We are not going to finish the work. The work is intergenerational, ancestral, microbial, bacterial, spiritual, socio-material, technological, ecological, all those things, and more.
--Báyò Akómoláfé
Last week in conversation with Báyò Akómoláfé,[1] we were discussing the extraordinary challenge: What do we do when all we do is reinforcing the problem?
In Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era, my magical realist, speculative fiction, I attempt to incite such a deterritorialization of the infrastructures of storytelling. I cite Anton Chekov: "How are we describing the structural, legal, and ethical problems with which we are confronted?...When we acknowledge that misrepresentation of the problem massively exacerbates it, we can begin to experiment with ever-expanding possibilities of change, not fixed 'solutions'" (Letter to Alexis Surron, October 27, 1888). Echoing Chekov, Alnoor Ladha warns of solutionism: "The manner by which you approach the problem is more important than the thing you think you are approaching. Our ontologies determine what we believe are problems to be solved, and how we go about them." Chekov tells us: there are no solutions in life, there are only alternatives--in contrast to Margaret Thatcher's TINA (There Are No Alternatives). In our story, Zazu looks for "alternatives" for a better world in the least expected places, the places you would think the opposite would be the case (salt, shit, sand, and amber). Congruently, in one of her critiques of globalization, The End of Imagination, Arundhati Roy implores us to "conjure beauty from the most unexpected things, to find magic in places where others thought never to look" (179). Fertile conjurings are transformational, static solutions reify the status quo.
Con-spiring (breathing with) beauty and transdisciplinary, intergenerational text, I constructed Zazu Dreams as an attempt to embody the cross-cultural mythological trickster storyteller. In conjunction with an inquiry-based dialogue between the sciences (400+ endnotes) and the humanities (a fable for adults, yet coded in the primary narrative as a children's tale), the paintings by Micaela Amateau Amato, my mother and primary collaborator, interpenetrate both variations of text (storytelling and information-dense data).
Inhabiting the fertility of the interstitial while embracing difference and multiplicity, I incorporated intersecting languages of the Diaspora. The story, images, and endnotes play between ancestral wisdoms/ ancient technologies and modern-industrial daily habituated obediences. In contrast to monolingual patterns resulting in monocultural hegemonies, I attempted to invoke socio-spiritual commitments to multidimensional eco-justice perspectives.
Since its publication, I have performed Zazu Dreams hundreds of times in a vast array of venues: academic (university classes and conferences), scientific (museums and planetariums), political (climate justice, get-off-the-grid, etc. rallies) and spiritual (temples, motivational speaker leadership gatherings). I met my partner, the love of my life, Wild Menagerie, while exploring the vicissitudes of storytelling. While living at EcoVillage Ithaca, I organized panels of scientists who use storytelling to catalyze eco-social justice. Wild has been a wildlife ecologist for over thirty years and was one of the invited scientists. Zazu Dreams is a model for this science-storytelling practice/genre.
Yet, even though my work was endorsed by thinkers and doers ranging from Noam Chomsky to Eve Ensler to SHKG Humpty Hump to Paul Hawken, my transcontextual storytelling patternings (for example, environmental racism through the eyes of lead poisoning, 2015 Flint, Michigan in relation to qanats (Iranian aquifers from 3,000 years ago) often seems to backfire. I try to approach incredibly contentious, value-laden themes through storytelling that would ideally inspire the reader rather than back them into a defensive position. Yet frequently I receive completely contradictory feedback: my stories are simultaneously "too niche" and "too expansive." Anti-"primitive"/ anti-folk denigrations mingle with anti-intellectualism (anti-academic claims in which I am "accused" of using elitist jargon, alienating my audience, "making" them "feel dumb"). In my critical philosophy book, Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene, I had written extensively about these kinds of insidious politics of clarity, the tyranny of certainty, and the erasure embedded in such notions of accessibility/ digestibility.
We measure "successful" communication within the paradigm of taken-for-granted, growth-driven consumerism (e.g. hyper-conformism). In the name of progress (certainty, clarity, modernity), we justify xenophobic and ecocidal constructs of normalcy. Linda Hogan warns us: "Decent people commit horrible crimes that are acceptable because of progress."[2] Equally, phenomenally indecent people commit horrible crimes that are justified in the name of progress, the name of clarity. For example, In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt unravels the systemic violence of the everyday as society's normalizing immoral behavior. Arendt's "banality of evil" referred to the Nazi war criminal who "Arendt found 'terrifyingly normal,' bureaucratic, and clueless rather than overly monstrous" (The New Jewish Encyclopedia 2019: 18). Eichmann's brutality was even more vile because he was so ordinary, because he didn't stand out as an abusive savage. Eichmann was perfectly normal.
