I once balked at the idea of taking a class that seemed too overloaded with theory. I printed the first readings and sat down with my cat to prepare for the first week, and I just could not do it. There was too much thinking about thinking, too many demands for brain cells to be tied into pretzels. I look back now and see that I was not ready yet for that material, much as I was unready for the Faulkner that was assigned summer reading in 8th grade. I had to wait, to grow a little, before I could find satisfaction in the kind of brain twisting that theory demands. Though perhaps it is not the wordiest of our readings this semester, I find myself staying with Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway. Her work focuses on reformulating our conception of futurity in environmental justice, thinking tentacularly, and making kin, among other things. While I am nearly finished with my ‘academic’ career, such thoughts are sure to guide the decisions that drive my teaching style, as well as inform the most personal decisions I have ahead in life.
For Haraway, staying with the trouble means remaining focused on what is wrong. Our global community faces problems that demand we remain present and engaged to solve, and we cannot simply find a way out. Haraway condemns the tendencies toward techno-fixes and defeatism that characterize much of our environmental discourse. As she says, “Neither despair nor hope is tuned to the senses, to mindful matter, to material semiotics, to mortal earthlings in thick copresence” (4). Complacency and satisfaction in our own actions represents a deviation from the general trend of life on earth. A wild animal must never slow down and feel safe or satisfied in its position, because it never is. Likewise, looming environmental crises demand the same of us. There is no comfortable point in an ill-defined future at which we can all put down our tools and go back to how it once was. Saving the world will be a continuous struggle, and I aim to bring that struggle to inform my teaching and private decisions. In a high school German classroom, staying with the trouble will call for thinking outside the bounds of any given state’s curriculum for language instruction. I cannot be satisfied with that. German language and history are complex, tangled masses littered with knowledge that must be continuously re-engaged. Issues of nationalism and genocide, colonialism and class-consciousness are just some of the tentacles of my field that cannot be ignored. These initiatives may push the bounds of what one can teach in a traditional language classroom, so I want to give thought to expanding my teaching resume to include classes on German or European History. Graduate school has been two long years, but knowledge is a lifetime commitment.
Haraway goes on to focus our attention on the idea making kin, a word she problematizes. Not merely mothers and sons, brothers and aunts, kin are the connections we forge ourselves, the relationships we recognize in unpredictable places. She asserts that “the stretch and recomposition of kin are allowed by the fact that all earthlings are kin in the deepest sense, and it is past time to practice better care of kinds-as-assemblages (not species one at a time)” (103). Our kin are those entities with which we recognize a single fiber or a resilient tentacle of connection, and we should thus feel a responsibility to each and as Bennett concluded, perhaps not even living. Whether my sister or the worm feeding on my compost pile, we must establish and perceive these networks of kin if we hope to thrive in a world threatened with disaster. Like staying with the trouble, my personal life and my teaching career will require me to be ever in search of my kin. It is no coincidence to me that my students who perform the best are so often the ones with which I have a good working relationship. Likewise, some of my poorest-performing students have been those I felt unable to reach. People begin to invest in their future when they see others daring to do the same, and I want to help build that foundation for my students.
Last, Haraway’s notion of making kin touches on a subject that sits on the minds of many people my age: whether to have children. While we are still on the millennial fence for the foreseeable future, Haraway gives a glimmer of hope for finding meaning in nontraditional notions of family. Rather than feeling driven to meet someone nice, settle down, and have kids, making kin only asks us to do the first of these. We should not necessarily lash ourselves to conservative ideals of what constitutes a family. Perhaps having kin is enough.
Sources:
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Sentosa, Resorts World. “5 Curious Facts about the Octopus.” S.E.A. Aquarium at Resorts World Sentosa, 8 Aug. 2018, seaa.rwsentosablog.com/5-curious-facts-octopus/.