultural, historical perspectives. Freud is part of that history. Generally, we in the Western world, although certainly not exclusively in the Western world, tend to attach a lot of meaning to dreams, whereas it’s not self-evident to do so. In the case of Freud, you could say dreams are a way to know more about ourselves than we would normally be able to detect or see. This is something that you find throughout Western history. I find that intriguing because it’s not self-evident that dreams have a meaning or a significant place in the way that we understand ourselves.

    Although, that’s just an observation. That’s not an opinion. I don’t know if Freud’s theories can be maintained. He argues that dreams are wish fulfilments – or attempts at wish fulfilment. There is current research, especially in neuroscience, from those who claim that Freud made a good point here. Though, I don’t know whether Freud’s arguments about dreams are absolutely plausible. It’s not my field, but as I said, I find it intriguing that he paid so much attention to dreams as being meaningful and providing self-knowledge, whereas one could also spontaneously argue dreams have no meaning – that it’s just chaos.

    Charlie: Since you mentioned wish fulfilment, I was thinking about how sometimes we use the word ‘dream’ as a synonym for a hope or a desire. I was wondering what Freud would make of this, and maybe also what you think about this yourself.

    Herman: Yeah, that’s the popular use of dreams, right? The American Dream, dreams about the future, et cetera. This use of ‘dreams’ could well be seen as a kind of popularised version of a Freudian take on dreams, right? There’s a lot of stuff in Freudian thought that has been popularised. The idea of dreams as wish fulfilment is among them. I’m not really sure whether ‘dreaming of the future’ in terms of what you hope or what you wish to happen can fully be reduced to Freudian thought. Although, I think that Freudian ideas have been very important for shaping this idea of dream as wish or hope for the future. It is indeed phrased like that today, as opposed to the classical idea that dreams can be messages from the gods that reveal what is going to happen in the future – that was a very antique idea. So, I think the idea of dreams, as wish fulfilment, or hope for the future, is a kind of popularised version of Freudian thought. I think Freud is part of that, at least.

    Charlie: That’s very interesting. I’ve never made a connection between the American Dream and Freudian thought.

    Herman: Well, the American dream, of course, also has other sources, right? It’s also the dream of the colonists to have their own country, to have their own land, et cetera, to make to make your life a success – ‘Manifest Destiny’. There are also other sources for that, but I think to phrase it in terms of dreams and dreams as wishes is a very Freudian idea popularised.

    Charlie: Yes, that’s interesting. For those of us who perhaps have less pleasant dreams, could Freud offer any words of comfort for us, or is his work likely to make us feel worse about our weirder, more uncomfortable dreams?

    Herman: Ah, yes, most dreams are uncomfortable. First of all, I would have to start by saying that Freud is very analytical, in honest and realistic depictions of dreams, and taking seriously what is communicated in dreams. If dreams are wish fulfilments, they are closely related to fantasies. That also means what you find in dreams, as I already mentioned, is somewhat – but not fully – censored. Repressed or unconscious thoughts show themselves in the form of very violent dreams. For example, you can kill people in your dreams, or you can get killed in your dreams. There is violence and absurdity in your dreams. There is also power in dreams: being able to do things that you would normally not be able to do, like flying. There are all kinds of bizarre things, but also some aspects of human life that we would normally rather not be confronted with, especially violence and anxiety.

    For Freud, nightmares are also wish fulfilments, but they are wish fulfilments in the sense that we react with fear to the consequences of what we are dreaming about. Waking up in a nightmare is usually at a point where something we do not find acceptable is going to happen. When the censorship breaks in, or when consciousness breaks in, you suddenly start to realise the implications of what you are about to dream, and this is where the dream ends. This is the point where the wish fulfilment shows its implications and then something in psychic life says, “this this is unacceptable, this cannot be!” Dreams are not just wish fulfilments in the sense that they show us pleasurable sides of our own fantasies and imaginations. Quite to the contrary, they can also show the violent or the anxious side of psychic life.

    There is also a special case to which Freud devotes some attention: the traumatic dreams of traumatised people. They may repeatedly dream about the traumatic events that they lived through. This is a really puzzling issue for Freud, because if dreams are wish fulfilments, even anxiety dreams to some extent, it is very difficult to explain why a traumatised people would return to their trauma in their dreams. That is counterintuitive for Freud. Therefore, he believed that there are some dreams that are ‘beyond’ wish fulfilments because they have something he calls ‘demonic character’. Dreams that bring us back to scenes of trauma are special case, but also shows, again, that dreams are not in any way related to pleasure.

    Sophie: Following that line of thinking, how satisfied would you be with the conclusion that our dreams don’t mean anything – none of them?

    Herman: I think that nobody would actually object to that. This is also something I said in Radboud Reflects: from the very start of our own cultural history of thinking about dreams, there has always been the idea that at least a part of our dreams is perhaps meaningless. Of course, in the antique world, that means there are dreams that don’t entail any messages about the future. Sometimes the gods are not speaking in dreams.

    Freud would probably say that some dreams are more significant than others, but there are no dreams that have no meaning. All dreams reveal something of unconscious and repressed material. In this sense, dreams are, per definition, informative about psychic life. Yet, some dreams are more significant than others.

    Sophie: What do you make of the dreams that come true? For instance, something bad might happen or things go wrong in an anxious dream and might really go wrong in practice.

    Herman: Apart from self-fulfilling prophecy? You could give an answer from the idea of a wish fulfilment. If you dream that something is going to go wrong, it’s probably because you wish, to some extent, that it goes wrong, and so why wouldn’t it go wrong? Maybe dreams can also reveal something of an unconscious self-sabotaging mechanism. They may at least show you that there is a conflicting voice to what you may consciously think. Freud would say that our psychic life is always in conflict. There’s always also another voice. There’s a counter-tendency – for instance, not succeeding in things you think you want to succeed in – and it is that kind of mechanism. A Freudian answer to your question is that there is a self-fulfilling prophecy in this case.

    I certainly don’t want to return to the idea that that dreams are really messages from ‘gods’ about what is going to happen unavoidably in the future. We can only prepare for what might happen. In the example that you mentioned, someone dreams of something that goes wrong, and it actually goes wrong. That indeed shows that they are probably self-sabotaging.

    Sophie: Would you say this further illustrates that some dreams may be considered more meaningful, or at least less random or chaotic, than others?

    Herman: Yes. I am now voicing a more or less Freudian take on dreams, but such cases are quite telling of our relation to what is going to happen. Our relation to persons or objects is never straightforward, but always ambiguous.

    Charlie: I was doing some homework for this interview and I found that Freud analysed his own dreams for his work. I was wondering if, in your opinion, we should be able to get away with this kind of practice in our own work. Could I cite something that I’ve dreamed as a source for my own dream analysis book or essay?

    Herman: I think this is a challenge. Strictly speaking, in psychoanalysis, it is not a good idea to analyse your own dreams. You could bring your dreams into analysis, vis-à-vis an analyst, but the idea of a self-interpretation of dreams is probably not the most fruitful form. At the same time, having said that, there’s a long history since Freud in psychoanalysis where analysts, and also patients, keep dream books. This is not only something in psychoanalysis: there are people who do that, who wake up and the first thing they do is make a note about what they have dreamt and keep it in a book. This can be seen as an ongoing diagnosis of their own mental states.

