Envy - Cambridge Tab

I am quite alarmingly competent – nay, gifted – at the overwhelming majority of things I attempt to do. This isn’t because of any innate superiority I have and Übermensch I most emphatically am not. But, I do hold tightly to the pragmatic dictum that if you try something and fail at it, you might as well resign yourself to that fact, and find something else to do.

In this respect, Cambridge suits me quite well. I am able to use my ‘badboy writing skills’ to dash off an impressively academic essay, or scribble down some Tab-worthy thoughts for a column without much toil, and at relatively short notice. I can utilise my patience and stupid sense of humour to work with kids through student charities. Generally speaking, I am quite able to wear the uniform of the hyper-competent human when I’m within two miles of Great St. Mary’s, but take me out of this comfort zone, and I quickly flounder.

In situations that require more than the knowledge I can reap from the shelves of the PPS library, I am lost. When the chain comes off on my bike, I just stand and look at it. I regularly have to fish out the packaging of Super Noodles from the bin to check through the instructions for cooking them. Once, I paid a child 50p to re-thread my shoelaces. I have trouble operating photocopiers. I don’t know what a dongle is. I don’t even know what a mortgage is.

But, I tend not to think about these flagrant incompetences; I am just about wise enough not to attempt to validate myself and sculpt my self-identity out of the things that I am shit at. So when being asked in a job interview “What do you do in your spare time?” I am inclined to mention the writing, the sporadic bursts of creativity and the social work. A truthful, but psychologically self-flagellating, alternative response could be: “I sit in my room and swelter in my unclean clothes because, one: I can’t bleed the radiator which has been on full-blast for five weeks now, and two: I don’t know which slot you pour the Lenor into on a washing machine, so I just let my clothes fester.”

But, honestly, what is human greatness if not the ability to cover up one’s flaws? Most people are well adapted at self-presentation, and can carefully cultivate and sanitise the view that other people have of them. We can all take solace in the fact that most successful people just aren’t as fucking marvellous as they make themselves out to be. What if the girl with the beautiful ‘just got out of bed’ look actually spends half her days subsumed by the anxiety of needing to make her raggedy style look authentic? Or, what if Jeremy Twat, who has intellectually reamed you all year, is only so dominant and impressive in supervisions because his inability to make friends has left him with nothing but Wikipedia and RedTube for company?

The social world becomes a less hostile place when you realise that, at the heart of it, every skill, competency or favourable trait that an individual has is tempered by the heinous, depressing and sociopathic inadequacies that they hide from us. It is always easier to see the dazzling and the impressive in what people do, but don’t forget that they, like you, are crippling failures in most other aspects of their life. So, for example, Cheryl Cole might well be seen as a talented, beautiful role model for young girls, but let’s not forget that she was somewhat less inspirational and dignified when she punched a black lady in the face and called her a ‘Caribbean jigaboo’.

A great character can be the perfect disguise for the bad actor – a good mask hides an irksome face.

Facebook and your Future Selves

This was originally published in the paper edition of Varsity on the Friday 5th November 2010, issue 728. It can also be found here, on the Varsity website.

I was one of those textbook, weedy, milksop boys whose misspent childhood was spent in the glare of television screens. Borne mostly out of overexposure to WWF wrestling (before the panda-huggers re-appropriated their acronym), as a nine year old I started to fetishize tattoos as symbolising a forceful masculine identity.

But when I got to the age at which I could legally get one, I found myself unable to; it wasn’t that there weren’t any designs that I liked, the problem was that unshakeable obstacle of foresight: would I really want that tattoo as a young man or as a grey scale pensioner? A similar thought process ought to be on our minds as we negotiate our precarious existence in Cambridge. We must ask ourselves the question: how accountable are we being to our future selves?

When Nick Clegg was an undergraduate at Robinson, he had some dalliance with Cambridge University Conservative Association. Whilst this isn’t altogether surprising given his puppetee/puppeteer relationship with the Prime Minister, it must have proved quite embarrassing for him as he climbed the ranks of the Liberal Democrat party machine. But of course, he wouldn’t have known then what he would become in later life; and nor do we.

