Schooled in Grief Amidst Climate Disaster
Amid the solidification of bipartisanism and the pervasive threat of injustice and disaster, western society is increasingly unable to have civil dialogues to progress and enable basic survival, let alone human flourishing. Education, as one of the pillars of a society, must be rooted in truth, and this root must come out of such dialogues. These dialogues need to result from acknowledging a collective humanity and suffering. We need to speak for our suffering and for those who cannot speak for themselves.[1] I will focus on public pedagogy and the modes of authority that prevent a dialogical and discursive relationship between institutions and people. The site of analysis through which I will argue is McMaster’s fall major production, Nothing Remains the Same. The program describes the devising process of the play as follows:
“…our research class assembled to tackle the subject of the climate crisis. The skies had turned orange; the air was hard to breathe… The experience immersed us all in the process of imagining futures that might grow out of the crisis we were experiencing” (Cockett).
I will use Judith Butler's Precarious Life as the text that shapes my argument. As the precarity of life is hinged upon the only universal experience being grief, suffering, and death, Butler reminds us that true justice arises through a willingness to rescind individualism, break away from a fear of authority, and embrace the reality that in at least some small ways, our lives are in the hands of others
[1] This idea is framed by Cornel West in our course – as first articulated by Theodor Adorno. For the purposes of clarity in this essay, I am not engaging with the text as a whole. Voicing suffering, in my view, is similar to the Levinas’ idea of the “face,” which is why it is mentioned.
Nothing Remains the Same and climate activism is a form of public pedagogy that schools us in grief; by turning us to the face of incoming disaster, they prompt us to think about how our obligation to others parallels others’ obligation to us.
Public discursive practices are rooted in some level of dissent and debate, and this remains essential to a healthy democracy. A public pedagogy might be imagined as a social and ethical responsibility to lean into this contention. In Precarious Life, Butler discusses how post-9/11 America’s interest in forcibly and violently imposing vulnerability in Afghanistan (and elsewhere in the Middle East) was a reactionary campaign that emerged out of the feeling that it was necessary to retaliate against Al-Qaeda through abjectly violent means. The public discourse that followed this, especially in circles that opposed the American government's actions and attacks on civilian life, was forcibly silenced. This pervasive control of thought parallels climate activism suppression and might be imagined through critical pedagogical frameworks. Such frameworks emphasize the relationship between educational practices and public life. Henry Giroux, a key thinker in critical pedagogy, states that “Expanding critical pedagogy as a mode of public pedagogy suggests producing modes of knowledge and social practices in a variety of sites that not only affirm oppositional thinking, dissent, and cultural work but also offer opportunities to mobilize instances of collective outrage and collective action” (Giroux 29). His point about collective outrage and action speaks to Butler’s ideas about how dissent and debate need to include, and depend on, the voices of those critical towards institutions like state policy or civic culture (Butler, Precarious Life xix). By denouncing an individual's reputation and credibility on matters of social and political life because they deny the status quo is more than suggestive of a threat to democracy. This is ironic, given that the ‘protection’ of democracy is something that these institutional practices of censorship and surveillance strive so strongly to do. An example of such suppression includes how, in the United States, ‘critical infrastructure protection laws’ have been passed in twenty-one states following the protests that objected to the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation (Lakhani et. al). These protests would not only displace Indigenous peoples, causing unnecessary suffering immediately, but also create infrastructure that would harm the earth. Through the criminalization of activist praxis, a fundament of critical pedagogy, it is elucidated that caring for the future of humanity requires breaking away from authorial violence.
Capitalist-individualism differs from what Emmanuel Levinas imagined when he described seeing the face of the Other. This idea heavily influences Butler and is the ‘answer’ in the text. They quote Levinas, “My ethical relation of love for the other stems from the fact that the self cannot survive by itself alone, cannot find meaning with its own being-in-the-world…To expose myself to the vulnerability of the face is to put my ontological right to existence into question. In ethics, the other's right to exist has primacy over my own” (Precarious Life 132). The concept of the “face” offers a framework to imagine how the unique individual is connected to other humans, and that this recognition is an act of surrender. The individualism of late-stage capitalism differs from this as it seeks to deny this connection, instead arguing that self-sufficiency is the foundation of a ‘flourishing’ society. The uniqueness of Levinas’ concept of the face lies in how it explicates one’s indebtedness towards the Other. This meaning that once we see this face, we have “an ethical demand upon [us]” (Butler, Precarious Life 131). By ignoring the face, we “become an accomplice in death” (Levinas qtd. in Butler, Precarious Life 131). This very idea challenges the rhetoric of capitalist-individualism – if we have the chance to help someone and are able, then to not help them would be a great injustice. These ideas extend to the climate crisis. Whether it be the farmers who supply one’s food or the pharmacist who fills a prescription, an ethics rooted in love for the Other (because they have sustained one’s survival) – is an antidote to a deeply desolate outlook on humanity's future. Butler, who is answerable to Levinas, calls us to rescind the sense of individualism born out of censorship of dissent. In Nothing Remains the Same, the audience is spoken to directly as a form of call-and-response. While watching the play, I was shown ‘that face’ and could not turn away from it. However, the face also has the adverse effect, as described in Precarious Life. Climate activist Greta Thunberg’s “face”[2] is ridiculed and has become a tactic of dehumanization when her calling out of world leaders was ridiculed and meme-ified, just as Butler describes has happened in the Middle East with lives being rendered ungrievable and monstrous. Nothing Remains the Same asks questions about how institutional powers would let us get to a stage where the earth is burning for days, as does Thunberg. It grounds itself in grief using multi-media, song, and dance to place the viewer opposite the face of human suffering. The Other, in this case, is both one’s future self, the future of their loved ones, and humanity as a whole. By looking at the face and considering the Other, we might be schooled in grief by recognizing that our interconnectivity puts our “ontological right to existence into question,” as even if we do everything in our power to act sustainability, we cannot save ourselves (Levinas qtd. in Butler, Precarious Life 132). When this is questioned, a self-interested ethics is mobilized. It is not inherently selfish or morally wrong, but once one realizes that their life depends on the actions of others, they might be more motivated to act.
