Allegra editor Julie Billaud writes about... quitting smokes and academic breathing

I have been a smoker for 30 years. Smoking has been part of my everyday routine since I transitioned from childhood to adulthood. During three decades, I considered my cigarette a reward after a class, a means to focus when writing, an entertainment when socialising with friends and colleagues. I used to smoke all day long: after the morning coffee, when making a phone call, after lunch and dinner. I even smoked when riding my bike to work. I always had good excuses for my addiction: I smoked because of stress. I smoked to celebrate. I smoked because I was sad. I smoked because my parents used to be smokers… and after all, I am French and was socialised into the idea that smoking women are liberated and sexy. I know by the state of my lungs and through my very body how toxic patriarchy can be.

I stopped smoking one month ago and this is one of the few things I did that I am rather proud of. Not only because it is hard to overcome dependence to nicotine but also because it means reinventing oneself and one’s way of being in the world. A bit like fieldwork necessitates to find inner resources to fully immerse in the lives of others, quitting smokes requires learning anew how to socialise, to organise one’s time, to manage one’s emotions. Yet, like fieldwork, it gets better after a first period of bewilderment and confusion: after surviving the first week of intense withdrawal symptoms that made me feel almost like Rent Boy in Trainspotting, I rediscovered some breathing capacities that I thought were long gone. I realised that I could run for 30 minutes without feeling exhausted. I could smell the scent of blooming flowers in the Spring with an intensity I had forgotten could exist. I could feel the flavours of foodstuff as if I was tasting them for the first time. All these new sensory capabilities encourage me to persevere, even when the little devil in my brain attempts to seduce me to return to the old world I left behind. Quitting smokes is like fieldwork: it’s realising that what we think we know about the world and ourselves in the world can always be revisited, and experienced anew. 

LAWNET workshop: From Critique to Political Practice

You are warmly invited to the latest EASA LAWNET workshop in collaboration with Allegra Lab

The workshop will take place on 12 May 2023 at University of Sussex, in Room JUBILEE-115.

Or on Zoom

Meeting ID: 994 7650 3164

Passcode: 869970

What is the role of researchers in articulating critique in a time of heightened political, social, economic and environmental upheaval? What kind of critique is necessary, possible, and useful in our current times, when the very idea of critical thinking seems threatened by authoritarian, illiberal power and post-truth politics? As such, we ask: What are the moral implications of a social science that remains mostly concerned with critique? What are the limitations of such a framing outside the walls of academia? What alternatives do we have?

PROGRAMME

8.30-9.00: Welcome + Coffee

9.00-9.15: Opening statement

9.15-10.45: Panel 1

Discussants: Julie Billaud (Geneva Graduate Institute) and Agathe Mora (University of Sussex)

Rafael Carrano Lelis (Geneva Graduate Institute): Embodiments of Global South and North Narratives on Sexuality at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Samuel Shapiro (Laval University): Of What Is a Political Anthropology of Institutions Critical? How Is It Complementary?

10.45-11.00: Coffee break

11.00-12.30: Panel 2 [ONLINE]

Discussant: Lieselotte Viaene (University Carlos III de Madrid)

Jill Alpes (Ghent University): Strategies for seeking justice as a migration scholar: Auto-ethnographic lessons for capturing impact and smuggling action into critique.

Sepalika Welikala (The Open University of Sri Lanka): Protests, positionality and critique: reflections from a native anthropologist.

12.30-13.30: Lunch break

13.30-15.00: Panel 3

Discussant: Jane Cowan (University of Sussex)

Ali Huseyinoglu (Trakya University): Human rights of minorities in Europe and critical thinking about the positionality of researcher: Greece as a case study.

Deniz Duru (Lund University): Problematising the Politics of Recognition of Alevis on Conviviality in Burgaz Island, Istanbul: Fixing ambiguity, losing heterogeneity.

15.00-15.15: Coffee break

15.15-17.00: Panel 4

Discussant: Matthew Canfield (Leiden University)

Pedro Rocha Lima (University of Manchester): Humanitarian secrets: negotiating disclosure, studying ‘up’ and ‘sideways’.

Noah Walker-Crawford (University College London): From critique to engagement: Anthropology between legal and political practice.