    There is a technical problem with doing self-analysis, which can easily take the form of a kind of self-deception. This is because I’m not sure whether we are the best interpreters of ourselves given the censorship I already mentioned. The other element in your question would be whether it is a good idea to do any form of self-analysis. Why would we be so obsessed with analysing ourselves? Self-analysis is also a way of self-problematisation, and why would we make our lives so much more difficult than necessary? This is a somewhat Foucauldian answer; he criticises psychoanalysis, notably for the obsession with analysing ourselves in Western history.

    But are we a problem? I don’t know. Should we be a problem for ourselves? Who says that we should be a problem for ourselves? This kind of argumentation that you find in Nietzsche and in Foucault can be used against psychoanalysis and against any form of treatment. Why would you make a problem out of yourself? Or consider yourself a problem? That’s actually part of the idea of self-analysis. There is something happening in myself that I want to gain control over, and what is beyond my control is de facto a problem.

    In the Radboud Reflects lecture, I already mentioned this in connection to the early Christian monks. They fought their dreams and thought the thoughts and images that appeared in dreams were fundamentally a problem. They thought their dreams were a problem, and self-analysis was a way to gain control over one’s inner life. That’s another way to answer your question.

    Charlie: Thank you. When I was re-watching the lecture, you were talking about how the contents of the dreams were worrying to the monks. I was wondering if you’ve ever had a dream about Freud when you’re in the midst of all of your writing!

    Herman: Did I ever have a dream about Freud? I must have, but I don’t remember anything. I’m not very good at remembering my dreams, and I don’t keep a dream book.

    Charlie: What do you think Freud would say about that? If you think you’ve dreamt about him, but you can’t remember, does that say anything about things going on with your psychic apparatus?

    Herman: It would be very strange if we would be able to remember our all our dreams. According to the Freudian argument that dreams reveal something of the unconscious, when you are asleep, the consciousness is more or less shut down. You would expect that in waking life, these things are again repressed, unconscious, and not accessible. In this sense, they are also not remembered for the large part. My colleague (and neuroscientist) from the Radboud Reflects lecture shows that you have a lot of dreams during the night – you don’t remember most of them. The participants in dream experiments need to immediately share what they have been dreaming about when they wake up, because otherwise the dreams are forgotten. Most dreams are normally forgotten, that’s not a strange thing.

    It is actually more or less abnormal when you remember very vividly what you have been dreaming. This is likely the case for the dreams that were really impressive somehow – disturbing or perhaps very pleasant. I don’t think that I’ve ever dreamt, for example, being in an analysis with Freud. That would be the ultimate Freudian dream – to be a patient on his sofa. And, as far as I know, I’ve never dreamt that I was the analyst and Freud was on the sofa – I’m sure about that.

    Charlie:     That must be reassuring to some extent.

    Sophie: Returning to the Radboud Reflects lecture, one thing we were curious to discuss is whether any new questions about dreams occurred to you throughout the process of preparing for the lecture and working with Sarah Schoch.

    Herman: No, not really. The lecture that I made was based on research that I had been doing in the past, which I already knew quite well. Instead, what I hadn’t realised before was that most dreams in the antique world were not about big, societal future events. For instance, when gods were believed to give messages in dreams, most dreams concerned medical issues. That was quite a new insight.

    Those dreams in the antique world still had a kind of prognostic quality in the sense that something was predicted to happen in the near future. Nevertheless, there was already something also of a diagnostic quality in these dreams because they were supposed to reveal something about psychic or somatic processes that were, as of yet, hidden and going to be a problem. This nuances the distinction between predictive dreams and more analytic dreams telling us about unconscious or hidden processes.

    Another thing I found interesting, in relation to Sarah’s talk, did not necessarily surprise me, but more or less confirmed something I had already expected. The team at Radboud Reflects discovered that there was not that big of a difference between our work. They tried to create an opposition between the neuroscientific work of Sarah and my talk, which focused mainly on Freud. They initially thought there must be a fundamental disagreement on the issue of dreams, but there isn’t. Neuroscientific research does not falsify Freud or, at least, not completely. Freud is important for thinking about dreams and putting dreams on the on the scientific agenda – I would say historically, that’s certainly true. However, they expected that the neuroscientific research would show a fundamentally different perspective on dreams and that Freud would be basically nonsense. Yet, that’s not true, there is no such fundamental disagreement. As I said, this is what I actually expected from the research, although they are completely different forms of science – if psychoanalysis is a science at all.

    Sophie: That’s certainly an interesting reflection. Given everything we’ve discussed today, I’d like to ask one final question for the readers of Splijtstof. Most of this interview has been about dreaming, but our edition is themed around ‘hopes’, too. Is there anything you’d like to share about ‘hopes’? Perhaps I’m returning to wish fulfilment with this question.

    Herman: Yes, this comes back to wish fulfilment. I don’t have specific hopes or wishes apart from very general ones that everybody would immediately agree with; these are open doors. I hope the next generation, such as you and younger people, will use all their efforts and all their creativity to find solutions to fundamental problems in our society and in our world. I’m thinking of the problems that my generation did not succeed in resolving and only made worse, such as climate change. That’s a very open-door and very general answer. I’m not very pleased with this answer, but maybe this is exactly what you wanted to hear.

    Sophie: I think that answer is a hope in itself.

    Herman: It’s always my hope that the next generation does better than the previous generation.

    Sophie: That’s a good hope to have.

    Herman: It’s a good hope to have, indeed.

    Sophie:     Thank you very much for joining us today. I’m sure Charlie and our readers would agree that this conversation has been very insightful.

    Charlie: Yes, thank you very much for your time.

    Herman: Thank you. It was a pleasure. If you have any afterthoughts or dreams about what is missing, you can always contact me.

    For further information, the Radboud Reflects lecture can be found on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/xQI9vU9PIrU?si=5V3SHc3EvMmhzP0j.

  • The Ethopolitics of Reproduction

    Biopolitical strategies and their effects on the reproductive choices of people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and carriers for genetic conditions

    (Content Warning: This essay discusses eugenics, abortion, ableism, disability, chronic illness and genetic conditions in a manner which might be uncomfortable or upsetting for some readers.)

    “We face discrimination every day in schools, in the work place and in society. And now thanks to this verdict the judges have upheld discrimination in the womb too.”

    In 2021, Heidi Crowter, a woman with Down syndrome, lost her appeal to the UK High Court concerning a law that legalises the abortion of foetuses with Down syndrome up until birth (BBC 2021). In the UK, abortion is legal up until 24 weeks of pregnancy, except when “there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”. Heidi Crowter and her legal team argued that this legislation does not “respect her life”. Crowter’s appeal was overturned, with the judges of the case stating that the current law balances “the rights of the unborn child and of women [sic]” (BBC 2021).

