Letters

Letter 1:

Lisbon, 13-07-2017

Dear object of my desire,

You lay there lecherously coilled (sic) on the sky in the abscissa of the “Field”. We are playing together this slippery slope. Yes, that’s the playground you chose to gamble with me and to put my love to the test. Sweet desire, this the appealing gown that mold (sic) your forms to invite me to a passionate dance of passion. Fieldwork! You are the game that makes our romance possible. It’s you that allows the fabulous encounter with the complex beauty of humanity, teasing everyday more my sensual curiosity and my intellectual appetite. Sometimes frustrating, but always fullfilling (sic). Beloved fieldwork, you are not the end in itself, but the fantastic facilitator, skillfully (sic) concerning ad hoc creative libidinal constraints, traps you fomented to hunt the intensity of my insatiable poetics of resistance, accepting my trivial humanity as a award of bravery, permanently gently redefining my person, in your arms, finally; between your hips, fatally.

That bratingly (sic – bracingly?) yours,

Bernard

Letter 2

Picture, with a hand inscription “Ohiboka jeddans”

Comment to the picture (as a response to my question if “Ohiboka jeddans” was a singer):

“Ohiboka jeddan is not a singer, it means “I love you” in moroccan arabic. I choose to write it in arabic, becuase in the Residential Centre my co-researchers, sometimes, use arabic to speak about the things they don´t want to share with the social workers or educators. I don’t know if you were in my presentation. I research with Unaccompanied Foreign Minors that come from Morocco.

The picture is the photo on my thesis cover. I took the picture and the boy that appears in the pic is one of my co-researcher. He dicided to look to that landscape, that it is a ficticious landscape. Is Bilbao, where he is set, and Tanger, where his family live. It does not represent a person. Nor me, nor my co-researcher. It represents the resarch as something we need to care for.

With this declaration of love to my co-researchers and declaring it in a language that social workers do not dominate I wanteda also to parody the idea of when you are seen you with your co-researchers years after the fieldwork ended, the social workers who worked with these children they imagine that we have a relationship of love/sex. This makes us feel very uncomfortable and attack. So, with this lover letter we want to represent that love overflows the imaginary of social workers.”

(Karmele Mendonza Pérez, e-mail 17-07-2017).

Later, the author also attached this text:

Las investigaciones cuando son construidos a partir de una metodología de investigación que permite una colaboración intensa y extensa en el propio proceso investigador a veces generan resultados y relaciones inesperadas. Al hablar de relaciones, y como nos recuerdan constantemente colectivos como Colaborabora (2017), o autores como Sánchez-Criado (2013), Lafuente y Lara (2013), Kulman (2012) en este tipo de investigaciones las emociones, los afectos, los sentimientos, como en el arte, forman parte del propio proceso. No es que las emociones, los afectos y sentimientos no hayan tenido importancia en la práctica investigadora en el pasado, sino que en otras formas de investigar no se han reconocido ni se les ha dado espacio. Sin embargo, para comprender los derroteros de mi propia tesis es necesario tener en cuenta los afectos y relaciones (Mendoza, 2017). Así, en este proceso de investigación nos hemos llegado a sentirnos amigos, confidentes e, incluso, hermanos. A veces tejimos lazos y hermandades inesperados.

Lazos y hermandades inesperada que he querido agradecer, cuidar y recordar con esta ̈foto de amor ̈. Esta foto es la portada de mi tesis y habla de afectar y ser afectados; de lazos tejidos durante la investigación no acabaron cuando se agotó el tiempo del taller, sino que continuaron en la construcción del relato, en el diseño de la porta de la tesis y por supuesto en nuestra vida. Esta ̈foto de amor ̈ es la portada de mi tesis y no solo nos habla de un paisaje ficticio soñado como Bilbao con Tánger de fondo, sino también habla de lo invisible de esa necesidad de cuidarnos y querernos. Cuidar y querer no solo a la familia que está lejos, sino cuidarnos y querernos mientras investigamos.

Pero hablar que querer cuando se investiga con menores es algo peligroso, incluso vergonzoso, y que puede ser malinterpretado, hasta tal extremo que donde una dice amor otros imaginan sexo. Por eso, para cuidarnos en salud hemos aprendido que las cosas hay que decirlas, y más cuando es un te quiero, pero quizás sea más seguro decirlo en otras lenguas. Por eso: ̈Ohiboka jeddan ̈ que en árabe, la lengua materna de mis co-investigadores, significa te quiero.

Bibliografía:

Colaborabora (2017). Si te vas a hacer un traje, mejor estate. Disponible: https://www.colaborabora.org/2017/07/10/si-te-van-a-hacer-un-traje-mejor-estate/

Kullman, K. (2012). Experiments with moving children and digital cameras. Children’s Geographies, 10(1), 1-16. Lafuente, A., y Lara, T. (2013). Aprendizajes situados y prácticas procomunales. Revista de la Asociación de

Sociología de la Educación (RASE), 6(2), 168-177.
Mendoza, K. (2017). Adolescentes y jóvenes migrantes: Prácticas de vida y socialidad. Tesis Doctoral. Universidad

Autónoma de Madrid.

Sánchez-Criado, T. (2016). “Hacer cuerpo” & “¿Poner el cuerpo en común?“, Blog Fuera de clase, Periódico Diagonal.

(2013). “Ese conocimiento que la razón tecnocrática ignora” 1: “¿Del doctor como el mejor gobernador?”, 2: “¿El estallido de comunidades epistémicas experimentales?”,3: “Vulnerabilidad y mimo de la experimentación del cualquiera”), Blog Fuera de clase, Periódico Diagonal.

 

 

Letter 3

Dear A, (A, for Academy)

I’m leaving. It has been wonderful years, but it is my time to leave for a new vital horizon.

I am really disappointed. You always find somebody that is more clever, more articulated, younger… It is as if you had never enough my company, generosity and affect.

I am sorry, A., but I think you are lost, getting older and losing your enthusiasm. I am really sorry for you.

Yours.

---

 

Letter 4 (sent through e-mail):

On the third day…

You’ve caught more sleep than one would expect at a conference. You even do some yoga in the morning, while listening to electronic summer music. You have a lot of coffee and choose to leave your laptop at the apartment. When you enter the room, many others are already there, so you silently join into the rhythm of the morning session that has become familiar so quickly. You sit down on the wooden floor. It is colder than before – the soft breeze almost gives you goosebumps. The stories you listening to intermingle with dogs howling. You are picking up thoughts, think with them. You are noting down a few words and draw the plants and animals of the garden. With western eyes (*) all the books stare at you through their cage. You can smell how they are slowly yellowing. You think of the cat sitting on the massive tree roots. And then you dissolve in the continuing choreography of voices and noises. You want to hold on to that feeling, but you know that you can’t.

(*) Portishead (1997) Western Eyes. In: Portishead: Portishead, 11.