Tag: Interviews

Authors: Andreia Abreu Remigio & Alicia Saner

Andreia: Hello Elvis!

Hi!

AAR: Thank you so much for meeting with us today and accepting to share a little bit about yourself with our readers! It’s an honor to interview a staff member who was in our shoes some years ago. Your area of interest seems to encompass many topics, from language to mental health and sexuality. I’m sure people will enjoy learning more about your research. How are you doing today? Only a couple days before Spring break! (The interview was conducted on March 25).

Thank you for the invitation. It’s really a pleasure to have students interview someone who is not really a permanent staff member [laughs]. But yeah, I’m doing fine; a little tired though. I’m looking forward to a little break.

Alicia: You’re brand new to the Department but first-years all know you from IELL. Could you tell us more about yourself? Who are you? Where are you from? Where have you studied and worked?

I was born in 1990 and raised in Gstaad in the Canton of Bern to Portuguese parents. I did all my mandatory schooling in Gstaad, but then after 9^th grade I didn’t have good enough grades to continue my studies. My parents would say “if you don’t study, then we’ll send you back to Portugal,” which I’ve always found very ironic, because I’ve never lived in Portugal. So, I did a raccordement in Château d’Œx and then I was able to do my gymnase in Burier. I ended up at UNIL where I studied English and Film. I also spent a year at the University of Montana in the US during my BA, which was literally the best year of my life! It was really fun and that’s when I saw the usefulness of what I was studying.

Before then I didn’t really know why I was at university and why I was studying literature and film. One of the reasons I wanted to be here was because I wanted to be a movie director. But I quickly realized that the Department of Film History and Aesthetics here wasn’t going to teach me the required skills to become a movie director. And I decided to study English because I wanted to write better songs in English. Those were really the naive reasons of a young adult who didn’t know what to do with his life! And then in the US, I took a class on literary criticism where we learned about Marxism, feminism, queer theory, etc. And that’s when I realized that the things that I was learning were useful. So I shifted to linguistics during my Master’s, because I got a bit sick of literature. I just didn’t see the point of doing literature, whereas linguistics has that practical aspect that I really liked. By learning how language works in society, I could also make sense of how I was using language in my daily interactions and how people were using language with me. I actually took one of the first classes Anita taught at UNIL, on language and gender, and I wrote a paper about OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) for it. Then I wrote my Master’s thesis on OCD with Anita. Since there were only a handful of linguistics studies on OCD at the time, it gave me the idea of doing a PhD about that topic.

So, I got a funding opportunity in London in 2017, and I defended my thesis in 2021 while I was in quarantine because of COVID [laughs]. Anyway, Queen Mary University of London was very chaotic. It was not well organized, compared to Lausanne. But I was really lucky, because I did my PhD with 24 other PhD students. We had a big office that we shared and there was a really nice communal family atmosphere. My supervisor had 4 other PhD students who were all studying language, sexuality, and gender. We had discussions about the theories we were reading, the data that we were analyzing, and it was just an overall very stimulating environment. And on top of that, I was lucky because my funding was coordinated between King’s College and Queen Mary. At King’s College I had my co-supervisor, Olivia Knapton, who was the only linguist working on OCD at that time. And at Queen Mary I had my supervisor, Erez Levon, who is a big specialist in language, gender and sexuality. Being in London at that time was really the perfect moment for my PhD.

And then I came back to Switzerland! Since I didn’t have a job, I signed up for the HEP (Haute École Pédagogique). While I was studying there, I was also chargé de cours here in the English Department where I helped out our linguistics team with IELL and also taught a seminar on discourse analysis. I kind of stuck around and now I am replacing Jennifer Thorburn who is on sabbatical leave. But my contract is ending at the end of July and then… I don’t know what will happen to me! [laughs]

AS: So you’ve experienced the Department from both sides! How different did the Department feel when you were a student? Did you have a feeling one day you’d be back?

Definitely not! [laughs] When I was doing my Bachelor’s degree, I didn’t even know what a PhD was. But to answer your question, I’ve always preferred the English Department compared to the Film Department. The English Department welcomed our own interventions. It was never like “I’m the teacher and I’m giving you the knowledge and you sit there quietly, and you just absorb what I’m telling you.” The English Department, at least that was my experience, encouraged the sharing of impressions, and ideas. And that was, I think, one of the best ways to explore the different theories and the different books. That’s also something that I try to do in my own teaching. Now that I am part of the teaching team, my opinion hasn’t changed much of the Department.

AS: We were quite impressed to see that you’ve participated in Switzerland’s Got Talent while you were still an MA student! What was more stressful, performing on national television or defending your mémoire?

That’s a good question! [laughs] In terms of emotions, I think it’s very similar, in the sense that you experience anxiety and the fear of failure. But on television, I think the stakes are a bit higher, because you can face social repercussions, right? If you fail on national television, people might recognize you on the street and laugh at you. Whereas for the mémoire, my family was present, and I was in a safe space. In terms of the stress levels, I think it was the same. Although with Switzerland’s Got Talent, one of the things that people don’t realize when they watch the clip is that I arrived at 12:00 PM and I had to wait until 8:00 PM before entering the stage. I remember waiting for 8 hours while reading Derrida for the Critical Approaches assignment! I have that memory of being stressed, trying to focus and relax with Derrida [laughs].

AS: So that would be your advice against stress, reading Derrida?

No, no, no. [laughs] Do something to distract yourself. I like to watch horror movies when I’m very anxious because it levels out my anxiety. But that’s just me, other people do yoga and meditation, play video games, or something else.

AS: Do you still write songs and play the guitar nowadays?

Unfortunately not, because my priorities have changed. Back in the day, I wanted to be a rock star. And now my priorities are basically my job, so I don’t really have time to write songs, although I have about five different songs that I’ve started writing. But I just never got the energy to sit down and finish those songs. I think I also don’t have the motivation for it. I’m not going to gain any money from it. Why invest much energy in that when reading about linguistics is as interesting as writing songs?

AAR: So you used to write songs and you used to write poetry. Your poems can still be found on MUSE’s website…

Oh God. [laughs]

AAR: Do you remember them, and do you still write creatively?

I don’t write creatively anymore, no. I journal whenever I feel down or anxious. Writing is always useful to have an objective perspective on your problem, because if you don’t write it, the problem stays in your head. Writing really allows you to shift your perspective and to tackle the whole thing in more objective terms. It’s nice to know that my poems are still on the website! [laughs] I think one of the poems was about my guitar…

AAR: There was one about Derrida!

There was one about Derrida, yes! I experimented with the notion of understanding and not understanding. Derrida is one of the intellectual figures that I really like, as well as Foucault. I have all his books on my bookshelf [points to office bookshelves]. I refer to them as “Tonton Jackie” and “Tonton Michel,” just to remove them from their pedestal and remember they’re just human beings. Coming back to my poems, I think there was one about my guitar and another one where I tried to embed three poems in one. When reading the even lines and then the odd lines and then the whole poem, it creates three different poems. Those poems were written when I was taking a class on creative writing in the US, because I thought it would be really useful for my songwriting. But I haven’t written any poems since then. Life happens, priorities changed.

AAR: Now you devote your time to linguistics! You once told me that you consider yourself more of a social scientist than a linguist. Can you tell us more about that?

My relationship to linguistics is very complicated. I started off as a literature student, and at the beginning I thought linguistics was difficult to understand. Though I never failed linguistics, unlike medieval that I failed twice [chuckles]. I also associated linguistics with those structuralist schools of thought like Chomsky, or syntax trees, all these technical things that don’t fascinate me. Even when I started doing sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis, I always struggled to identify as a linguist. When I was writing my MA thesis and my PhD thesis, I would have lengthy discussions with my supervisors about “am I doing linguistics? Is discourse analysis linguistics?” My supervisors always told me, “if you don’t trust yourself, at least trust us because what you’re doing is linguistics.” So that’s why I’m not a linguist, I don’t walk around with all the theoretical linguistic knowledge. I know where to find the information in my notes or in the slides that I created. But it’s not the kind of thing that I keep in my mind all the time. So I prefer to refer to myself as a social scientist, who uses linguistic and sociolinguistic theories to better understand social and psychological phenomena. I’m not interested in linguistic theory per se. I don’t care about comparing grammatical structures of different languages. I’m interested in how people make sense of their lives, how people make sense of the different social, social and sexual norms that they have to navigate in their daily lives, how people describe their symptoms when they are ill, what kind of ideologies they draw on when they construct their identities. These are things that we do all the time. Having a theory that allows me to explain those different processes has turned me into a more empathetic person towards other people, but also towards myself. I understand the world differently. And this is something that literature didn’t give me in the past. I was reading Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, John Donne, Baldwin, all those different authors. But it wasn’t enough for me. It was fun to interpret those books but… how can I be sure that my analysis is sound enough? There was something lacking, and that’s what linguistics gave me: a practical kind of knowledge that is based on empirical observation. And then, of course, with linguistics, it’s not just about language structure, but also sociology, psychology, etc. It’s highly interdisciplinary and that’s what I like about what I’m doing. I’m an interdisciplinary scholar. I’m not an expert in linguistics, I’m not an expert in sociology, I’m not an expert in psychology. I’m somewhere in between, and I’m trying to understand how the different theories work together. That’s why I have a hard time identifying myself as a linguist.

AS: Your work on OCD has also led you to organize a conference, which is a very interdisciplinary and tangible project! Students taking “The Language of OCD” can validate their credits by presenting a poster at the “OCD in Society” conference. Can you tell us what “OCD in Society” is and how it came about?

I organized that conference for the very first time in 2019 when I was in London doing my PhD. And the idea came out of the observation that most studies on OCD were done in psychology and used statistical tools. At the time there were very few qualitative studies on OCD that explored how people with OCD made sense of their illness, how they struggled to find therapy. All these meaningful practices were not really explored. So I thought, why not organize a conference where the goal is simply to bring together different scholars from different disciplines who have an interest in studying OCD from a non-quantitative perspective? The 1^st edition welcomed linguists, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, literary scholars, and even artists. That was very important to me because in London there is this community of OCD sufferers who are artists and whose artwork I wanted to showcase. Now I’m organizing the 4^th edition of the conference and unfortunately, I cannot invite artists, because we don’t have enough funding. But the topic of the conference is connected to that seminar that I’m teaching, so I just thought it would be nice if students could actually contribute to the knowledge of OCD from a qualitative perspective. Instead of writing the typical essay or doing the typical oral presentation, they can create a poster that summarizes the research project that they will do during the semester. I’m sure that whatever they will do will be new and groundbreaking, because up until today, there are only 12 or 13 linguistic studies on OCD!

AAR: Are you working on any research or is that on the back burner for now?

Unfortunately, I’m not paid to do research [sighs]. I have a couple of articles in mind that I would like to publish. One of them is part of my PhD thesis that looks at how people who identify as LGBT+ talk about their obsessive fears of not being LGBT+ and how that is connected to heteronormativity. The other paper questions how normativity is researched in queer linguistics. Basically, we often refer to normativity as a spectrum ranging from what is normative to non-normative. However, that doesn’t capture expressions that denote quantification and signal a non-normative status like “this penis is too short”, “these breasts are too huge”, “he is not trans or straight enough”. These examples seem to imply that these extremes are not normative. What is normative is somewhere in the middle. So instead of seeing normativity as a straight spectrum, I also see it as a U-shaped spectrum. I think that they are two sides of the same coin. I’m really interested in theorizing how language is used to express such normative stances. How people negotiate the extremes to decide what is normative. I would love to write an article about that.

AS: In a nutshell, you’re busy with school! Subbing for Jenn, teaching at the language center… Can you tell us about the other classes that you’re teaching and that you’ve taught? Do you have a dream class that you would like to teach someday?

I’ve already taught my dream classes! [chuckles] At UNIL I’ve taught IELL, both the lecture and the tutorials. I’ve taught “Introduction to Discourse Analysis” several times. I taught a Master seminar, “Language and Sexuality” last year, “The Language of OCD” this year, and “Language and Health” last semester. When I was doing my PhD thesis or even being a student here at UNIL, I would have never thought that I would teach a class on OCD since that’s not what linguists usually teach. But here I am.

AS: How would you describe your teaching style?