[2] I have used face in quotation marks to denote that I am using the word in the Levinas sense, not to dehumanize Thunberg. I have cited the video where she calls out political leaders in my Works Cited.
Next, I will discuss what Butler calls themself to answer in Precarious Life: “If we are interested in arresting cycles of violence to produce less violent outcomes, it is no doubt important to ask what, politically, might be made of grief besides a cry for war” (xii). Nothing Remains the Same also invites the viewer to imagine this idea. It explores a future where this violence is arrested, and interconnectivity is embraced. It wrestles with the idea of de-individualization through future humans living in a symbiotic relationship with fungus. Though scary at first, humans begin to flourish, once this is embraced and they reconnect to the natural earth. The play was devised through “the idea that complex patterns and systems are created through a multiplicity of simple actions and reactions, working in combination with each other, like ants in a hive” (Cockett). I interpreted this as a metaphor for the much needed [acknowledgement of the] symbiotic relationship between humans. As we are already seeing human and animal life die from this violence, we must turn to the face of our future, have it educate us, and not “discount the words that deliver that message to us” (Butler, Precarious Life 150). This can be interpreted through Giroux’s idea on pedagogical authority:
“Authority in this perspective in not simply on the side of oppression, but is used to intervene and shape the space of teaching and learning to provide students with a range of possibilities for challenging a society's commonsense assumptions, and for analyzing the interface between their own everyday lives and those broader social formations that bear down on them” (34).
This idea of authority within education can be applied to news media and other institutions that serve as a ‘voice for the people’. This voice seeks to not disturb the status quo or get themselves in trouble. In Gender Trouble, Butler writes on their history of trouble, whether with feminism or as a child. They say, “Perhaps trouble need not carry such a negative valence. To make trouble was, within the reigning discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely because that would get one in trouble” (Butler, Gender Trouble xxvii). Here, Butler addresses how, by questioning authority, one will always get in trouble, not because they did something wrong but because they are merely questioning the authority’s legitimacy. This paradoxical idea of authority is hinged upon how discursive echo chambers and the ‘moderate’ news, are not interested in getting in trouble. This fear of authority, whether it be inter-personal, social, or institutional, prevents us from fulfilling our ethical responsibility of asking questions. As a result, we are schooled away from grief, becoming desensitized to death and suffering. The call-and-response nature of Butler's Precarious Life can be looked upon as a commentary on the responsibilities of the individual to ask questions without constant fear of reprimand. Through being schooled in grief, one is allowing “suffering to speak” (Taylor 12). Through “talking about truth as a way of life,” one transforms suffering into progress (Taylor 12). Yet, there are severe repercussions for those who speak out for suffering. Butler’s discussion of Michel Foucault’s ideas on governmentality is especially relevant to this point. Governmentality is the “mode of power concerned with the maintenance and control of bodies and persons…[it] operates through policies and departments…through the law…through state and non-state institutions and discourses that are legitimated neither by direct elections nor through established authority” (Foucault qtd. in Butler, Precarious Life 52). A mode to counter this ephemeral authority might include educational practices that involve, as Henry Giroux states “providing students with the skills, ideas, values, and authority necessary for them to nourish a substantive democracy, recognize anti-democratic forms of power, and to fight deeply rooted injustices…” (Giroux 30). This means shaping a new generation that does not fear disturbing the peace. This is not only applicable to formal education, but also to public pedagogy.
Through this discussion of climate activism and Nothing Remains the Same, I have argued that Judith Butler's Precarious Life can be understood through critical pedagogical ideas. A public pedagogy might be imagined as the ability to access unbiased information that does not desensitize violence and protest suppression. As Butler schools us in grief, prompting us to look to the face of suffering, so too does Nothing Remains the Same. Both texts ask us to imagine alternative modes of being, including the descension from individualism into a recognition of the interdependency of humanity. Despite barriers to this public pedagogy of discourse and dialogue, Butler (in the context of the War on Terror) and Nothing Remains the Same (with respect to the climate crisis) instill an understanding that the consequences of not acting are far greater than those of challenge authority. Perhaps trouble is not something to be troubled by, but instead, a marker of successful disruption. By looking at the face of suffering, we should feel motivated to act.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life : The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso, 2006.
Butler, Judith. “Preface (1990).” Gender Trouble. Tenth Anniversary ed., Routledge, 2002, pp. xxvii-xxxiii.
Giroux, Henry A. “Critical Pedagogy in Dark Times.” Praxis Educativa (Santa Rosa, Argentina), vol. 17, no. 2, 2013.
“Greta Thunberg to world leaders: 'How dare you – you have stolen my dreams and my childhood' – video.” The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/s ep/23/greta-thunberg-to-world-leaders-how-dare-you-you-have-stolen-my-dreams-and-my-childhood-video. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.
Lakhani, Nina et. al. “How criminalisation is being used to silence climate activists across the world.” The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/12/how-criminalisation-is-being-used-to-silence-climate-activists-across-the-world. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.
Taylor, Astra. Examined Life : Excursions with Contemporary Thinkers. New Press, 2009.
Nothing Remains the Same. McMaster University, 2023, www.nothingremainsthesame.com/. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.
