Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Books Up Close. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and anyone interested in language. In today's episode, I talked to Rami Khalia about his book Remarks on Power. This is a different kind of episode than usual where I'm talking to some authors about books.
Speaker: about reading, about writing, about annotating. rather than the usual format. so we're not going to do a close reading of this book but we will be talking about close reading Raimi is a scholar and practitioner of annotation. For over a decade, Raimi has studied how annotation facilitates social, collaborative, and justice -directed learning. He's the author of two books with MIT Press, Remarks on Power, How Annotation Inscribes History, Literacy, and Justice, published last year. and Annotation, a volume in the Press's Essential Knowledge series.
Speaker: He currently serves as Associate Director of Faculty Development and Applied Research at Duke University. Remy, welcome. Thank you for joining me. Chris, it is an absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker: You're very welcome here. and I'll come to the book in a minute and I'll say about how I found out about your work. But given that I ask everyone this... I probably should start with you as well. How do you feel about close reading? What is your relationship to it?
Speaker: how do you How do you? Do you do it often? In what format? What does it mean to you? How how can I not feel close reading? I'm excited. engaged connected but also frustrated uh and you know i i love to read closely not only books and other media, but also the world. And yeah I think that much of our conversation today will talk about how we...
Speaker: Perform close reading not only of books but also of the built environment how we're not only closely reading words but also the world and Of course, I'm an annotator and I begin my most recent book with that simple statement I am an annotator.
Speaker: And so are you. And so. To me close reading is a practice. It is something that we constantly move in and out of as we pick up texts.
Speaker: as we encounter texts. And as we also encounter the narratives and the traces that are left. for us by other readers. this This doesn't mean that everyone is always close reading or that there's only a single maybe modality. or rhythm or emotion that's associated with close reading. Close reading can be very frustrating. Closed reading can be very alienating.
Speaker: It at times can be confounding. But to me, not only in my personal life as a reader, certainly in my professional life. I value close reading.
Speaker: I know that close reading helps students to learn and ultimately I believe that close reading helps us as readers makes sense of the world around us and the world that we then shape.
Speaker: through our reading and through our writing. This is very succinct and very good. And yes. One of the drives of this podcast when I started was like, how do I share? what I usually do in a literature classroom with like other people, right? People who maybe have never been in a literature classroom or... We're in one long time ago. How do you like listen in on the kind of conversations I'm having with students? but let's have that conversation with an author as well. But also my impulse is always like... we're all reading the world all the time you're reading text messages you're reading images the news
Speaker: how people interact with you, social cues, the whole thing, right? So... trying to see reading as embedded in Every day. worlds and lives it's like something i'm always fascinated by And it brings us back to attention. And I think that, Chris, you're already... surfacing and an important what I might call affordance.
Speaker: of close reading and and we visualize that through annotation and we can of course we'll get into annotation but close reading is a commitment to attention yeah And right now we, and I'll just include myself and you and probably your students and probably my former students and many of us, we are constantly bombarded by text.
Speaker: and demand for our attention. I don't want to talk at all about AI and AI slop, although we can do that if we want to. But the point is that there's all of this information that is saturating our senses. that is distracting us.
Speaker: from bringing careful attention. to what we can. engage with deeply and meaningfully. And so close reading. is a way of recommitting yourself.
Speaker: to the practice of attention. Close reading is a way of saying, yes, I know there are texts all around us. And yes, I'm constantly being asked. to be distracted. or to turn my attention to something else. But no, I'm going to closely focus my attention Amen. this particular text.
Speaker: for this amount of time for perhaps a given purpose. The purpose could be pleasure, The purpose could be learning scientific methodology, whatever the purpose is. But we're saying my attention and my time is valuable in this particular way, and that is why I'm going to closely read this text.
Speaker: with my attention. I came to your work firstly through your book Annotation, which was... handed to me by A wonderful colleague, Mark Holloway who will be listening to this because he's he's really committed to this show and i appreciate him for that good greetings mark greetings and he does lots of the academic skills work at my university so he's kind of like in charge of that unit
Speaker: And. he did a literature degree he's very interested in annotation as practice and like what that does and about the kind of the art and act of writing so he was like you're gonna like this book read annotation And then he was like, you know, there's a new Khalil book out. And I was like, what? So anyway, so he pointed me to this one. So he wanted you to know...
Speaker: Firstly. that he has a very heavily annotated version of annotation that is now given away and he is mournful that it's gone from his life. well Well, Mark, I appreciate the story and I know you'll be listening. And so you'll appreciate that, of course, there is a long history of sharing annotated texts.
Speaker: And so people. Perhaps only recently. in this case, in the last few decades, certainly with you know the rise of web -based learning and all kinds of interactive media.
Speaker: have appreciated that annotation can be social. that's something that I might write, let's say on a pdf or a news article or a blog can then be seen by another reader well that's all well and good but actually this practice of sharing annotations of sharing heavily annotated books has been happening for hundreds of years and we know certainly in England england and, in you know, early America and in other, you know.
Speaker: certainly western you know cultural contexts where readership became more accessible with the advent of the printing press, with the advent of more cheaply and mass produced books as print media. People would read these books. They would annotate these books with their private marginalia.
Speaker: But then that private marginality became social when they passed the book along. And there were very well -known social practices and parties where people would exchange annotated books. you know This is an exchange of knowledge.