In the Facebook generation, we are all the more constrained by our present when thinking about our futures. So as you stagger your way to Gardies dressed in full black tie, and you gurn in joyful vinolency into your friend’s SLR, remember quite how permanent that image is going to be. You might lose contact with that friend; just next week he could sleep with your girlfriend and you could become determined enemies. Cambridge is famed for its elitist grasp on the professions and the higher you climb, the greater the fall. What if you become one of those dowdy, pontificating Conservative MPs, arguing about the problem of binge-drinking youths in 30 years time? What if your snap-happy friend becomes a journalist?

With Facebook, we actively diarise our every whim, every thought and every activity, and these facts, which we disclose freely ourselves, are out of our control as soon as we press ‘send’.

How lucrative a trade would some conniving young Cantabrigian forge if he befriended us all and saved copies of those compromising pictures, made copies of all those political and religious slurs you have aired all over your status and noted which events you have attended!

All he would have to do is wait for you to enter the professional world and the power he wields could be immense – a future prime minister could be jelly-wrestling this May Week, an aspiring head teacher could be brought down in later life by the pictures of him dressed as a Nazi guard in a bad taste bop when he was just a starry-eyed Fresher.

Our generation is more accountable for its actions than any previously. Whereas public figures today can explain away the deviant foibles of their youth by talking euphemistically about having a ‘full university experience’, we shall not be spared such liberties. It is all documented. Every uploaded photograph, every blogpost, each tiny tweet has the potential to rain down a torrent of shit on you in your professional life depending on which path you take.

Be you Tab Totty, be you parading in Champagne decadence or be you shagging your way across the sticky dancefloor of Cindies, keep in mind that you don’t know who you and those around you will become.

Hoobitus - Pierre Bourdieu and The Hoobs

Episode 232 of 250 of Series 1 of children's TV Show 'The Hoobs' and the female pink hoob Tula opens the microwave and carries her baking to the table. Enter Groove, a green male Hoob, "Ah Tula, you make the most hoobalicious hoobnip tart ever...when will the hooby cookies be ready?". Ivor runs in, also wanting some of that hoobnip tart, the ambrosia of hoobland, but Groove, the little bastard, has eaten it all. "It's ok Ivor, Tula can always make some more." Tula drops her spoon "Oh no she can't!" The boy hoobs are confused why she is cross - "I'm tired of making the hooby cookies, hooby fizz, hooby buns." The lovably camp Ivor excuses his lack of help in the kitchen, he does the cleaning and the tidying up. It is the lazy laddish Groove who does nothing. They decide to take her to a restaurant, but she is too scared, so they decide to set one up together.

There's some learning to do!

And so begins our foray into the world of the Hoobs - the world reversed - a simulacrum of social reality and a practice of acute symbolic violence.

The concept of the Hoobs is that they are outsiders to human social life - they speak the same language as the peeps (adults) and tiddlypeeps (kids), but they don't have the same cultural concepts, and lack the basic understanding of the social order. Bourdieu speaks of a habitus - an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it was constituted - the social life that the peeps take for granted, their latent contentedness and practical mastery of their lived environment, is something that the Hoobs lack. Raised in Hoobland, they haven't acquired the skillful mastery of the social intricacies, so when they encounter a problem, they head over to earth to see the tiddlypeeps, who inculcate them with an artificial 'practical logic'; this will only ever pale in comparison to the doxic experience of the peeps themselves, who see life through the lens of a pre-conscious and taken-for-granted world.

As they journey over to see the kids, the music plays a song, the same each episode. "We're off to see the tiddlypeeps, on the road we go. We're off to see the tiddlypeeps, they're smart, they're fun, they know. If we need to know, who what when why where and how, we ask them and they know." Thus we see, from the ritualised chanson, that the culture of the tiddlypeeps, and by extention peeps generally, is constituted in the hoobacious mind as the legitimate culture. The knowledge of the peeps is a 'fait accompli' - once the Hoobs have consulted the tiddlypeeps, they can cease questioning 'Why?'; the legitimate knowledge of the peeps is accepted as correct.