    Biopolitics

    Michel Foucault, a celebrated French philosopher and historian, argues that the focus of political power has shifted from a power over death (which he calls sovereign power) to a power to manage and administrate life (Foucault 2013, 44). He terms this new kind of power ‘biopower’, and writes that biopower takes two basic forms: “anatomo-politics” and “bio-politics” (Foucault 2013, 44). The latter form, bio-politics, concerns power over the human species itself and the conditions which influence reproduction, birth, death, longevity and health (44). This essay will engage in a biopolitical analysis of the reproductive choices of disabled and chronically ill people, and carriers[1] of genetic conditions.

    I will begin by identifying the biopolitical discourses, policies, technologies and practices associated with the reproductive choices of disabled and chronically ill people and carriers. ‘Discourse’ within the context of this biopolitical analysis should be understood not as the everyday discussions of citizens, but as ideologies and global interpretative frameworks that are introduced by religions, politicians, and other authorities. These discourses have sufficient power to shape or influence policies and technologies. Practices can be understood as lifestyle, and the way in which people tend to behave within a society.

    The discourse surrounding health and disability is very visible in the outcome of Heidi Crowter’s High Court appeal. Disabilities and chronic illnesses are conflated with suffering, and conversely, health and able-bodiedness are associated with positive well-being. This discourse is biopolitical, since it concerns the management of the human population and their health. In response to the discourse surrounding health and disability, policies have arisen or been amended to respond to the threat of disability. The UK Abortion Act, which permits the abortion of abnormal foetuses after the 24 week mark, is one of many laws of a similar nature – in 2017, 61% of countries permitted legal abortions in instances of “foetal impairment” (United Nations 2020, 1).

    In order to more accurately predict the health of a potential human being, technologies such as genetic screening and prenatal testing have been developed, and are often recommended as part of family planning and prenatal care (NHS n.d., John Hopkins Medicine n.d.). The aim of these predictions is to inform prospective parents of the risk of their future children having disabilities or genetic conditions. While online resources are evasive about the next steps once a disability or genetic condition has been discovered in testing, it is safe to assume, given that these tests are offered to those who are planning to start a family, that these tests are intended to be preventative on some level.

    To summarise: on the level of discourse, disabilities and ill-health are conflated with suffering and are thus undesirable. On the level of policies, campaigns and laws are put in place to avoid ill-health, and it is increasingly becoming legal to terminate pregnancies on the grounds of “foetal impairment”. Technologies such as prenatal testing and genetic screening exist to identify, and sometimes ‘disallow’ disability and ill-health via termination. Having briefly discussed the biopolitics involved in reproduction, I will explore the ways in which these biopolitical strategies influence the reproductive practices of disabled and chronically ill people and carriers.

    Abnormality & Disability in Genetic Screening and Prenatal Testing

    In “Biopolitics and Human Reproduction”, Catherine Mills (2017) explores the role of reproduction in biopolitics. Mills writes that 19th and early 20th century biopolitics concerning reproduction involved a great degree of state intervention (283). Regarding the aim of eugenics, she concludes that eugenics aims to secure the survival of the nation through “quality control”, and that control over birth entails controlling who is born, and also who gives birth (288).

    Mills argues that today, the principle of procreative liberty ensures that institutions cannot prevent a person from choosing to reproduce (unless the choice will cause harm to others) – a marked departure from the negative eugenics policies of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which directly interfered with the reproduction of citizens (Mills 2017, 283). However, this is not to say that biopolitics is no longer involved in reproduction. Individuals have the freedom to make their own reproductive choices, but their choices make them responsible for the health of society as a whole; “responsibilized” (Foucault 1990, 104-5 in Mills 2017, 284) prospective parents exercise biopolitical control mechanisms on themselves (Mills 2017, 283-4). In other words, the biopolitical responsibilization of individuals has taken the place of direct intervention into reproduction by institutions.

    Mills continues her argument by discussing the role that “normalization” (282) plays in biopolitical discourse and technologies surrounding reproduction. She writes that the parameters for a normal (healthy) foetus as observed through ultrasound technologies are derived from the measurements of other foetuses – a foetus can fall into the “healthy range” if it exists within a norm that has been “derived statistically from pre-existent bodies” (290). This is not to say that ultrasound technology dictates that a foetus that falls outside of normalcy must be terminated; rather, what is “normal” becomes valued and what is “abnormal” becomes devalued (290).

    Mills proposes that, as opposed to being an innocent measure to observe whether or not a foetus falls within “normal ranges”, prenatal testing technologies which target “foetal malformations” are responsible for creating an association between the statistical normal and a particular quality of life (Kittay 2006 in Mills 2017, 290). Institutions cannot directly intervene in matters of reproduction, but they can present prospective parents with the results of a test that makes an a priori assessment of the quality of life of their offspring, based on associations between statistical normality and the ability to lead a particular kind of life. This association results in the exclusion of the statistical abnormal from the biopolitical community via selective termination (282).

    As Mills argues, the medicalisation of pregnancy has meant that those who can become pregnant[2] have become “moral pioneers”, making decisions about life and death on the basis of medical testing that was unavailable to prior generations” (2017, 289). While the choice to ‘disallow’ life lies with the prospective parents, institutions create and advise on the basis of norms, from which ideas about quality of life, well-being and value are derived (290). As a result of the availability of statistics and predictions about the health of a foetus, prospective parents are made aware of suffering before it happens, and are given the choice to ‘disallow’ it, or ‘allow’ it on the grounds of an ethical obligation to prevent others from suffering through a low quality of life.

    The technologies of contemporary biopolitics ensure that individuals are aware of the risks at play in their reproductive decisions. Responsibilized individuals can no longer “passively” choose to reproduce in the presence of the possibility of disability or a genetic condition. Technologies such as ultrasounds and prenatal tests are so ubiquitous that in refusing to be tested, one makes the conscious choice to ignore the advice of biopolitical institutions. Furthermore, since biopolitical discourse posits that some instances of disability and illness can be prevented via biopolitical technologies, prospective parents who make the choice not to “prevent” these instances of disability and illness are rendered responsible for the health of their children. Thus, every individual reproductive choice – even the choice not to engage with biopolitical technologies – is given an ethical significance.

    Ethopolitics of Reproduction

    Concerning the notion that individual choices have an ethical significance, Nikolas Rose (2001) writes that “contemporary biopolitics is ethopolitics” (2). By ethopolitics, Rose means a political system in which human lives and everyday choices are subject to continual moral judgement by the individual, with the aim of self-betterment (18). In an ethopolitical system, knowledge of one’s own biological and genetic risk factors becomes a part of one’s overall obligation to be responsible (19). Screening technologies allow experts to evaluate or mitigate risk when it comes to individuals’ reproductive decisions; Rose argues that these tests are a way to resolve the difficult ethical choice presented to prospective parents (12). The availability of genetic screening and prenatal testing, and also the possibility to seek an “ethical abortion”, creates a possibility for prospective parents to minimise or prevent the suffering that is associated with ill-health and disability. If one’s reproductive choices can cause suffering (by fostering life) or prevent suffering (by disallowing life), these reproductive choices become ethical choices.

    Evidence of a higher risk (and thus a higher likelihood of the suffering associated with disability and chronic illness) presents an ethical argument, on the basis of biomedical science, against a particular reproductive decision. Rose argues that this has led to the prevalence of screening those in a ‘high-risk’ category for developing particular conditions or passing them on, and the use of amniocentesis[3] in order to identify genetic abnormalities in foetuses. Ultimately, “therapeutic abortion” may be offered to parents whose foetus tests positive for a genetic condition (Rose 2001, 12).