I’m always thinking about how I can teach my students specific things in the most efficient way. At the end of their degree, humanities students are very often not aware of the skills that they learned for their future jobs. I try to make students conscious of the acquired skills. Last semester, some of my students had to do an oral presentation, so I showed them what good oral presentations are and then I gave them an assessment grid where different skills were evaluated, not only the content of their presentation, but also their body language, and paralinguistic features. I think those are just important skills that students need to be conscious of when applying for a future job.

AAR: So you’d say that the HEP was influential in the way you teach now?

Oh yes, definitely. The HEP does have its issues [laughs], but there are some classes, especially one about assessment strategies, that completely revolutionized my way of thinking about assessment. Some people are against assessment grids for various reasons. But I have seen how valuable it is to explicitly state what students will be assessed on and to use that grid to give targeted feedback. I also witnessed the efficiency of learning by teaching. So that’s something that I try to use as much as possible in my seminars. I ask students to explain to each other what they understood from the reading. They then share their impressions, and I’m always there to guide the interpretation, based on my own knowledge and previous experience.

AAR: One of the reasons we wanted to interview you is precisely because you’re a temporary member of staff and are leaving in August. What do you have planned for the future?

[Laughs] I sent my CV to the HEP. I had job interviews. I’m still waiting for a response. I also sent my CV to two different gymnases. I’m hoping that the English Department will still need me, so that I can extend my contract, but up until now nothing is settled. In August I’ll only have 20% at the language center and I have to fill the rest with something else!

AAR: Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty: lightning round! Favorite color?

I hate those kind questions! [laughs] I’m just going to say blue without knowing if that’s my favorite color. I like it because I think that’s the color that I often wear, but I don’t think consciously that’s my favorite color.

AS: What’s the last book that you’ve read?

The last nonfiction book I’ve read is called The Identity Trap by Yascha Mounk. The whole book criticizes left-wing politics for their extreme take on tribal identity politics by arguing that this furthers the rise of far-right ideologies, and suggests a way of finding a common ground between different social groups by endorsing universalist values.

And the last fictional book I’ve read was a graphic novel called In, by Will McPhail, which is a very beautiful, very simple graphic novel about meaningful relationships and how important it is to have banal social interactions and not being afraid of sharing something personally with each other.

AAR: The last TV show you watched?

Yesterday, I finished the 4^th season of You.

AS: Cats or dogs?

Oh God. [laughs] I didn’t grow up with animals. But I now own 2 little cats because of my girlfriend: Balou and D’Artagnan, and they’re very cute. So I’ll say that I’m a cat person in becoming. [laughs]

AAR: Controversial opinion?

Yeah… The song “Wonderwall” by Oasis is overrated.

AAR: Favorite album of all time?

Oh no! I like so many things that it’s impossible to put one at the top.

AAR: Recent album that you liked, then?

One that I listen to very often on repeat now is Blink 182’s One More Time that they recently released. But it’s not my favorite. I will recommend a music genre, instead. I’m really into synthwave, it’s a genre that uses music styles from the 80s, with contemporary themes. I love groups like The Midnight, Ollie Wride, FM-84, At 1980, Max Cruise, The Strike. The Weeknd also has some synth wavy songs. The 1975 sometimes go into that mood. Any synthwave that uses saxophone is a treat for me.

AS: Favorite place to vacation?

[Laughs] It’s really difficult. Again, I don’t think in terms of favorites because it excludes the rest of things that I like. It’s a very post-structuralist way of thinking, because if you have a favorite then you also have a non-favorite!

AAR: You’re thinking too much! [laughs]

I know, I know, but that’s my intellectual journey! I’ve read all these different theories and I’ve tried to incorporate them into my life. But if I had to recommend a place: a road trip through Portugal, not just going to the touristy places like Lisbon, Porto or Algarve. Go through the whole country, because the landscape is constantly changing and that’s really beautiful. I would also recommend a road trip across the West Coast of the US, through Montana, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington state. That’s really a lovely road trip.

AS: Tell us one thing your students would never guess about you.

I bungee jumped two years ago. [laughs] And then, I suffered from a kidney stone and the doctors thought it was because of the bungee jumping… like I’d dislocated the kidney stone!

AS: Favorite place in Anthropole?

[pauses then laughs] I don’t like the Anthropole as a building, so I don’t think that I have a favorite… No, yes, I do have a favorite place in the Anthropole, it’s the cafeteria. I like talking to our mamas downstairs, and it’s nice because they talk to me in Portuguese and they always call me like então menino, “what’s up little boy”, and that’s so endearing. It gives me those really familiar “mama” vibes that I got from my mom! [laughs]

AS: If you had to compose a theme song for the English Department, what would you name it?

Hmm, that’s a very good question. [pause] “Talk, Talk, Talk!” Because we always want students to participate in our lessons, and when I was a student that’s the thing that I liked most about the English seminars. So yeah, it’s also a wink to Rihanna’s “Work, work, work.”

AS: To the same beat ?

[singing] Students gotta talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, we just want them to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk…

AS: Thank you so much for sitting with us! It was a real pleasure to get to know you better. Is there anything else you’d like to share with MUSE?

Yeah! So, keep doing the work that you’ve been doing for all these years, right, one generation after the other. I think it’s really important. And, a message to all students: just be mindful of the skills that you acquire, because even if you’ve spent hours analyzing language or literature, those analytical skills are important. You stand out from students of the other faculties who don’t have those linguistic analytical skills. If you can somehow highlight them in your CV, I think that would be really great!

Authors: William Flores and Roxane Kokka

Image: © Nell Wasserstrom (Matthew’s wife). Matt enjoying an éclair in Paris.

Roxane: Hello, Matt! Thank you for accepting this interview with our magazine! It’s an honor for us to interview a new staff member and especially someone who seems to be interested in so many different disciplines. It’s quite fascinating!

Matthew: Thank you, the pleasure is all mine!

R: Could you tell us a few words about yourself? Where are you from? Where did you study and how come you ended up here?

M: It was sort of a strange process getting here. I’m from Connecticut in the US, a very small state between Boston and New York, the major landmarks in the area. But I did my bachelor’s in Montreal at McGill, where we had a bilingual university environment. And then I did all my graduate work in Boston; my master’s at Boston College and my PhD at Tufts. With its 200’000 students Boston was a great space for academics and for university life. As for UNIL, I saw a job advert on Twitter of all places! I think it was after a colleague from the Netherlands posted about it. I had a great experience with the interview process and with getting to know the faculty and, since I was offered the position I decided to take it. That was about a year ago. I think I arrived in mid-February last year.

William: Was it tough for you to leave the US?

M: In some sense, yes. I do miss Boston and a lot of my friends and colleagues who are there, although with things like Zoom and social media it’s easier to stay in touch. But other than that the transition wasn’t too hard. Everyone in the department has been really wonderful and welcoming. So, the shift from teaching in Boston to teaching in Lausanne has been fairly smooth. And my wife, who is also an academic, had already been in France for a year and a half, so I was already familiar with the European academic system. In terms of bureaucratic procedures, however, like health insurance, it took me a few months to truly get into the system, but once I got that settled, it was much easier.

R: So, did you also move with your wife who lived in France?

M: Actually, I was commuting from Boston to Paris about once a month, more or less, and I would also spend a few months over the summer to max out my tourist visa. This is the first time I’m living in Europe for a longer period.

R: And how do you like Lausanne, so far?

M: Well, I didn’t know what to expect at first but I’ve really enjoyed it. Now that I’ve settled and figured out all the bureaucratic procedures, it’s been great! I’ve been exploring Lausanne and taking advantage of all the things to do around, like hiking and the wine country, which has been a highlight! I’ve really liked it so far and, again, the department is truly fantastic and I’ve enjoyed getting to know all of my colleagues! Having people here to talk to and meeting people in Geneva as well, developing all those connections has been nice and helpful. All these friends and colleagues gave me recommendations for things to do and see in Switzerland, so that has kept me quite occupied.

R: Was there anything in particular that stood out to you?

M: When I first arrived, after landing in Zürich and taking the train to Lausanne, that moment when we came out of the tunnel by the Lavaux and I saw the Alps, and the lake, it was all so comically beautiful… Especially because it was such a perfect day and I felt kind of jetlagged and confused! That has really stood out to me. Now I live close to the center and I like to run along the lake and it’s still stunningly picturesque. I love the landscape throughout Switzerland, especially after having been in a place that isn’t quite as stunning.

R: I also love the views here! I like to run in the vineyards while looking at the landscape and then I get all distracted and go “oh, wait, I have to take a picture!”

M: Totally! Do you stay at the lower levels or do you go up?

R: I live further up, so it always goes up and down, but it’s fun!

M: Yeah, I’ve personally stuck to the flat parts…

R: You appear to have a very large range of interests from visual arts, to music and politics, psychoanalysis and, of course, American literature; so, I was wondering, why American literature, specifically? Is there a particular reason?

M: That’s a really good question. I actually came to American literature late during my PhD. In fact, throughout my master’s I was working on British literature and focused on British modernism in particular. But then, for a series of reasons, something about American literature made more sense to me and I also started shifting to the contemporary sphere. I think partly my own reading led me to contemporary American literature, but also some of the questions that come up with American studies and literature that seem open to a very diverse set of texts. It just seemed to fit better with my own theoretical interests.

R: According to UNIL’s website you are currently working on a new book on several different topics. Could you tell our readers a little more about it?

M: Sure! I have just signed my official book contract with Fordham, so the manuscript will be done in June and scheduled to appear next spring. The book is about democracy and democratic anarchy. The motivation for the book was to see how the word “democracy” in the US is now used both on the Left and on the Right, but for completely different purposes. The word has become an empty signifier and can mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean. So, part of the book interrogates this language confusion while also recovering the core principles of democracy, such as equality and freedom. That’s why I make the link between democracy and anarchy, as the latter keeps open questions of equality and freedom where democracy, as it is deployed in the US political discourse, forecloses those ideals. It’s a politically motivated book, but most of the main texts are literary with a few exceptions, such as a visual art piece and a couple of references to film and some political speeches. The goal was to find through these texts a discourse on democracy that resists the status quo of mainstream politics and social organisation. At the same time the book is kind of messy in the sense that democracy is also messy. I bring in several topics and types of literature and theories, and link references from the 19th century to the present, for instance. It’s a big bag of materials and questions.

R: That sounds very interesting! Do you have any other passions or projects aside from your academic ones? We were wondering precisely because you have so many different academic interests.

M: Yes, I think a lot of academics have their scholarly interests blend and bleed into their personal interests. So, for instance, I love going to museums, but at times seeing art ­– or reading even – feels like work. But I also play music.

W: What instrument?

M: The guitar, but I don’t have a band or anything over here.

W: Over here?

M: I used to in the States.

W: What kind of music did you play?

M: Mostly jazz and blues. I was trained as a jazz musician, rather than a classical one. But, my PhD program kind of destroyed the practice routine that I had, so I can’t play as well as I used to. But I still try to keep up with jazz and blues music. That’s my main interest, but I also enjoy running, hiking and swimming. Although, I couldn’t swim in the lake with this temperature…

R: I do understand what you mean by your passions and scholarly interests intersecting. I could be reading a book or be in a museum and suddenly get an idea for a university paper. It’s fun, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to enjoy these passions without that mental load.

M: Absolutely! It’s really hard to read and then not have the urge to grab a pencil…

R: I happen to be very curious about what people wanted to be when they were growing up, so I was wondering, what did you want to be and who were your role models?

M: That’s an interesting question! I can’t tell you much about my early childhood, because I can’t remember early role models or desires, but I definitely went through a phase of wanting to pursue music as a profession, all the way through high school. I had this idea of making a living as a professional musician. But when I started my bachelor’s I decided to major in literature rather than music. It was a last minute change. As for role models, I’m kind of old-fashioned in terms of music, so I modelled my playing on Jimi Hendrix and other artists from the 1960s and 1970s who would combine jazz principles with blues and mainstream rock!

W: Speaking of the 1960s and considering your interest in the relationship between art and politics, what are your thoughts on the rise of nostalgia in music and film?