In this particular episode, the pedagogic authority is a pair of boys. The fatter of the two tiddlypeeps instructs Groove on how to be a waiter, and, with the confident authority of Sun Tzu, imposes a panoply of cultural arbitaries - an arbitrary that is posited to be concrete and natural through the legitmacy of the interlocutor. The first lesson from the rotund pedagogue is the 'correct' laying out of cutlery on a table. This is followed up by the second pedagogue who asserts that then you need to put flowers on the table, to make it look pretty. Little Ivor, subject to this peep-ocracy, eagerly notes down the teachings - "flowers, water...".

Groove assimilates the teaching and attempts to be a waiter - he gets the food and throws it onto the table in front of the tiddlypeeps. They laugh at him and point in his face - he looks around, startled and aghast! - this is what Goffman, in Stigma, referred to as a shaming ritual and as a blemish of character. It similarly links in to Foucault's concept of discipline - transgressions against socially normative behvaiour are avoided through adherence to the cultural arbitaries, and are monitored through omnipresent surveillance.

So the children laugh at Groove, who cannot perform easily as a waiter due to the constraints of his own boisterous Hoob-habitus (for which I coin the neologism - Hoobitus). This situation finds it's parallel in the amusement of children seeing an African woman carrying a basket on her head or the schadenfreude of watching somebody from China trying to pronounce 'lollipop'. Although cultures are equal, objectively, some are valued higher than others and those individual who considers her own to be the legitimate will thus denigrate other 'deviant' cultures - she will discipline those cultures which differ from her own.

The tiddlypeeps instruct Groove that to be a good waiter, he has to be polite and speak in an affected manner. He tries again - "Here you are Sir...and here you are Madam." The fat tiddlypeep pedagogical authority's doughface beams - "Very good Groove!!" Thus the legitimate authority corrects and controls the deviant Hoob, and is able to do so through such pedagogic action as befits a pedagogic authority.


Like this, in the 249 other episodes, the children sat in their homes, who watch The Hoobs are given a show of deference to their own culture. The naive Hoobs who gallivant into the tiddlypeep world on-screen can be seen as a simulacrum of the symbolic learning the children make in their pre-cognisant state, as their habitus is forming and before it displays itself in their hexis. The Hoobs ask the questions that the children don't need to. The children learn that the correct way to eat is with a knife, fork and spoon. But also at a table, whilst sat on a chair. Also in a designated room withing the abode. And at a designated time.

What the children viewing 'The Hoobs' see is a representation, vivid and engaging, of the idealised form of their own world, as seen from the perspective of the mores of the status quo in their society.

Cambridge as Total Institution

Erving Goffman defined a total institution as a 'place of residence and work where a large number of like-minded individuals, cut off from wider society for an appreciable amount of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life'. Institutions he had in mind were mental asylums, prisons, prisoner of war camps, concentration camps; as well as less punitive others, such as sanatoria, leperosaria, army barracks, monasteries and even some boarding schools.

'Cambridge is a total institution. Discuss.'
This is the question I've decided to set myself, out of a deteriorating sense of academic purpose, an inability to revise and a need to find new and less guilt-inducing ways to procrastinate.

*

A prerequisite for a total institution is that sleep, play and work take place in the same place. In society generally, it is a fair assumption that one might wake up in his house, go to work at the office, retire to the golf course to chill out for a bit, before returning home to family and his bed. The central feature of total instituions can be described as a breakdown of the barriers ordinarily separating those 3 spheres of life.

I woke up at 11:30 today, in my tiny cupboard of a room in Homerton (incidentally after having a range of weird dreams but no matter). I switched on my laptop and staggered off for a piss. I sat down at my desk and read some Erving Goffman. I got hungry; I ate in my room. I worked for a while this afternoon. I chilled out here, watching 4OD, and now I'm listening to Eels whilst dubiously revising/procrastinating by writing this. Then I will hop off my scummy desk chair into bed. If I went and stood on the lawn outside East House and looked up at the windows, I daresay there will be many others doing the same. Working, living, relaxing, sleeping, playing, reading: all in their confined spaces.

*

In a total institution, the fulfilment of human needs is dealt with bureaucratically - all you need to keep you alive will be provided for by the institution.

