Tales from the Chicken Shop:

Undoing a Narrative through storytelling

Welcome to Tales from the Chicken Shop where I attempt to undo the harmful stereotypes the chicken shop has come to acquire and how it has affected those who frequent these businesses.

Before you begin this practice, you must know that this project is divided into six sections. The first section titled Methodology will have me demonstrating why I chose a methodology like walking and audio recordings as a form of data collection with reference to scholars like M. de Certeau (1984) and J. Aoki & A. Yoshimizu (2015) for academic support. The second section titled Background Information will give you some context with the dominant narrative this project aims to undo and counter. The third section titled Walk, Look, Listen, Think will highlight the instructions that I’d recommend following if you are capable of doing to experience what the storyteller is expressing and to follow the process, I performed so that you too are able to embody the lived experience of the stories being told. By following the instruction and following the footsteps of those who came before, you too can re-narrate the dominant stereotypes. The fourth section is where the project takes place and does require walking and listening to fully engage critically with the stories. There are audio files and images provided as well as a map with the location for you to travel to if possible. Follow the footsteps and embody the experience… “go see for yourself” is what a participant told me. So now I tell you…go see it for yourself, go feel it, smell it, be there to see what they saw. The fifth section is my concluding thoughts, and the final section is where I get others to help build and archive work by contacting me with your very own audio recordings or transcripts.

Methodology

Go and see for yourself is what a participant of this project told me, “let’s go and see and you’ll know what I am on about” (Story Two participant, an off-the-record conversation). This was the catalyst in using a multimodal approach, the use of audio recordings and walks for a project that prioritises storytelling fit well. Orthodox academic projects usually consist of ‘jargon-filled prose’ (L. Back 2016). With the cognitive dissonance that many experience with hearing about the discipline of Art and Politics, this project strays away from the ‘sprawling, compendious work of large-scale, cross-cultural comparison monographs’ (S. Mclean 2017: 148-149). Instead taking on a more ‘modestly conceive, usually place-specific ethnographic field monograph’ (S. Mclean 2017: 148-149). Put differently, taking on an unorthodox and experimental approach is a core value within Art and Politics and for this modestly conceive and place-specific project, a creative methodology is used to re-narrate the harmful dominant narratives that surround the chicken shop and the people who frequent it, these peoples being people of colour.

Finding a methodology that would truly help convey, not fully experience, but instead channel a level of embodied experience through those willing to re-narrate the harmful stereotyping spaces like the chicken shop and those who frequent it take. This project went for a more practical stance and adopted walking as an ethnographic methodology. Walking as a methodology helps to study the ‘sociocultural aspects of urban spaces’ (J. Aoki & A. Yoshimizu 2015: 275) as walking places us in an environment to ‘critically engage in urban spaces through sensory and embodied experiences’ (J. Aoki & A. Yoshimizu 2015: 275-6). Walking as an alternative form of knowledge production allows for a wider audience to re-narrate dominant narratives through our own lived experience. With this project, you are recommended to walk from site to site, to ‘listen to…the rhythms and temporalities that constitute the materiality of the city space (H. Lefebvre 1996: 299). In other words, the project requires you to follow in the footsteps of those who came before you and look through their eyes and live their experience with the environment before you. Walking as a methodology will allow you to ‘weave places together’ (M. de Certeau 1984: 97) as well as weave nodes of understanding through ‘tactile apprehension and kinaesthetic appropriation’ (M. de Certeau 1984: 97). Each story told in this project will activate all your senses, and through the methodology of walking the stories will sit longer in thought, ‘creating new embodied ways of knowing’ (S. Pink, M. O’Neill & A.R. Radley 2010: 1) and producing a re-narration of the harmful dominant narrative of the chicken shop and those who frequent it, these peoples mainly affected being people of colour.