It is also critical to note that the original title for Dr. King's "I Have A Dream Speech" was "Normalcy No More."
In multiple kinds of interactions (activist, academic, parental, spiritual), we must distinguish between surplus meaning and the trickster dance of polysemic rhythms. They represent two different variations of excess. And then there is the peculiar and oppressively prevalent correlation between New Age and neoliberal-capitalist ideologies--both typically silence difference.
For example, as I have written elsewhere (and does that mean I am auto-plagiarizing?! See below...), a white, male long-term member of Earthaven Ecovillage (where my family and I lived for two years) told me that he was disturbed by my "Western-patriarchal, capitalist" behavior. Because I speak quickly, am particularly proactive, ask lots of questions, provoke discussion, and don't simply accept things "as they are" (it's not "all good"!), he told me that I am not "Indigenous enough." He emphasized that his training by Martin Prechtel alerted him to my oppressive style of communication. I am saddened by this association for many reasons: I deeply admire Prechtel and feel he would not want his life philosophies to be used to silence those who express themselves through profound inquiry, enthusiasm, and directness. Prechtel's heart-centered living draws much of its wisdom from our plant allies and is about reestablishing our intimacy with nature while experiencing the world from multiple perspectives, not shutting down unfamiliar ways of being and projecting one's fears onto those who feel and act differently. The Mayan greeting in lak'ech--a la k'in, "I'm another you"--"you're another me" reflects this dialogue between differences. Ironically, the ecovillage member's criticism that the way I communicate is divorced from our spiritual-natural world is itself rooted in a Descartian, patriarchal violent division between mind and body that characterizes both repressive white-dominant culture and anthropocentric values that devastate our planet.
When we are examining who is responsible (response-able) for sustainable collective eco-justice, we of course need to take a multi-pronged approach. But in climate-crisis discussion (should we even be "discussing" this any longer? Aren't we far past the point of discussion?), too much attention is on governmental band-aids and making people feel "comfortable," and not enough on how we can "educate" (from the Latin, to draw out)--how we can shift people's relationship to (and recognize!) their own empowerment. I am told that I am too heavy handed; even though I am "preaching to the choir," "preaching to the converted," I am told that I am too passionate. So, I must ask, a choir of what? Converted to what, exactly? What happens when the mode of reception (how the audience sees and hears) debilitates, and often eviscerates, that which is being delivered.
Meanwhile the fires continue to burn, the heat suffocates, the floods drown.
Sajay Samuel wrote in his review: "Zazu Dreams is not a bedtime story book for the helicoptered and coddled--whether young or old--sensitized to microaggressions and needy of trigger warnings. Zazu dreams up a proper fairy tale--in which the comforting is enfolded within the scary and the beautiful is twisted into the ugly. Zazu dreams in images and in words, in philosophical musings and in historical forays -- Zazu dreams to awaken us from our smug and slothful slumber."
What if our story "makes" our audience uncomfortable, puts them on edge, defensive--is that the response-ability of the storyteller or the listener? Of course, I claim storyteller and listener must be in a co-evolutionary dialogue, a helical call and response. Yet, anti-intellectualism (at the very core of white modernity[3]) converges with body phobia which converges with solipsistic ethnocentrism. Resulting in pervasive and ultimately suicidal self-censorship.
And I'm used to being censored. Both in my photography and in my writing. For years, in international art (galleries/ museums) and non-art (academic, public, governmental, radical subculture) venues my photographs (my visual storytellings) were censored because my work's ambiguity provoked viewers' visceral anger based in fear. My audience became more afraid of their own imaginations than they were of reality. And those viewers had the power to dictate what could and could not be seen by the public eye.[4] History repeats itself...
More recently my text-based storytelling has been censored. These incidents include denunciations of conspiracy theory--because I contest the accepted norms of 5G implementation--and auto-plagiarism (ironically perhaps!, from Queer Studies-designated (I will not out them) as well as Christian-oriented (Pilgrim Press) publications focusing on eco-justice. In both cases when my stories were on the verge of publication (check cashed) but then dropped, my thesis highlighted internalized fascism: our complicity with the extraordinary perils of the techno-euphoric, misleading and fallacious "renewable" energies movement.
Because we are addicted to business-as-usual, it is not only not a popular stance to out greenwashing, it is a crime.
