Typing posts up is exhausting and takes my mental energy away from where it needs to be (e.g. my thesis, maybe), so I’m not going to be making any more gigantic posts about theory – or, well, I won’t be pushing myself to do so, at least until my dissertation is over and done with. Life is too short to hold oneself to academic standards for writing that is non-peer-reviewed – and, let’s face it – that isn’t generally even considered by a hiring committee for a traditional academic job, or tenure review board.
Academically, I am spending a lot of time thinking about the ends of days (there are many), and it is depressing and disempowering these days in a way that it wasn’t when I first embarked on this PhD research four years ago, since my topic was not actually that relevant to contemporary politics & news in general. Now it is, and I am slightly bitter about it.
Not academically, I am also spending a lot of time thinking about environmental collapse, sociopolitical regression, the rise of fascism world-wide, the sixth extinction, climate change, biodiversity loss, etc. Despair seems to be the flavour of the times.
Hope doesn’t have to equal ungrounded optimism. I am finding hope in small things; staying with the trouble, to parrot Donna Haraway. Right now, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass is helping me immensely with that. I’m reading a few chapters a week for a course I am auditing, and is reminding me of the importance of grounding oneself, of having a sense of place – and of being a being that is part of a place. I highly recommend checking your local library for a copy.