I direct you to CUSU, where you will find your political rights, your sexual health, your mental stability, your academic services, your official information and your every faxing and photocopying whim catered for. Hungry reading this? You can go down to hall or to the buttery. Wearing dirty clothes? Go to your on-site laundry room. Preggo? Call your welfare officer. Ill? Visit the college nurse. Religiously ambiguous? Chaplain.

*

In a total institution, activities that carried direct gratification on the outside are made fruitless and seemingly futile. Thus the soldier may find himself cutting a lawn with a pair of nail clippers as a disciplinary punishment. The prisoners may be forced into labour, pointless or otherwise, for which they get no material reward. In the total institution, work does not lead to a dispensible wage; instead, fear is instilled in inmates about the consequences of NOT doing the work. This is coupled with incentivising things that would be taken for granted on the outisde; for example, a prisoner may behave perfectly for a month in order to be granted a phonecall.

In Cambridge, which students haven't begged the question of what in the holy fuck is the point? In no occupation would you expect to work over 12 hours a day for no other incentive than for your own good. So we work towards exams... what do they measure? Only how much work you have done. It's exam term and a girl who lives on my corridor has mentioned that she will get up early to start work so that she can allow herself an hour to watch Over the Rainbow. Is it really worth it?

*

In a total institution, whether there is too much work forced upon them (as in the forced labour of a Nazi death camp) or too little, so that they fall into extremes of boredom (as in those who rock to themselves, retreatist, in a mental asylum), those who enter the institution being work-motivated are likely nonetheless to be ground down and demoralised by the persistent work culture of the total institution.

This one needs little elucidation. All I will say to elaborate is that in the September before I matriculated, I found myself pre-reading in Doncaster Library, thinking keenly about how the Cambridge experience will expand my academic horizons, entrench my convictions and push me to reach my potential. Two weeks after matriculating, after gulping from the ceremonial Homerton Horn, I found myself sat in my pants at 3pm missing lectures only to eat Ryvita, watch Youtube clips of japanese scare pranks and bash myself off. If ever there was a case study of demoralisation, it lived in 333 West House in Michaelmas 2008.

*

New inmates (read: freshers) enter the total institution with a personal identity and a unique way of life and set of experiences that set them apart from other inmates. The institution sets about a process of DISCULTURATION - an 'untraining' which renders the inmate less capapble of managing certain features of daily life in the real world, if he ever leaves.

Can you remember your first supervision, when you realise that despite being top of the class for the 13 years leading up to this pedagogical stand-off, you are actually brainless, ineloquent and pathetic. And gradually, the cultural currents of Cantabrigia catch you and sin you around - you probably don't evn notice it happening - so that when you return back to your hometown you feel somehow alien. My own experience of returning back to Doncaster, my genuinely much-loved hometown for all my life, was this sense of unease at how fat everybody was and a distrust of shopworkers. Further examples of disculturation can be found in the SPS library, where, after reading Foucault and Lacan for 4 hours, students leave unable to socially interact: my own experience of this was telling a Big Issue seller I wanted him to bite me, in a skewed pursuit of banter.

And there is more; but regrettably the panopticon is conditioning a sense of guilt into me as I'm writing this; that unseen but omnipresent force of the institution incorporeal, whsipering into my conscience, breathlessly, "Stop writing blogposts, and do some fucking spider graphs"

So I leave you with the 4 tactics Goffman identifies of how inmates cope with life inside the institution. If you agree that Cambridge is a total institution - bedfellow to Belsen, Bedlam and the barracks - maybe this will be useful for you.

- Situational Withdrawl - becoming completely insular and withdrawing entirely from all semblances of an external reality, living only within the confines of your mind. Think along the lines of a mental patient who does not communicate but merely moves around silently in the ward, the Romanian orphan who has not been spoken to who is closed off to the social world, or the stereotypical CompSci.

- Intransigent Line - adopting a flagrant refusal to obey the institution and its rules. These people often do not last long; in many total institutions, physical pain, torture and even death may been inflicted upon these transgressors. In Cambridge, these rules essentially constitute doing academic work; so such transgressors can be considered to be practicing what Homertonians may understand to be the Gadsby Effect.