Speaker: This is a way of saying, here's where I've brought my attention, my curiosity to a book. Here's where I've left my traces, and I'm going to pass this along to you. Now, sometimes those books did return to the original inscriber. the author of the annotations and sometimes those books you know passed along and so Mark, I'm i'm sorry that that you've you've said goodbye to your well -annotated copy of annotation, but please know that that that act of sharing and that act of social annotation is extending a lineage.
Speaker: of readers as writers. of annotators as social actors. that precedes us and our grandparents. And so thank you for passing it along and carrying along that tradition.
Speaker: It's part of a long tradition. And I mean, even... I go back to books, say that I annotated during my... undergrad degree. That also feels like a different person, right? Like I look at those annotations, I'm like... What was Chris thinking in 2006? Chris, I wanted to ask you about your experiences as as an as an annotator. But that. even that that brief recollection is a good reminder that annotation is And I know this is going to sound a little strange perhaps to listeners, but annotation is time travel.
Speaker: And so you're seeing a former self. or you're seeing another self in a different time or another reader from a different time, particularly when one looks at annotations in the archive. And yeah again, we can get into that, particularly as that relates to my most recent book.
Speaker: But Chris, you're seeing yourself in a former life. Yeah. And the preoccupations. of that. first year undergraduate. That first year undergraduate. wrote on his books in pen.
Speaker: I'm saying his as though it isn't me, but like... i don't do pen anymore i still use i use pencil more because
Speaker: I feel like I'm changing my mind more often than not and scribbling things out but like I i don't know there's something about me at 18 where I was like this is going in pen because I'm definitive about this thought There's a copy of Frankenstein over there somewhere that has lots of like heavily underlined bits that I'm really interested in. There's like... code words that clearly meant something to me at the time that now I'm like I don't know what that would refer to, whether it was like something we were discussing in class. So sometimes I'll i'll pick up an older book and be like. What the hell was I...
Speaker: doing at that point and what what was that thought about? But then that kind of leads me off on another tangent of like, I never would have noticed. this sentence now, I don't think. had I not seen that underline. You're pointing out a few of, again, to me, what makes annotation such a beautiful. everyday literacy practice you're telling us about yourself as an annotator and again when i lead workshops or and i'm invited to speak somewhere i often ask audiences or participants you know how are you annotators what what do you annotate what are these memories of annotation and chris like your story
Speaker: Annotation for many people is idiosyncratic. you know It's often a very private act. It has, as you said, like some some code words or some symbols or some things. that They have deep personal meaning. yeah And you are inscribing as you are reading and making sense of.
Speaker: the text that you are reading. And we know, we being researchers and and and people who study book culture and study learning and education, both in formal and in informal contexts, know that this is a very common activity.
Speaker: that children of a variety of ages, that learners again well into their adulthood whether you're studying in grade school or you're doing a doctorate you're annotating as you read to make sense of what it is that you value and care about this given text.
Speaker: But you're also telling us, Chris, that that this is a valuable experience for you over a different, again, kind of time scale.
Speaker: that you can go back and still learn from your former self. You can go back and learn from, or at least appreciate, not in a tongue -in -cheek way, but in a way to say, I've grown as a reader. those marks may be to some degree incomprehensible to you now but they remain marks of growth they remain marks of maybe maturity you prefer writing in a pencil now because you appreciate the dynamicism of your own thoughts and the way in which you may change your mind or yeah everything is
Speaker: kind of more provisional and less you know definitive, and yet that former Chris was committed to the pen. and so even going back to those marks shows you how you've grown as a reader.
Speaker: and as a thinker and as somebody who's deeply engaged with literature and with scholarship over time. what What a gift to yourself. What a gift from that younger Chris to the Chris of today.
Speaker: I don't know, it's just interesting to go back to them and just forget that they were annotated at all, right? That there's like a surprise sometimes that you open, you're like, oh, wow, I didn't, I had strong thoughts about this opening, apparently. Yes.
Speaker: And more recently, I've kind of changed into, not changed into, but I've added, you know, the kind of small post -its, like the thin ones, right? i've got yeah i've got all the colors all over here And I've got a copy of Giovanni's room that...
Speaker: I usually teach Baldwin's novel every year in some kind of format. Like it's just the book that I always teach. And then that copy got very heavily. battered and used. I'm like, right I need a new copy for teaching and a copy for reading almost, right?
Speaker: Oh. And then I gave that copy to my partner to read. And he was opening it and he was like, wait. Can I move these post -its? I was like, you cannot. You cannot be. How could you? how how could you So he's like reading, he's like peeling back the poster a tiny bit, to see the words underneath and then print it back. So even that is kind of like an interesting like. He's like, why is that marked in blue? I'm like, I don't know, but...
Speaker: ah Hopefully you like the sentence. I don't know. It's just funny. you know this is It's so intimate, Chris. it This is where we're sharing a book. we're sharing ourselves. And to me, one of my initial I guess, interest in annotation. and and and and That pops up in a variety of. parts of my own history, both as an educator.
Speaker: and certainly as a reader. is that We have. deep intimacy with books. as material objects. as objects that then are shared with loved ones. And it's so beautiful to hear you talk about sharing your book with your partner. It reminds me that. Books that are inscribed. are often seen as quite valuable.