    However, Rose argues, these risk evaluations are based on probability, not certainty. It is impossible to guarantee the results of prenatal screening – genetic testing can indicate a higher risk of developing a disease, but the tests cannot predict whether or not an individual will develop a condition with 100% accuracy, nor can they predict the severity or timeline of a condition with any certainty (12). Choices surrounding reproduction are evaluated not based on a “clear-cut algorithm”, but on a weighing-up of risk. “In this space, biopolitics becomes ethopolitics” (12).

    Furthermore, second-trimester amniocentesis has an 0.1-0.3% chance of causing a miscarriage, even if the amniocentesis is performed by a skilled physician (1-3 in every 1000), and the risk is higher in the first trimester (Mayo Clinic 2022). The evaluation of risk hence involves the introduction of an additional risk. For whom could this additional risk be tolerable? Amniocentesis is usually only offered to those who are in a ‘high-risk’ category, such as those who are disabled and chronically ill, and carriers who have a family history of genetic conditions (Mayo Clinic 2022). The decision to perform amniocentesis in spite of the additional risk involves a judgement of the worth of the foetus. The unmitigated risk of disability or genetic disorder lowers a foetus’ worth, meaning the risk of causing damage or a miscarriage in the process of testing for these conditions is ethically permissible.

    Rose writes that the power dynamic between prospective parents and influential voices within biomedicine is “pastoral” (2001, 9), rather than outright controlling. The ethics of the “guider” (experts on biomedicine) work in relation with the ethics of the “guided” (prospective parents). Rose argues that this pastoral process, whereby the expertise and ethics of the “guider” enter into discussion with the ethics of the “guided” often exacerbates feelings of shame, guilt, and a sense of obligation to a party that is not present and cannot advocate for themselves – the potential offspring of the “guided” (9-10).

    There is much to be said about the affective potential of knowing that one could theoretically ‘give’ one’s offspring a gene that causes them to suffer. On the Genetic Alliance UK website, they have made a plea for those who have such a gene “to remember that genes are distributed by chance and having a faulty gene is no one’s fault” (Fletcher-Dallas 2016), demonstrating that the link between ‘giving’ and ‘causing’ can sometimes be drawn by those who test positive for a particular gene. Some prospective parents could feel as though, since their child is ill or disabled due to a gene they passed on, they have ‘made’ their child ill or disabled. In other words, if a prospective parent is made responsible for their own genes, by passing these genes to their child, they are responsible for their child’s suffering.

    In the case of carriers, whom Rose describes as “those individuals carrying the markers or polymorphisms of susceptibility who are neither phenomenologically or experientially ‘sick’ or ‘abnormal’” (12), their understanding of the predicted quality of life of their potential offspring comes from information provided by “guiders”, rather than their own experiences. They simply carry genes that increase the risk for a particular condition. Any ethical judgements about the quality of life of their offspring, whether on the level of their medical or societal condition, are guided by the pastoral influences of discourse surrounding disability and abnormality.

    Rose argues that, in consultations with biomedical experts about one’s reproductive choices, the affected party – the foetus – is not represented (Rose 2001, 9-10). However, while the foetus may not be able to represent themselves, there may be a person or persons present in the discussion who have an innate understanding of how that foetus would feel should they be ‘allowed’ to live – the prospective parents, should they be disabled or have a chronic illness themselves, can judge their quality of life a posteriori, not a priori. They know what it means to be disabled or have a chronic illness in the society they live in, so they understand the implications for the quality of life of their potential children. This, in combination with the pastoral guidance of biomedical experts who offer a host of preventative measures, means that the reproductive decisions made by disabled and chronically ill people are entangled in an ethopolitics of both affect and empathy. When considering having children, disabled and chronically ill people must consider whether it would be ethical to subject another human being to the conditions they are experiencing.

    Disability, Heritability and Labour

    Worth and Productivity

    In common parlance, the phrases ‘quality of life’ and ‘well-being’ are often used interchangeably. Both terms involve an evaluation of a person’s life, and these evaluations can be either positive or negative. The frame of reference for both of these evaluations can be based on statistically-derived norms, as this essay has previously explored. In this sense, ‘high quality of life’ and ‘positive well-being’ both reflect a valuable life, and thus one can assume that a person with positive well-being also experiences a high quality of life.

    However, there is a significant aspect in which these terms diverge in meaning. While ‘well-being’ concerns an individual’s health and happiness, ‘quality of life’ concerns a much broader range of factors. The World Health Organisation defines quality of life as: “individuals’ perceptions of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns” (WHO 2012, 3).

    Positive well-being is associated with high quality of life, but is not the only characteristic of a high quality of life. In fact, the World Health Organisation Quality of Life (WHOQOL) User Manual explicitly differentiates between ‘well-being’ and ‘quality of life’, stating that “quality of life cannot be equated simply with the terms ‘health status’, ‘life style’, ‘life satisfaction’, ‘mental state’ or ‘well-being’” (2012, 3). The WHOQOL lists six broad domains that are to be evaluated when considering one’s quality of life: “physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, personal beliefs and their relationships to salient features of the environment” (3). 

    The third domain, ‘level of independence’, is of particular significance in relation to disabled and chronically ill people. In the WHOQOL User Manual, pages 60-61 are dedicated to an explanation of the individual facets of quality of life within this domain. In the explanation of facet 9, ‘Mobility’, it is stated that having to depend on another person for one’s mobility is thought to lower one’s quality of life (60). Facet 10, ‘Activities of Daily Living’, involves an evaluation of a person’s ability to independently perform ‘usual’ everyday tasks (61), again under the assumption that depending on another person to do these tasks lowers one’s quality of life . The assumptions about quality of life inherent to facet 11, ‘Dependence on medication or treatments’, are immediately evident (61). All of these facets involve an assessment of one’s quality of life that is not necessarily concerned with one’s medical or physical reality, but rather one’s status as a dependent within society.

    The tendency of biomedical experts to provide guidance on the basis of quality of life, rather than well-being, initially appears to be an issue of phrasing. However, using the phrase ‘quality of life’ means that not only a person’s projected well-being, but also predictions of the kind of life a person will lead, are involved in an assessment of whether or not it is ethical to ‘allow’ life. The facet of ‘mobility’ does not evaluate an individual’s quality of life on the basis of “impairment” in the sense associated with physical well-being, but rather if that person is independently mobile (WHOQOL 2012, 60).

    The conflation of ‘well-being’ and ‘quality of life’ was not explicitly elaborated on by Mills (2017), but she does note that: “[…] concerns about biological normality are made inextricable from concerns about ways of living well” (291), as a part of her argument that norms of health become associated with a particular lifestyle. Arguably, the practice of incorporating assessments of one’s health and one’s ability to lead a particular, normative lifestyle into a singular evaluative criterion, ‘quality of life’, is a compelling reason for this association. This is not to say that those who are unable to live independently do, in fact, experience a high quality of life. However, low quality of life, to the extent that it could constitute an ethical obligation to ‘disallow’ it is not an intrinsic feature of dependence; it is the feature of a society that devalues life as a dependant.