M: Nostalgia is a very tricky concept… My knee-jerk reaction to this 90s revival I’m currently seeing, which was an era I grew up in, is a bizarre experience. It’s alienating for me to see the 90s in a nostalgic way. It certainly was three decades ago, but to me it feels much closer, so I don’t perceive it as an object of nostalgia. Whereas the 1960s truly represent for me a distant past that I have no personal connection to, so it becomes more of a detached object of interest. But it seems like everything is destined to come back at least once in some form. And I know that nostalgia can have some negative connotations with conservative politics, such as nostalgia for an idealised past that never existed. On the other hand, there’s nostalgia for remaking things of the past, like from the 1960s, to keep alive some of the possibilities that seem to exist in that space… Nostalgia always appears to be operative and it can be pushed towards a conservative pole or a more progressive pole, or even just a neutral one. Perhaps it also draws attention to the idea that nothing really is new. We’re always recycling and reusing things from the past. Going to college in the mid-2000s, I can tell you that the music of the time was clearly inspired by the 1980s; like the big synthesizer was back and bands like Arcade Fire were becoming popular. So, that 1980s sound really came back with a vengeance. It strikes me that there seems to be this recursive structure, especially with objects like media and music. I guess this wasn’t really a sophisticated answer but more a rambling of sorts…

R: We’re here to pick your brain, so any thoughts you say are interesting to us!

M: Thank you!

W: You said that as a society we tend to recycle old ideas and that it’s normal. Does that mean the current nostalgia we see for the 1980s and 1990s is not a symptom that we have run out of ideas as a society?

M: That’s a good question. I think there are two versions of it. On the one hand there’s a more pathological and vulgar form and on the other just a normal kind of recycling. In film it always struck me how repetition is built into the medium. But when I look at Disney Plus, every day there seems to be another Star Wars series, so it seems that repetition has intensified. Now, I haven’t watched these series, so they could be great, but maybe there is a difference between recycling older forms to make something innovative and interesting with them and then a more vulgar and market-driven approach, where we just reuse old stuff because it’s gonna sell.

R: I also feel that the part about recycling just to sell is certainly a thing. I think that familiarity plays a role in it. It seems to me that people often like staying in their comfort zone and therefore seek to watch something they’re already familiar with. But the other kind you described is a phenomenon we see in art history too: there have always been movements that drew inspiration from the past while adding new features.

M: Yes, it’s like the modernist mantra by Ezra Pound; “make it new”. But, of course, he does not suggest throwing away the past. Rather, we should salvage what is useful and reconfigure things. I think it’s an interesting synthetic and dialectical process.

R: Yes, kind of like Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made art. Take what is already there and give it a new meaning.

M: Yes! That is indeed a great example.

W: But speaking of this desire to take something which already exists and make something new, do you think that people in the past, especially in the second half of the 20th century, had more hopeful ideas for the future? Because when we see renderings of how people imagined the future in the past, the future seemed pretty bright. We don’t really see those grand, retrofuturistic visions anymore.

M: That is an interesting point. It makes me think of that often misattributed quote, I think by Fredric Jameson, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world, than it is to imagine the end of capitalism”. There’s something about the post-70s world and especially post-70s America where neoliberal structures became so entrenched and successful that it becomes quite difficult to imagine an alternate form. But perhaps Afrofuturism is an exception, as it tries to imagine alternate future societies and social organisations. In that sense I find that sci-fi and fantasy remain quite alive. I think they work hard on imagining a future that is not as bleak as the one we’re constantly inundated with and that is authentically different from the status quo. I guess it’s more difficult to imagine that today than in the late 20th century, just because of the normalisation of the neoliberal logic.

W: Do you think that the current crises, such as global warming and the COVID pandemic, are signs that capitalist structures are reaching some kind of breaking point?

M: I always like to think so, but capitalism is insidious and it strikes me that every crisis appears to be a means for the economic system to reconfigure and reassert itself. Remembering the 2007-2008 financial crisis in the US, it really seemed like an opportunity to disrupt finance capitalism, but it just ended up reentrenching it. But there is hope, I think. In my teaching experience I’ve noticed that ecological concerns have become more and more important for students in the last years. But crises themselves are not enough to change the system.

W: You’ve previously mentioned anarchism. Do you think there are things that we can learn from anarchist modes of organisation?

M: Yes, I think that the decentralisation of anarchist organization is really appealing, especially in the US, where anarchism has a much longer history than Marxism. Although it kind of moved into the background in the 20th century, it came back with movements such as Occupy Wallstreet and Black Lives Matter. I think avoiding a big central organization is helpful, because they tend to be hierarchical and thus to reproduce inequalities. With mutual aid, anarchism can bring solidarity in interpersonal relations as well as in bigger political movements. It’s not an all-or-nothing situation with anarchist groups. From what I have learned in Boston, they are also quite open to questions and avoid slipping into dogmatic ways of thinking. There’s also a Marxism vs. anarchism dispute, but that’s another topic… But in general, anarchist groups seem to have a more ad hoc approach to organization and resistance, with a willingness to experiment. That kind of inventiveness and improvisation probably leads to more long-lasting change as well.

R: I agree, I believe you need to have the courage to test new things and think outside of the box in order to move forward.

M: Absolutely! I also think that anarchist protests can be quite funny as well which can be useful in some cases.

W: Right, are you familiar with Murray Bookchin’s work?

M: Yes! Although not as much as I should be. I do know about his social ecology theory. But what I can say is that it seems like a lot of what is going on today is the conjunction of fields, which is why I love American Studies so much. Both Black and Queer studies engage with anarchism and ecology. I like these approaches that use notions of social ecology to think about the interaction between human and non-human groups, and therefore address the totality of the problem.

R: I saw that you worked on William Faulkner, among other authors. What do you appreciate the most about his writing?

M: I love his writing, he’s phenomenal! But like every modernist (it seems) he was a terrible person… I would never want to interact with him. But despite that he writes magnificent fiction that supersedes personal and subjective limitations. So, his fiction produces counter-positions to those of the biographical Faulkner. I have always loved his work partly because of how he manipulates space and time. He gives you a view of a particular object or moment while also changing the point of view. Let’s take the beginning of As I Lay Dying. The dying mother is in one room, one of her sons is building her coffin outside, while two of her sons are walking up the path from the barn and you can really map out the space just by following the shifts in view. He reconfigures the realist tradition and reinvents the fictional language in a stunning way. In that sense he is like Virginia Woolf in the British tradition.

R: Yes, that fascinates me too! You would only gradually understand what he’s describing.

M: Yes, and then in some cases he breaks the realism and there’s a character who’s just speaking in a way that does not correspond to them at all and so he just shows you another mode of thinking. I am also reminded of that boy, Vardaman from As I Lay Dying, who has a one sentence chapter, “My mother is a fish”. Out of context it’s completely enigmatic, but in the context of the novel it makes perfect sense. When you follow all of the references to the mother and the fish in the novel you can piece it all together. So, it’s a completely innovative way of building the fictional psychic interiority of a small boy dealing with his mother’s death. It really is an impressive accomplishment in fiction.

R: Alright, so our last couple of questions are very random… Let’s imagine you’re hosting a celebrity dinner party (the invites can be dead or alive)! Which writers, philosophers, artists or political and historical figures would you invite? With whom would you like to talk? And who would you like to see interact with one another?

M: Well, that’s incredibly difficult, but not Faulkner! I would love to have Toni Morrison. I’ve heard her speak a couple of times but I never spoke with her. I think she would be a wonderful person to speak with. It would also be fun to bring Karl Marx, who would probably hate the whole thing! And then someone like Frantz Fanon, whose work I really love. He’s also quite critical of Marx, so that would be an interesting interaction. I’d be tempted to invite people with whom I’d really love to speak with, as well as those really critical figures who had disagreements. It might end up like a terrible dinner party, more like a boxing match… but those would come to my mind!

R: Our editors’ team would love to know who would you put on Mount Rushmore if you had a say in it.

M: Can I give you an annoying response first?

W and R: Of course!

M: I would just get rid of Mount Rushmore entirely. There’s just such a risk to any kind of monumentalisation of one particular figure. That’s really obvious when it’s on the Right. Take all the Confederate statues in the US. Then, when they’re taken down the obvious answer is to replace them with a left-wing figure. My fear is that any kind of monumentalisation ends up encouraging some kind of dogmatic indebtedness to that figure. But if I really had to choose, I’d say Toni Morrison. Also because her works resist monumentalisation. There’s always something in her fiction that completely disturbs the reader. So, she’s kind of an impossible figure to fix in a stable position.

R: Yes, I noticed that Love is one of her most disturbing books, which is pretty ironic. But that’s what’s interesting about her. She is bold enough to go the extra mile and make us uncomfortable and push us to think about what’s wrong with the system.

M: Yes, and this also makes me think of her novel Paradise which she initially wanted to call War but her editor overruled her. “Paradise” and “Love” probably sell better.

R: How confusing! This reminds me of Recitatif, where, just like Faulkner, she’s not straightforward. As readers we’re left guessing which character belonged to which race, all based on stereotypes.

M: Yes, and right now I’m teaching Sula in a third year class and there’s three characters named Dewey, all with different ethnic identities, but the matriarchal figure just refers to them as “that Dewey”. So, I think Morrison is playing with our own obsession to impose a certain identity on characters and people. She does that in a kind of comic way.

R: Well, that would be all from our part. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

M: I would just like to emphasize how important it is that we, as readers, or students even, remain willing to be surprised and made to feel uncomfortable, precisely to ask us to question our own ethical and moral positions. We might call it productive self-alienation! Well…Thank you very much for these extremely interesting questions!

W and R: Thank you for answering them and taking the time!

Image: © Nell Wasserstrom. Picture of Matt during the couple’s visit of a village in the Lubéron (France).

Image: © Ute Inselmann. Cécile Heim (right) with former English department colleague Ute Inselmann (left) at the top of the Augstmatthorn. Lake Brienz, named after the village where Cécile grew up, is seen below.

Author: Tonia Ramogida

On March 21^st 2022, I met with Cécile Heim at a café in Fribourg. Cécile is at the end of her contract as PhD candidate and Doctoral Assistant at the English Department. She joined me after a long day of putting the finishing touches on her dissertation—Representing and Resisting Violence against Indigenous Women and Girls through the Rougarou, Deer Woman, the Windigo, and B’gwus—which she’ll defend on April 29^th. She nevertheless made time to discuss her work, politics and thoughts on social issues over a glass of wine. Here is our candid and laughter-filled discussion.

Tonia Ramogida: Thank you for accepting to do the interview. I was really looking forward to speaking with you.

Cécile Heim: (laughs) I was really surprised that you asked me! I’m at the end of my contract now—I have, what, ten days left on it? (laughs) I’m going to defend my dissertation, my PhD, at the end of April. I’m at the end of my time at university, really.

TR: Oh, wow. So, you’re all done? You’ve written it?

CH: Yeah, I’m essentially done. I’m putting the final touches on my dissertation as we speak. I just came from it. I’m taking a break now.

TR: Cheers! Congratulations!

CH: Thank you! My goal is to finish everything this week and send it, so my experts and professors will have a full month to read through everything again, and to prepare for the soutenance. So, I’m at the very end of that journey.

TR: Oh, wow. It’s a book? It’s long?

CH: It depends on how you define a book. In terms of length, it’s definitely a book; it’s probably an encyclopaedia. (laughs) Without the bibliography, the first version was 369 pages which is awfully long. I’m trying to shorten it now by cutting out everything that people have found repetitive. But it’s not a book in the sense that it’s not published. I can turn it into a book afterwards if that is something that I want to do. But yeah, it’s long.

TR: You must feel a great sense of accomplishment.

CH: I mean, not really. Frankly, when you hand it in the first time, you’re just super happy that this huge weight is off your shoulders. And then you have to get back to it. For me, it’s the revision part that I found awfully difficult.

Before I even started the PhD, I heard so many horror stories about writer’s block, and people not being able to motivate themselves for five years, and then having to rush for one year to finish their dissertation.

Luckily for me, that never happened. I never hit writer’s block. I was always happy to work on my dissertation, all the way until I handed it in the first time which was on the… 17^th of December, just before Christmas. And then it was like, “Ah! Finally, I can breathe again!” Then I had the colloque in early February, and when I had to get back to it, I had a really, really hard time. I couldn’t for many weeks.

You don’t really get a sense of accomplishment because you’re never done anyway. The kind of work that we do is not the kind where you can tick a box at the end. It’s never done. You could always pursue it; you could always take it further. You could always just improve on whatever you’ve done, no matter how much of a perfectionist you are.