- Colonisation - when the inmate builds up a virtual experience of the outside world from the few external influences that remain for them. This could be the soldier in the bunkers who is motivated by the thought of returning to his wife. This could be the prisoner who keeps his sanity by merely thinking of the beauties of freedom and counting down the days. Or, in Cambridge, it could be the Lawyer who works themself to the extent of autism with their eyes fixed solely on their life after leaving the oppressive manacles behind.

- Conversion - accepting the rules and striving for perfect. This could be the perfect prisoner, who follows the rules without question, is subservient and helpful to prison officers and who thus incurs merits such as small but significant freedoms, such as special duties. Here, it could be the student who grafts away, eternally mindful that they must be on time, of passable quality, diligent in supervisions and getting the most from their time here.

*

Anyway, I must get back into my cell; revision beckons.

The Student as Sisyphus

In Greek Mythology, Sisyphus was a cunning mortal. When Hades, the God of the Underworld, came to take him down to the kingdom of the dead at the end of his life, Hades came prepared and brought handcuffs, which Sisyphus cunningly got him to demonstrate on himself - Sisyphus kept him locked in a closet. For this, and other crimes against the Gods, he was given an eternal punishment of being put to hard labour.

His task was to push a boulder to the top of a hill, and when it reached the top and fell back down, he had to climb back down, and begin to roll it back up again. Exertion. Toil. Sweat. Ennui. Sisyphus was resigned to his fate, and had little choice but to continue - pushing the boulder up the hill only to be forced to start again once he had reached the top.

The French Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus saw this as a fitting metaphor for life in a futile world without meaning such as our own. In 'L'Etranger', translated as The Outsider or The Stranger, Camus' protagonist Meursault is the Sisyphean, absurd hero. Camus postulates that there is no objective purpose to our existence, but that this needn't necessarily be a source for pessimism.

He identified three ways in which an individual could react, faced with the futility of their existence. They could deny that it lacks meaning, by creating false idols through religion, for example; by creating a God-as-purpose. To do this is to lie to oneself though, and to deny oneself the dignity of their autonomy, however futile their existence might be. Alternately, one could commit suicide, and suicide is the major theme in his philsophy - "there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide" - but if one's life is pointless, so would be one's death. If life is futile, it is yet more so to try and escape it. The third option, and the one which Camus and the existentialists generally promote, is to embrace the futility of life, to find those small insignificant acts in life that indulge you in sensorial pleasure, albeit subjective, and accept that life is meaningless.

We're alive to the extent that we are conscious of ourselves, we don't have any obligations, we don't have any purpose, we don't have any 'meaning'. Whether you do good things or bad things, in the grand schema of life itself, it doesn't really matter. Any recognition or status acquired is subjective and is grounded in life itself - in terms of existence, it is meaningless. The fact is, we're here at the foot of this great bloody mountain and the boulder is there, waiting to be pushed, and there is no reason not to push it.

This is pretty much life as a student here in Cambridge. Sisyphus had to push a rock endlessly up a hill for eternity, undergradutates have to write essays, make deadlines, make it to supervisions... But do we have to? Not really. Most students here are locked into Camus' first option of how to cope with the futility of our existence: denial. The NatSci grafts towards a new pathos in understanding the structure of plant cells, the Social Anthropolgist attempts to diagrammatise and bifurcate culture into binary opposition, the Philosopher ponders metaphysics, the Medic develops ways to keep people alive, the Lawyer memorises tomes of rules... but why? It is not the 'meaning' of the Plant Scientist to theorise on stomata. Structuralist analysis doesn't make the social anthropologists life any more meaningful... But nonetheless, we push on in our quest for knowledge, for a better career, to satisfy our parents, to keep ourselves from ennui, to avoid the job market.

The legions of Sisyphean students sit in their accomodation and if you stand outside and face the windows, you can see them, hundreds of them spread over numerous floors - like Bentham's Panopticon - all sat at their desks, typing, reading, researching but ultimately, distracting themselves and constructing a subjective meaning for the inessense of their existence.

Doing this only makes it more difficult to push the boulder. Whether we do it in acceptance or in denial, we have no choice but to push the boulder up the hill.