Speaker: And so when I, you know, we also recently moved about a year and a half ago now from from Colorado to North Carolina in the States. And I did get rid of a lot of books. I will never. get rid of a book.
Speaker: that was inscribed by someone to me. You know, the the books that my mother gave to me often on a birthday or a holiday. And she wrote me a short note.
Speaker: and the inside of that book. Those books become deeply cherished objects. There are books that I have from my grandfather who passed. quite a number of years ago now, but books that he annotated.
Speaker: perhaps incidentally, not even to inscribe them to me. but I can now hold those books. knowing that he held those books, that he marked those books, and that to me,
Speaker: there is a life there, a life of the reader. a life of engagement with the text and even if i don't understand my grandfather's annotations in the same way perhaps that your partner might not understand yours. Why is this underlined blue?
Speaker: He's holding an object that you held, Chris. I'm holding an object that my mother inscribed to me. And those, you know, even for folks, and I digress a little bit here, but we could get into a whole debate around, can you even write in a book? Is it is it okay to annotate? And in some cases, people very strongly argue it's not okay to mark a book.
Speaker: But... for many people who argue against annotation and who think that it's some form of defacement or graffiti. Even they often say,
Speaker: Oh! But if it's a book that's inscribed to me by a loved one, then it's very valuable. Then I'll cherish it. and so you know We have we had these very intimate relationships to books that we mark.
Speaker: and that's important that's important as we think about our lives as readers yeah for sure it's like the one thing week one of every like my class I'll ask
Speaker: my students like what is your annotation practice right like what do you do do you write on books some of them are just like horrified that i would even suggest that you wrote on the pages and i'm like okay these three years are gonna be really interesting like how are you making notes like how are you writing down what stands out are you you know some of them will use post -its some use highlighters but so many are reading digitally now in my classrooms they're reading on a laptop or on like a tablet of some kind and on the laptop i'm just like they've got a weird pdf of the novel right and it's just like odd font and it's tiny and i'm like
Speaker: ah It's such a different reading experience from the one that I'm having. and and not there's no good or bad i there's accessibility there's all the things right like i know and i cherish but i'm just like your experience of reading a 300 page novel on a screen in this horrible font. On like a weird format.
Speaker: And then your annotations, how are you moving through them? How do you find them? How do you move? It's like, this is a really interesting conversation that we start to have in week one. And they're like, when are we getting to like... the assignment i'm like no we need to talk about a practice of how you get through the work from the tech. This is this is all it's all part and parcel.
Speaker: um And yes, know these are conversations that I have a lot with with my colleagues. the move from reading. not only print books, but entire print books to then excerpts.
Speaker: of a book, a given chapter. doing so primarily on you know some type of digital technology, computer, tablet, whatever it may be. Even in the last few years, again, now the move to having essentially AI readers, you know, little assistants.
Speaker: embedded into you know, some type of platform. And so the annotations are actually fed to you. the interactivity is actually fed to you. You know, one of the things that I cherish about, you know, Chris, you mentioned going back to books that you read when you were in college and seeing yourself as, you know, a younger student and a former learner and, you know, this this kind of young Chris, you know, I can go back to my young Ramey. There are a lot of those books around that bookshelf over there or or over here. What I'm looking at is I'm looking at a record of struggle.
Speaker: And I'm looking at a record again of sensemaking. And my ability to move through, and again, I'm in the field of education and of literacy studies. and so we might look at. and an educator and an author like bell hooks for example and many people who study education we'll often read, you know,
Speaker: her groundbreaking text, a book that many people referenced, you know Teaching to Transgress, and a book that was very formative to me as I... moved into my role as first ah a teacher of 11 and 12 year old you know young children and then eventually a teacher of students in college. But and in in any case.
Speaker: When I look at my initial annotation of teaching to transgress, It's a record of struggle. I'm a young white student. trying to make sense of a book written by by bell hooks and her many critiques of society.
Speaker: of patriarchy. of racial relations in the states. her ability to parse through dynamics that I was being presented with for the very first time, my ignorance was extremely deep.
Speaker: That corpus of annotation. in my first reading of her book is a record of struggle. It's a record of me and my ignorance. trying to make sense of the words that I am struggling to. encounter in a way that then might in some humble way align with my reality, much less my performance in a class as a student.
Speaker: And what I fear is that... the shift to books that are chopped up as digital PDFs. reading primarily again. through a medium like a computer, reading online, reading again now with an AI assistant. you know along the way feeding summaries to students is that they will lose that record.
Speaker: And then they will lose the ability now for me 25 years later. I can go and I can pick up that copy of Teaching to Transgress, and I can actually see now three recursive readings of that same copy. three different passes of annotation That first one, I was in college.
Speaker: Once again, when I was in graduate school, And then again, when I was a professor. And as a professor, similar to Chris, your experience of saying, I have to teach this text to future teachers. Now I have to reread this. And so those layers of annotation, they're up. It's a palimpsest of knowledge, my knowledge.
Speaker: it's a palimpsest of ways of sense making for me to now transition from somebody who was once a learner with that book to somebody who might. Dare I say. teach that book or at least include that book in an educational experience where I am facilitating with other learners now. That's a very... beautiful years -long relationship. with a book and and i do fear and i know this is a bit of a tangent but i do fear that some of the practices now particularly in higher education that are defining.
