Death and Other Lessons: On Hospicing Modernity
Nothing changes you like a death.
At the end of last year, my last living grandmother passed away. Like the genius comic, 'Kill Six Billion Demons" said in the margins of a recent comic 'Some day, you will die in a hospital.' I was literally the last person that saw her alive; while in hospice care, in a facility in suburban Maryland, I felt her breath shorten and her heartbeat quicken - until it gave out in a soft hospital room.
As the family matriarch and historian, she took an immense amount of energy and time to pass on the history of the Gordon lineage. Where did we come from? What had our grandparents accomplished? What could we pass on to the future? It's a bit of a trite statement, but I realized too late: now, when I have questions about what the future holds, I yearn to ask her questions about what they did in the past - and now, I don't have that opportunity.
Near the same time, I gave a talk, where a colleague who has my heart offered a book that would change my life. (Shout out, Maryam Ahmed!) In Hospicing Modernity, by "Vanessa Machado de Oliveira," I felt solace towards social change that I knew I would carry with me for years.
You see, the world we've created is in polycrisis. Societies are being destroyed, technologies are being disrupted, the environment and economies are both fighting for existence, and political institutions remain in increasingly volatile chaos.
Like futurist and science fiction writer Madeline Ashby wrote about the Hollywood strike, one thing rings true: "Nobody knows anything.".
So, it's time, as Oliveria alludes, to "build new stories with which to dance." The book takes on a behemoth of a task: shaping what modernity has evolved into, what it denies about society, how it takes ahold of our ways of being and imagining the future, and offers ways to disabuse ourselves of its limitations. Its core thesis, is as follows: if the world we've built is dying, what can we learn about its death throes to build a better one?
As a social change researcher, I'm drawn to the theories and insights about social change. As a facilitator, I'm drawn to her ability to introduce ego-shattering exercises to privileged academics and development professionals without causing them to resort to insecurity and defensiveness. More than that, though, I was drawn to the community the book represented. In the presence of death: whether the death was of a grandmother, of a society, or of a way of life, there's community in not knowing what the future holds. It's clear this book literally came from the community: the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures website, with colleagues that helped with exercises, insights, and resources, is weaved heartily through this text.
The Diaspora Futures Collective held two ad-hoc discussions about the insights of the book. We discussed the steps any serious readers should take before engaging with the text: where did Modernity come from and where does it sit in our lives, what denials does it offer that keeps it from grappling with the violence it engages with the world, what tools can we use to counteract its magic on our lives, and what could a future look like that takes seriously its effects on our Earth, our social-political contexts, and our very beings.
Our world is filled with people who, for all their bluster, argue confidently about what the future holds. Take a look at and Future of Work conference, or any multilateral organization recycling the Sustainable Development Goals, or any TESCREAL Evangelist that makes their lives - or extremely oligarchal humankind - the end state of civilized society. When these humans talk about the future, they remain on the invisible clock of progress - without recognizing the lives, the cultures, and the ecosystems that have been laid to waste because of their aspirations. All of us buy into this way of life, one way or another, and it feels impossible to imagine another way to survive.
So, the book offers a starting point, by asking: How do we learn?
How do we live?
How do we grieve?
Where do we go?
We don't know the answers. But, if we can learn anything from my grandmother, it's how there are lessons - some she taught, some we learn after she's gone - about what a healthier world can look like.
There's nothing that changes you like a death. So, as our worlds die, we have the chance to let it change us, completely. Let us do so, in earnest.
Books/Links referenced in this conversation:
