The pot, the cup and the jar: Coming together in/for stories

I have twin boys and live in an apartment with an open kitchen. In addition to this context, my family roots are in central Anatolia, while my childhood memories are from Antalya, a Mediterranean coastal city in Turkey. Kitchen and cooking have been a compelling interest, learning how to prepare the olives and how to select the best of lemons and oranges from my mother, as I grew older. When I think about why I decided to study “kitchen” as a communication place for my PhD studies, it is not hard to realize the very personal connection. Then comes my boys, pointing to pots, cups, saucepans or discovering the function of the buttons on the dishwasher. My experience as a mother is one of veritable millions and being timeless is another subject once I consider my position as a mother working in academia. Just like in the kitchen, in academia, we have ingredients and tools to put things together and create new things.

In the Preface of his Digital Storytelling Cookbook, Joe Lambert concludes the introduction of the little booklet with the following words that give me a very good starting point: “The rest of this cookbook will break this digital story down into a recipe with ingredients, that will help you to prepare it all again. We’ll talk more about stories in general too, so you can take this recipe and adapt it to your own tastes. We encourage you to make the digital story you’re hungry for” (Lambert, 2010: v). The digital story that I was hungry for was a relief from my struggle with an object that I was trying to create: my dissertation. Digital stories have surrounded me since 2009. Sharing the same office with Burcu Şimşek, I was destined to be a part of the story

The process, having started with Digital Storytelling Workshops from Amargi Women that we ran in order to collect the daily life experiences of women, has continued with the workshops such as “Ben Alandayken (When I was in the field)”, “ 24 Saat Detay (24-Hour-Detail)”, “Feministim [I am a feminist]”, which open paths for sharing various women’s experiences; “Böyleyken Böyle [As it is]” and “Aşk Demek… [Love is…]” which were organized with the participation of lesbians and bisexual women who are not very visible in women’s movements and LGBT movements; and “Kökler, İzler ve Gölgeler [Roots, Scars and Shadows]”.

“I have food on the stove” Digital Storytelling Workshop came out as a result of the pressure I felt while I was writing my PhD dissertation about kitchen and the meanings that are produced in relation to kitchen and cooking in the urban kitchen of contemporary society in Turkey. This pressure was a shared one in our office. Burcu felt the same throughout the time she was working on not only her dissertation, but also her book titled Mutfakta Dijital Hikayeler

Forthcoming book by Burcu Şimşek on the digital storytelling movement inTurkey.

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Although, “I have food on the stove” Digital Storytelling Workshop concentrates on our story of writing dissertations that last many years, it was planned as a one-day workshop due to the fact that the women who would participate in this workshop would have limited time owing to the ongoing hustle and bustle of their home and work life. Thus, in addition to arranging the place to run the workshop, we also needed to speed up the workshop process, putting pressure on ourselves time wise to make participation possible for most of our participants. Our experiences from previous workshops pointed to the fact that a one-day workshop meant the participant’s spending one-whole day in the workshop. Accordingly, this meant that the place where we would run the workshop was going to be used for all the stages of the workshop including image production and editing. In the meantime, the workshop venue served as a kitchen where we ate and drank coffee and tea, had a rest for a few minutes and had our lunch break as it being the kitchen of the stories. After many years of facilitating digital storytelling workshops for various groups and different purposes, this was the first workshop where we decided to make digital stories ourselves after our facilitator training.

All of the participants who take part in a digital storytelling workshop either/both as a coordinator-facilitator or/and a participant know that story circle is the hardest stage of the digital storytelling workshops. It is difficult for the participants both not to be able to know what to talk about and to tell something intimate to the people they meet for the first time in their lives and also to do it in a really short time. However, this circle makes the people, who do not know each other beforehand, come closer to be able to connect to each other not only face-to-face, but also intimately through enabling them to tell stories in the circle, which they may not be able to do so elsewhere. We found a really practical way while we were trying to figure out how to deal with the limited time and feeling of not being able to know what to tell in the story circle in the, “I have food on the stove” workshop. Through using the capacities of the objects for attributing and containing the meanings and feelings within itself, we could fit our lives during our dissertation into a can of tomato paste, a pot, a jar, a coffee pot, a ladle, an onion, a knife, a chopping board and a mug that we put into a box.