Speaker: how people read and how they mark their readership. are changing to the point where it will be less common if Very rare. to then have this type of annotated record. yeah accessible to you. later in your life. And that's, to me, that's potentially quite sad.
Speaker: Yeah. Or even two months later when you write your assignment.
Speaker: and I can't remember half the things, you know, I'm reading something and I can go back to it. I'm like, oh yeah, that was the thing that I thought, at the time you know, whether I'm doing a review of a book or something, right? Like that doesn't, like that's a short term going back to those annotations.
Speaker: And yes, I could. do 75 episodes on AI. Do not start me on that. And anyone that knows me, anyone will know ah that I am not here. like Funny, on those e -book readers, it's like... He is a... co -pilot summary of the book like it's called an abstract it already exists it's like on the front of the book what do you mean like the author already wrote one
Speaker: like it's And and and perhaps right perhaps the author actually really tried to distill, you know. yeah like this, you know, take a 30, 40 ,000 word book and distill it into two paragraphs that actually does capture in your voice.
Speaker: what you hope is a useful preview of that. I don't want AI to do that. Yeah, absolutely bizarre. I feel like we're in a... parallel universe. Let me just remember rewind slightly. to To move towards Remarks on Power, this great book. How did you get into annotation? like where did That first book on annotation, like how did you get there? This is a starting point. yeah we'll start there you know i'm a former again literacy teacher i began my career
Speaker: a little over 20 years ago now in the South Bronx in New York City. And I was teaching, again, 11 and 12 -year -old students. And I did a terrible job, absolutely terrible job. and and um First of all,
Speaker: primarily because I didn't know. who I was. as a young educator, and so then I couldn't. Connect well with my students who are learning to read. but they were of course already very literate. They were literate in their cultural practices. They were literate in their neighborhood.
Speaker: They were literate in how to navigate and grow up in a world that often saw them as less than, saw them in a kind of deficit way. And so I learned so much from my young students then about how they were reading the world.
Speaker: and how they were then also struggling to read the word. And it was a very humbling experience for me as an educator. learning how to support them. again to the best that i could as a literacy teacher and one of of course the core practices that was kind of pushed on us in a pretty reductive way was annotation and i always was kind of scratching the back of my head like there's got to be a better way for students to learn
Speaker: while they are writing, whether they're writing again on books or on printouts or paper, whatever it may be. And of course, I was thinking about my own experiences, you know, enjoying writing in books. And so there's always an interest of mine. And when I eventually found myself in graduate school and was doing more work, you know, around technology and how technology facilitates different types of collaborative learning, I returned to the fact that annotation can be this very social practice. And that again, there is in the more again technology focused approach to teaching and learning now There can be ways in which our annotations become points of connection. that the notes that I leave, let's say, on a digital PDF become an entry point for you to see how I am reading and making sense of a shared document. And so through my and initial chapter as a professor and some of my initial research, I got really interested in how
Speaker: annotation is social. how it affords. collaborative knowledge production, how entire classes of learners can be reading, let's say a shared article or a shared document. and actually can use technology in this case to share their notes with one another.
Speaker: and then use those notes to better inform let's say the essays that they write. or the discussions that they have and so that really defined For me, An early chapter of my career as a researcher trying to understand how this thing that has, again, for centuries, but understood as a private practice. When we think of book marginalia. again aside from our dear friend mark and again sharing books around many people do associate book marginalia as a private practice.
Speaker: I was very interested in understanding annotation as a social practice. as something that could bring the social life of a document, of a text, of an article to life and afford then the kinds of deep, meaningful learning experiences that we know students find engaging. They like learning from their peers. They like engaging with diverse perspectives.
Speaker: conflict can actually be quite productive. And then when conflict leads to some type of new understanding and insight that is shared among the community, or perhaps some kind of consensus. from a misunderstanding. to clarity about again a key point and again chris this could be happening in a literature course This could be happening in a class of. studying but biology or chemistry. yeah There are very deep ways to use the social practices of annotation.
Speaker: to facilitate. very high quality learning environments. And and again, those can transit from both face -to -face environments to more digital and online environments. And so those are kind of the waters that I was swimming in.
Speaker: when i then initially wrote and and i should of course mention that that my first book annotation is co -authored the dear friend and colleague, Ontario Garcia. He introduced me and us really to MIT Press. and It was an honor to.
Speaker: get to know the press and and to get to really write that first book as but a kind of a general entry point into how we understand this centuries -old literacy practice.
Speaker: how we understand both, it's again, personal, private. affordances and also it's social. And. It's educational affordances. And. While writing that book, and this this might tee up the next bit of our conversation, but while writing that book, we... We wanted to really wrestle with an aspect of annotation that at the time was. very complex it was In some cases. I wouldn't say troubling, but it was troubling us to think of annotation.
Speaker: in a much more critical way and that was the relationship between annotation and power. as an individual reader if you are writing in that book especially you know chris here's chris with his pen right this is a definitive mark yeah it is an expression of your own power now it might be a power in a very limited sense you may not really be speaking back to the author, although to some degree you are.
Speaker: But annotation is a mark of power. And in in our first book on Tarot and I, talk about the relationship of annotation and power. We talk about how annotation enables and inscribes power how annotation is often not neutral especially when it moves beyond let's say a bound book And that chapter from my first book, it really resonated with readers. And as I whether it was on podcasts or on talks, again, was invited to engage with audiences. I kept...
