Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine: a tale of becoming... a working-class academic (researching environ(mental) health)

...knowledge is not classificatory. It is rather storied. (Ingold, 2011, 159). The semi-fictional story of Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine (which you may eventually come to, although it may be read without reading this preface-epilogue) traces the journey of a working-class child who slowly transforms into a transclassed young adult to become a lecturer in higher education. During his time teaching and studying/researching at university he is transformed yet again into a middle-class academic (by Mr. Neat and Mr. Tidy who want nothing more than to 'straighten him out'!). Eventually, however, this enclassing has the reverse effect on him as he has a moment of existential clarity and becomes a working-class 'haecceity' in academe, finally accepting/realising that he/she [3] has no 'fixed' form as an organismic 'subject' (although a story never finishes at 'the end'). This preface-epilogue is messy. It introduces-concludes the story of Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine by taking a nonlinear route across a wide plane, assembling themes of children's literature, gender (in)equality, environmental (in)justice, psychiatry/psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, schizoanalysis, happiness, academic elitism, suicide, flat caps, myceliums, extended minds and entangles them together within the assemblage of social class and inequity; because they cannot be separated. You, the reader/performer, will have to do some work. You are not merely a passive observer or audience member. By your very actions (or 'intra-actions'), of reading this you are implicated and imbricated in the story. You are changing it as we speak; because you cannot be separated from it. This is not symbolic. It means nothing. It is always a becoming...