ONCE I GOT TOLD OFF FOR CALLING MYSELF A TART
Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , 1907: I once got admonished in a work meeting saying I was an academic tart in how I go about my research. I meant tart in the sense that I'll do whatever, provided it's ethical, to promote myself. And, moreover, I was always happy to read and research outside my so-called discipline. Though I was politics, I was more than happy to read anthropology, biology, cultural studies, ecology, economics, geography, history, law, psychology, social policy, social work, sociology, and even engineering, mathematics and physics (if not too technical) for me to gain understanding. I was very cross-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary in the way I did my research, though I must admit I never bothered with chemistry or religious studies. (I was told that that there's a difference between those disciplinaries but I never worked it out!) Do you find the tart word when used to describe people, especially women, an offensi...