Speaker: getting questions about really that chapter. People kind of understood marginalia. They understand that it's helpful for learning. They they understand that there's Again, a lot of crossover with technology. Okay.
Speaker: they're like this chapter about power really resonated or really challenged me And that for me set. Set me on a path. to think about how I could further my scholarship.
Speaker: and further the kind of arguments I wanted to make about annotation and that ultimately led to three, four more years of of research than ultimately the the writing of of my most recent book, Remarks on Power.
Speaker: There's a little section that I think is lovely to read. here's Here's a brief. paragraph or two from from the introduction. Thank you. I work through this book.
Speaker: to recast annotation. as implicated in people's meaningful and socially vital activities. as woven into multimodal texts and cultural contexts and is mediated by everyday language and power.
Speaker: To do so, I propose the concept of remarks. which I define as annotation traces collectively read and rewritten. so as to advance counter narratives and more just. social futures.
Speaker: This term makes prominent the inherent hybridity. and visual assertiveness of annotation. as both a textual disruption and social intervention.
Speaker: As for the scope of remarks, you may read my emphasis on more just social futures. as an untoward aspiration. for something as seemingly unremarkable.
Speaker: as annotation. Indeed, our ability to follow annotation traces over texts and time. does not indicate an achievement of social justice.
Speaker: Rather. My intent is to show that the actions of annotators are legible? Longstanding? and instructive amidst the ongoing project of shaping a pluralistic society that values equality and affirms human dignity.
Speaker: My original concept is a useful heuristic. for demonstrating how people's recursive marks. have highlighted Literally. and metaphorically, the continued struggle against social inequality.
Speaker: and oppressive ideology. And my research will show that those who closely read everyday symbols. and spaces. and then who compose additive responses of resistance and imagination.
Speaker: are annotators. for their pursuit. of more just social futures has been visualized through traces. We can call. annotation.
Speaker: Thank you so much. It's lovely just to hear it and... until here. The kind of, you know, what. that first book annotation that some people might be like okay like it's got a very clear scope right maybe that's for me maybe that's not for me like for me that's my thing right i'm just like that's a sexy title to me but here like the book is really like in it's not that long, this is a short academic book, is really pushing for...
Speaker: annotation in the world right to kind of like yes so like annotation as Not just a thing. that is done on text but a text is read broadly right from maps in like California's woodland right like the and like the timeline that's on that map of like the history to the writings on border walls between the US and Mexico and so on and so on like text is read broadly which I always enjoy and thinking about
Speaker: anything that we do with a text how we like put markings on it whether that's like i agree or that's wrong or you know, on a toilet door someone is scribbling over something else, right? I don't know how many of those I've seen.
Speaker: recently of you know someone writing something pretty horrific and then other people scrolling all over it and being like not here like you you know you don't get that's right that's right Yes, the homophobia, the racism. exclusion, whatever it may be, is not welcome here. And that counter -narrates hateful ideology. and is a way of saying that
Speaker: you know our public was inscribed by harm and our public spaces can be rewritten and they can again often and that often occurs at scale And it also occurs in again in a very visible way. You know, Chris, you capture so well. you know i was seeing annotation appearing in public spaces and to me That was the language to make sense of.
Speaker: how other readers were then responding. you know Again, whether it's a map or a timeline at a national park in california that was essentially annotated to create a more comprehensive historical account of you know the peoples whose land was essentially stolen
Speaker: for this park. how women of color were excluded from conservation efforts you know at Muir Woods in this case, how park rangers were being very intentional in saying, history is not complete. History needs more nuance. History needs to be visualized. And we are going to do that visualization process. as annotation.
Speaker: you know That was a very clear example. of bringing that History to bear now, notably. Dad. annotated sign has been removed in the last number of months because of again what's happening here in the states at the moment where you know There's a very considered effort by the current administration to censor. so -called unflattering depictions of American history.
Speaker: And so actually. based upon an executive order. national parks and monuments were told to review their signage. and essentially censor anything that was perhaps deemed controversial.
Speaker: The sign that I write about. at Muir Woods. was the very first sign that was subsequently taken down. because of this new executive order and so you know We're seeing here a push and pull.
Speaker: of how civic narratives and understanding not only of history, but then of public memory. And those two things are, of course, very distinct, are sites of power. They're sites of contest. And so, you know.
Speaker: five, six years ago. groups of park rangers and community members worked to more comprehensively. document the troubled history,
Speaker: of a particular place. And that then built environment and that public memory. was complemented through annotation. and then and now a retrenchment from.
Speaker: that complexity. and a censorship of accurate history. those annotations are essentially redacted they are removed and so this to me captures the push and pull of.
Speaker: the permanence of annotation The way in which annotation both reveals and can then be hidden. This also reveals What I refer to the book as the syncretism or the hybridity of annotation. Annotation is an interruption.
Speaker: It makes the uncomfortable. and it makes the contesting of power visible. but then it can also be erased. And so there are actually a number of annotations.
Speaker: that I saw. while I was researching for this book. In fact, the cover itself. is one of my photographs. The cover is a photograph I took At the border wall, I was on the Mexico side of the U .S.-Mexico border at Playa de Tijuana.