I find this particularly disturbing because I was writing about tyrannies of property and ownership. Is the bizarre accusation of autoplagiarism not a patent-based-like attempt of commodifying our very thoughts? I have recently learned that scholarly journals frequently use software like iThenticate® to screen for plagiarized work, yet given the political/pedagogical potential of imbricated thought/ interrelated co-thinking leading to collective direct action--I find these kinds of "surveillance" dangerously suspect. Many of my colleagues in academia concur. In my defense, Eric Cheyfitz, Professor of American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Cornell, called these denunciations "obsessively unprofessional," "idea envy," and actually "impossible." Scott Gilbert, Professor of Biology, emeritus, at Swarthmore College, wrote: "It's like taking a table from the kitchen where it was used to eat on and putting it in the living room where it upholds the ongoing jig-saw puzzles. I think that the publisher is being sloppy, not saying, that his or her journal has IP rights and that you're infringing on the intellectual properties of your original publisher. Which is bullshit. As long as people cite what is the work of others, they should be able to use their previous works in whatever other contexts they please. Otherwise, it's merely going to the thesaurus and changing 'protein' to 'peptide' and 'region' for 'domain.'"
Yet, the United States is founded on claiming territory--at all costs.
While my images were silenced because of race, gender, sex, and body-phobic associations, my written word has been silenced based on ideas of political affiliation as well as notions of property. I was punished because even though I had cited my previous work, I re-used/ re-purposed my trickster neologisms--petroleum parenting, humanitarian imperialism, hygiene capitalism, green colonialism. I was in a Catch-22: guised as a legal concern regarding prior publications, I was told I should have claimed these terms as originally mine, yet I couldn't legally reuse them and their definitions). However, I refuse. I will repeatedly repeat myself. I will autoplagiarize and call out profit-driven "green" energy horrors again and again and again. My repetition detailing the malfeasant ironies of "renewable" energies, a clarion call, is my pledge of allegiance to human rights and those of more-than-human ecosystems.
...my sole occupation is torturing and being tortured...namely, to get the damn word out of the damn mouth.
--Franz Kafka
We can't talk about storytelling and voice, without talking about silencing and power.
Kafka is a case-in-point. We now know that Max Brod (Kafka's primary translator who "shaped the popular perception of him") "sanitized and sanctified Kafka, diminishing his complexity as a writer and a human" (Ross Benjamin, New York Times, Feb. 2023). Brod felt compelled to make Kafka palatable, i.e., accessible. Brod's translations center Kafka-- drawing him out of the liminal zone: "refashioning the disorderly mass of material....heavy-handed editorial interventions...[promulgating] the pious myth of Kafka as a pure, saintly martyr to literature" (Benjamin). In fact, Kafka's stories were "far more alive, embodied and in motion...rough edges and idiosyncrasies, flux and instability...fragmentary and disjointed, stumbling and stuttering...alternat[ing] among different modes of writing...relentlessly reworked...fits and starts, constantly breaking off and beginning again...unpolished error-strewn prose...fertile disarray...staccato series of false starts and new iterations that veered off in different directions, Brod rearranged the discontinuous scraps and stitched them together to fabricate a seamless composite, discarding whatever wouldn't fit into a single, integrate whole."
Ross Benjamin's assessment is equally heart wrenching as it is exhilarating.
Let us dance with the trickster.
I feel a vivid connection--it is that ineffable, visceral, remarkably spiritual moment of relief and lucidity. Reverberating Kafka's "inchoate consciousness" (Ross Benjamin), my own mind is racing. Not frantic, scattered racing, but swift and lucid--like a streaming Aurora Borealis...I must keep up. I was going through a conversation I had--let's say endured--with an artist whom I had thought to be a collaborator of mine. She felt I was using her work to further my eco-justice, human-rights "agenda." And, she claimed my passion, my intense delivery was the problem--the obstacle to cohesive community action.
Wait a minute.
Storytelling is not monolithic. Listening is not monolithic. Again, our culturally-indoctrinated fear of the unknown becomes ragingly apparent. Our social body is inflicted with agnosia, a mental blindness. We are able to see, but unable to decipher what we see--like Oliver Sach's agnostic patient, the man who mistook his wife for a hat (Sachs, Anthropologist on Mars: 117), our social body is contaminated by perceptual incapacity leading to cultural somnambulism. The artist told me she wanted to be "invited" not "hit over the head." Yes, and there are infinite forms of oral traditions, infrastructures of storytelling. When we are dancing with storytelling, we must remember that the word Kabbalah means to "receive." How we listen is as crucial as how we tell. How does a story transform by how it is being listened to? For example, while living in S. Korea where I was learning Korean, or Bangladesh where I was learning Arabic, or learning Quechan in the Ecuadorian rainforest--I didn't have the hubris to assume I should understand the language or the culture, yet I didn't feel alienated or even like an outsider. I didn't expect to know, to comprehend. While drawing these connections, that's where the trouble (Donna Haraway) began--actually, continued.