So students, citizens, humans, find what pleases you, embrace it wholeheartedly, always remembering not to take yourself too seriously, and carry on heaving through life.

Chocolate, Sperm and Sigmund Freud

There are some foods which you know are bad for you, but they are just so good, you can't give them up. When life starts to go to pot, when you're down on your luck, certain foodstuffs seem all the more desirable. Think of crying, remembering a lost love, with a massive bar of Galaxy. It's funny with these products; their 'naughtiness' is half the appeal.

Sigmund Freud developed the theory of the Psychosexual Stages of Development, and it is through these stages that a normative child must pass through in order to become a normative adult. If a child is unable to progress from a given stage, it sticks with them into their adult life and leads to symptoms. In this tihnking, if a child is unable to progress out of the Oral Stage, in which the mouth is the focal point for stimulation, they are more inclined to be smokers, to be nail-biters or to be a heavy drinker. What goes in the mouth is the most instant source of gratification.

There are other phases. The Anal Phase develops when a child is being toilet trained, and at this stage, the chief gratification for the infant comes from having a poo, or from stopping themselves from doing so - exerting their control over their own body. The Phallic Stage focuses on the genitals, and the child gets pleasure from touching themselves.


I'll focus on 3 main excessive 'naughty' foods - foods which are considered to be somewhat more than food. The sort of food that you consume whilst slouched on the sofa, relaxed and at peace. Or the sort of food that is respected as a delicacy. This isn't food just to satisfy the need to fill the stomach - they have a more special quality.

Chocolate. Champagne. Oysters.

The rich gloopy thickness of chocolate screams pleasure. Who doesn't want to get a healthy dollop on their finger as they lick the bowl of freshly baked cake? Lovers, if they are inclined to use food in their sexplay, are more likely to use chocolate than any other food.

There are no foods that more resemble poo than chocolate.

Champagne is one of the most culturally value-laden drinks available - it stands for luxury, for wealth, for celebration - for success. In Formula 1, after the victor crosses the finishing line, the first thing that happens is the drivers who come in 1st, 2nd and 3rd go to the podium, where the victor sprays champagne all over his vanquished rivals. When life gets hard, many turn to alcohol - it gives a quick lift, it is predictable, it sends a little shiver down the spine.

Champagne has the same colour and density as piss, and although Champagne is considerably more bubbly, there aren't really any other drinks that resemble piss quite as well.

Oysters. You can probably envisage where this one is going. Oysters are widely esteemed to be the archetypal gastronomical aphrodisiac. The eating of an oyster poses so many questions for etiquette. That strange yolk like consistency makes it difficult to consume - there are few other foods that, in polite company, you are expected to pour directly into your mouth from the shell and maybe even knock your head back. Men in dinner jackets, champagne in one hand, oyster in the other, will slurp down this uncommon food and smile as they wipe of its silvery snail trails from the side of their lips.

Oysters are, comparatively speaking, pretty cum-like. It takes some effort to even prize open the shell, the foreplay of consumption, making the slippery ambrosia that is the reward all the more special.

The naughtiest foods, the ones which for this very reason are everybody's favourites, correspond to our psychosexual hang-ups. The child who gets a little bit too much pleasure from forcing out a poo on the potty can be found 20 years later licking chocolate body paint from their partner's torso. The child who sat with their hand down their trousers too often, can be found 20 years later putting up the pretence of being dignified in polite, sexually inhibited company, as they drink the symbolic nectar of their old genital fixations - champagne and oysters.

Autism and the Daleks

"The metal is just battle armour. The real Dalek creature is inside."

I don't want this to be interpretted as being a light-hearted joke-essay, and although it might seem odd to write about Autism and Doctor Who simultaneously, I shall be looking seriously at the links between autistic behaviour and Dalek behaviour, as a way to explain how and why our own society stigmatises and judges them both.

There are, of course, many more reasons why Daleks are NOT like autistic individuals, but that does not negate the interest that can be found in their similarities. Essentially, what I am saying is that autistic people, unlike Daleks, don't pose a threat to human existence and in fact, this essay will be showing how society generally mistreats people with Autism by its misinterpretations.