Background information:

I recommend you doing a google search for articles on the chicken shop when you get some time and see from your own eyes the harmful narrative that circulates through the media on the chicken shop. There is more effort placed on public and media scrutiny (A. Rhys-Taylor 2017) instead of critical analysis on the lived experience of those that frequent these businesses. The chicken shop has always been seen as a ‘matter out of place’ (M. Douglas 1966:35), a space that has operated as a ‘symbol of defiance on high streets that are becoming more unrecognisable to the people who live near them’ (Bridget Minamore 2017 for VICE). A space of defiance that stands against being ‘fully colonised by white art students and middle classes’ (Bridget Minamore for VICE), an issue many have faced here in Lewisham and South London. While food in Britain has a strong correlation with class, wealth, status, and prestige (E.N. Anderson 2014: 181) the food itself is not what warrants the “negative” stereotyping. Nor does it come from the business or the masses of people who have come to enjoy the food but rather the colonial and imperial residue Britain has left. The issue of race, class, and gender are at play, frequented by more people of colour and mainly a younger male demography, especially here in Lewisham where ‘children and young people 0-19 years make 24.5% of residents, compared to 22.4% for inner London and 23.8% nationally’ (Lewisham Council 2017). The chicken shop has and always been a space where ‘inner-city kids can actually chill’ (Bridget Minamore 2017 for VICE) especially a space and place where people of colour are able to let their guard down to some degree, to reside in a space with little intimidation or reminder of their ‘Otherness’ (S. Hall 1997: 225).

How can something like food and the area food is located in be engrained with presumptions? How does a place in a space come with prenotions of crime, low status, and associated with people of colour? Well, the space we inhabit has never been neutral but rather gendered, racialized and a vessel for power to be manipulated (A. Gupta & J. Ferguson 1992, G. Lipsitz 2007, K. Beebe & A. Davis 2015), space is entrenched with consolidated power dynamics that intersect with nominal categories such as class, race, gender, age, culture, just to name a few. Such power dynamics have been sewed into our social contract (C.W. Mills 1990: 1) and formed over years of colonialism, cemented by ideals of imperialism and white supremacy. Such power dynamics here in the U.K has led to harmful narratives that many people of colour are held to, one specific narrative this project aims to undo and re-narrate is that the chicken shop as a space is a source for crime, where “lower class” peoples, the unhealthy and unhygienic inhabit. The chicken shop has always been a sight of media and public scrutiny, but such stereotypes placed on the chicken shop and its association with people of colour who frequent it here in the U.K are but a lengthy entangled history with imperialism (M. Sheller 2003), the ‘wake’ (C. Sharpe 2016) and ‘afterlife’ (S. Hartman 2007) of colonialism as well as its residue within space. This project aims to counter such narratives paved by imperialism, white supremacy, and the residue of colonialism.

So how does one re-narrate and undo a harmful narrative? This project will develop a practice that would help build and archive bodies of work that produces and catalyses an alternative and parallel form of knowledge production from the narratives formed by the media scrutiny towards the chicken shop and the people of colour associated with it. A body of work that illustrates and highlights how the embodied and lived experiences from those who inhabit the ‘undercommons’ (F. Moten & S. Harney 2013) are of value. Introducing the voices of (an)Other in the mainstream has disrupted the flow of colonial reproduction but ideas of white supremacy still run deep as the ‘unnamed political system’ (C.W. Mills 1990: 1) that has formed the contemporary, modern, and aesthetic world/spaces we move about in today. So, what does this project plan on doing to decentre such ideologies?

The answer to that in this project is by prioritising the stories told by people of colour about their lived and embodied experiences with space. In this project, you will be directed to different locations around South London where you are then to listen to a story relating to a space and place. This space and place being the chicken shop and the lived experiences generated in such place. This method of storytelling is an attempt to re-narrate and undo the harmful dominant narrative that the media and British imperial history has placed on the chicken shop and the people of colour who frequent the space.

Walk, Look, Listen, Think

From here on out, you’ll be introduced to a set of instructions that I would recommend in order to experience each story so that “change” and undoing occurs within you. These instructions are recommendations and not mandatory. You can still listen to the story told from the comfort of your location. If you are unable to visit each site, please refer to the images attached to each story so that you can visualize them. However, for a greater understanding of what is being said, it is recommended to be present in the same space the stories are being told from. There is a map that will point out the location, so please feel free to walk or get a suitable form of transportation there. Please walk around the area and follow the footsteps of those before you.