Everybody has a different opinion, so you can have ten experts and you’ll have ten different opinions—sometimes contradictory, and sometimes they will agree…. Essentially, at some point, you just have to stop yourself. If you wait for the moment that you’re done, that’s never going to happen.

For me the struggle was to wind back in my brain, to put the backwards gear in, and to go back to the dissertation before moving on to the next step, which is applying for jobs… and just trying to plan the rest of my life. (laughs)

TR: Yeah, that’s, um… No Pressure.

CH: No pressure at all, yeah. (laughs) No pressure at all.

TR: I was looking at your personal website and you’ve done a ton at UNIL and within the department. You were in the labour union; you were co-organizing first-year courses; you’ve done a lot of teaching. You’ve done conferences, written lots of different articles. And then there’s DICE—the Decolonial, Indigenous, and Critical Ethnic Studies Network. You started that?

CH: Oh, yeah, I’m so happy with that. It’s fantastic.

The advantage that we have when we study and work in Switzerland is that it’s a really small community. Everyone knows each other, and they’re all super nice and very supportive, generally speaking, of young scholars. And a lot of it is just sheer coincidence. For example, I got a position with the Swiss Association for North American Studies (SANAS)—I’m the Swiss delegate for the European Association of American Studies (EAAS). It’s a fantastic job. I absolutely love it. But I only got it because Boris resigned at the right time, and because Agnieszka was supposed to take it but couldn’t for personal reasons. So, they asked me, but it was a “Shit! We don’t have anyone—what about Cécile? Let’s ask her” kind of thing. It was a complete coincidence. I ended up having a fantastic time and I loved doing it.

And that’s how the DICE Network came about. It’s a network that I co-founded with Prof. Aleksandra Izgarjan from the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. It’s sponsored by the EAAS. We’re not an academic association per se, because we’re a non-profit, non-money-holding-in-any-way kind of network. But we’re working through the EAAS, who are a recognized association, to connect people within Europe or people interested in working with Europeans on these fields. The goal is to work across fields.

You know, there are quite a few people in Europe who work on Indigenous Studies or on Black Studies, but they all are in their little corners, and that’s why, very often, they feel isolated. But when you actually start looking around and working with various associations, you realize that these fields are growing really fast and there are actually an increasing number of people working on them—it’s just that they don’t necessarily know each other or know of each other.

With the Serbian delegate, we had this idea of creating a network. We did, and it just took off overwhelmingly. Now, all of a sudden, we’re managing more than 150 members—which is fantastic—but we never expected it to take off like that. It just proves how necessary it was and how big the demand is.

In a couple of weeks, there’s the EAAS biennial conference. This year, it’s in Madrid. We decided to ride the wave. We’re going to have our first public appearance as a network. We created a few panels; we’ll have a round table, and… our first general assembly where we’re going to vote on the network’s articles. It’s going to be a thing—a real thing!

TR: That’s awesome!

CH: Yeah, it’s really cool.

I mean, I think a big part of what academia is, you just walk through it, and hold on as much as you can. Opportunities pop up and you can take them or leave them. Sometimes you get really lucky and sometimes you get horribly unlucky.… I just got really lucky, I think.

TR: I have a question from the editing team at MUSE: what do you take away from your time at UNIL? You’ve been there a number of years now. How many years in total?

CH: I did all of my studies there—except during my BA I went away for a year to Glasgow, and then during my MA I went away for six months to Vancouver, to UBC, your home town.

TR: Yes!

CH: I worked for a year and then talked to Agnieszka. I was like, “Okay, let’s do a PhD if you’re still up for it,” and she said, “Yes, but there is no available assistant position right now, but we are still seeking for someone to go on a Teaching Assistant exchange at Buffalo, in the state of New York.” I said, “Sure, let’s do that.” I did that for two years and then I came back and worked for a year at UNIL as a chargée de cours, and then as a regular teacher at a different school. Then I started the contract that I have now, which I have been on for five years. So, yes, it’s an institution that I’ve been in and out of for many, many years. It’s been one of these on-off relationships….

TR: Ah, yes… those.

CH: (laughs) So what do I take from that experience?

I take from it pretty much what you would take from all on-off relationships, which is that you love it and sometimes you also realize that you need a break from it. That it doesn’t only do you good, or that it’s time to move on.

It’s hard to summarize what I take from it in a few sentences because I learned so much there. You know, I very much became – … I think one could say that I very much grew into to the adult that I am now at UNIL. And thanks to UNIL. And thanks to the teachers I had at UNIL. But also, especially, the texts that I read and the opportunities that UNIL created for me.

So I guess I’m just slightly more… slightly wiser than I was before. It’s hard to say.

I was a student there. I became a teacher there. I became a researcher there. I had really good times. I also had some of the toughest times of my life. Not just because of UNIL… a lot converged at one point in my life—it was private stuff, but also stuff at work—and it just felt apocalyptic…. So, yeah… I take a lot from it. (laughs)

TR: Yeah, no, for sure.

CH: Yeah, it’s really hard to say.

TR: I was at the Talking About Race and Racism series event where you presented along with Jennifer Thorburn and Agnieszka Soltysik. I thought the talk was really fantastic; it seemed like it resonated with a lot of the people that were there.

CH: Jenn and Agnieszka did an incredible job with that series.

I really regret that I couldn’t be there for more events because of that bloody dissertation. (laughs) No, no, it’s not bloody at all (laughs), but I needed to work so I really couldn’t join for more events.

I hope they’re going to do more stuff like that. It’s absolutely fantastic what they’ve done. I think it’s the kind of topics that students are really concerned by, not just for research purposes or whatever, but because it is a struggle everyday in their lives.

I think there are many topics like that that people don’t talk about enough just yet in academia as research or as material that needs to be taught.

I think it was a wonderful event and I hope that there’s going to be more. Having said this, I would understand if they just couldn’t create more because every time teachers create events like this, this is on a purely voluntary basis—they don’t get paid more, they don’t get any kind of discharge of teaching or anything like that. It’s a tremendous amount of work, in addition to the full-time job that they already have. It’s a huge investment on their part and I think that was fabulous.

TR: How did you come to study what you study?

CH: That’s a good question. It’s a question I try to answer in my dissertation.

Part of the answer is that I was always frustrated with hearing only one side of the story. When I started my studies in English, I had a great time. It was all good, but it was mainly white, male authors that we read. You had a Black author once in a while. This is not to say that these are not fascinating subjects or texts to study—but I just felt like it wasn’t answering a lot of the questions I had. And I think it was when I started going abroad during my exchanges that I started realizing what direction I needed to go in to find the answers I was looking for.

If I had to pin-point a moment, I’d definitely say it was my exchange at UBC in Vancouver, my six months there, that really started it all. That’s when I had my first classes in Indigenous literatures… and I volunteered there at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre (DEWC).

TR: Did you?

CH: Yeah.

TR: Oh my God, really.

CH: It was a fascinating experience.

It was really easy for me to talk to one teacher at UBC—she’s still there, her name is Lorraine Weir. She was a great teacher and we talked a lot together. She said, “You should really go and have a look at the DEWC because you seem interested in working with Indigenous women, and you seem interested in topics such as sexual violence or domestic violence or just gender violence in general. Maybe you’d be interested in hearing some of the stories women have to tell there.”

I quickly realized what kind of place it was, but I didn’t shy away from it still. It was an incredibly fascinating experience. This is where I started seeing the importance between research and activism. And the kind of impact that volunteer work can have on your research, and on your work as an academic and as a teacher.

I then wrote my MA thesis on Indigenous women’s plays, on the tropes of movement and mobility. It was a shit MA thesis—like, don’t go and look it up. (laughs)

But, yeah, I think it all started in Vancouver for me.

TR: I’m curious, what are your thoughts on Canada as a settler-colonial project? And, again, no worries if there’s anything you say that you don’t want published.

CH: Well, I mean, pretty much everything that I say here I will have published even worse versions of already, so no worries. (laughs)

I mean, everything I say about Canada is true as well for other states, like the United States, but also South Africa—although the situation there is slightly different—or Australia and New Zealand. Even here in Europe. Or even non-settler-colonial states.

I think there are interesting parallels in policies and ideology to be drawn between settler-colonial states and European states. Obviously, settler-colonial states are very much influenced by the originally colonizing continent of Europe. Let’s talk about these connections a little bit later.

These states are not post-colonial. They are still colonizing the lands of people. So, for me, the Canadian, and American, and Australian states are illegitimate in that sense. Unless they are able to acknowledge Indigenous peoples and their governments in addition to their own relation to Indigenous peoples, they remain illegitimate.

I think it’s fair to say there is a colonial relationship between the contemporary states of Canada or the US and that this relationship can still be described in many ways as genocidal.

Do I think that… all government people in Canada and the US are complete pricks who… actively want to kill off all Indigenous peoples? No. I do think that some of them—I don’t know how many—have sincere intentions of trying to create a good relationship. I also believe that a lot of politicians really believe that by enacting certain laws or policies they think they’re improving Indigenous peoples’ lives, even though they clearly aren’t. I think it’s a lot more complicated than black and white, obviously.

I think that states such as Canada and the US are so far behind in their understanding of themselves. And this is where literature comes in. Here I know a little more about the US than I do about Canada—but I think it’s fascinating to try to understand how narratives come into play when it comes to creating national identity and national history—which ends up being monolithic, linear, and sanitized in many ways.

You have stories and theories such as the Frontier Thesis, or the City on the Hill, or the Promised Land, or Manifest Destiny. These are all narratives… stories that people tell themselves to rearrange the world in a way that makes sense to them. And very often, excluding any other vision of that.

TR: What you say about nations like Canada not understanding themselves is interesting.

On Canada’s first-ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation last year, Justin Trudeau ignored two invitations from Kúkpi7 Roseanne Casimir, chief of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation, to attend one of the country’s biggest events in Kamloops, British Columbia. A couple months earlier, they found the unmarked graves of 215 children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

He nevertheless decided to take a 6-hour flight from Ottawa to British Columbia to spend the day vacationing with his family in Tofino, a rural surfing town on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

This man positioned himself as a ray of hope for a progressive, feminist kind of politics. It’s upsetting.

CH: Hugely. But he’s by far not the only one. We actually see a lot of those.

I think that people like Trudeau—like Emmanuel Macron in France—I’m half-French, my mom’s French, so most of my family now is in France, except for my brother who’s here, and my niece… anyway—people like Trudeau and Macron are typical products of the neoliberal state.

I think they are exceptional failures—no, sorry, they are not exceptional—they are precisely the result of the logical failures of neoliberal, very often socialist politics.

These are children of politicians who thought that it was enough to just have a diverse government to be fair and not be oppressive anymore. These are people who thought that you just need to have enough women in your government in order to not be sexist anymore. These are typical neoliberal moves where a lot is done for the show, for the appearance, or because it is trendy to do so, without actually understanding the systemic repercussions of oppression. Without actually understanding that violence is something that is structural or that oppression is something that is systemic. These are people who want to find quick solutions for profoundly embedded ills.

I mean, the kind of oppressions that Indigenous people face—but also that women face in many of our European countries—or that People of Colour face—this violence, this kind of oppression is something that stems from centuries ago, that does come from colonization. This is profoundly embedded. This is actually inscribed in the very structure on which our societies function and are based, on which our laws are written. To think that it is enough to have one Black person or one Indigenous person in your government to solve all problems of oppression against People of Colour or Indigenous people or whoever—is ludicrous.

This is a typical neoliberal attitude of, “Oh, let’s just be multicultural, and that’s the solution to everything,” without understanding that these are institutional, systemic, structural issues that need profound reworking.

Where did I read this lately? I think it’s in Histories of Racial Capitalism—it’s a book that just came out—and they say in there that there never existed any form of capitalism other than racial capitalism. And to actually create an egalitarian society—that is, a non-racist society—one doesn’t just need to be anti-racist, one needs to redistribute wealth. Our current economies are founded very much on slavery. But, of course, this is an absolute taboo.

TR: I took a class with Dr. Enit Steiner last semester and we read a book by Olaudah Equiano, which brought to light the economic and industrial side of slavery. My partner and their sibling got into roasting coffee beans, buying green beans direct, and researching the coffee market. And then you find out that coffee is the second most-traded commodity in the world after oil—and you’re like, hold on, wait—

CH: (laughs)

TR: Are all these coffee harvesters happy people?