Our stories concentrating on our lives full of dissertation are not only about the stress, despair, dilemmas or sacrifices we experienced during writing our dissertations, but they are at the same time the reflection of questioning, “the compulsory duties” that are socially attributed to women and that gets harder to carry each day, the burden of which we felt more during the period of time devoted to dissertation as the issue is about the time that we can have more for our thesis writing process, with its all components, such as reading, taking notes and fieldwork/experiments in some cases. In order to make the process less complicated for the participant women, we decided to put the selected kitchen objects into a box, giving each a number. Then we asked our participants to draw numbers from a bag for identifying their objects for their stories. Taking an object as a starting point for a story makes the process less complicated most of the time. This time was not different other than surprising coincidences. It was shocking for me to draw the number of my own teacup whereas my officemate co-facilitator Burcu drew the number for the coffee jar. The objects were used and attributed meanings in such a way that each became the main character of the story. After all, I could not help thinking about how the objects can be so significant and embellished with meaning and emotion.

Objects, as things to fulfill the needs of persons are described as all the life contents except subjects, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochber-Halton in their book titled The Meaning of Things. In support of this description, comes the underlining necessity to accept the objects as, “polysemantic and multifunctional” narratives of life in opposition to thinking about them as solely functional (Ruppert, 1996: 19). The expression of narratives of life depicts the things to which the objects correspond in people’s lives. Within this framework, an object may be made one’s own, and is made a part of one’s own style by who uses or owns it. Stating that this process is implemented to ordinary-daily objects such as furniture and cloths with which bodied interaction takes place, Lupton remarks that these objects, which are given value through being ascribed personal meanings, notably tend to be attributed emotions (1998: 212). The aspect of attributing meaning and emotions to objects shows also their potential to be used as a means for transferring and creating meaning; within this context Eiguer accordingly states that, “the objects arouse the strongest feelings” (2013: 91). Any object, which is bought and started to be used, gains importance through being attributed meaning and emotion by means of any occasion, person and time it is made to be related with, together with becoming a tool for explaining, recalling and talking about the things they are associated with. The research Csikszentmihayli and Rochberg Halton conducted with 315 people in 1981, showed that people frequently described the object which they associate with a person, place, memory, occasion or values the person harbors, as significant and they started to talk about them (1991: 27-28).

Another reason why the objects are of such importance in our lives is that they articulateour feelings and the things we would like to say. In this workshop, just like participant, Kübra’s identifying her dissertation, which is somehow not finishing and lengthening out, with a tin of tomato paste (scattered into all corners of her life)

Kübra’s digital story can be found: http://vimeo.com/album/2816367/video/92034037

In the “I have food on the stove” digital storytelling workshop, using the objects related to kitchen was a tactic that we used to make the workshop stages go faster due to the power the objects have as tools of telling stories as we mentioned above. On the other hand, while trying to make a connection between kitchen and writing dissertation, we thought that the objects that can be related to each other would stimulate participants’ ideas and stories and would tell a larger story through being tied to each other. We reached this point through Burcu’s remark, that in our everyday conversations, we connect to others through their stories, with reference to Norrick’s following words: “We tell stories to make a point, to catch up on each other’s lives, to report news, and to entertain each other. And one story opens the floor to other participants for stories of their own” (qtd. in Şimşek, 2012: 32). In the in-group screening we made at the end of the workshop, we realized that our stories were connected to one another visually as well. In this workshop the thing we had not predicted before the process, was that participants put together the object they had in their hands with the others’ objects while they were building up their stories and creating the images for their own stories. The objects that we brought to the workshop and mentioned above did not belong to any participant; nevertheless they became the things the participants appropriated and spoke about without feeling out of them as each one of the objects was familiar due to the connection the participants have with the kitchen. Then we thought that almost none of the objects except the ones related to kitchen would be so convenient for making private as well as being ordinary and very public. Owing to this connection between stories constructed by means of objects, each story actually completed one another through telling a part of another participant’s life experience with dissertation, just like Ece did in her story, “Keskin Bıçak (Sharp Knife)”, that I will focus on in the rest of this paper then in relation taking a look at the dynamics of home for women from academia.