As I unravel these various infrastructures of storytelling, I remember my yoga teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar saying, "Precision is freedom." I open to Robin Wall Kimmerer's "The Grammar of Animacy" in her Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdoms, Scientific Knowledge, and the Wisdom of Plants. So many yeses pour through me--yes, this intimacy, this sense of precise presence echoes those too familiar accusations of me using alienating academic jargon, autoplagiarizing, not being indigenous enough, being excessively passionate. Kimmerer's description of her connection to the land, her ancestors, is no different. Ideas intended to illuminate potential, spark possibility, provoke curiosity, rather than fix meaning. Grammar as relationship-generation, not language as capture. "English is a noun based language, somehow appropriate to a culture so obsessed with things. Only thirty percent of English words are verbs, but in Pottawatomie that proportion is seventy percent..." (Kimmerer).
I jump up to grab a dictionary. Given that my family and I live in a converted school bus and we have hundreds of books in our tiny home, everything needs to be precisely ordered. In my urgency to look up the origin of the words "comprehend" and "apprehend," I tip over the stack of thesauruses and dictionaries. A domino effect: the books fall and land on the oil/vinegar shelf, the bottle of sunflower oil (made from locally-grown sunflowers) crashes down onto to the granite (found and repurposed) counter. Oil and glass shards spread and seep into my stacks of journal articles and manuscript notes, neatly piled three-feet high next to the counter. And amid this micro oil spill, I'm trying to get to my ecstatic dance weekly gathering. Another mind-body crossroads at which the trickster spills stories...
[1] After over a year of meeting online, Báyò and I finally got to share our life passions in person at the Aspen Global Leadership Network. I will be teaching with Báyò's We Will Dance With Mountains, this fall, September-December, 2023.
[2] Derrick Jensen, Listening to the Land: Conversations About Nature, Culture, and Eros (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995), 126.
[3] Báyò Akómoláfé speaks of "white stability, a feature of white modernity, the idea that we are isolated, independent selves...a spatial, temporal arrangement of bodies designed to produce the isolated individual. Whiteness is not white people, whiteness is the arrangement of bodies in a power structure. It captured white people as much as it captured everyone else. This white modernity is the division of bodies...what it does not allow us to see is how our bodies are co-terminus with each other, how we are constantly thinking along with microbes and furniture and ancestrality...that we don't live in a single timeline that proceeds from the past to the present to the future...White modernity flattens the world to make it convenient for isolated bodies to walk and then it tells us that we are all alone" (Keynote, Aspen Global Leadership Network).
Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff, Professor of Transdisciplinary Ecological
Leadership, has published dozens of interdisciplinary books and
articles on critical philosophy, climate justice, art, epigenetics,
gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies, including
the critically-acclaimed Zazu
Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable
for the Anthropocene Eraand
Viscous
Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene.
Alhadeff's
theoretical and visual work is the subject of documentaries for
international films and public television. She has been interviewed
by
The
New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Pacifica
Radio, NPR, and the
New Art Examiner.
Alongside
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Vandana Shiva, Alhadeff received the
Random Kindness Community Resilience Leadership Award, 2020. Her
work has been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Bill McKibben, James E.
Hansen, Paul Hawken, SHK-G, Eve Ensler, Alphonso Lingus, Avital
Ronell, and Lucy Lippard among other activists, scholars, and
artists.
Alhadeff's
photographs/performance-videos
have been defended by Freedom-of-Speech organizations (Electronic
Freedom Foundation, artsave/People for the AmericanWay, and the
ACLU), and are
in private and public collections including and San Francisco MoMA,
MoMA
Salzburg, Austria,
the
Kinsey
Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and reproduction, and include
collaborations with international choreographers, composers, poets,
sculptors, architects, scientists. Her art-based and pedagogical
practices, parenting, and commitment to solidarity economics and
lived social-ecological ethics are intimately bound. Former
professor of
Philosophy, Performance, and Pedagogy at
UC Santa Cruz and Program Director for Jews Of The Earth, Alhadeff
and
her family
live in their eco-art
installation repurposed schoolbus where
they perform and teach creative-zero-waste
living, social
permaculture, and cultural diversity.
She is always eager to collaborate with other activists, scholars,
and artists from other disciplines. If you are interested please
contact Cara via email at photo@carajudea.com
or
via her websites, Cara
Judea
and
Zazu
Dreams.
See also this article: Social
ecology pioneers return to Nederland.
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