A Miscellany of Misfittery
Location
Again this week, we’ll meet at NYPL’s Stavros Niarchos Library Foundation, 5th Ave + 40th St, Room 604, at 4pm!
Agenda
This week we’ll get to know one another a bit better, explore our different areas of interest, and start to build a prismatic critical framework and shared set of references, by creating a Miscellany (or Menagerie!) of Misfittery. We’ll examine a few common texts and examples, which will help to frame our discussion and spark your independent exploration; then we’ll share your own contributions.
Looking Ahead
The new Everyday Rebellions exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, opening on October 10, promises to be relevant to our interests!
To Prepare for Today
What follows are two full-length academic articles, one of which you’re free to skim; plus several short texts and videos, which you’re free to sample, too!
Please read my little explanation about our weekly reading lists!
- Consider: How might a psychologist think about misfit? This piece probably won’t facilitate a terribly transcendent reading experience, but it will offer an extensive overview of relevant research: Skim Benedikt Englert, Martin Sievert, Bernd Helmig, and Karen Jansen, “The Incongruity of Misfit: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda,” Human Relations 77:9 (2023); you’re welcome to focus on the Introduction, Conceptual Background, Discussion, and Conclusion sections.
- What about a bioethicist-humanist? Read about Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, then read her “Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept,” Hypatia 26:3 (2011): 591-609.
- What about a librarian or a library board member, whose perspectives don’t always align(!)? Read Kelly Jensen, “What Is Weeding and When Is It Not Actually Weeding?” BookRiot (August 16, 2024); you’re welcome to stop at “Book Censorship News.” Consider, too: how might a botanist, a landscape ecologist, or a gardener think about “weeds” differently?
- What about a statistician? Read “What Are Outliers in the Data?” National Institute of Standards and Technology (n.d.).
- What about a cartoonist? Watch Nick Drnaso, “The Making of Acting Class,” Granta (2022) [video ~ 11:32].
- What about an artist attempting to redress colonial legacies of misfit? Read Stephanie Syjuco, “Hands Floating, Faces Recognized: Escaping the Anthropological Gaze,” Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology (2024). Check out her website, too.
Now, please contribute to our Miscellany of Misfittery:
- Consider other contexts and genres of misfit that reflect your own interests and commitments. Here are just a few examples: the outcast, the rebel, the loner, and the eccentric in sociology and psychology; the outsider and the punk in art and music; the factory defect or “ugly” produce in retail; the exile in geopolitics; the “freak” in cultural history (which Garland-Thompson writes about); the trickster and civil disobedient in politics; the “irrelevancies” in audio compression; the untranslatable in literature; and so on. Choose one to focus on.
- Think about what norms or standards define this species of misfit (i.e., what “fit” does it “miss”?), consider how its deviance is typically “managed” in conventional contexts of “normal operating procedure,” think about its broader cultural and political-economic implications (e.g., does it pose a threat to efficiency or security, remind us of our own imperfection or mortality, etc?) and imagine how it might be reconceived or redeemed. I invite you to think creatively and capaciously about these questions – perhaps even to intentionally misread them 🙂 Please identify a few references, too (maybe 3-5?), so we can situate your topic within the critical literature and popular discourse.
- For an example of how to reimagine such a collection: skim through an excerpt of Maria Roskowska, Nicolas Nova (RIP), and Nicolas Maigret, eds., A Bestiary of the Anthropocene (2023): click “excerpt” at the top-right corner of the page.
- Post your contribution on OUR SHARED SLIDE DECK; each contributor is allocated two slides. Why a slide deck? To allow you to integrate media in various formats, and to facilitate screen-sharing and courteous time-management in class. Speaking of which: to make sure we allocate equal time to everyone, and have sufficient time for integrative discussion, please aim to share your work in class in no more than three minutes 🙂
Supplemental Resources
- Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Misfiting: Disability Broadly Considered,” Iowa City Public Library (April 4, 2019) [talk: 8:20 >].
- Shane Greene, “On Punk and Repulsion, a Misfit Theory of Society,” in Gretchen Bakke and Marina Peterson, Anthropology and the Arts: A Reader (Bloomsbury): 263-73.
- Carol Muske-Dukes, “Census,” from Skylight (Doubleday, 1981).
- Stephanie Syjuko, The Unruly Archive (Radius Books, 2024).
- Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot (New York University Press, 2024).
- “Weeding Is Fundamental,” 99% Invisible (May 14, 2019) [podcast].