In her digital story, “Sharp Knife”,

“Sharp Knife” Transcription in English: I'm married. I have a daughter and a 110 kg husband. "Knife" is my biggest helper, my weapon. There are people waiting, the "food on the stove" to be cooked immediately. Who cares about the thesis! Onions and vegetables should be chopped quickly and well. So I'm so in need of a sharp knife. I cut out from the journals and the books for my thesis. Meanwhile, there emerged a feeling of cutting off many things: to cut off my daughter's voice, my husband's snores (especially when I'm studying), my mom's, my sister's, my father-in-law's wishes, the desire for cutting off the lecturers' voices during the Thesis Committee Meetings. There were indeed the things I'd really cut. To appease my conscience, to save time I cut off the working of psychodrama. I cut off going to the coiffeur; I don't have my hair dyed anymore. I cut off some of my social activities and visits. There are also the things I'd like to cut off. To have relief, to be me… I want to cut off giving answers to my daughter, my mom while at the same time talking to my lecturer on the phone, to overeat, the times I cry and say "I can't do this anymore!" and to cut off my thesis (to finish it). And let the next track come for me by Yasar: "Sharp Knife" [the song sings: one day plus another, another sin in a day, my tears dropped one day, didn’t stop].(1.37) http://vimeo.com/91286135

We deprive ourselves. We cut off the things that we enjoy and do for ourselves in our lives. Ece gave up/cut off going to the hairdresser and having her hair dyed, also visiting her friends. For a more comfortable and peaceful life, there were things we wanted to cut off just like the ones we could not manage to do in this life: with her knife, Ece depicted for us our wish to cut off our supervisors’ demands as opposed to ours, the necessity to fulfil several things at the same time, the scars the life with dissertation has left on us, the moments we fall in despair; and certainly our great desire for completing our dissertation.

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“Digital stories often start with the pictures” (2010: 27) states Lambert. In our workshop, the story circle started with objects. “Stories move in circles” says Lambert and adds, “[t]hey don’t move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles” (cited by Lambert 2010: v). Since 2009, in none of the workshops it was possible for me to create another digital story. However, this time the workshop was to find a relief for my own longing for solution to the struggle with an object: my dissertation. At the end of this workshop, none of us had a secret formula, but a path for solidarity: hearing that I am not the only one to go through the hardship, juggling with multiple responsibilities. In the next section, I intend to position this solidarity into the discussion about housework and homework.

There will always be some tension in the everyday lives of women academics as Ece reflects in her digital story. The respected image of the housewife combined with the myth and the struggles for being present in academic life as a women, is a complex blend. In this section of the paper, I focus on the modern phenomenon of everyday life and its weight on women especially in academia.

In a world governed by speed, the everyday life responsibilities and engagements have inclined for women, who have been associated with home and have attempted to be limited to the life cycle at home through providing their labour only for the family. The entrance of the women to the labour force, providing income for themselves on one hand, have doubled the burden because of the expectations that division of labor according to gender that have been put on them have made life harder.

