Six thousand masks for one imposter

Abstract

Having recently given, and published in Third Text referee journal and Third Text Online, a series of articles on mask, class and carnival, I was recently invited to write a text to accompany an exhibition relating to masks. Mask, Masque, Masc was a group exhibition hosted online between 14 and 31 May 2020. It was curated by Marc Hulson, Alessandra Falbo and Rolina E. Blok, and hosted by Five Years and Darling Pearls & Co at Platforms Project Net 2020 (see: http://www.fiveyears.org.uk/archive2/pages/277/Masc_Mask_Masque/277.html. Accessed 28 July 2021). This article is a transformed version of that text, edited and extended to suit this journal and the requirements and suggestions of the journal’s reviewers. It starts out with an epigraph taken from Nietzsche, followed by two quotes from Walter Benjamin that relate writing playfully to ‘magic’. It later turns towards a conclusion with two more fulsome quotes from F.W. Nietzsche, which dispute the priority of truth and claim that every word is a mask. The piece aims to encourage and support newcomers to writing, as well as non-native speakers and those from less privileged backgrounds; any and all of whom might nervously feel that their own writing is in some way illegitimate. I draw upon my experience as an arts lecturer and arts writer, as the article becomes an example of an autobiographical strain in my work that uses first-person narratives to explore ways in which writing, education (in general) and art education (in particular) might contribute to or help us negotiate class consciousness and cultural barriers. The article discusses ways in which new technologies invite and allow new voices to gain confidence in writing, and also alludes to ‘masks’, ‘imposters’ and ‘imposter syndrome’ (initially nominated as a feminist concern). It attempts to help and to advise aspiring writers by ‘dis-spelling’ myths of writing as transcendent, privileged and thereby socially divisive, and promotes the idea of writing as a material process (no less ‘magical’ for that) open to all. Interestingly, the title of this article alludes to its own word count, and thus the title had to be changed each time the article was edited and as it grew into the approximately 6,000-word essay it is now. As well as being, in this and other ways, self-reflexive and self-conscious, the writing becomes self-deconstructive towards its conclusion, tugging at a certain ‘masc’-ulinity concerning the sources and motivations for the writing and of the author that might otherwise remain masked to the author. This allows the piece to end by extending the implications of a purported écriture feminine to become an encouragement to more and different ‘others’ to find a way, and to find their way, to and through writing, meanwhile expanding on the many ways in which we might deploy a new-found freedom to write according to the model of words as masks, of writing as a masque and of the author as masked.