So please walk, look around, listen carefully, and think about what is being said and how these stories are undoing the harmful dominant narratives placed on the chicken shop and how the lived and embodied experiences of those who frequent these businesses counters such narratives.

STORY 1: Nostalgia

Story 2: Community

Story 3: Transit

Story 4: Busy Bee

Story 5: A Love Story…

Story 6: A Product of Multiculturalism…

Concluding notes

The media scrutiny on the chicken shop not only effects the businesses but the people associated with them. This project has opened a conversation and platform for others to listen to each other’s perspectives and see their side of the story. This place specific study hopes to alleviate some level of issues previously mentioned and through the medium of storytelling I believe it is possible to do so.
This project is in its early stages and will continue to build and archive works and evidence from the public which counters the harmful dominant narratives produced by British media on the chicken shop. Whether this is an effective method in undoing such narratives…I believe so as a conversation can begin and those who have their voices silenced have a medium to be heard.

However, even though I have managed to bring the voices of some onto a platform for others to listen to. The audio recording used within this project are present for the reader to engage with. The multimodal approach to this project is so that an alternative form of knowledge production can be prioritised from that of the ‘thick description’ (C. Geertz 1973: 1) we are pushed to understand. The future of this project might adopt a different approach from audio to assure it sticks to its core of offering different forms of knowledge production.

So, what now?

As stated in the ‘background information’ section, this project is a practice that aims to build and archive a body of work. So far, I have archived 6 stories that counter the harsh stereotyping on the chicken shop and those who frequent them. Let us continue to archive and build more evidence and allow others to hear your lived and embodied experiences with the chicken shop.

So, if you can, submit your tales from the chicken shop, Let’s undo the harmful narrative together because not only are we re-narrating the mainstream, but we are also battling the issues of racism, imperialism and colonial residue and all its multifaceted grips in the spaces we inhabit.

Submit your story by clicking the button below.

Send your audio or transcript via email – jaffar@mycatsdopressupseverymorning.com .

This is not just an academic project for review, but a project seeking solutions.

Bibliography:

·      A. Gupta, & J. Ferguson (1992). Beyond "Culture": Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 6-23.

·       A. Rhys-Taylor (2017), ‘Food and Multiculturalism: a sensory ethnography of East London’, Bloomsbury, London

·       B. Minamore (2017) The Chicken Shop Is London, Available at: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/vbmn43/the-chicken-shop-is-london (Accessed: 8th June 2020).

·       C. Geertz (1973) In The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books.

·       C. Sharpe (2016) In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Durham: Duke University.

·       C.W. Mills (1990) The Racial Contract, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

·       N. Anderson (2014) Eaveryone Eats: Understanding Food and CUlture, 2nd edn., New York & London: New York University Press.

·       Moten & S. Harney (2013). The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. New York: Minor Compositions

·       Lipsitz (2007). The Racialization of Space and the Spatialization of Race: Theorizing the Hidden Architecture of Landscape. Landscape Journal, 26(1), 10-23. 

·       Lefebvre (1996). Writings on cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

·       K. Beebe & A. Davis (2015) Space, Place and Gendered Identities: Feminist History and the Spatial Turn, 1st edn., London: Routledge.

·       L. Back (2016) Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters, London: Goldsmiths Press.

·       Lewisham Council (2017) Overview and Scrutiny: Demographic Change, Safer Stronger Communities Select Committee, London: Lewisham Council.

·       M. de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

·       M. Douglas (1966), Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Ark Paperbacks.

·       M. Sheller, (2003), Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies, London: Routledge.

·       S. Hall (1997) ‘The Spectacle of the "Other"’, in Stuart Hall (ed.) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, pp. 223-79. London: Sage

·       S. Hartman (2007) Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along The Atlantic Slave Route, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

·       S. Hartman (2007) Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along The Atlantic Slave Route, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

·       S. Mclean (2017) Fictionalizing Anthropology: encounters and fabulations at the edges of the human, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.

·       S. Pink, M. O’Neill, & A.R. Radley (2010). Walking across disciplines: From ethnography to arts practice. Visual Studies, 25(1), 1-7.