Abstract
As a person who wrote an entire academic book about the need for frivolity and humor in environmentalist discourse – and, oh yeah, as a former teenaged zine author – I am predisposed to like the Academic Life in Lockdown Activity Book. This free, downloadable publication from the University of Exeter’s Cultural and Historical Geographies Research Group (CHGRG) offers 36 pages of games, recipes, yoga instructions, drawing activities, crafts, and ‘stuff’ (p.1). It admirably exemplifies the kind of playfulness that scholars rarely engage with, much less in.
I was amused by ‘Zoom Puppets: Interrupt Any Meeting’, replete with paper puppet template (pp. 10–11). And I was tickled by the recipe for ‘The Luckiest Baker Cinnamon Rolls’ – ‘Have you managed to get your hands on flour AND yeast?’ (p. 13) – at least in part because I read it as a trolling of celebrity chef Mario Batali, whose 2018 mea culpa letter for sexual misconduct included a recipe for cinnamon rolls. 1 Either way, those frosted delights sure have a way of popping up in the middle of the grimmest matters.
And there is where my uneasiness with the Activity Book lies: how it largely declines to address serious matters – namely, the privileges and disparities behind both COVID-19 and the very making of this book. 2 A fill-in ‘Diary of My Lockdown Walks’ includes elements like ‘Park’ and ‘River’, though many people do not get to encounter such pleasant elements around their homes. And the authors explain that the book emerged as a lockdown alternative to CHGRG’s twice-yearly ‘residential retreats on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall’ (p.3) – luxuries that most academics can only dream of, what with the extreme defunding and adjunctification of higher education. So exactly whose ‘Academic Life in Lockdown’ are we talking about?
To be fair, the Activity Book suggests that lockdown should entail a ‘reflection on time and politics – perhaps as a sort of purposeful heritage of the [pandemic]’ (p.32). I agree. But the book itself does not actually offer a reflection on politics; it merely invokes them. Perhaps part of the issue is the otherwise-admirable decision of collective authorship. That is, the specific subject positions of the contributors, and the ways in which lockdown might affect them differentially, are never disclosed. Have any of them been affected by the racial inequities that have led, for instance, to Black and Latinx people dying at exponentially higher rates from COVID-19 than others? Have any of the contributors experienced the anti-Asian racism that has accompanied COVID-19? Such problems go unmentioned.
It might sound as if I wish this publication were more serious in tone. But in fact, as I have argued alongside many other scholars, serious topics can and often should be tackled with playfulness and humor. I could imagine, for example, a connect-the-dots cartoon activity that satirizes the evisceration of the UK’s National Health Service. Or something like a game of white-privilege COVID bingo. And in fact, even leaving issues of inequality aside, some readers might find themselves wanting something a little more unique and creative than the recipes and yoga instructions found here. New masturbation techniques? DIY drag ideas using your own or your partner’s closet? Or, more practically and utopically: directions for meal swapping?
Perhaps the point is that I need to return to my roots and make my own activity book. Perhaps each of us does. So for all my criticisms, I must stress that the Academic Life in Lockdown Activity Book is a generative publication, a reminder that academic work can and should come in many different shapes, forms, and affective modes.