    The United Kingdom is an exemplar case of such a society. The government of the UK has recently proposed a policy whereby disabled, chronically ill and mentally ill individuals who depend on benefits will have their benefits cut by £4,680 a year if they do not look for remote work (Open Access Government 2023). This policy is openly hostile towards those who are not currently able to work because of their health, and places individuals who were already experiencing financial insecurity in an incredibly difficult position; perhaps an impossible position. It is a biopolitical strategy to attempt to increase productivity, by making an ethopolitical claim that it is a “citizen’s duty” to work, and that working is expected as part of a normal lifestyle.

    Statistically-derived norms, as Mills (2017) emphasises, create an association between fitting a particular norm of health and living a particular kind of life (290). For prospective parents who are aware of the connection between dependency on the basis of disability/chronic illness and a low quality of life, the question of whether their offspring will be able to be independent becomes a part of an overall consideration about their offspring’s quality of life. The issue is not simply the health concerns associated with an individual’s disabilities or chronic illnesses, but whether they can have a high enough quality of life within a society that devalues dependence to an extent that causes additional suffering. Prospective parents with a disability or chronic illness understand this connection, not because they have been made aware of this connection due to the pastoral guidance of a biomedical professional, but because they have likely experienced it themselves.

    Facet 12, within the ‘level of independence’ domain of the WHOQOL, is highly indicative of the fact that human life that is capable of work is valued more highly. This facet concerns ‘Working capacity’. The explanation for this facet is as follows:

    This facet examines a person’s use of his or her energy for work. “Work” is defined as any major activity in which the person is engaged. Major activities might include paid work, unpaid work, voluntary community work, full-time study, care of children and household duties. Because such questions refer to these possible types of major activities, the facet focuses on a person’s ability to perform work, regardless of the type of work. (WHOQOL 2012, 61)

    On the basis of this quality of life assessment, if a person is unable to work, their quality of life would be evaluated more negatively than that of a person who is able to work. Given the hostility of society towards those who cannot work, it is no wonder that an inability to work is counted among health issues, psychological issues and physical insecurity as factors that can depreciate an individual’s quality of life. One can imagine that in a world in which an inability to work is accommodated for, disabled, chronically ill people and carriers could be more optimistic about the quality of life experienced by their potential offspring.

    It could be that some readers have thus far interpreted this essay as an anticapitalist critique, but this is not the case; ableism has existed for far longer than capitalism. This essay is as much a critique of contemporary capitalist societies as it is a critique of the Ancient Spartans, who bathed newborn male babies in pure wine to test whether they could grow into strong warriors, and killed the babies whose constitutions could not handle this (Penrose 2015, 510). Indeed, an anecdote from Herodotus about two Spartan men who were temporarily blinded by the same condition, one of whom went into battle anyway and died, and another who asked not to fight and was excluded as a coward (2015, 512), is almost reminiscent of the UK government’s policy that disabled and chronically people should “find work anyway” or suffer the consequences. Disability/chronic illness activism is necessarily anti-capitalist, since it advocates for those who do not labour, but we must not assume that anti-capitalism is inherently anti-ableist. I hope to have adequately demonstrated that ableist rhetoric is entrenched not only in our political systems but in conventional morality, down to the level of our individual reproductive choices. Regardless of whether or not we live within a capitalist system, the quality of life of disabled and chronically ill people will continue to influence people’s reproductive decisions.

    Moralistic hand-wringing about ‘quality of life’ is ableist and unproductive if it is not accompanied by attempts to actively improve the quality of life of currently-living disabled and chronically ill people. Disability and chronic illness are not immutable. In spite of many attempts in the past and present to prevent disabled and chronically ill life through influencing the population’s reproductive choices, disability and chronic illness will continue to occur spontaneously. As a person living with fibromyalgia (a chronic pain disorder) for a decade as of the date of this publication, I can attest to the fact that able-bodiedness is far more precarious than most of us are willing to accept. Even for those readers who do not develop a disability or chronic illness in their lifetime, those lucky enough to reach old age will experience the realities of life as a dependent individual.

    It is therefore in our best interests to maintain a society that guarantees a positive quality of life for disabled and chronically ill people, but it is as if, having observed our current quality of life, our ethopolitical responsibility has become preventing future disabled or chronically life rather than engaging in activism and societal change on the behalf of future disabled or chronically ill life. One is left to wonder who benefits from discourse that on the one hand encourages the prevention of disability and chronic illness (in other words, the prevention of disabled and chronically ill people), and on the other actively makes the world more hostile for disabled and chronically ill people. It is certainly not disabled or chronically ill people themselves.

    Conclusion

    This essay set out to examine the effects of biopolitical strategies on the reproductive choices of disabled and chronically ill people, and the carriers of genetic conditions. I have argued that the reproductive choices of disabled/chronically ill people and carriers are shaped by biopolitical policies and practices, and that these in turn are informed by ethopolitical discourse about ill-health and suffering. A biopolitical analysis of the discourse, policies, technologies and practices associated with reproduction shows that at every level, disabled and chronically ill people and carriers are influenced by authorities and institutions. In the case of carriers, the ethopolitics of reproduction may indeed be exercised on the level of pastoral guidance and abstract ethical equations, as Rose (2001) argues. However, in the case of those who are disabled or chronically ill themselves, their reproductive decisions are influenced by biopolitical strategies that affect the lives of disabled and chronically ill people at large.

    Furthermore, biopolitical policies that reduce the quality of life for disabled and chronically ill people, such as the one proposed by the UK Government (Open Access Government 2023) not only control how people live, but control who gets to live. The knowledge that life – or rather, the current way of living – is hostile towards dependent individuals influences conceptions about quality of life, creating an ethopolitical component to individuals’ reproductive practices. Disabled and chronically ill people experience this hostility firsthand. If they do make the choice to reproduce, they are more likely to be offered prenatal testing, even if it produces additional risks for the foetus, because life as a disabled and chronically ill person is devalued as a result of the quality of life they experience.

    The biopolitical strategies at play on the levels of discourse, policies and technologies, both on the level of biopolitical management of disabled/chronically ill people and the ethopolitical management of the reproductive choices of disabled people and carriers, promote a self-sustaining, able-bodied and independent population. It is indeed the case that dependent individuals experience a lower quality of life as a result of the ableist society they are born into. Having explored the reasons for the lower quality of life associated with disability and chronic illness, many of which are societal rather than inherent to disabilities and chronic illnesses themselves, it is apparent that positive societal change would likely influence the reproductive choices of disabled and chronically ill people, and carriers of genetic conditions. Notably, making an ethical argument in favour of improving the quality of life of disabled and chronically ill individuals by accommodating us within society, as opposed to making an ethical argument in favour of preventing our lives, is the road less travelled.

    Bibliography

    BBC. 2021. “Woman with Down’s syndrome loses abortion law fight.” Accessed 3rd April, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-58662846.

    Fletcher-Dallas, Robert. 2016. “Making the decision to have predictive testing.” Genetic Alliance UK, July 21, 2016. Accessed January 22, 2024. https://geneticalliance.org.uk/information/service-and-testing/making-the-decision-to-have-predictive-testing/.