More so, I see the link in the way in which, when watching Doctor Who, we almost instinctively attribute character and conscience to these supposedly insentient beings – not because we are led to do so by the scriptwriters but because it is part of our inbuilt psychosocial constitution: we constantly strive to attribute meaning and purpose to the actions of others, and in this, we are guilty of speciescentricism. We strive to ‘make human’ the Daleks, in the same way that many in society try to ‘make 'normal'’ those individuals with autism by applying their own value judgements.

Let us now investigate the ways in which the Daleks share similarities with aspects of Autism.

When one thinks of a Dalek, one is likely to conjure up the image of the metal shell (as in the above image) – when in fact, the Dalek itself is a betentacled ‘pink and greenish blob’. It is the outer aesthetic presentation of the Dalek, with its polycarbide peppershaker armour, eyestalk and gunstick, that strikes fear – the Dalek itself is considerably less intimidating. The large disparity between the outward appearance of the Dalek and the actual inner being is similar to the effects of Mindblindness, a concept developed by Cambridge’s own Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen. The autistic individual can conceive of the affective experience of others – their emotions and thoughts –only in the same way that a colourblind individual can ‘appreciate’ the colours are. The colour-blind individual may know what ‘pink’ is, but they cannot themselves experience and thus truly understand it. Similarly, the autistic individual, mindblind, may often inadvertently, and at times inescapably, present himself as socially aloof, or as unresponsive and socially awkward. Likewise, the Dalek inexorably presents itself as ruthless and callous. What both the Dalek and the autistic individual share is the fact that they are bound to their genesis – what goes on in their heads is, to a large degree, a product of something outside of their control and for this very reason, their actions are wrongly perceived to be negotiated when in fact, they cannot do things any other way. This links in to the Nietzschean concept of the ‘Lamb’s Anger’ – it is reasonable for a lamb to fear and hate the birds of prey which circle it from above, but it is wholly unreasonable to expect the bird of prey to do otherwise. In the same way that one cannot reason with the condor about the emotional repercussions of its predation, we resent neither the actions of the Dalek, nor the behaviours of autistic individuals.

The next parallel is the reliance of both on logic and machinery as a way of explaining and experiencing worldly experience. Tragically, both the Daleks and autistic individuals are aware of the weaknesses of this, and recognise its shortcomings for themselves. Uta Frith, in ‘Autism: Explaining the Enigma’, emphasises the tragic paradox that very often, the thing autistic individuals may feel themselves lacking in most is social contact, and their social behaviours tend always to marginalise them. They are aware of how their reliance on logic affects their capacity to function in the pragmatic world of conversation. This is comparable with the Daleks, whose reliance upon a strict hierarchy stifles their individual personality – they see their shortcomings but, being ruthless, they enslaved non-Dalek species to compensate. The virtues of logic are not to be underestimated – the disregard for the subjective allows the Daleks to focus single-mindedly upon their goals. The disregard for the subjective similarly enables autistic individuals to occupy themselves in solitary activity, to develop and foster huge skill in the objective sciences and such like. But despite this, the reliance on logic makes it difficult to function socially, which in reality, proves itself to be hugely important in day-to-day existence.

There are more examples that I could state – the ‘electronic voice’ of the Daleks which, for its lack of emotion, appears so strange and chilling, is comparable to the monotony of many individuals with certain types of autism – but for now, I shall leave just these two points.

To summarise, there are links between the two which can be used to explain the behaviours of each of them. The Dalek, though frightening in its single-mindedness, cannot be expected to behave in any other way. The autistic individual, though not always subscribing to socially normative behaviour, cannot be blamed, nor should they be reprimanded, for it. The negative image that is held of Daleks and autistic individuals, though the two are, and I emphasise once more, very different, is that they are mysterious because of their difference – what makes both appear strange to many people is that they defy some of the characteristics which are perceived to be normal.

The Etiquette of Cambridge Stash

The most obvious place to start here is to define 'Stash' for those non-Vulgarian Cambridge students - stash means branded clothing, such as hoodies stating 'University of Cambridge', 'Leeds Met' etc.