CH: Yeah. Do you remember how coffee came to Europe?

TR: Oh, God. I don’t.

CH: Well, it was part of the triangular slave trade.

TR: Oh, was it? Yeah, there we go.

CH: Yeah, so these coffee harvesters are probably not very happy….

But what do we do now? You know, that’s the thing. We can create all of that knowledge which is important and which we need to do. We can educate people. We can write articles on it—which is a crucial task—but it’s still not going to be good enough.

The truth is, I have reached a point—and maybe this is just too tainted by everything that’s going on in the world—I have reached a point where I don’t honestly think that we’re ever going to be capable of creating a fair and just society for all. There’s too much work to be done. Every time we take a step forward, we go two steps back. There was a huge backlash after Barak Obama, for example, even though he wasn’t the most anti-racist kind of president.

I hit the point where I just raise my hands to the sky and say, “I don’t know what to do now,” because we have all that knowledge. We also know about climate change—we’ve known for years. We know about mass extinction—we’ve known for years. Does anyone do anything against it? No, not really. Does it stop people en masse from taking the plane to go somewhere? No. Does it stop me from going anywhere? No, not really. I mean, what the fuck does it take for us to change?

There are things that I do to try to prevent climate change. It’s nowhere good enough. There’s still more I could do, so why don’t I do it? Why don’t we do it, generally, as a society? Why don’t we move away from excessive consumerism? Why don’t we move away from fishing out the oceans? Why don’t we move away from relating to the land in extremely extractive ways, and start relating to it in more equal ways? Or start to respect it as a living being, instead of as a resource to be exploited?

I don’t have any answers. Bourdieu would say it’s habits—we have been socialized, acculturized like that; it’s just our habit to do so. Habits sound harmless—but they’re extremely difficult to break. And I think it’s more than this. I think it’s just that deep down, we don’t really want to change.

TR: Something I’ve noticed, among a couple of the women I know here—who are maybe, like, 10 or so years older than me—so, early to mid-forties—a couple times when I brought up the topic of feminism… the response was, “Oh, no, je suis pas du tout féministe mais… I negotiated a higher salary for myself, or, I have my own place and my independence and don’t want to live with my partner,” you know? So, is ‘feminist’ still a ‘bad word’? What’s the deal with that?

CH: Well, it’s really funny you should say that, because I had almost the reverse experience.

I’m 35 now and was talking with younger women who are in their late teens or early 20s. This was a few weeks ago, when I did a substitution at a high school here in Fribourg.

I taught an English class and wasn’t given the programme. I’m like, “Okay, I’m just going to do whatever I want,” so I gave them some Emily Dickinson to read, some Harlem Renaissance poems, some this and that…. I had a great time with them. We didn’t at all do the grammar program we were supposed to. (laughs)

Anyway, I had a few conversations with them about feminism. They all say, “Yeah, I’m a feminist! I’m a feminist!” And I’m like, “Great, what does that entail? How would you define being a feminist?” And they’re like, “Well, I’m the same as a man. I’m equal to men.” And I’m like, “Great, absolutely.” And I say, “So why do you always dress in the sexiest way possible? Why do you always have to keep sexualizing yourself?” And some of them are like, “Well, that’s just my style.” And I’m like, “Great, that’s a cool style to have…. Is there anything to it? Why do you girls on Instagram do the duck mouth picture all the time? What is feminist about that?”

It was very interesting for me, because I had a generation in front of me who wasn’t shy about claiming themselves as being feminist. But I didn’t really see a lot of feminism in how they were behaving in their day-to-day workplace or high school. …

That’s where I would differentiate between feminist theories or feminist discourse and the identity of feminist. I think these are two different things and I think that emerges from what you and I have been saying just now.

You can face someone who lives in the most feminist way possible without identifying as a feminist, because, for that generation, to be a feminist meant being lesbian—not that being lesbian is bad in any way—but there was the social stigma that came with that. For that generation, being feminist meant never being in a relationship…. In French, feminists were often called les mal baisées or things like that. It was as if being a feminist stemmed from some kind of discontent or from an eternal state of unhappiness that was self-induced.

These women are now 40 or so, but they’re from the 70s, right? That’s second-wave feminism—and after that came a huge backlash. The 80s and 90s are a huge backlash for feminists, historically speaking. So, I understand if people who became adults during a time when feminists suffered a huge backlash don’t want to identify as feminists even though they do live in a very feminist way.

And now we can maybe see a little bit of the contrary. People who become adults now do want to claim that identity because it’s cool, because we have the hashtags, the massive social media movements, the Journée de la Femme. We live in moment in our society where it is cool to be considered a feminist. But I don’t think that everyone who actually claims that identity really understands what it entails. Some of them certainly do. But I don’t think that all of them do.

I think that’s where we have to differentiate between claiming an identity—being feminist—or being queer—or being any other kind of identity you might want to claim—and actually acting or living according to that identity.

Another question that raises is: what does it mean to be a feminist?

When you claim that identity, are you not a feminist when you walk around in sexy clothes? Was I wrong to ask that question to my students? Of course, I would never say that someone who walks around in a hyper-sexualized way is a bad feminist, if they then advance the cause, or if they don’t accept subordination. But then, who am I to make that decision?

To answer your original question—whether ‘feminist’ is a ‘bad word’—no, not anymore. But then, it’s changed. And I really wonder what it means to claim that identity.

Would I claim that identity? Absolutely, yes.

Why do I claim that identity? Well, because I’ve studied feminist theories; my research is heavily influenced from that. I would consider my work to be feminist work. Because I try to fight inequality between men and women wherever I can. But does it take all of that to rightfully claim being a feminist? I really don’t know.

This is where I find Roxanne Gay’s book Bad Feminist really interesting. It had very good and very bad critiques, but I think it raises interesting questions. Again, I have no answer.

This will be the most frustrating interview you will ever do. Whatever question you will ask me, I’ll ask you fifty back.

TR: Fine by me.

Being Canadian and a bit homesick, I got really caught up in following the Truckers’ Protest—the Freedom Convoy—that took place in Ottawa in January and February 2022. Some convoy supporters said they wanted this to be a Canadian version of the January 6^th attempted insurrection in Washington, DC.

It was crazy to see a super-disruptive protest movement literally shut down parliament and the downtown core of the nation’s capital—and to have that go on for nearly a month without any serious intervention from police.

Back in BC, there are the Wet’suwet’en land defenders—have you heard about them?—there was a blockade—

CH: The pipeline?

TR: Yeah. In November 2021, militarized police troops with attack dogs, helicopters, snipers came down on a relatively small number of peaceful, unarmed land defenders. They used a chainsaw to break through a door and put journalists in jail.

(You can find the land defenders’ video of the raid here; please note the content warning for police violence against Indigenous women. This video provides further commentary.)

One of the issues raised was the double standard in terms of who is allowed to protest, to be disruptive. What were your thoughts on that?

CH: That’s a really interesting question.

I didn’t really think about the Canadian example as much as about the French example, which is very similar.

In 2020 and 2021, there was a huge wave of Black Lives Matter protests that came all the way here to Europe. In France, these protests lasted for a while, because there were a few incidences of Black—especially young men—who had been hurt, and a few of them killed, by the French police, in similarly unjustified circumstances as in the United States.

When these protests happened, the crackdown from the government was massive, really massive. They were deplored in the media in general. There were very few media who were sympathetic to these protests. Nobody understood why statues like Colbert would be put down—you know Colbert?

TR: You’re going to have to explain that one to me.

CH: Colbert was an economic minister in France under Louis XIV. At the same time, he was also one of the founders of the triangular slave trade. He’s the author of the Code Noir—which is kind of like 18^th century French Jim Crow laws—which justified slavery.

During these Black Lives Matter protests, statues of Colbert were pulled down and desecrated. French people were like, “No! But why? This is holy!” Black Lives Matter protests were received very negatively.

Even to this day, as soon as you start talking about decolonization, about anti-racism, about systemic racism—these are ‘bad words’ in France.

People will tell you that you’re some sort of woke academic or woke leftie who just wants to follow the ideological fashion of the day. Or they’ll tell you you’re completely exaggerating.

But then, something like three weeks ago, there were massive independence protests in Corsica. People from Corsica attacked the police, and put quite a few of them in hospital. And the French media and public opinion were like, “Aw, so cute! Little independentists! Aren’t they cute and lovely? Look at their beautiful little island! We love them so!”

The difference in reaction—the double standard, precisely—is just ludicrous. So that is very similar to the double standard that you were talking about between the Truckers who are considered almost cute—

TR: There were videos of police officers expressing their support—

CH: Right, exactly.

TR: They blocked the Canada-US border at three spots.

CH: And they probably did a lot more damage than a lot of the Indigenous protesters, protesting pipelines or water dams or any kind of project.

The double standard exists. It’s undeniable. It is there. It is horrifying to see. It’s simply impossible to deny that it exists and that people aren’t treated in similar ways. This is the proof.

What’s fascinating is that this is so strongly connected to public perception as well. This kind of public discourse doesn’t just come from politicians. It is also media representation.

These are representations that are circulating differently through media who are supposed to be independent from politics, which leads me to say, it’s not just about politics, is it? It’s not just about law. It’s really very much about discourse, representation, about perception, about ideology, about the symbolic part as well as the nitty-gritty legal, technical part.

TR: I went to an all-girls Catholic high school which turned me off the religion for one lifetime. In June, I found out that the nuns that founded my school actually founded the Kamloops school—

CH: —the residential school?

TR: Yeah.

CH: Oh, shit.

TR: Yeah. They founded or staffed at least 5 other schools in BC, and one in Alaska. They found 215 graves at the Kamloops school, 160 at the Kuper Island school, and most recently, 93 at the Cariboo school in Williams Lake.

Every year, my high school took the Grade 11 class on a trip to Vancouver Island to see stuff related to the order’s history like the convent and the ‘pioneer schoolhouse’—which is a small, 1840 log cabin located on the grounds of the Royal British Columbia Museum.

So, we went to see what is basically a glorified shed built by these so-called bringers of hospitals and schools who voyaged out West from Quebec to provide services to people during the Gold Rush, or whatever.

We visited Providence Farm, which is now a community farm for people with disabilities. Back in the day, it was a residential school, and later also an orphanage for Indigenous children. We were never told any of that. Or about their involvement in the residential school system. The story we got was ‘Pioneer Nuns’….

CH: (laughs) … Pioneer Nuns…

TR: Literally.

CH: It’s funny how they try to make it a feminist thing—

TR: —and they did! There was this weird feminist/anti-feminist thing going on. They were really good at instilling anxiety in girls. It’s the creation of the character that gets me: the Pioneer Nun. I mean, what were these nuns actually doing?

CH: If you start reading Black feminist theories or Indigenous feminist theories, the degree of complicity of a lot of whitestream feminist theories with imperial or settler-colonial projects is absolutely horrifying.

One example is the slave mistress who fights for her rights while subduing Black people as a free labour force. There are also many accounts of the on-off relationship between the whitestream feminist movement for voting rights in the US and the abolitionist movements.

If you read Angela Davis’s Women, Race and Class, she has a very detailed account about that relationship—how whitestream feminists at first were keen on working with abolitionists to end slavery and to gain the right to vote for Black people as well as women. As soon as Black men started receiving the vote, they became major racists because they were like, “They’re becoming our enemy now, because they are taking the voting right away from us.” That’s obviously a simplistic, reductionist version of their logic, but it’s not as shocking and as despairing as it might seem. You’re like, “How is it that when you fight one oppression, you end up creating another one?” That’s horrible; that’s not the point. But it’s by far not unheard of. This is common.

The Pioneer Nun—it’s one of these feminist histories that one has to be very, very leery of. I think that this is also a kind of divide-and-conquer strategy of the settler-colonial ideology in general. If you have minorities fighting against each other, they won’t bother you too much by trying to actually change things. That sounds very conspirationist, but I think that’s what it is.

The Pioneer Nun image. Well, it’s a ridiculous image. I don’t want to offend anyone, but I just don’t see how you can be Catholic and feminist at the same time. These are profoundly opposing value systems to me. If anyone can explain it to me, that would be lovely. But I haven’t been able to create that connection just yet. While it is ludicrous to me on that level, in addition to that, I think it’s very perverted on the settler-colonial edge that it takes.