Speaker: It is an annotation that I myself wrote. of a Gloria Anzaldúa phrase. So Gloria Anzaldúa, of course, the very noted. scholar and poet. who wrote about actually not only of course the border in a broad sense, but actually that particular place.
Speaker: wrote about the border at Playa State Tijuana. separates San Diego from Tijuana. on the Pacific coast. and wrote about that as an natural boundary.
Speaker: And so I wrote her words. as a homage to her scholarship and her influence on my work. on the border wall there alongside countless graffiti and hashtags and names and murals and painting.
Speaker: and Between the time that I took that photograph and my book went to press, and my book was released, that entire section of the border wall was torn down. That entire section of the border wall was reconstructed in an even more barbaric way. higher
Speaker: more violent, more surveillance, more razor wire. In this case, by the under the... auspices of the Biden administration. And so I mentioned that to say that readers who read my work will encounter annotations that no longer exist.
Speaker: And that's okay. Annotation is not about permanence as i write it's about a glimpsed visibility it's saying at some point this was here At some point, this did contest a dominant ideology that was perhaps quite harmful, and it will change. It will change over time.
Speaker: When I encounter that annotation though, or I add to that palimpsest of narrative and counter narrative. I am then joining the conversation. I am making sense of this. I am continuing to, we hope, bend that narrative. toward a more just reality.
Speaker: There is so much in there that is... shocking and interesting and important.
Speaker: I'm still thinking about the sign. That's really striking about the Muir Woods one, because i I've got a friend in Northern California. I was like, please go and see what it's like. But now I know it's gone. It's quite devastating. but what I'm interested in, I wonder what thoughts you have on Over here we've had a similar kind of debate around what's called the National Trust, right, which is the big kind of... you know, that own all the kind of historical buildings and things. And they've been adding plaques, right? To like, just it's like a big country house that says, oh, you know how this was built, right? Like money from. empire and colonialism right just like a tiny little plaque on the side of a wall nothing else has changed about the site in any way
Speaker: And people were leaving National Trust in their droves, right? Because they're like, how dare you insert this? leftist, woke, quote unquote. storyline right as though the annotation is is a I don't know. I've i've never been fully able to understand this twist of logic. what is Torsion, right? adding information is is the lie not do you know i mean it's like wait when is ever adding in more fact
Speaker: been its reverse, right? well and the content so we call this contextualization or some folks would and chris I picked this up in the context, in in in an American context around monuments.
Speaker: And in this case, place -based. monuments and memorials the so -called memorial landscape in america that is very deeply tied to Americas. History of Enslavement. and white supremacy. and then specifically celebration of the Confederacy.
Speaker: And. That of course. rose in its visual prominence, not in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, but during a period of time actually at the very end of the 1800s into the beginning of the 1900s. called. monument mania where groups that were very committed to white supremacy and very committed to essentially a legacy of the Confederacy were erecting monuments.
Speaker: in town squares, outside of courthouses, you know presumably halls of justice, to honor the legacy again of division, hatred, oppression.
Speaker: white supremacy. And there's been a real reckoning in America well for from not only many, many decades, but certainly more acutely over the last number of years about what to then do with some of these monuments, as as maybe listeners to this podcast know. And very similar things I know have also happened in England as well, again, along with you know legacies. i know I believe in Bristol, there was some very notable public marking of statues and removal of statues. And if I'm not mistaken, you know the dumping of a particular statue in a river. And similar things are happening in America. And so I talk about that in my book. I actually give the term.
Speaker: in terms of an annotated terminology, figurative highlighting. You know, when you see blood or red paint or graffiti or a hashtag appearing on a monument. The monument was a text.
Speaker: The monument was designed for a very particular reason. you know it has an author it has a creator a sculptor who who creates this you know monuments are texts They are then displayed to be read. They are displayed often with their own plaques to be consumed. to reinforce a particular narrative, a narrative that is often not about history, but is again, often about public memory.
Speaker: That was again, being very different. And so when we see, let's say, protesters. throwing their own blood or red paint on a monument they are annotating it they are figuratively highlighting the injustice and their resistance to those hateful ideological ideas and so
Speaker: the counterbalance to that in some cases has been this idea of contextualization. How do those with ascribed cultural authority, maybe they're museum curators, maybe they're part of, again, the National Trust, maybe, again, they have a particular responsibility to to help the public make sense of. you know again a particular landscape landmark building whatever it may be let's say, add a plaque to that place. to try and better understand the history of this and and it's just
Speaker: Sadly, I think it's been well documented that those acts of annotation that contextualization are are often insufficient. They're insufficient for a number of reasons. As you pointed out, they're often very physically quite small. They're they're seen as almost like ah a very small little insertion to what is often a very large either object building place, whatever it may be. So their scene is very diminutive. They're often written by those who are in power.
Speaker: So while they may reference some aspect of a contested history, they're still written from the perspective of a dominant group. let's say those who colonized or those who, you know in this case, are part of a white power structure in the American South, for example.
Speaker: And so they don't then. bring in the counter narrative. from those whose histories were originally erased. or whose dignities were not honored.