    Foucault, Michel. 2013. “Right of Death and Power of Life.” In Biopolitics: A Reader, edited by Timothy Campbell and Adam Sitze, 41–60. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    John Hopkins Medicine. n.d. “Common Tests During Pregnancy.” Accessed January 16, 2024. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/common-tests-during-pregnancy#genetic.

    Mills, Catherine. 2017. “Biopolitics and Human Reproduction.” In The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics, edited by Sergei Prozorov and Simona Rentea, 281–94. London: Routledge.

    NHS. n.d. “Genetic and genomic testing.” Last reviewed March 1, 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/genetic-and-genomic-testing/.

    Open Access Government. 2023. “UK Government: Disabled people urged to work from home or face benefit cuts.” Accessed November 29, 2023. https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/uk-government-disabled-people-urged-to-work-from-home-or-face-benefit-cuts/170554/#:~:text=Individuals%20facing%20mobility%20and%20mental,fail%20to%20find%20remote%20work.

    Penrose, Walter D. 2015. “The Discourse of Disability in Ancient Greece.” The Classical World 108(4): 499–523. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24699780.

    United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. 2020. World Population Policies 2017: Abortion laws and policies – A global assessment: Highlights. (ST/ESA/SER.A/448). https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Nov/undesa_pd_2020_world_population_policies_highlights.pdf.

    WHOQOL Group. 2012. “WHOQOL User Manual.” Accessed January 24, 2024. https://www.who.int/tools/whoqol.

    [1] Henceforth, I will refer to people who carry genes for genetic conditions as ‘carriers’.

    [2] Mills uses the word ‘women’, but it is more prudent to avoid using gendered language in this instance, as this argument is chiefly concerned with the potential for pregnancy rather than gender identity.

    [3] Amniocentesis involves removing amniotic fluid and cells from the uterus. The procedure is sometimes done to test the genes of the developing foetus, or diagnose a foetal infection (Mayo Clinic 2022).

  • Off the Record with Marilyn Kallasse

    Marilyn Kallasse is a woman on a mission. She’s a 21-year-old international student from Estonia. Not content with simply studying PPS, she is the Chair of F.C. Sophia, and can often be found working at the Coffee Corner at the UB.

    Rather than starting by asking you for a fun fact about yourself, can you tell me a fun lie about yourself?

    ‘‘I can’t lie. I physically can’t lie. I have never successfully lied in my life. I don’t know. There are no lies… there is only truth. That is not a good answer, but YOLO. I can tell you a fun fact about myself, though!’’

    Oh! Go for it.

    ‘‘I am very intrigued by countries ending with -stan. Two days ago, I watched an hour-long video about Turkmenistan. They have all the Guinness world records for having the most marble buildings in their capital. Did you know that?’’

    I did not know that!

    ‘‘Now you know!’’

    What’s your favourite -stan country?

    ‘‘I am intrigued by Kazakhstan… the capital looks like a mixture of Dubai and Las Vegas together, and I am very intrigued by this. I watched a documentary about it, and the nature is very beautiful, so I am going to go there one day.’’

    What is it like to do a full-time study, a part-time job and a board year all at the same time?

    ‘‘…It’s sometimes a very silent, loud scream… Sometimes it’s hard, but I’m a big fan of time management. To be honest, right now there are only two things in my mind, board and work. I rest is kind of like, in the background. It’s stowed in my filing cabinet. It is tiring, but I’m trying my best and right now I’m doing fine with it. I feel like an actual businesswoman, ‘cos I need to have my phone ringer on all the time. It’s a thing.’’

    Speaking of being a successful businesswoman, what gives you a feeling of achievement?

    ‘‘If we talk about doing a board year, I think the most fulfilling feeling is when someone notices that I did this thing, or that thing, and says: ‘this was very nice’. I’m a big fan of words of affirmation. I’ve been getting a lot of ‘good job’s’ and pats on the back, and I’ve been going ‘whooo!’. It’s so goofy.’’

    Do you have some wisdom for us?

    ‘‘I don’t wanna sound too cheesy, but I think people should be more kind to themselves. If there are days where you feel like you can’t do anything, like if you went to the library for 9 hours and all you did was Buzzfeed quizzes, that’s fine. I try to practise with myself saying that it’s okay, life goes on, and I shouldn’t hold it against myself. I think some of my friends struggle with this as well. It’s okay to realise at 12pm on a Monday that you’re done and you can go home. We ball. And some of us are bald…’’

    [to me, as an aside] ‘‘You know how in courtrooms they have those keyboards to write everything down in shorthand? You would be so slay at that, typing all this down. It would be so slay.’’

    If 2016 was the year of realising things, what was 2023 the year of?

    ‘‘I mean, I feel like people started realising things in 2016 and STILL haven’t fully realised everything. 2023 is – okay, another very cheesy answer – but it’s about being kind to yourself and others, and it’s just… I don’t know, life is hard and there is inflation, like, beer is getting more expensive, it’s all a lot. But I feel like at the end of the day, what we have is other people and ourselves and we should just be kind.’’  

    What is your favourite word in every language you speak, and what does each word mean?

    ‘‘So in Estonian, my native language, my mother tongue, the word is ‘tohuvabohu’. It means chaos. It’s a goofy word because, like, you can literally use it for anything. It’s the Estonian equivalent of ‘goofy chaos’. It rolls very nicely off the tongue. It’s not a common word in the Estonian language anymore, like, you would hear a grandmother say it. I think that’s very beautiful.

    In Dutch it’s definitely the word ‘smoorverliefd’, because it means being ‘head over heels in love’ with someone, and I think it’s so nice in Dutch that it’s only one word. In other languages you have to use a lot of words to get the point across. But the Dutch came up with just one word for it, and I think that’s really beautiful. Also, shoutout to Doe Maar for writing a great song.

    I think my favourite word in English… is an adjective, though. Does an adjective count as a word?’’

    If I answer the question, am I allowed to keep this part in the interview?

    ‘‘Yeah… I guess… An adjective is a word, right?’’

    Yes.

    ‘‘Okay… It’s probably goofy! Because with goofy, you can give away so many things. ‘That’s goofy’, as in, ‘I think that’s weird’, ‘that’s goofy’, as in, ‘I think that’s funny’… if I don’t know what to say, I can say ‘goofy’. It’s a good word.’’

    Is it kind of like when Paris Hilton says, when you don’t know what to say, you can say ‘That’s Hot?’

    ‘‘Yeah, literally.

    …Oh, and I don’t have a favourite word in German.[1]’’

    Which musical album changed your life?

    ‘‘I think the album that has had a genuine physical effect on me was the first time I listened to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon on the trolley to work – we have trolleys[2] in Estonia, goofy – and that’s when… I’ve always, you know, been surrounded by music, but that was the moment when I really realised what music can do to people. And it’s a great album!’’

    What are you reading right now?

    ‘‘I haven’t started a new book, but I love Dolly Alderton, and I just finished a book by her where people write prompts to her and she responds to them. Sometimes women in their 20s can feel like they need to have a boyfriend, bla bla bla, and what she writes is that the biggest loves in her life have been her friends. I think that’s really important.