The item in the above image is the best-selling stash, but it is, despite its simplicity, one of the most culturally and symbolically laden items one could ever wear, if one is a Cammy student.

First up there is the awkward dichotomy between the stereotypes of Cambridge and the stereotypes of hoodies. The stereotypes of Cam students run far and wide, but a general consensus rests around excessive-privelege, arrogance, confidence and, essentially, wealth. Quite how justified these stereotypes are is beside the point in this case. Then you have the stereotype of the hoody - it is now a term in the political lexicon. 'Hug a hoody' has the same aversive connotations of shaking hands with a leper or being stuck in a lift with somebody in an overcoat. The hoody is the symbol of vandalism, of disruption, of intimidation, of gangs of youths, of evil juvenile delinquency ... and a loads of other old bollocks. The 'Cambridge Hoody' is then, in itself, quite an absurd idea. Sure it would be better to have University branded elbow pads, or Tailcoat-stash... But no, Cambridge Hoody it is and it is due to this awkward bifurcation into the contradictory connotational worlds of privelege and delinquency, that the social mores and messages of wearing it are so bizarre.

We go first to Cambridge itself, that sexy little city in the otherwise non-descript area of England known as the East. In Cambridge, the majority of people you will see in the city centre are students at the University of Cambridge. Nonetheless, a walk down Kings Parade will inevitably lead to passing by a multitude of 'University of cambridge' hoodies, there are a few explanations for this. 1) If the wearer is Chinese, there is a greater-than-average chance it is a tourist, 2) It is a practical item, 3) inferior college?

Ooh contraversial! I propose that those students who are wholeheartedly ideologically integrated into their college are more inclined to wear their college stash. Thus, if one wears a 'University of Cambridge' hoody in the city itself, chances are you are at a 'lesser' college. The hoody then comes to represent an assertion of one's belonging in the institution.

The message that is given out by wearing the Cambridge hoody whilst in Cambridge is one of a need to assert one's group membership, and an awareness of this risk.

This is very different when back on provincial turf. I refer specifically to Doncaster, previously home of mining, horse racing, railways, now home of an English Democrat mayor, a BNP MEP and 4 poundshops. The Cambridge hoody in Doncaster is a wholly different cultural symbol. I daresay I am more dubious about wearing my Cambridge hoody in Doncaster, than I am about wearing my Labour Club hoody in Cambridge! One has a right to be proud about making it to Cambridge surely? The town centre populus is dotted with 'University of York St John' hoodies and 'Univeristy of Hull' hoodies yet nobody bats an eyelid. But what of the Cam hoody?

By wearing the Cambridge hoody in Doncaster, it is effectively dividing the wearer from the group - to compare with Social Anthropology, it is like Malinowski wearing his Victorian garb whilst in amongst the Papuans. The Cambridge Hoody thus symbolises difference in the same way that does a sari, a turban, a hijab or ... a kimono.

Another difference when back in Doncaster is people's interpretation of the wearers intention. People may consider why would an individual wear such an item. My reckoning would be that there may be presupposition that it is a manifestation of vulgar pride, big-headedness. This is something very much against the folk culture of Doncastrians! Any writing on the chest, male or female, effectively invites people to observe you and judge you, as they would a book. And what messages you see?! When I see people wearing anything with the lame French Connection puns - FCUK fashion, FCUK my life, FCUK my wife etc - I instantly categorise them as a twat/idiot. When men wear the intentionally offensive shirts with messages like - On Your Knees, Suck it and see - I instantly think they are lower class. The wearing of University of Cambridge on one's chest in a poor area may be tantamount to bragging.

I find this interesting because we now come to the realisation that the 'University of Cambridge' hoody has adverse social and cultural effects for the actual Cambridge students who wear it, whether at Uni or at home. Thus, the people best adapted to wearing the University of Cambridge hoodies are those not in any way linked to the university. In this way, they are not representative of their own identity, but the tourist wearing of the Cam Uni hoody is testimony to the powerful identity of the University itself. People effectively become billboards.

Yet still I own one. Yet still it remains tentatively on my coat peg on my bedroom door in Doncaster. Dare I do it? Dare I?