Speaker: and have perhaps not been honored for generations, you know whose voices have been silenced here. It's not a way of effectively and affectively providing a voice and a platform to those who are written out of what this symbol monument you know place represents in the first place instance and so I take that up in my book, yeah in in the chapter about monuments, and I essentially say that yes,
Speaker: contextualization is annotation. and it is a form of annotation. that fails. It ultimately fails. to help us Us being. readers and writers of the world who care about perhaps a more just future find a way of creating a counter narrative. It often reinforces the dominant narrative without truly reveal -y, challenging the the powers that be.
Speaker: Fascinating. Okay, so this is the other question, just to kind of bring us down a tiny bit before I ask you about your writing practice as well, which I ask everyone it's important to do. And this was also a question from...
Speaker: mark actually and we've talked about this before And this is like a less, not lesser, but It's a different register from the conversation we just had, but like he's interested in, you know, the book talk world of.
Speaker: people posting their annotations on books right or like you know displaying them as some kind of like practice he said performative in quote marks um is this a less vital version of annotation or remarking than the other examples like does that matter?
Speaker: I don't know what your thoughts are on that. Thank you. I mean, first of all, i I want to say that there's a at least an American higher education. i'll bracket it there in american higher education is a very unfortunate, very pervasive narrative at the moment that like students no longer read books.
Speaker: that students are not going to pick up. a physical book and just read all of it. Students don't read anymore. And then i my my rejoinder to that is. Yeah, but go look at TikTok.
Speaker: Go look at all of these. Booktubers. and Yeah. Boop. hawkers who are sharing their love of annotation publicly with the world. Now,
Speaker: Is it a bit performative? Of course it is. They're doing so to get views and be influencers. And you know what? I love it i love every bit of it now i don't maybe follow it and i don't think that i'm the given demographic you know a lot of this is It's fine. Again, I love it. as know It's often genre -based. Yep.
Speaker: There are very kind of important conventions around how people are sharing their, again, kind of, again, still very personal idiosyncratic. marginalia This is very much about, I think, celebrating. the individual as the annotator. Do I see those as remarks?
Speaker: No, actually, not as I would define it in my book. Again, I see my book is very much about. public
Speaker: Civic. power -oriented contesting of in inequality, essentially, and how actually these everyday annotation practices do that. And I think that I hope that... the book's four kind of key cases and stories show show that. yeah So do i when I, when I look at these, and I watch some of them too, um I'm often a little bit more on. YouTube that I may be on TikTok these days, but in any case. When I watch those videos, and No, I don't see them as remarks as I define them. What I do see them as very enthusiastic readers.
Speaker: People who are just so excited to share their interest with a broader audience. people who are getting tens if not hundreds of thousands of views and they're celebrating literacy.
Speaker: And so I love it. I love it. I think it's fantastic. I think it's actually a very nice counterbalance to this, again, very, at least in the States, pervasive idea that like students don't read. yeah Well, they're reading over here. So then to me, you know, the responsibility is maybe you're - on an educator to say how do i make my students as excited about reading some book in class as I see that they can be. watching their peer cohort.
Speaker: you know, annotate books on TikTok. to kind of swerve a tiny bit then like what is your writing practice how do you write a book like this or even the collaborative book right because that's like an entirely different writing endeavor you have a strict
Speaker: Do you have a strict practice? Do you have rituals? Are you always typing? Like what is your setup? oh Thank you. Well, I would say at least with remarks on power, I was on sabbatical. And I have to say that the great privilege of, in that case, being a very conventional academic was I had time and I had space. Our family spent a year actually in Cambridge, Massachusetts, because my wife was on a fellowship at Harvard. And so I was in a new environment, actually. I had a completely different desk. I had a very i was on the third floor of a little flat.
Speaker: And you know we were literally in the trees. And so I had this. small little you know half bedroom that i could turn into at a home office that wasn't mine, but was lovely and had some windows. and I was kind of basically looking out at the trees and I had a whole academic year.
Speaker: to meet with my editor. who happened to also be in Cambridge because of MIT Press, of course, to just... have the incredible leisure of i'm a runner going running in the morning settling my mind writing for quite a few hours before picking my little one up from.
Speaker: his preschool at the time, he was still in preschool then, um and having also the the the leisure of reading and the ability for me to read and write together. to do a lot of my initial writing by hand at least with this book.
Speaker: I was, I found myself and I should have shown you Chris, but you know, with the books that were really the influences of. these, particularly the cases. Again, I have a case about Harriet Tubman yeah and her literacies. Again, I got a case about the the US -Mexico border. I would find myself starting to write.
Speaker: my arguments and write parts of my chapters essentially has extensive excerpts or annotations. when I could find like a blank page in that book. And then I would. ultimately then translate that into some type of you know digital writing platform you know i must say that at least when I was doing longer sustained writing again for this book.
Speaker: I was not writing. using any kind of web -based platform I know that some people love things like Notion. and even a google doc and yeah i had to be actually just on microsoft word in this case because I didn't want to have the distraction of too many tabs. I didn't want to have the distraction distraction of, you know, things that I could, again, speaking of attention to, you know, kind of bring about like I had to say to myself. You are writing this book now.
Speaker: this is what you're doing and of course My own annotation was then all over the walls. I had walls in front of me, kind of behind me on the sides of these windows. just covered in photographs and my own markings.
Speaker: and And it's funny you mentioned that you were color coding the digital version of the book. Now I color coded my writing. And so after I had the first. full draft, and after the book went through peer review, and I was essentially making my final edit.