TR: After the discovery, there was a letter written by an alumna who’s an investigative journalist now. She’s done work on fake Indigenous art.

The letter was signed by over 1000 students and alumnae and called for the school to make specific changes, like ceasing all visits to the Farm, implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action by developing ongoing curriculum on residential schools and the Sisters’ involvement, as well as editing school material and signage that “glorify colonization.”

It goes to show how deep that ideology goes. I grew up right next to a First Nation and knew nothing about it.

CH: You’re not the first person I’ve heard that from. When I was in Buffalo, I heard very much the same.

While I was in Vancouver, I met a good friend of mine who also came from Lausanne. We both studied at UNIL at the same time, in different years. But it’s only in Vancouver that we met. We had very different experiences of Vancouver.

I took these classes on Indigenous literatures. I became more and more involved in Indigenous issues. I went to protests. And, of course, I did the internship at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre where there were a lot of Indigenous women.

My friend didn’t have that experience at all. She said, “Oh, I didn’t realize the Downtown Eastside is full of poor Indigenous people. This is something that passed me by. I was just told, ‘Don’t go into the east side of downtown.’ Nobody told you why, and I felt I was happy with that information. I felt like I didn’t need to know anymore.” She had a very, very different experience from me. I think to this day she perceives the city in a very different way than I do.

And I think it’s part of the identity that settlers have created for themselves. For them to legitimately inhabit that place, they need to ignore Indigenous people. Otherwise, it doesn’t work.

TR: There was an episode on a Canadaland podcast series called “The Police.” It dealt with the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

CH: Oomph—

TR: —it’s grim.

CH: Yes, the RCMP. I hated them before I fully understood who exactly they were. (laughs)

Do you know the book by Maria Campbell? She’s a Métis author and she wrote what is essentially an autobiography called Half-Breed. … It was quite a big success from the start. She published the book for the first time when there was a growing interest for Indigenous authors and Indigenous life narratives.

In 2019, two researchers at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver—Deanna Reder, who is a professor, colleague, and friend—and Alix Shield, one of her PhD students—discovered, in an archive in Dublin—at Trinity College, I think it was—the biggest excerpt from Half-Breed that had been edited out from its first publication in 1973.

Maria Campbell is still alive. They interviewed her after they found the passage and were like, “Did you want to take this passage out?” And she was like, “No! I wanted to keep it in!” It was silently edited out. The publishers cut it out without her consent.

It’s a passage that talks about her rape by two RCMP officers in her own home. I don’t know what the publishers decided. I guess they thought it put the RCMP in too much of a bad light.

It’s funny, because everyone who has read the first version is like, “Something is missing. Something is not making sense…. Now that we know about this passage, everything falls into place.” Maria Campbell says, “Yeah; that’s why I didn’t want it cut out, because it didn’t make sense without it!”

The RCMP is a very dangerous, executive part of the settler-colonial government. It’s dangerous because they’re not tied to a specific territory. They can go wherever. Within their larger organization, they have smaller jurisdictions, but as an organisation, they’re entitled to go pretty much anywhere. There’s very little oversight. It’s a tightly-woven network of buddies—most of them men, most of them white. For a long time and still now, they enjoy a massive amount of prestige because it’s called ‘Royal.’ To me, it’s one of the more dangerous institutions that Canada has. Maybe even more so than the actual police.

Content Warning: The following two questions and the links within them deal with subject matter that may be triggering for some readers. These portions touch on police brutality against Indigenous peoples and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

TR: APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network) News did an investigation recently where an Indigenous woman spoke out about how she did sex work and had dealings with active police officers.

It touched on this idea of certain cases not being investigated properly, because how many of the perpetrators are actually the cops themselves?

CH: Oh, absolutely.

The amount of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women in Canada, but also in the United States—if we limit ourselves to North America—Mexico being quite a different context, so I’m not going to speak too much about that—the number of women and girls who have disappeared is massive, massive, massive.

Such governmental bodies as the police and the RCMP are not innocent in that.

There have been some inquiries, occasionally.

For example, there was a fairly famous case in Northern Manitoba—Helen Betty Osborne, in the 1970s.

She left her community to go to school in town to become a teacher. One night she was walking home from a friend’s and she was assaulted and brutally raped and killed. When she was found, it was obvious there was foul play. But the police didn’t really do anything. Her relatives had to push them. And then the police were like, “Yeah, okay she was attacked and killed.”

It took years and years for them to bring the perpetrators—and they very well knew who they were—to justice, but they got off pretty much scot-free.

There was a huge outcry again from the Indigenous population and the story managed to somehow reach the national news. This led to an inquiry against the RCMP who handled the investigation and butchered it. I mean, they did a shit job. Like they couldn’t care less. And they’ve done that over and over and over again.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Highway of Tears, in British Columbia?

TR: Of course, yeah. There was a report recently on APTN about Indigenous men and boys who’ve gone missing along the Highway of Tears, in addition to all the women. Which is why your work is so important. It’s not only women, it’s everyone.

CH: It is absolutely everyone.

I think that the case of gendered violence highlights the colonial character of it even more. Which is why I decided to focus on that. It connects pillars—foundational values of settler-colonial society—to the form of violence that Indigenous women experience today. I can talk a little bit more about that later on.

The Highway of Tears is an example of the location of mass disappearance. Winnipeg’s Red River is another one. Hudson’s Bay is yet another. There are all these places—which end up just being Canada, in general—where Indigenous people disappear en masse. And hardly anything is done against it.

(This documentary film provides further information about The Highway of Tears, the Downtown Eastside, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada.)

There’s this really fascinating book I’ve come across—thanks to one of my experts on my dissertation. Her name is Mishuana Goeman, she’s Seneca Tonawanda. She said I should look into Dying from Improvement by Sherene Razack.

It’s about Indigenous peoples’ death in custody. The last chapter is on freezing deaths. Obviously, it’s not a fun read… but it sheds some light on the particularly colonial character of the police and the RCMP. But also, how they work not just individually, but as a network, as an institution.

(In addition to the National Film Board documentary linked above, this podcast episode provides more information about freezing deaths or ‘starlight tours‘.)

It’s very sweet of you to say that my work is important. I think the topic is. I don’t think that my work about it is.

TR: Well, Eden Robinson—the author of Monkey Beach, a novel you discuss in your dissertation—might not agree.

CH: (laughs) Well, I don’t know.

Maybe this is the PhD syndrome that I’m experiencing but I just don’t really see the impact that I’m going to have. You’re pretty much the only person I know who cares about my work right now. (laughs)

Obviously, I’m interested in the topic. Obviously, I think it’s crucial. Obviously, I’m happy to spend years of my life working on it, researching it, trying to understand it, to fight it. I just don’t think that my contribution to it is that important. Also, it would be arrogant if I did. (laughs)

TR: Probably. (laughs)

CH: (laughs)

TR: So, there’s a photo of a horse on your personal website.

CH: (laughs some more)

TR: Who is that horse? Because he looks very friendly with you.

CH: Oh, that horse. (laughs) It was love at first sight.

His name is Brew. And he was a massive, massive Shire horse. I didn’t know him that well but I immediately fell in love with him. It was when I was in Scotland, in 2009. At the end of my exchange year—after I finished courses and my job at a hotel—I took several weeks and I travelled around Scotland. I went to the Outer Hebrides. The picture was taken on the west coast of Lewis. I was staying at a youth hostel with a friend. We were the only two guests there—it wasn’t quite summer vacation yet. There was Apple—the donkey—and Brew, the Shire horse.

They were the friendliest inhabitants of the island. (laughs)

The Outer Hebrides is quite the place. It’s very austere. When you arrive with the ferry on Lewis, people will not speak in English around you; they will immediately switch to Gaelic. It’s a very closed community. I wouldn’t say unfriendly, but not the most welcoming.

But I had a blast with Brew. I always brought him an apple.

I love horses. I’ve been riding horses for many years now.

TR: What do you do? How do you ride?

CH: Jumping, dressage, hiking, trekking.

TR: Oh, wow. You do it all!

CH: Yeah, I love it. Very much. Some of the most important relationships that I’ve grown up with have been with horses.

TR: I hear you.

CH: They taught me so much.

TR: Like what?

CH: They taught me not to hold a grudge. They never do. I feel like they live so much better for it. They taught me patience. They taught me kindness. They taught me self-control. When a horse gets scared, it flees. When you want to keep your horse under control when it’s scared, you cannot let it feel that you’re scared. You have to tell them that everything is all right. You have to override your own emotions to make sure that you can control the horse’s.

One of the most important lessons is that they taught me a whole different language. One that doesn’t work through words. But that isn’t any less meaningful because of that.

Animals are really wise. It’s a shame that we haven’t learnt to listen more to them. Horses are great teachers and companions. And they’re just lovely.

TR: Do you have a horse now?

CH: No, I could never afford it.

I still haven’t quite come to grips with that sport that I love so much which is riding horses. I’m like, “If you really love horses, wouldn’t you prefer for them to be free and happy, without having to carry humans around on their back—humans that very often mistreat them?”

I also don’t want to enter that entire horse economy which treats these beautiful beings as commodities. I’m profoundly against that. At the same time, I love them. I want to be with them, and spend my free time with them. It’s hard to do that without entering that economy. I haven’t found a good way of doing that yet.

I don’t think I could have my own horse unless I have my own stables. But that requires way too much money that I’m never going to have.

Anyway, ‘no’ is the short answer. (laughs)

TR: I had rats. And I had them free-range, no cage. When I moved to Switzerland, I shipped my rats here, because, you know, I couldn’t leave my rats. They’re people. They don’t live long. Definitely not as long as horses. But they’re empathetic, intelligent little beings. If you take the time to interact with them on their level, within their boundaries, they’re incredible. They’re little spheres of personality, full individuals. I understand those relationships that you can have with them.

CH: I think all animals. Cats are the same. Dogs are the same. Birds are the same. All animals are like that.

The only kind of animals I haven’t really had a connection to yet are fish—I find them fascinating, but it’s hard to communicate with them in the same way. (laughs)

Snakes scare me a little bit.

I try to love all insects, but I really hit my limits with mosquitoes. (laughs)

TR: (laughs) Especially the one at night in your ear.

CH: Fruit flies… (laughs) I try to love them all. It’s difficult sometimes.

We didn’t have animals at home and nobody else in my family rides. I don’t know where that comes from. My family, they weren’t very wealthy—and I always loved horses….

I didn’t cry a lot as a child. I was a weird, spaced-off, sing-song-y kind of child, but I didn’t cry a lot. The times that I cried were, obviously, when I was hurt very badly, and when a horse came by my window, and I couldn’t touch it and be with it and ride it. That would break my heart, every time.

When I was seven, my mom was like, “I’ve had enough! I don’t know what to do with you anymore!” (laughs)

TR: Riding lessons!

CH: (laughs) She brought me to the nearest barn and there they were, like, “Oh, she’s too young to ride still, but she can do de la voltige”—which is like gymnastics, but on a horseback. I did that until I was nine and was finally allowed to start riding lessons. …

First it was one lesson per week. Obviously, that wasn’t enough very quickly. So, I struck a bargain with the barn owners and said, “What if I come and clean the stables so I can ride for free?” They said, “Let’s do that.”

That was the beginning of a very intense riding career. I was really glad that my mum finally gave in! (laughs)

TR: That’s really sweet.

CH: Whenever I hear people say stuff like “Animals are really like humans,” I’m like, “Really? You haven’t realized that before?” What the fuck took you so long to realize that animals have feelings? That they’re intelligent? That they can interact? Why does it take us so long? Why are we always so surprised when we realize how clever beavers are? Of course, they are! How arrogant of us to not think any different!

TR: The thing that gets me is when I think about how much space rats actually need and how they’re kept in labs. Shoeboxes.

CH: Do you still have them?

TR: No, they passed away. I needed to just stop myself because I go overboard. They take over the house, and I’m home-making them organic food. I loved them so much. I don’t think I loved anything as much as my rats. Don’t tell my partner.

CH: (laughs) Your secret is safe here.

TR: (laughs)

CH: A few months ago, we voted on whether we wanted to get rid of all animal experiments in Switzerland. Did you follow that?

TR: No, I didn’t; but I remember hearing about it.

