Small Pleasures and Precarious Hopes

by J J Cohen

A lull. The manuscript of Veer Ecology went to the U of Minnesota Press in June, the copyedited Earth is back at Bloomsbury, Julian Yates and I submitted a prospectus for a big new collaborative project and are waiting to hear back. Three books, each one collaborative; no more lonely projects. A piece on Sir Gawain and local readings has meanwhile gone to its editors, a review essay on emergence and ecology is now with Public Books, conference travel (Edinburgh, London) is complete ... whew. Last week we finalized the GW MEMSI calendar of events, among our most ambitious. I think I can call this summer full, especially as the days shorten and the autumn semester looms.

***

Summer is a difficult time for many of us who work within higher education. Support systems vanish, and for a great number so does a source of income. Even full time faculty tend to be employed on nine-month contracts; making those paychecks extend over the "extra" three months -- when faculty are hard at work on the projects that they are told are necessary for raises -- is not always easy. Summer teaching is especially difficult to come by for adjuncts. That's one reason among many that I donate at this time of year to PrecariCorps, an organization that assists those employed in non-permanent positions. Health care needs, research travel, financial emergencies of all kinds, teaching supplies: you name it, PrecariCorps attempts to assist. Yes, it is sad that we need such an organization -- but the fact is, we need such an organization. I urge you to donate if you can. The money you give is tax deductible, if that matters.

***

I've been thinking a great deal this summer about shared precarity, especially in the wake of reading Anna Tsing's wonderful book The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. "What do you do when your world falls apart?" Tsing asks in her prologue ... and responds that she walks out in search of mushrooms, in order to know that "there are still pleasures amidst the terrors of indeterminacy" (1). Such wandering (she calls it "an adventure story": she writes in a mode medievalists know as romance) is not a turning of the back against a difficult world but a recognition of endemic and shared precariousness. For example:

Modernization was supposed to fill the world -- both communist and capitalist -- with jobs, and not just any jobs but 'standard employment' with stable wages and benefits. Such jobs are now quite rare: most people depend on much more irregular livelihoods. The irony of our times, then, is that everyone depends on capitalism but almost no one has what we used to call a 'regular job' (3)

Tsing urges us to rail against this unjust system, most certainly -- but to recognize as well that the nonhuman world has likewise been transformed profoundly by capitalism's propensity to extract, commodify, alienate (especially by turning the entangled into stand-alone units) and ruin. Her book attempts to think capitalism without a progress narrative, without the assumption that history naturally moves towards communal betterment. "Precarious livelihoods and precarious environments" are intimate to each other, and an earthwide condition. What Tsing calls "patchy unpredictability" is the result, and she finds in its disharmonious, "disturbance-based" ecologies glimmers of hope. Her solution to global ruin involves local action, propelled by curiosity and the embrace of freedom (meaning, stepping away together from the systems that would organize people, animals, forests, plants, minerals into alienated individualities). She does not provide a roadmap for how this future might be built. She embraces instead the aventure of openness to a world differently imagined, observed, roamed.

***

This summer we adopted a rescue dog named Wrigley -- and expanded at our daughter's urging his name to Wrigley Mercutio Cohen. Likely a mix of beagle and Jack Russell terrier, Wrigley is sweet, devoted, and anxious. He is about seven years old, and in that time he has at least twice been given up, perhaps because of his separation anxiety. When Wrigley first came to our home he spent each night walking into our three bedrooms in succession, a nervous round to ensure that all of us were still there. He did not like to take walks because (I think) he was afraid he would not be coming back to our house. At some point someone must have kicked him because he is terrified of feet. Nothing makes Wrigley happier than to sit by someone's side and be praised, or petted, or simply allowed to sleep peacefully. Wrigley is old enough that he is difficult to place, so Lucky Dog was thrilled that we wanted him. We feel that there are so many great dogs out there who have lost their homes that we should always choose an older dog over a puppy. We don't know what happened to Wrigley's brother Mugsy but we hope someone welcomed him into a new place of family.

***

This summer many of my friends are dealing with the health problems of their aging parents (and a few are dealing with their own challenges). My dad is starting treatment for lymphoma in a few weeks and that sudden diagnosis has me thinking about how quickly life changes.

***

I'm a little worried about our son's return to college in the fall even as I know he will be fine. He has had insomnia lately. Honestly, so have I.

***

I was thinking last night that many of our friends and most family are the very people that Donald Trump's supporters hate. Yes, I know his numbers have dwindled somewhat, but how can so much hatred flourish? I understand that much of this venom against others is motivated by the "shared precarity" that Tsing has detailed. I also get that the fervor to burn the system down (whether the government, the academy, or what have you) can be intoxicating, and blind those who advocate the making of ruins to the fact they are likely the ones who will survive such destruction fairly well -- but there are many vulnerable groups who rely on the law and others structures and institutions now in place for their own safety. It is difficult for me to reconcile the call to smash things (whether it comes from the left or right) with a desire to foster, enable, and imagine shared thriving. Tsing advocates careful observation and inquisitiveness as agents of change and catalysts to alliance. Maybe this is the aged scholar in me speaking, but like her I am more inclined to build than to break.

***

A week ago I had an argument with a good friend who did not understand why three people in my family supported Bernie Saunders over Hillary Clinton. She asked why vote for something impossible? I told her something that listening to the Hamilton soundtrack over and over again while running has emphasized for me: the founding of the United States was impossible, conflict ridden, a struggle, compromised, full of problems and selling out, not the ideal or at least more inclusive community to which many wanted it to aspire. But the impossible was also necessary. The impossible remains necessary. So much work yet to do.