Speaker: before we went to proof. I color copied words and phrases throughout the entire book. So every... instance of justice slash injustice was gray.
Speaker: every instance of remark. was. like a shade of blue. I was very keen to write. to the reader. And so readers will notice I'm Speaking of myself a lot, I'm speaking of you, you the reader, you the annotator. Whenever I was dipping into first, second person. I was highlighting that in green.
Speaker: to try and visually indicate. when was the last time I connected to the reader? Have I left the reader behind? Like I need to, have i and do i how how am I tethered perhaps too closely in this? And so I had all of these colorful visual cueing.
Speaker: to myself as a writer. Um, so that I could understand and see the traces of my own narrative throughout the book. And that was also helpful in my writing practice as well. That's fascinating.
Speaker: I'm going to try that. Not that I... i've got some book edits to finish by monday i'm stressed out of my brain but like i don't want to be writing for a little while after that like no more five minutes But that that's like a really interesting...
Speaker: just to kind of see your own writing practice like i do this a lot of words recur right and i'm like why have i used that word seven times in the space of two pages like delete all of those chris but you know that you can see where your brain has been at that moment, right? or which other authors i've been reading and i'm like oh clearly i was reading too much lauren bland that day because i'm trying for their sentence structure and failing radically you know right right yep so kind of interesting to see that as like a visual like color coding Okay.
Speaker: Last question. What are your book recommendations? You can have as many as you want. They can be old, new. Things you return to, you've already given us hooks who. you know. hooks is great well yeah what else well i'll give you another uh Ordinary notes.
Speaker: by Christina Sharpe. This book was published just as I was finishing. writing. remarks. she I don't know where to begin with how beautiful this book is. First of all, the the physical version of it is quite different than...
Speaker: the copy that one might have. let's say on on an ebook. Professor, scholar, educator. Annotator. yeah She herself is... quite the annotator.
Speaker: She has also brought some very... distinct annotation practices. into this collection of her notes. yeah Specifically, red redaction.
Speaker: This book is... very much about. identity, race, belonging. family. And both. broad social scale and at an extremely intimate. Uh, level.
Speaker: I return to this book. regularly when I think about. How an academic, sometimes academics write very academic -y books and it can be hard to get through a sentence, um even when we care a lot about what they're writing of.
Speaker: you know, as an academic who, to me, has pushed Writing. in a very... significant direction? What does it mean to compose a book like this?
Speaker: Is this an academic book? is this you know an excerpt of diary is this memoir. you know, the genre of this particular book for me. is irrelevant to how much it's moved me as a reader. And so I highly recommend if you're interested in annotation at any of the broader social. themes that we've talked about today, please do pick up Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe. The photo of her copy of Beloved in that book is incredible. Her teaching copy of Beloved is... yeah
Speaker: Incredible. It's incredible. um so please do check that out and then i'll just also mention because you know a total different turn Again, as I mentioned, I'm a runner. my my My very dear wife and partner just over the holidays gave me the running ground.
Speaker: So a little memoir about. a father, a son. and running and i mentioned only because i haven't started reading it yet it is the next book on my to do my my book reading pile here but i mentioned it because I have a very intimate connection between. running and read and and running and reading and writing.
Speaker: And. things that I've written or read. i will make sense of when i'm moving my body when i am running And then when I come back from my run or when I have that energy, I am then. better able to get back into my own writing practice.
Speaker: or return to books that I've read and better understand something that I was having a hard time making sense of. And so to me, actually, the movement of my hand and whatever types of movement are happening in my mind are extremely embodied.
Speaker: They are very felt. And for me. that embodiment and that movement comes through the act of running and so I'm going to pick up the running ground. Going to see how how it fits. Could you tell us the author as well? Yes, the author is Nicholas Thompson, who is actually the CEO of The Atlantic. So he is himself an author, of course, and a journalist. And so, you know, you got, again, somebody else who's a who's a a runner and writer.
Speaker: So yeah, Running Around by Nicholas Thompson. Perhaps the next time we speak, Chris, I'll let you know how the book is. yeah yeah please do um i mean two thoughts one is I don't know how I feel about the Atlantic anymore, but that, you know, that's a story. that i regard yes yes But also as I've only recently in the past year started running, I do not understand how people are thinking or being creative when they're running. I'm just running and hating every second of it. And then when I finish, I need to sit down for an hour, not do any writing. So more power to you and that it fuels you. Thank you. Thank you. thank you It does. It does indeed.
Speaker: Remy, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. This is really lovely. And so many thoughts now to take away. Oh, Chris, this is an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. This was just, it was wonderful to be in conversation with you.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you want more on close reading and annotation, you might go back to episode 25 where I talked to Dan Sinekin and Johanna Winant or episode 29 where I talk with Robert Douglas Fairhurst on Looking Closer. Please subscribe to the show if you haven't already. Please, please, please, please, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube. Or even if you don't have time for that, just put five stars on Apple. I'm sure you're listening on there. Please do that if you're listening right now.
Speaker: it only takes two seconds and please share with people in other places follow the show and me on instagram tag me in posts of episodes that you like and if you want to fill out the feedback form that's linked in the show notes you can also get more information by subscribing to the sub stack This show was made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Hertfordshire.
