In her debut collection of essays, Peripathetic: Notes on (un)belonging, Cher Tan turns an unorthodox attention to the possibilities and power of resistance. Born from a rebellious DIY sensibility and sustaining an anti-establishment energy, Tan's essays examine how meaning, purpose, and change are produced in and against our digitally networked, late-capitalist world.
The nine interconnected essays centre around identity, technology and counterculture, and explore topics such as internet culture (“Speed Test”), precarious work (“Shit Jobs”), queerness (“Who's Your Normie?”), punk and DIY culture (“The Lifestyle Church”) and writing (“This Unskilled Life”).
But listing them like this feels like an abbreviation: these are incredibly wide-ranging and ambitious essays that address in equal measure migration, inequality, subversion, survival, how we know what we know, and what we do with that knowledge, and, as the title suggests, are also written with sharp wit and humour.
Book Review: Peripathetic: Notes on (un)belonging – Cher Tan (New South)
Tan is part of a new generation of Australian essayists, including Eda Gunaydin ( Root and Branch: Essays on Inheritance , 2022), Sally Olds ( People Who Lunch: Essays on Work, Leisure & Loose Living , 2022) and Gemma Nisbet ( The Things We Live With: Essays on Uncertainty , 2023).
These essays explore central concepts in associative and idiosyncratic ways, and while the sequence of the essays may not form a linear narrative, they are held together by the authors' sensibilities, opinions, and life experiences.
Alienation, restlessness and digital life
Peripathetic's subtitle is “Notes on (Dis)Belonging.” “Notes” suggests direct communication – thoughts and ideas captured in the moment – and a more physical, tactile text, in which Tan uses techniques such as fragmentation, footnotes, and blacked-out, edited text to subtly differentiate each essay.
Thematically, (Dis)Belonging suggests a restlessness; belonging is an elusive concept, always in dialogue with its opposite. In the opening essay, “Is This Real?”, Tan pursues the ideal of a cohesive self that straddles the physical and virtual realms. As Tan explains, there is no longer a clear divide between real life and digital life.
Now you can be anyone or anything, and still be yourself. IRL becomes URL, then IRL, then over and over again. GIF of a snake eating its own tail.
Like the endlessly circular movements of a GIF, Peripathetic's essays deftly move between life writing and criticism, with sharp humor and references ranging from advanced theory to niche DIY publications. In an article called “On Writing,” published by Meanjin in 2018, Tan expressed her determination to put her ideas in dialogue with other thinkers. “I write to quote,” she explains with her characteristic candor.
Tan connects literature, film, music, cultural theory, philosophy, and internet culture, each reference appearing just long enough to spark a connection before the essay accelerates, a style that invites the reader to trace a broad map of influences and resonances.
Peripathetic makes a great reading list for those wanting to explore contemporary cultural theory (Lauren Berlant, author of Cruel Optimism; Sianne Ngai, who specializes in aesthetics and emotion theory; philosopher Byungchol Han; and time activist Jenny O'Dell). or Punk and underground literature (Virginie Despanto, Lisa Carver, Ian Svenenius), or many other genres related to the essay.
This is especially notable due to the fact that, as Tan points out, she has not received any higher education; instead, she has built up her knowledge in a DIY way, driven by a strong sense of critical inquiry.
The references zigzag between high and low, formulaic and ephemeral: in “Shit Jobs,” for example, Tan profiles some of the low-paying, precarious jobs he's worked, giving them tongue-in-cheek aspirational titles (liquor store assistant, data entry specialist).
In the first few pages, she cites a variety of sources, including radical anthropologist David Graeber (author of Bullshit Jobs), activist texts published by the anarchist collective CrimethInc., and Anna Lowenhaupt Zinn's influential study of globalization, capitalism, and matsutake, Mushrooms at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in the Ruins of Capitalism.
“I learned I can do anything.”
In the collection's central essay, “Lifestyle Church”, Tan traces his upbringing through the DIY music scenes in Singapore and then Australia (Kaurna Country/Adelaide, then Naam/Melbourne), where he has lived since 2012. Organized as a series of vignettes that loosely trace the timeline of Tan's “protracted adolescence”, the essays chart his life embracing and being embraced by Singapore's punk and extreme music scene in the 2000s.
Underground music was an escape from the oppression of an illiberal democracy where, as Tan puts it metaphorically, “we prided ourselves on making drones.” As she became more involved in the underground music scene, she realized the stakes were higher in Asia than for her Western counterparts.
There were some of us who really wanted to smash imperialism, and it wasn't just a slogan: writing and singing songs about it was our way of wanting to make it happen, to shout about it and make it happen.
Participating in the scene was an outlet for her anger and an expression of rebellion, but it was also an education: “There I learned I could do anything,” Tan writes. Here are some of the skills she acquired:
Critical thinking, hand sewing your own rips, feeling comfortable performing on stage, navigating cultural differences, dealing with conflict, self-publishing, consent, asserting your rights, sharing within your means, changing the tires on your bike, abolitionist politics, planning timelines, organizing events, making things work with very little money.
This subcultural journey and the skills it enabled were revelatory and life-defining experiences. Though deeply formative, Tan is careful not to fall into uncritical nostalgia: “You read punk memoirs and think, do I sound like a wet rag constantly lamenting the underground's repeated decline?” She doesn't think so. Not at all.
Tan's experiences of racism and sexism, and her observations of the scene's gradual commodification, gentrification and decentralization, belie any suggestion that it is a utopian space, and it is testament to her skill as a writer that she is able to embrace these contradictions while still ultimately respecting the power of DIY culture.
While Tan can be considered part of a new generation of essayists, he is also part of a growing number of writers who continue to hone and pursue their craft through zines and subversive publishing. Australian authors such as Anwen Crawford, Max Easton, Bastian Fox Phelan and Safdar Ahmed publish in both traditional and DIY literary formats. It is encouraging to see local publishers recognising the power of literature forged through alternative and subcultural avenues.
As a writer who discovered her voice through punk, DIY, and zine culture, there is much I recognize and admire in Peripathetic. Tan's collection is an important document of the DIY sensibility, generously and rigorously sharing her life experiences, critical thinking, and networks of influence. Tan's unique and forthright voice speaks to the power of dissent and insights gained through a curious, restless creativity.