On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace by Phanuel Antwi

Pluto Press, 2023, Part of the Vagabonds Series

Look, I have said it before and I will say it again (the next time this happens), but I don’t know anyone who isn’t an academic who reads as many academic texts as I do.

There is a reason for this.

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NB in the below writing I utterly fail to engage with the topic or themes of the text, so if you want a rigorous, close (or even conscious) reading, you’re in the wrong place. My baby is very very young, if you need me to have an excuse.

On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace has an extended Acknowledgements section at the end that may well contain more names than any acknowledgement section I’ve ever seen in my life.

Normally, when a book’s acknowledgements is this many pages long, it is because there’s lots of detail about the people who are mentioned. There is some detail, but not a lot here. Just a huge, huge, list of names.

This very much surprised me, because – as happens with many academic texts that I read – it didn’t feel to me like a text that had been read much before publication at all…

I’m not saying it’s bad or that the ideas aren’t interesting or (sometimes) interestingly written about, but it just fundamentally felt (to me) like this book wasn’t… Polished.

It seems common for academic writing not to find the best way to express something (be that the most beautiful, the clearest or the tightest), but instead to find the longest way to express an idea. Academics love words. And often seem to hate the chiselling required to turn language into literature.

(you can argue that academic writing isn’t literature, sure, and I shouldn’t be reading it expecting that, but I think that if a piece of writing isn’t trying to be the best version possible of that piece of writing, then something is lost, no???)

That “chasing a word count feel” isn’t the case in every single chapter included in this book, thankfully, but there are definitely some where it really feels like the meat is in the first couple of paragraphs and the pages that follow are reiterating the opening in different, longer, forms.

When this book is interesting – which it very often is – there is a real urgency, a seriousness and intellectual engagement on display that is  important, intriguing, playful.

But – a problem for the casual reader and possibly not for the author’s peers – I found that there were too many times when an idea was expressed and explained concisely in a couple of paragraphs… but then explained and reiterated and backed up with additional evidence and additional sources and quotations…

And maybe this is what the text is trying to do that, to me, feels redundant: in order for an academic text to justify itself as part of an academic tradition, it must dedicate more than half of its word count to other people’s ideas, to other people’s work, which – though I understand (ethically) should be cited as sources of the author’s ideas/understanding where necessary – I (me me me me me) just don’t need to read…

For me, the other texts an author has used to create/influence their work should be listed in a bibliography, sure, but don’t need to be in the text when doing requires so much additional prose.

This is academic writing, though, I think?

I think I’m objecting to a text doing what it is meant to be doing. Which is probably, actually, not fair of me. Of little old nobody me.

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What this book is about, which is very interesting, is the idea of cuddling, state cuddling, cuddliness, and embrace and the ways in which racism (particularly anti-black racism in the United States of America) often coincides with physical and institutionalised embrace/embraces.

There are fascinating and insightful essays and sections here on topics such as the use of historic stereotyping in contemporary reality television and talent show competitions … there is exploration of the techniques used by American police when they suffocate black men to death (as frequently happens – that many “accidents” is not accidental) … there is really interesting stuff around the queer acts presumed to have happened in the holds of transatlantic slave ships during the middle passage … there is great discussion around exploring these interlinking words: hold, embrace, cuddle, and so on. Also a piece about the history of teddy bears.

It’s all good stuff.

And this is why I found On Cuddling frustrating, because what I want from a book is the author to express something clearly, succinctly, provocatively (sometimes) in the manner they think is best, but this book – and maybe much academic writing – feels like ideas are dwelled on and repeated in a way that that that…

that that that

that that that

that that that

…repetition not clarifying meaning, but rather obscuring it…

…Polysyllabic language, the academic’s friend and this reader’s enemy, litters the text, with clarity often jettisoned for [what felt to me like] jargon…

But then is this book just not for me???

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Many of the chapters would work great out of context!

There are some good poems here! The autobiographical introduction offers a fascinating premise for the origin of the book’s thought that isn’t really followed up…

I’m sure there’s also a great podcast interview somewhere with the author talking about the themes … but as a book, as a text, that repetition and reiteration (again, possibly just the demands of the text’s style), really dampened my enthusiasm…

That said, it is a genuinely interesting book with serious ideas, and if you are an academic or someone who doesn’t dislike the style (the rigour? the intellect?) of academic writing, then this might be a good read for you.

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What do I want from a text like this? I don’t know. I don’t know what I want, and maybe that’s the problem…

Am I too stupid for a text like this, should I be reorganising my bookshelves and only holding onto the books that I’m able to understand with my tiny little brain?

Is wanting clarity, is wanting neatness, is wanting directness ignorant of me, a sign of failed intellect?

Maybe it is.

But yes, it is an interesting text. But maybe I shouldn’t be reading beautifully published academic texts if this is what I’m reduced to, though.

Ok. Sorry.