    Next, I’m going to read Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma. It’s about a woman who moves to a different planet to start a new life. But I haven’t started, I’ve only read one page.’’

    Speaking of starting a new life, what are your hopes for the future? Where will you be, and what will you be doing?

    ‘‘I see myself staying in Nijmegen and doing my Master’s here as well, maybe another board year. Then, I would like to work, for example, as an ambassador one day. I would like to be the Estonian ambassador in the Netherlands… but maybe that’s too ambitious.’’

    Do you have any final messages for the Universe, before I end the interview?

    ‘‘Please come to F.C. Sophia’s Lustrum activities, it’s going to be really fun!’’

    Anything else?

    ‘‘That’s it!’’

    [1] I have received word that ‘tohuvabohu’ is also used in German. It is originally a Biblical Hebrew word meaning ‘primordial chaos’, i.e. the formless chaos/void before creation.

    [2] A trolleybus is an electric bus that gets power from overhead wires.

  • Into the Black Hole with Jonathan Zackor

    The Valkhof Museum’s exhibition ‘Into the Black Hole’ opened in October of 2023, to much fanfare. Students from Radboud University (such as our very own Laura Schranz!) participated as ‘public-in-residence’ to co-design the exhibition alongside the Valkhof museum. I decided to interview Jonathan Zackor, a Master’s student in Tourism and Culture at Radboud, who was part of the core group of students working on the exhibition. I had a strategic advantage in scheduling an interview with him, owing to the fact that we have been boyfriends for almost a year and a half.

    I decide to spring a surprise interview on Jonathan during his shift at the coffee corner in the main University Library. He is wearing his black work polo shirt and a pair of comfortable-looking jeans, but his individuality is still obvious even through his uniform: his split-dyed hair (currently half-brown, half-orange), the tattoos on his arm and his nose piercings make him easy to spot. He is softly spoken, switching between English and Dutch to take people’s coffee orders, and apologetically defaulting back to English with a smile if someone tries to order using unfamiliar Dutch slang. In a quiet moment, I ask my first question:

    For the uninitiated, who are you, and what was your role in the Valkhof Museum exhibition ‘Into the Black Hole’?

    “I’m Jonathan Zackor, I’m an international student from Germany who is doing his Master’s in Tourism and Culture. While I was working at the Valkhof Museum, I was still doing my Bachelor’s degree in Arts and Culture Studies, so my Master’s orientation coincided with the work I was doing at Valkhof. I was hired by the Valkhof Museum, as a Radboud student, particularly as a student who could participate in giving a unique perspective on the collaboration between art and science.”

    He leans over to look at what I have written down so far, then asks, “Could you add that I was selected to be a member of the core group, not the senate?”

    On the topic of unique perspectives, I ask him if he noticed a difference in approach or mindset between him and students from different faculties. He begins to answer, but is interrupted by an influx of customers to the coffee corner. He diligently switches to taking people’s orders, and once the rush dies down, he returns.

    “A difference? Well, yes… I think a difference was already reflected in my motivation when I applied for this position. They were asking what our opinion about the black hole was, what initial thoughts we had about it. I told them that I wanted to become an academic researcher, that I’ve done some independent research on it already, and that I’ve done some independent research on Affect studies – with an A!”

    At this point, something shifts: Jonathan is no longer just chatting during his work shift, cleaning Billie cups and keeping an eye out for customers – he embodies an academic, a professor giving a lecture on cultural studies (one I am struggling to capture the true depth of in my hastily-typed notes).

    “In my opinion, the phenomenon of the black hole is extremely challenging to grasp, so I attached some thoughts to it that were inspired by my previous research, such as imagining the black hole as a void with all emotions absent, with all humanness absent. So I was considering the black hole from a Culture-studies’ perspective. I was not the only person working on the exhibition from the Faculty of Arts, obviously, but I was very willing to stand in for the initial idea that I had.”

    “I think the perspective I have is also important for people who don’t know anything about black holes. Like, I didn’t know anything about the scientific side, I think most people probably don’t. In antiquity, people came up with Greek gods to try to understand the phenomena around themselves that were beyond understanding, and I think the black hole represents something similar.”

    “In my studies, we are taught to be extremely critical. Our study is very theoretical, so I thought it was very different…”

    Jonathan dashes away for a moment to retrieve some returned Billie cups from customers, puts them in the sink, then makes his way back over to me.

    “…I feel like other studies from the Faculty of Arts might have more practical applications, like studying languages, but with Arts and Culture Studies, it may be a stereotype, but you can’t really do anything with it if you don’t have more education, like in a job. You know what I mean?”

    I am a PPS student; naturally, I do.

    So, being an Arts and Culture student, you’re used to having to deal with more abstract ideas that aren’t tangible. You’re used to studying things that can’t necessarily be understood, like a black hole.

    “Oh… you put that much better than I did.” Jonathan half-sighs, half-chuckles.

    What does the exhibition mean to you, firstly as Jonathan the Arts and Culture scholar, and secondly as Jonathan the individual?

    “As a scholar, it means a successful combination of art and science perspectives.”

    He doesn’t elaborate, so I nudge him:

    And what about Jonathan, the individual?

    He smiles, this question is more difficult. After thinking for a moment, he says: “I think one major component of the exhibition was that it was co-designed with students my age, and I think it’s quite an honour to be part of this. I think that the exhibition really thrives off of that as well, because you can hear the contemporary voices. That’s very cool. Like it’s very… in the moment, completely recent. It speaks for our generation.”

    You were talking about Affect earlier; how do you feel when you’re in the exhibition?

    “I feel fascinated by all of the voices that come together. It’s a very overwhelming experience. It leaves me in awe. It makes you wonder why museums don’t work with students more often.”

    What do you think a student from the FFTR could learn from a visit to the exhibition?

    “People can have different conceptions, theories, “scientific theories”…” (Jonathan mimes the quotation marks for “scientific theories” with his hands, half-mockingly, with the air of someone who has several strong opinions on the separation of scientific theory from cultural theory), “…but they can express them in artworks as opposed to in writing. In philosophy, I feel as though writing is the primary way of expressing and learning ideas and theories. In the exhibition, philosophy students could try to retrace the objects, and try to see what theories the objects might incorporate or represent. Obviously the written descriptions of the artworks on the plaques help people to interpret the work…”

    Jonathan hesitates for a moment to gather his thoughts, then confides in me: “If the museum wants to work with students and take them seriously, I think a point of improvement in the future would be for them not to pick and choose from our ideas as it suits them or the status quo.”

    I detect some frustration and, in the spirit of journalism, I resolve to delve deeper, devising a new question while Jonathan finishes his shift.

    Were there things that the senate or the core group had suggested, but weren’t able to implement in the final exhibition?

