Type by Galia Alena
For many years I laboured under the misapprehension that a first-person narrative was only good for chick lit, The Divine Comedy and American Psycho. It is not highly regarded in non-fiction, unless you write a memoir, better if of misery, while in the academia it is frowned upon, and I speak as someone at the receiving end of vast verbal abuse on account of having used 'I believe that' in an essay about The Canterbury Tales many years ago. At university you can only get away with using 'I' if you are Harold Bloom or Slavoj Zizek or Jacques Lacan or someone equally high up the pecking order or the gibberish scale. For everybody else, one's own writing identity becomes a phantom trickster, a battered mask, a skeleton never to let out of the closet.
Yet, teachers, tutors, agents, editors and high-profile authors invariably suggest to develop a loud and clear voice as the first step in the journey to becoming a bona fide writer. Of course, I do know that one's own voice is not one and the same with a first-person narrative, but to develop an identity amidst an establishment that encourages us to stifle our creativity and our selves, right down to the use of 'I', from primary school onwards takes unfaltering stoicism and a set of steel balls. When I read articles from reputable news sources all the way down to the least frequented forums, I am often taken aback by underhand, and unproven, claims that cultural and media studies, literature, music, history of art, photography or design are second-rate subjects only the intellectually inapt can excel at.
I remember how enthusiastically we would greet the history of art or the music teacher when we were very young, most probably because we subconsciously aligned those two weekly hours to a recreational time of sorts, when the ability to expresses our selves was not a sin but a talent. However, it was not until I left university that it became apparent that the top mark in art or literature was considered less of an achievement than one in physics or maths. When confronted with a question about my educational background while at work, mentioning my English degree prompted my working companion to conclude that I had been 'taught how to read then'. I retorted that I had learnt that at home when I was five, but while I am certain that the irony was lost on him, the sting stayed with me.
Our distinguishing characters are squelched into homogenised submission to the point whereby very few, and far between, individuals would be able to pinpoint the predominant features that define their creative endeavours and selves. Yet, while the notion of identity is certainly complex, why cannot our own creative identities be defined by a handful of words, just as they are in dictionaries? Why is it so hard even to admit to creativity, especially when working in un-creative environments?
If you are at university you will be brainwashed into being objective, detached, emotionally unfettered by the texts you're dissecting, as if you did not care either way. Find a book which you think inadequate, unreadable, puerile and you will be expected to say so in the most sly manner possible. Avoid any reference to your specific responses to the text, even though you're writing an essay that crystallises those very same responses. Find a book which is engaging, ground-breaking, up there with the very best of them and you will be damned if your appreciation shows between the lines, let alone on them.
This pressing need for objectivity is a false idol because deep down we all know that objectivity does not exist. It does not exist in the news, it does not exist in business, and it most definitely does not exist in the arts and humanities. You can smother your writing personality until it has gasped into oblivion; you can even begin to refer to yourself in that most conceited third person singular, but you will still provide a subjective, personal interpretation of whatever text you are reading. So why pretending it is not so? I may have averted futher flack when I stopped using 'I believe that' in my essays, but I can assure you that the sub-text was still one which screamed me loud and clear.
When I cannot use 'I' and have to replace it with the gruesome 'one' or the more revolting 'the reader' (reader which I seem to know so intimately, so damn well... I wonder why that is) my identity is only temporarily highjacked by the context of my writing, for I really am there on the page, naked for all who stifle me to giggle at. The sooner you learn to identify and embrace yourself on the page and the better your writing will get, especially when confronted by a world which thinks reading and writing are just down to learning the alphabet. What if you could do more than that? What if you had discovered that identity is not down to alienation and lack and faux objectivity but is in fact your most prized possession?
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