Interview with Philip Cunha

As John K. noted in his post below, according to many conference goers, a young labyrinthian named Philip Cunha made quite a first impression at this year’s Contemporary Labyrinth Association (CLA) summit in the city of Głogów in his native Poland this past weekend. I caught up with Cunha via Google video chat on Monday. We discussed what he views as the most urgent crisis in post-constructivist labyrinth criticism: technology and subversive navigation (SN), and discussed briefly his upcoming Black Thicket publication: On the Question of Techné and Subversive Navigation.

Alex: Hey there Philip, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Thanks so much for talking with me. How are you?

Philip: Greetings Alex, thanks for getting in touch. I'm doing well. I’m back in Vila Real now, just getting settled in after a great weekend in Głogów.

Alex: It certainly does sound like it was a productive conference, I know all of us at CLP really regret not being able to make it out this year. You’re something of a newcomer to the international labyrinthology community. I wonder, could we perhaps start by having you tell our readers a bit about yourself, your critical interests, and how you came to study labyrinths?

Philip: Surely. I suppose my “introduction” to labyrinths occurred when I was five years old. I went to visit my aunt in Warsaw and my cousin took me to a hedge maze on the outskirts of the city. I wandered for hours in between the boundaries, mesmerized by the draw of the center, but even at that young age I was rigorously committed to the sanctity of what I would later understand is true ethical navigation. I see from your smile that you know something of what I’m speaking about.

Alex: Indeed I do, Philip. I had a similar experience myself as a child in Vermont. Wonderful, enchanting, seminal.

Philip: Very much so. Anyway, as I grew older my focus never waned from labyrinths. I'm still to this day grateful that my parents recognized my aptitude and passion for labyrinthology and permitted me to travel to Kraków to study with the estimable Klemens Logewnik.

Alex: Now tell me, how did you come to be interested in the rather new field of subversive navigation?

Philip: Interestingly enough, I suppose I can attribute my rather specialized interest in SN to the fact that from early adolescence on, I was always very intrigued by and conflicted about ARDF (editors note: Amateur Radio Direction Finding). As you may or may not know, ARDF is something of a popular sport in Poland, akin I think to your lacrosse in terms of its appeal. Anyway, in ARDF competition, competitors make use of magnets, compasses, and radios, Morse code and different types of attenuators. In short, many of the same gadgets that have come to serve as tools to subversive labyrinth navigators in recent times. Competitors make their way through dense wooded areas with the aid of this equipment. I was always awed by the competitors’ trek through the convoluted forests, but I could never quite condone their use of technology to facilitate their successes. I suppose I’m galvanized by this same Heideggerian attitude toward technology as it applies to labyrinth navigation. Just as Aaldi and the Medial School sought to explain away the mysteries of the labyrinth, I view SN devices and, to an extent, the labyrinthological project of Stephon Crete, as endeavors which aim to demystify and expose the fundamental absences that are innate to the essential being of labyrinths.

Alex: This puts you in definite agreement with many of the anti-New Constructivist arguments put forth by Bernhard Smallencroft.

Philip: Absolutely. Smallencroft’s work on eco-labyrinthology, contemporary labyrinth ethics, and boundary circumvention have had a formative influence on me, to be sure.

Alex: Could you tell me a bit about your treatise On the Question of Techné and Subversive Navigation that has, as I understand it, been picked up for publication by Black Thicket?

Philip: I'd be happy to. The manuscript was finished last fall, during a sabbatical from teaching at Tras-os-Montes. The text is broken into two divisions. In the first, I address my fundamental problems with SN. Many contemporary labyrinthians, as you well know, argue that SN is not necessarily a bad thing. They view the use of technology within the labyrinth progressionistically, as a natural development of properly futural navigation. In opposition to this view, I argue that this use of technology does violence to the essential being of labyrinths as such, and therefore constitutes an urgent crisis which we labyrinthians must address.

In the second half of the text, I voice my call for a re-enchantment of labyrinths and labyrinthology. I posit decentralization as a potential vehicle for such a quantum gestalt shift. By decentralization I do not mean engaging in what Smallencroft refers to as an inauthentic navigation of the labyrinth, in which we willfully disregard the beck and call of the center. Rather, my project endeavors to reverse the fundamental, longstanding binarism that plagues labyrinth navigation: the privileging of the arrival and the disregarding of the departure. I argue that by assigning equal priority to our experience of departing the labyrinth/returning to the perimeter, we make significant steps towards the recovery of a suitably authentic (in Smallencroft’s sense of the word) navigational sensibility.

Alex: I must say Philip, that is a very interesting and bold thesis indeed. Thank you very much for elucidating it for us. I know all of us here at CLP look forward to hearing more from you in the future. Thanks again for your time, it’s been a true pleasure.

Philip: Thank you so much, Alex. Keep up the good, inspired work at CLP. I hope to hear from you all soon.