    “Since I was a member of the core group, we weren’t part of a lot of conversations that the senate had. So I can’t really say anything about that. But we, as a core group, were each given additional specific focuses. One idea we had was contrary to what museums usually do –  we wanted to not print dates on objects we were exhibiting. There are a lot of objects in the vitrines and exhibition space such as the mobile telephone, prints, books from Radboud’s special collection… Using these objects, we wanted to give a comprehensive overview of people from different cultures and different time periods gazing into the stars and making art about it, or wanting to explore what’s waiting for them in the universe, and inventing technologies to do so. This is a cross-cultural thing, and we wanted the visitor to think for themselves about what connects different cultures, in spite of temporal differences. So we were thinking about just completely removing the data and locations of objects from the objects themselves, to not have the dates printed in the object descriptions.”

    “We wanted to do away with museum traditions. The students had visions for how we could change things, and this was brought up in conversation. But I think this, and other ideas, were sometimes too progressive, I guess, in the museum’s eyes. ‘This is not how we do it here’, basically. So those ideas from the students were put to the side, I feel, because they were so out of the way of traditions. But we weren’t really told that this was something we couldn’t give input on.”

    “There was also an issue with language. We were a mix of Dutch and international students, and one of the museum’s missions with the exhibition was to attract more students, which was why they wanted to have our perspective as students. We basically told them: ‘to be inclusive, it would be best to have English as the main language of communication’. But then there is also the tradition of the Valkhof museum to cooperate with German partners and visitors, so in their tradition, the main language of communication is Dutch, followed by German and English (or English and German). We wanted the main language to be English, not only for the big texts, but also for the videos, to make it more attractive to the general student population. But the museum reverted back to what they were used to. It was a very small thing, but I think we could have spent our time better if we had known there were certain things we couldn’t have changed, and we could have dedicated our energy elsewhere, towards things that were possible to change. The boundaries were sometimes a bit blurred.”

    “Basically, how museums usually work, they work with internal and external stakeholders. That makes sense for the museum. We as a core group were basically put in charge of the exhibition concept, or so we were told, which included the upcoming written narrative – the story we wanted to tell to the visitors – and we had a lot of ideas. Each of us in the core group prepared little powerpoints, presented what we thought about black holes, our study backgrounds, and we really connected with each other. From those conversations, we came up with a ‘master narrative’ which included the narrative, but also how to set it up in reality, spatial design, colour coding. One member had a really cool idea for making a vintage space poster, like Star Wars.”

    “And once we were told there were also external stakeholders involved, like a design team, we were excited to work together with them, we spent a lot of time on it, which says a lot, as students. We had multiple meetings. But what we weren’t really told – and I’m just saying that this should have been made clear upfront, to make sure we spent our time properly – was that the design team were the ones in charge because they had a lot of practical experience. We could give them our plans, but they would then tell us what they could do with that. And once they got back to us, I think all of us were shocked because the plan was completely different from what we had in mind with the story we wanted to tell. It was very different. We all really had to get warmed up to the idea. This is not to say that I don’t like the exhibition space as it is now, but we really had to get used to the idea because, at first, we didn’t know how this was going to go. And I think we would have done things differently if there had been transparent communication. I don’t want to sound too critical, but I remember everyone having a moment of silence when the plans were presented in front of us. We were like: ‘Huh? How did they come up with that?’. It was a surprise.”

    Did you learn anything about philosophy, politics or religion while you were working on the exhibition?

    “Well, I did learn a lot, of course, because another member of the core group is literally studying PPS, and she was very inspiring in her talks. I feel like she had a very personal stake in it. I love learning from other people as well. We had a lot of different backgrounds in the core group, and, of course, in the senate, but we didn’t collaborate as much with the senate as with the other core group members. I like to just listen to the very amazing ideas people have around me, obviously there is a reason why the collaboration wanted to have a philosophy student, and I think it was a great mix.”

    “The connection emphasised to me that mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion are all around us. People look up at the same night sky, as part of this imaginary of people thinking about the universe – we are all part of this. But there are still structural things in place that means that this togetherness is obstructed. We set others apart – we obstruct this togetherness. We create Otherness, we perpetuate ideas of cultural supremacy, we try to separate art and science.”

    “In my studies this is very much a point of attention, but to also see these ideas and points of attention emphasised in the work we were doing together, across studies and faculties, was really nice. The exhibition united students of all disciplines in thinking about black holes, and this unitedness is one of the goals of the exhibition itself.”

    “I like that the exhibition shows that people always have been, and always will be, curious about the world around them. I really like that.”

    The location and the exhibition itself describes itself as “accessible to wheelchair users and the disabled” on the website. Do you think this is the case?

    “It is now! For people with physical disabilities. So basically, when the initial design plans were shown to us, and we had a discussion about it, people were like ‘is it accessible for people who use wheelchairs?’, because the initial plan had obstructed the wheelchair ramp with walls. This was rectified, so now it is accessible for people with a wheelchair.”

    “But for some exhibition pieces, specifically ones that use a lot of light and noise, I would have appreciated a warning for people who are sensitive to flashing lights or intense sensory input in general. I don’t think there’s a warning in place right now, and that might limit accessibility for some people. But for the videos, for example, the education videos, there was a lot of conversation about how to deal with the sound. So we finally decided on ‘sound showers’, which I really like. Sound showers come from a source in the ceiling, and you have to stand under it, literally like a shower head but for sound. If you’re not under it, you don’t hear it. So that is good for people who would be overwhelmed by a lot of different sounds in the same room.”

    “And I also remember when we first went into the building on the Keizer Karelplein before the exhibition was set up. A lot of people from our group felt that the physical space of the building was very disorienting, challenging, and we kind of wanted it to not be overwhelming. There are a lot of colours, weirdly-shaped pillars, and we just wanted to create a coherent environment. When we were walking through the building at first, we felt quite uncomfortable. We felt we really had to work with the space and we didn’t want it to be too overwhelming for visitors. I think the exhibition itself is quite a lot, you know, it’s a bit overwhelming in terms of the content and the fact that it makes you feel like a little thing in the universe, it’s quite existential. This is making me think about Camus. May I refer to Camus?”

    You may.

    “I think Camus would have liked this exhibition a lot. You see yourself as this tiny thing, right in front of a black hole, and you think ‘Yes, it exists, you can ask a lot of questions and learn about it, but you can’t escape it, so you just have to face it’… I do like Camus.” Jonathan laughs a little at his own admiration for Camus.

    I recall that the students involved in the exhibition were each asked to devise a question for the visitors to consider as they walked around the exhibition. Your question was along the lines of: “Imagine you are being sucked into a black hole and into a different dimension, and you have to leave something behind. What is it?”. What would you leave behind as you went Into the Black Hole?

    “I asked this question because I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to answer the question. I think that everyone does want to leave something negative behind, maybe they feel that it isn’t a part of their story. So I feel like it’s, again, a very existential question. Usually, I tend to want to think about it, not just give a funny answer. I guess I would want to leave behind the feeling that I don’t deserve good things. Because I do, and everyone else also does. I don’t like it when people question their worth.”

    Speaking of worth, and as a way to round off the interview, what do you think makes the ‘Into the Black Hole’ exhibition worth experiencing?

    “I think the fact that it encourages people to experience curiosity, in the face of their fear. People look at black holes and think: ‘this is scary, but I’m going to study it anyway’. This is very human. I think the exhibition is a testament to human beings doing things both because of, and in spite of, existential fear or dread. Students, artists, scientists, everyone.”