Bedriye Poyraz (2013), in her research where she examined the common argument, academia being one of the institutions where women have been represented the best, she provided counter arguments. When the career development, positions, use of resources, the life-work balance, the national and international mobility and the publications are taken into consideration, women are in disadvantaged positions. Through the in-depth interviews with eight female academics and eight male academics, Poyraz provided an overview about what sort of private and public lives academics pursue in Turkey. While the majority of the men are married and have kids, most of the women are single or married with fewer children. The responsibilities of the children of these married men are mostly on their partners. Most of the married academic women with kids mentioned that they are fully responsible for the children. Leaving her job in order to take care of a family member was of great importance for one of the participants and was expressed with a strong statement: “without any hesitation” (2013: 11). The inequality between men and women in the sharing of the responsibilities concerning home and children causes most women in academia to spend more time and energy than men (similar to other sectors). In her conclusion, Poyraz states that for most academic women, the dissertation writing process, that is mentioned as the hardest phase of the PhD studies, usually intersects with getting married and having their kids and due to the temporary working conditions during the PhD studies, dependency on family weighs heavier and as a result academic life becomes secondary in the list of women (2013: 15, 16). In addition to my experience, the women academics around me have similar reasons for their burden between these two worlds, mostly they are caused by their husbands, immediate environment and also by the gender roles and stereotypes that they are directly exposed to. In Turkish society, as expressed by Kandiyoti, the family type is a patriarchal family, that is based on the gender based division of labour between wife and husband, where the man is the breadwinner and the woman is responsible for mothering, housework, caring for and feeding the family (cited in Dedeoğlu, 2000: 157). However, there has been no decline in the load of the division of labour that depends on the distinction between inside and outside, with women’s entrance to the work life. In addition to this, the dominant association of women academics’ work within the teacher occupation, that is coded as a suitable job for women due to the fact that a teacher is more flexible with time which seems to be very good to raise one’s own children, makes women academics’ lives harder. The necessity of research, publishing articles and attending conferences and other scientific events usually are not considered to be important aspects of the occupation for outsiders as lecturing seem to be the only task that needs to be fulfilled. As the working hours of the occupation is not limited to the physical environment of the university and in fixed time frames, the relationships within the family as well as the maintenance of friendships and kinship could be tricky, due to the fact that academics always need time to complete particular tasks. In Turkey, with the second wave of the women’s movement, the struggle for women rights has become more visible. The emergence of Women Studies departments at universities have contributed to widening the discussions on gender in relation to the labour market, body politics, education, health and education as well as the questioning of gender and university relationships. The struggle in academic life in Turkey for feminist academics is in line with the statements of Ramazanoğlu and Holland:

In this respect, it is likely to say that feminist attempts for knowledge production derives its sources from women’s narratives and lives, particularly the lives of the women who face particular burdens caused by the patriarchal systems.

Discovering the commonalities and diversity in the experiences for women have great importance in understanding social relations and reorganizing the everyday worlds. “An objective of a unifying female identity becomes blind to changing identities through time and context, and this puts boundaries around mutual understanding between differences”(Şimşek, 2012:286). In such a context, Şimşek values digital storytelling as a form of sharing commonalities and diversities among women’s groups (2012:288) and she concludes: “It is clear that digital story circles help forming new connections. In the digital era, attempts to form such circles matter on the way to overcoming exclusion and enhancing inclusion” (2012: 293). Talking about Capture Wales and London’s Voices projects, Thumim also reminds us of the importance of giving voice and hearing voices:

In the editor’s introduction for Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape for a Good Woman (2002), it is stated that,

“I have food on the stove” was a digital storytelling workshop ‘for ourselves’ as facilitators. We were keen on listening to other women’s voices and to have our voices heard by other women in the context of academia. In my personal academic journey with the kitchen as my subject, I focused on the everyday life aspects and the material culture while I was focusing on the gender dynamics in the meaning production process. Although my PhD fieldwork was not connected to digital storytelling directly, my life is and carrying that connection to the process as a way of resisting the stress became a tactic for me. “The storytelling process is a journey” (Lambert, 2010: 24) and my journey in the Digital Storytelling Unit at Hacettepe University seems to inspire me to explore new horizons, enriching my life as an academic mother.