***

I don't understand why anyone was dismayed when Michelle Obama spoke of the difficulty of sleeping in a White House built by enslaved people. I don't understand why anyone would want to defend that system of force and violence by suggesting that at least those slaves were well fed. WTF. You don't have to know much history to recognize that every good thing is already compromised, polluted, violence-limned from its foundation. That's why we study the past: the untranscended ill within the precarious good, the possibility within the constant and terrifying failures. Isn't that why we also dream better futures -- not so that we can forget the difficulty of what has been, but to construct more humane collectivity, belongings that inflict fewer violences? Don't burn down what the past has given us -- but don't idealize, or purify, or fail to admit that every human thing is contingent, uncertain, really hard, inescapably impure. I believe Tsing when she writes that capitalism has benefited too much from the progress narratives it sold us. We don't need to smash things when we are already dwelling in ruins.

***

I thought about leaving Twitter this summer because I was weary of receiving harassing, antisemitic messages, mostly focused on the work I have made available here at ITM on medieval race. Seems that when myths of eternal whiteness turn out not to be so eternal -- and when the Middle Ages reveals itself a difficult middle, not a purified expanse -- racists get angry. What I cannot get over (even as I am not surprised by this fact) is that most of the racist tweets arrived from ardent supporters of Donald Trump.

***

Last night I sat in the backyard while Wendy discussed recent political developments with a friend over for dinner (they have both been locally elected Democratic office holders; I admire Wendy so much for the hard work of political building she constantly undertakes, without pay or much other reward). Wrigley joined me outdoors, pleased to sit and watch a setting sun through high trees. And to sniff my bourbon. The wind shifted. Some of the humidity dispersed. For a few moments a change of season promised. This morning though the mugginess was so intense I had a difficult time completing my run.

***

In a month I will be back in the classroom. Each year I find the task of teaching 18-21 year olds more emotionally draining, and yet an undertaking to which I am wholly committed (my university tends to reward graduate teaching over the kinds of "service teaching" I have grown to love). These young men and women possess futures that are wholly uncertain. They know Tsing's "shared precarity" quite intimately, already. A problem with the call to burn the academy down -- to destroy what remains because it is irredeemable -- is that such young people are the ones who will be most adversely affected. Teaching them in the ruins is not the most cheering endeavor. Yet given the alternative -- breaking things even more, giving up on fugitive shelters, dismissing them to the maw of a gig economy in the mistaken belief they will somehow make their own way -- well, I will take pitching an uncomfortable tent over hurling some flame.

***

I do not think it a coincidence that I teach both medieval studies (the roaming of the distant past) and ecocriticism (the investigation of current and abiding precarities). Both are about difficult entanglement and future making. For me, at least.

***

I posted this to Facebook yesterday, while I was thinking about small pleasures and hopes -- and their relation to lives on a wider scale. I'll share it with you to close.

August 5 already, and summer's dwindling is unmistakable when I run: 5:30 AM and no orange promise of a rising sun. I have a route through Chevy Chase (DC & MD) that brings me past hushed residential streets and cityscapes bright with buses. As I pass the Starbucks at Livingston and Connecticut I glance inside to see if the man who reads the New York Times and the woman with the laptop are having morning coffee. If I see them both all seems right, and then onwards past the park to wonder whose dog demanded an early walk. Stars, darkness and a quiet world: I've been running this route long enough to love even that small change.

Summer coming to its end has me feeling a little blue. I'm looking forward to my return to the classroom, of course: an ecocriticism graduate seminar that I've been longing to teach. The Cohens have a trip to Maine looming, to spend some time with my family. Past years have seen us in Australia, New Zealand, Paris, Iceland, Alaska ... but this year no big trip. Alex has been working at the Folger, most recently at the theatre as they transition the stage for a new production. I suspect this summer is his last of coming home from the PacNW, so we're treasuring the time we have. Katherine injured herself in West Virginia while at sleepaway camp (I got the call as I waited to board my plane for London and NCS): she fell off a horse and got entangled in the stirrup on the way down. After a month of doctor visits, PT and crutches, she is nearly back to herself. We are *so* fortunate. She was supposed to be at the Shakespeare Theatre for the past two weeks, at a camp where they mount a production of Julius Caesar, but her injury meant she had to withdraw. She and I have therefore been spending a great deal of time together ... and it has been kind of wonderful to be able to enjoy her company for so long. I also think I needed someone to throw a monkey wrench into the work-all-time machine I too easily become. Our new dog Wrigley is also a good intensifier of the pleasures of home.

I know, summer is not quite over. But next week marks a reabsorption into camp and work routines, then comes Maine ... and then Katherine begins 7th grade, Alex starts his sophomore year at Lewis & Clark, and I return to GW . I will miss the lull that has unfolded over the past few weeks. My dad was diagnosed with lymphoma recently. It could have been much worse. I have been contemplating as a result though how small moments -- pauses, respites, unexpected breaks -- matter in retrospect at least as much as big experiences like family trips. And maybe the small pleasures within routines matter as well, even if these habits or regimens can seem like relentless forces at times. What won't be of consequence in the end, I think, is lifelong participation in the endless race to get things done.

So happy nearing end of summer (or if you are in New Zealand or Australia, end of winter). I hope the change of season is filling you with some hope, and some pleasures to hold.