CH: Exactly. I talked to friends about it who are biologists or who work as scientists. And I was like, “What do you think of it?” They’re like, “If that vote comes through, I’m going to be jobless very quickly.” They’re like, “It would put Switzerland back into the Middle Ages when it comes to medication, beauty products, etcetera. It would really not be good. And it wouldn’t just be that in Switzerland we couldn’t have animal trials, it would mean that we would not be allowed to import products from abroad that have been created based on animal trials, so that would cut us off completely, etcetera.” I’m like, “I don’t care! I vote yes! Let’s do this! We’ve got to find another way!” (laughs)

TR: Did it pass?

CH: No, of course not. (laughs)

TR: (laughs) … The industry is huge….

CH: The pharma industry in Switzerland is way too massive for that kind of thing to pass. Way too massive. I mean, we have, what? Three or four of the world’s biggest pharma industries, here, in our tiny, tiny country. It’s ridiculous.

TR: Not to mention the reputation of beauty products overseas. I know of one company that ships massive amounts of product to China. That’s basically their entire business. Everyone wants Swiss beauty products, apparently.

CH: And here people can’t even afford them. (laughs)

TR: No, of course, not (laughs). Okay, I think I’m going to stop the recorder.

CH: You have enough material?

TR: Oh, yes, I think so. We’re good.

Thank you, Cécile, for taking the time to speak with me. I definitely enjoyed it, and I think our readers will as well.

Image: © Bob Martin

Authors: Mégane Spicher, Katharina Schwarck

 

One fine day in April, the university’s shepherd, Bob Martin, generously agreed to meet us in front of his sheepfold to answer our questions and explain all about his sheep. [version française en-dessous]

 

Image: Deux Nez-Noirs au Géopolis © Katharina Schwarck

 

Could you say a few words about yourself, who you are, and why you are here?

My name is Bob Martin, I’m the university shepherd, and I’ve been looking after the sheep at the university since about 2013-2014. I’m in my forties, and then before this fabulous job I was a car mechanic. Yes, a radical change of profession, because I was a bit fed up with it, I felt that I had done all I could with that job, and then I wanted to work with animals, especially dogs. That’s where I found this job that does a bit of both.

How long have you been looking after sheep?

I’ve been looking after sheep since I started here. It was all new to me. So since 2011 I’ve been in the sheep business a bit, and then in 2014 I took over the university flock.

Is there a certain breed of sheep, a certain kind of sheep that you have?

Yes, I currently have two breeds of sheep: the Nez-Noirs du Valais and the Roux du Valais. The Roux du Valais were originally endangered and the Nez-Noirs I chose for aesthetics, because I love them and they’re a bit like plushies. I thought it would be nice to have a couple of plushies around the university. 

What do they look like? How do we recognize them?

Well, the Nez-Noirs are quite easy, hence their name: they are all white with black noses and then they have black spots on all their joints. And then the Roux du Valais are red. And the little bonus of these two breeds is that the females and the males have horns.

Oh yes! Because here I see some of them and they all have horns!

Yes, they (“elles”, French feminine form) all have horns.

Ah, they are all females! And I see that you also use dogs. How do you work with them?

I have three dogs at the moment. I have a little bitch who is 5 months old that I have to train to take over for my very old dog [a dog suddenly becomes concerned and barks] who is now 11 years old. And then there’s Will who’s in the middle, who is 7 years old, he turned 7 this weekend by the way. I always work with two dogs and then I always have a ‘spare’ one in case one gets hurt [it’s still barking] or for other situations.

Do the sheep have names? Or numbers? How are they recognised? What do you call them?

Officially they have a number, a BDTA number. They are registered in a Swiss database. And then all the sheep that have papers have a name and all my favourites have a name too. Let’s say that out of the 260 that I have, there are about a hundred that have names, but I don’t know them all by heart.

So are there some sheep that have a personality, that you can recognise, [the little dog barks] with whom you have a more special relationship?

Absolutely, yes! So I do have what we call my favourite. Punky, she’s called. And she’s also the one I take to classes, to schools, for example, because she’s quite calm [the little dog really wants attention and barks again], and that’s what’s so nice. 

Is she the little one? 

Yes, I haven’t taught her to stop barking yet. We’ll make do. He laughs.

Are there any misconceptions about sheep, or anything we don’t know at all? Something we think about sheep that is not true?

I would say the first misconception is that we always say that we are as stupid as a sheep or that we follow like a sheep. And it’s true that we follow like a sheep, because they are animals who live in a herd. But they are far from stupid, I noticed. When you live with them every day, you can see that they all have their own character, and sometimes their own strong ideas. So that’s what I also find nice about sheep.

Very interesting answer! And why are the sheep at UNIL specifically?

Well, there are sheep everywhere, but it’s also a bit of an emblematic model of the university. Back in the day, UNIL’s land was agricultural land and when they designed the first buildings, they decided to keep this system of sheep on the site. I think the sheep have been on the site since before we were born. I’m the third or fourth shepherd at the university. The sheepfold where the sheep are in winter – I bring them in between Christmas, New Year, until the first of April – this sheepfold that’s just behind us has always been there, so it’s really an iconic building of the university. It was built at the same time as the university buildings.

How do you decide where to put your sheep? Is there a schedule? Do you rotate them around the different parts of the campus?

Yes, we have a plot plan of about 45 plots for grazing on the university. Depending on the season, the growth of the grass, the work on the site, the events, and everything else around the university, we try to organise ourselves as best we can to graze these plots. We go on the plots between two and three times a year.

Are the sheep divided into small groups, or do they usually stay in groups of 260?

Now we have two flocks. There’s a small flock for the small plots of eight to ten sheep, and there’s a large flock that’s between thirty and forty sheep for the large plots.

How did your partnership with UNIL start?

I trained as a shepherd at Châteauneuf, and in this training there was the lady who looked after the sheep at the university. That’s how I got into the system and I had the opportunity to take over the flock.

Wonderful, so you are the successor! Do you use sheep as “natural mowers” elsewhere or only at UNIL?

Well, of my 260 sheep, between 30 and 50 graze at UNIL during the season. With the rest of the sheep, I use exactly the same system in Geneva’s communes, or for the army, for the road service, for civil protection, for many other institutions.

Thank you very much!

Image: © Bob Martin

 

ORIGINAL FRANÇAIS:

Un beau jour d’avril, le berger de l’université, Bob Martin, a généreusement accepté de nous rencontrer devant sa bergerie pour répondre à nos questions et tout expliquer sur ses moutons.

Image: Un Roux du Valais à l’ombre © Katharina Schwarck

 

Est-ce que vous pourriez dire quelques mots sur vous, sur qui vous êtes, sur pourquoi vous êtes là ?

Je m’appelle Bob Martin, je suis le berger de l’université, et puis ça fait environ depuis 2013-2014 que je m’occupe des moutons à l’université. J’ai une quarantaine d’années, et puis avant ce fabuleux métier j’étais mécanicien automobile. Oui, changement radical de métier, parce que j’en avais un peu marre, je sentais que j’avais fait le tour de ce métier-là, et puis je voulais travailler à la base avec les animaux, et surtout les chiens. C’est là où j’ai trouvé ce métier qui fait un peu les deux.

Depuis quand vous occupez-vous de moutons ?

Alors j’ai commencé à m’occuper de moutons en même temps que j’ai commencé ici. C’était tout nouveau pour moi. Donc depuis 2011 je suis un peu dans le monde des moutons, et puis depuis 2014 j’ai repris le troupeau de l’université.

Est-ce qu’il y a une certaine race de moutons, une certaine espèce de moutons que vous avez ?

Alors oui, moi j’ai actuellement deux races de moutons: il y a les Nez-Noirs du Valais et les Roux du Valais. Les Roux du Valais étaient à la base en voie de disparition et puis les Nez Noirs, je les ai surtout pris pour l’esthétique, parce que je les adore et c’est un peu des peluches. Je me suis dit que ça ferait bien autour de l’université d’avoir deux trois peluches. 

A quoi est-ce qu’ils ressemblent ? Comment est-ce qu’on les reconnaît ?

Alors les Nez Noirs c’est assez facile, d’où leur nom: ils sont tout blancs avec le nez noir et puis ils ont les taches de toutes les articulations qui sont noires. Et puis les Roux du Valais sont roux. Et le petit plus de ces deux races là, c’est que les femelles et les mâles ont des cornes.

Ah oui ! Parce que là j’en vois quelques-uns qui ont tous des cornes !

Oui, elles ont toutes des cornes.

Ah ce sont toutes des femelles ! Et je vois que vous utilisez aussi des chiens. Comment travaillez-vous ?

Alors là j’ai actuellement trois chiens. J’ai une petite chienne qui a 5 mois que je dois éduquer pour la relève pour ma toute vieille chienne [un chien se sent tout d’un coup concerné et aboie] de maintenant 11 ans. Et puis il y a le juste milieu Will, qui a 7 ans, qui a eu 7 ans ce weekend d’ailleurs. Et puis je travaille toujours avec deux chiens et puis j’en ai toujours un « de réserve » au cas où il y en a un qui est blessé [et il aboie encore] ou pour d’autres situations.

Est-ce que les moutons ont des noms ? Ou des numéros ? Comment est-ce qu’on les reconnaît ? Comment on les appelle ?

Officiellement, ils ont un numéro, un numéro BDTA. Ils sont enregistrés dans une base de données suisse. Et puis après tous les moutons qui ont des papiers ont un nom et puis toutes mes préférées ont un nom aussi. On va dire que sur les 260 que j’ai, il y en a une centaine qui ont des noms, mais je ne le sais pas tous par cœur.

Donc il y a quand même certains moutons qui ont une personnalité, qu’on peut reconnaître, [la petite chienne aboie] avec qui vous avez une relation plus particulière ?

Tout à fait oui ! Alors j’ai toujours ce qu’on appelle ma préférée. Punky, elle s’appelle. Et puis c’est elle aussi que je prends par exemple dans les classes, dans les écoles parce qu’elle est assez calme [la petite chienne a vraiment envie d’attention et aboie encore], et puis c’est ça qui est chouette. 

C’est elle la toute petite ? 

Oui, je ne lui ai pas encore appris à arrêter d’aboyer. On fera avec. Il rit.

Est-ce qu’il y a des idées reçues sur les moutons, ou quelque chose qu’on ne sait pas du tout ? Quelque chose qu’on pense des moutons alors que c’est pas du tout vrai ?

Je dirais la première idée reçue, on dit toujours qu’on est bête comme un mouton ou qu’on suit comme un mouton. Alors qu’on suit comme un mouton, c’est vrai parce que c’est quand même des animaux qui vivent en troupeau. Mais ils sont quand même loin d’être bêtes, j’ai remarqué. Quand on vit tous les jours avec eux, on voit qu’ils ont tous leur caractère, et puis aussi des fois leurs idées bien tranchées. Donc c’est ça que je trouve aussi sympa dans les moutons.

Très intéressant comme réponse! Et pourquoi les moutons sont à l’UNIL spécifiquement?

Alors, il y a des moutons partout mais c’est aussi un peu le modèle emblématique de l’université. A l’époque, le terrain de l’UNIL était des terres agricoles et quand ils ont dessiné les premiers bâtiments, ils ont décidé de garder ce système de moutons sur le site. Je pense que les moutons sont sur le site depuis avant qu’on soit nés. Je suis le troisième ou le quatrième berger de l’université. La bergerie où les moutons sont en hiver – je les rentre entre Noël, nouvel an, jusqu’au premier avril – cette bergerie qui se trouve juste derrière nous a toujours été là, donc c’est vraiment un bâtiment emblématique de l’université. Elle a été construite en même temps que les bâtiments universitaires.

Comment décidez-vous d’où placer vos moutons? Est-ce qu’il y a un planning? On les fait tourner sur les différentes parties du campus?

Oui, on a un plan parcellaire d’environ 45 parcelles pour brouter sur l’université. En fonction de la saison, de la pousse de l’herbe, des travaux sur le site, des manifestations, de tout ce qu’il y a autour de l’université, on essaye de s’organiser au mieux pour pâturer ces parcelles. On passe entre deux à trois fois par année sur les parcelles.

Est-ce que les moutons sont divisés en petits groupes, ou ils restent généralement en groupe de 260?

Maintenant on fait deux troupeaux. Il y a un petit troupeau pour les petites parcelles entre huit et dix têtes, et il y a un grand troupeau qui est entre trente et quarante têtes pour les grandes parcelles.

Comment a commencé votre partenariat avec l’UNIL?

Alors, pour la petite histoire, j’ai fait la formation de berger à Châteauneuf, et dans cette formation il y avait la dame qui s’occupait des moutons à l’université. Par ce biais-là je suis rentré dans ce système et j’ai eu l’opportunité de reprendre le troupeau.

Magnifique, donc vous êtes le successeur! Est-ce que vous utilisez des moutons comme “tondeuses naturelles” autre part aussi ou qu’à l’UNIL?

Alors, de mes 260 moutons, il y en a entre 30 et 50 qui pâturent à l’UNIL à la saison. Avec le reste des moutons, je fais exactement le même système dans des communes genevoises, ou pour l’armée, pour le service des routes, pour la protection civile, pour plein d’autres institutions.

Merci beaucoup!

Image: Un agneau au Géopolis © Katharina Schwarck

Image: © Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet

 

Authors: Timon Musy, Katharina Schwarck

 

Earlier this semester, Agnieszka kindly accepted to sit down with us over Zoom: the perfect occasion to get to know the person she is beyond the screen!

 

Hello, Agnieszka. Welcome. Thank you for sitting down with us!

You have been at UNIL for fifteen years, is that right?

 

I guess so! I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. This year it will be fifteen years.

 

So, who are you? Where are you from? Where have you worked? What are you currently working on?

 

I come from several different places, which currently makes me a person with three nationalities: I am Polish, American, and Swiss. I was born in Poland, I grew up in California and had most of my education there. Then I spent twelve years in Geneva before coming to Lausanne. I’ve been here for fifteen years now, that’s true! I sort of lost my sense of time, partly because I’ve just enjoyed being here, in Lausanne, so much. I think it’s a really great department and it’s allowed me to have a lot of freedom in terms of what I teach and what I research, and really to blossom in a lot of ways, intellectually. So, I have very much enjoyed being at Lausanne and I look forward to being here until I retire in about another thirteen years. 

 

Well, the other thing I am – I should mention this : I’m a really different person than when I first arrived. I had a huge thing happen to me three years ago: my son died. He was about to start the university. He was going to be at the faculty, like you guys, maybe even in the same year. So, that has completely changed me and remapped my world. It maybe doesn’t look like it so much from the outside because I’m still working and doing the same things, but I think that on the inside I’m very different and I’m doing those things differently and they mean different things to me. It’s certainly made me put a lot more of myself into my teaching. The fact that my son would have been at the faculty… It’s a huge sadness of mine, that he never actually made it to the university. But it makes me see the students that I’m teaching as reflections of what he could have been here, and what I would want to give them maybe flows a little bit from what I would have wanted him to find here.

 

In terms of my parcours and major research projects: I’ve always been interested in the relationship between society and literature and how social issues can be engaged with in literature, how they filter into literature and what literature can do to think about important political and social issues. My first book was about the nineteenth century gothic and how major writers like Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, and Henry James used the gothic in various rich and subtle ways to engage with the huge issues of their time like slavery, class, gender, and capitalism. The gothic is a strain of my research that is still there. I’m working on several essays even right now.

 

My second book was even closer to home, as an Americanist: it was about war and how we tell stories about war through popular culture. The United States is a very militaristic country, but it has not won a war since 1945, and even then, arguably, it won the war only because of the Soviet Army on the Eastern front. It may not have been able to win all by itself, and the fact that it dropped these two terrible bombs on civilians in Japan shows that it has not won a war because of great or effective fighting, – whatever that would even be – which I don’t believe in, in the last seventy years. It’s been engaged in one destructive war after another, killing people abroad, killing Americans, destroying economies. And yet, America continues to think of war as a worthwhile endeavour, as a glorious, important test of a people, and of individuals, and of a country. I think that a lot of that work of persuasion to see things in that way is being done through Hollywood, and through popular culture. That’s what my last book was about, about looking at how the formulas that are used for that come from literature more generally and have a long history, like melodrama, or adventure, that are used to make war seem exciting and meaningful. That book just came out a couple of months ago, I’m still in the process of promoting it and getting reviews and so on. It took me a long time to write it because I was interrupted by being Head of Department, and then I stopped working really effectively for a couple of years after my son passed away. So, it took me about six years to write that book. 

 

My next project is going to be about ecology, the environment and the planet, in some way or another. I’m not quite sure what the corpus is going to be, or what the research question is going to be, but that’s where I’m headed for the next book.

 

Congratulations on your book! And we are very excited about your new project.

We are currently going through hard times and we wanted to know how teaching online has been for you.

 

That’s a great question. I have to say, personally, I had to adapt and learn how to do it very quickly but I have not found it to be as disruptive as I think it probably is for students. I really feel for how lonely it is for students to be alone at home all the time. That’s really not what university is about. University is not just learning, it’s also the whole social environment, it’s making friends, it’s changing and becoming a different person in those three or five years. You can’t do that alone in your room. You really have to do that as a part of a class that you’re going through, with your volée, as part of an environment and all the different things that are impacting you. That’s been a tragedy for students. 

Now, as a teacher, I have found it to be not so bad! I actually enjoy being able to see people’s names and faces up close and I find that the break-out rooms work really well, I find that using the chat as a support while I’m talking to the class has been very helpful. I’ve found that I’ve had to prepare more and be more engaged in my classes, while the students seem to be as well, so it’s more intense and tiring, but sometimes I feel like it’s better teaching in terms of some of the discussions and interactions, especially since my classes in the last few years have gotten really big. There are sometimes forty or more students, and it’s very easy for forty people to just become really passive, whereas when you’re on a screen, you’re very visible with your face. I try to discourage having your video off, because then I don’t even know if somebody’s there or not! It’s sometimes easier to get shyer people to talk. The dynamic has been different. I find that it hasn’t been necessarily detrimental to teaching. I certainly enjoy being safe: I’ve appreciated the fact that I don’t have to worry about catching COVID in the classroom or wearing a mask while I speak and I can just focus on teaching. I also appreciate the extra time it’s given me, you know, the time I would spend showering, getting dressed, commuting. I have more time to read, to take walks, to be with my daughter or my partner. That’s been the good side of teaching online, but I do recognise that for students it’s been very difficult overall.

 

What is the favourite class you have ever given?

 

There’s different kinds of favourite classes. *She laughs* I love teaching the master’s class in “New American Studies” because I put a lot of my intellectual history and engagement into that class. I can see how, when students learn some of the things, and they get these tools, I see them going off and writing master’s papers or mémoires and it’s very exciting to see them taking things that I’ve brought to them but then running with it and doing things I hadn’t even thought of. So, I’d say that the recurrent annual master’s class I teach in “American Studies” is probably the most fun and exciting regular class that I teach. 

 

Then there are more occasional classes that I thought to have been very interesting. I taught a class on feminism once with Isis Giraldo, when she was still here. That was a class that felt really… dangerous to teach. I remember getting nervous, my heart beating, before going in. We were giving students texts to read from the 1960s and the 1970s that were extremely critical of male writers and patriarchal structures. I just never knew how students would react and I’d get scared, almost, before class, going “oh my god, what am I doing?”. And then a student told me once, when I said this, “you know, I do too! I get scared the night before class, I’m really nervous”. But it feels like there’s something really important going on, but something dangerous, that really affects people personally a lot and makes them question their entire way of being in the world. So, I don’t know if that is my favourite class but it is definitely one I will never forget and that was very important to teach.

 

Since you’ve been around Lausanne for quite a while, how have you been liking it? Is there a place in the region that you really like, and that you’d want us to go to and see?

 

Well, I do love being here, especially for the department, I have to say. It is really the most collegial, friendly,  open department I’ve ever been in, and I have been in various universities and various departments. I love the students, they’re curious and eager to learn. I have never had a discipline problem in all these years of teaching, I mean… maybe people whispering a little bit too much in the Anglo-American literary survey sometimes, but that’s the worst of it, and I know people who teach in high school who tell me horrible stories. So I feel very lucky in terms of students and how much extra work they do, all the extra-curricular activities they do, like MUSE! It’s just amazing how people get so involved or are so excited about language, and literature and the community that we have. I love the department for all those reasons, and the region is beautiful. 

But, I grew up in California right along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and I have to say that I really miss the ocean, I miss the beach and I miss the horizon. I miss the fact that you could go to the beach when you’re sad or on a winter day and just look into infinity. When I first moved to Switzerland I felt very hemmed in  by the mountains. Now it has been twenty-five years since I live in Switzerland – I came in ninety-four – and I have learned to love the mountains and to love the lake. We’re really privileged in terms of the natural environment. I have a little forest right near my house, and I talked with a park ranger once who told me that eighty-five percent of the Swiss population has a forest within ten minutes walking distance from their home. That’s really nice.

 

One of my favorite places is a walk in Crissier called the “Sentier de la Cascade”. I go there several times a year and it’s always different because of all the different colours; in winter there is more light, in summer it is more green and cool, and it’s just a beautiful walk along a river that goes to a waterfall. That’s my favorite place within a ten-miles radius.

[Note from the interviewee: Since we had the interview I have discovered the Venoge and the walk alongside it between St. Sulpice and Bussigny and this has definitely become my other favorite place along with the Cascade walk!]

 

What is your favorite book of all time ?

 

That’s a tough question. That’s a cruel question. *She laughs and pauses* Well, a book that I come back to as a teacher, my favorite book that I teach over and over again is Beloved by Toni Morrison. But my favorite book of all time… I can’t give you a single book but there is an author that I love reading and re-reading, and that’s Louise Erdrich. She is a Native American writer and I never get tired of her books, and whether I read it for the first time or for the fifth time I always find so many new answers and richness. I also find her vision of the world so balanced between the gritty and difficult, the luminous and quirky, the sexual and witty, and it is just such an interesting mix of everything that I find inspiring. So I would say that any book by Louise Erdrich would be one of my favorite books.

[Note from the interviewee: In rereading this interview I thought of several more that have profoundly marked me and I’d like to mention them: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Nancy Huston’s Dolce Agonia, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Tim Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume.] 

 

Is there a piece of advice you were given that you think is very important and that you would like to share ?

 

I don’t remember getting a lot of advice when I was younger. Maybe I should have gotten more! The one thing that really stands out of my mind is something my mom told me. She was a dentist – my family comes from Poland – and under the communist regime women were encouraged to get higher education and a lot of women were able to get into good skilled professions. So my mom said to me – she said this when I was quite young – that the most important thing in life for a woman is to be financially independent, to never depend on a man for your livelihood, as it always makes the relationship totally skewed. So you have to be free and independent, to be able to enter any relationship with your full free-will and to stay independent within it so that you can leave if you have to. That was a piece of advice that I took to heart and I continue to find very relevant when I look around the world and I see the situation of women in general. Around the planet most women are in various degrees of servitude and a lot of it has to do with not being able to be financially independent and make their own choices. 

 

What do you think would be the most surprising scientific discovery imaginable ?

 

Parallel universes. I’m very interested in physics and all the wonky, weird stuff that goes on, contemporary physics looking at dark matter that makes up ninety-five percent of the universe, and the weird ways subatomic particles behave, the way they get paired and then they start to behave in a way that is talked about in Only Lovers Left Alive as “spooky action“, which is the way time and space get folded into one another… Just all the magical stuff that seems completely surreal, that physics is about. So if there was some kind of definitive proof of parallel universes or other dimensions or that time is just an illusion, that would be pretty surprising!

 

If you could add anyone on Mount Rushmore, who would it be and why ?

 

First of all, I think it needs a woman up there and I’d say it’s about time that people of color in the United States start to get some celebration and recognition. So, I guess I would put up Harriet Tubman. She was the runaway, the escaped slave who helped other slaves to escape along the “Underground Railroad”. She’s being put on the twenty dollars bill hopefully soon, but I could definitely see her mixing things up on Mount Rushmore.

 

Have you ever tasted the Migros Ice Tea and what do you think of it ?

 

 *She laughs* I don’t really drink ice tea anymore because it’s too sweet, but I have tasted Migros Ice Tea and I agree that it’s probably the best in the world (although I wish they would make an unsweetened version of it).