How can post-activism, disability, and collapse be resolved together?
By Mae van Veldhoven
“Twinning” (2019), by Solomon Kammer Her paintings explore the chronic conditions such as endometriosis
The post-activism writings and talks by Báy Akómoláfé have left a lasting impression on me. The idea of post-activism evokes feelings of loss, disintegration, and profound transformation, which I am familiar with. Nonetheless, this essay is not intended to express sorrowful death. Our current systems are failing, and there are valuable lessons to be learned from those who have experienced crisis and collapse, particularly those with disabilities and chronic illnesses. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the correlation between their lived experiences and the endeavor of the societal transitions field to embrace collapse in their practice, and it is written from an embodied perspective
I will first explain what they are Post-activism And Disability The parallel between the occurrence of chronic illness and changes in society can be drawn in the following section. However, the idea of collapsing also invites doom and gloom, with nihilism potentially hindering these valuable lessons. I contend that navigating collapse requires one to embrace nihilism in its entirety. In summary, I will endeavor to express that those who have endured collapse and loss can offer a sense of hope in situations where all knowledge has been lost. We must learn to separate ourselves from those who comprehend, experience, and relate to it
Post-activism and disability
Akómoláfé defines post-activism as “a type of feminism.” The gentle sigh of relief emanates from a mountain you have been ascending ”. It is a process of estrangement from the world as we know it. It is when everything we’ve known and tried up until that point stops working — a realization of our mismarriage between acting on what we know and acting according to what is needed. Moreover: post-activism is the absurd feeling of this realisation. It’s a term not easily described or categorized, especially because it encapsulates feelings of absurdism, irony and loss. A deep, profound helplessness, where even acting on the problem at hand can be part of the problem itself. Post-activism is “ An invitation to sense the irony of action ”. What if our current methods of acting are not effective? Have they ever been employed? Post-activism marks the conclusion of the road, with the path being scrutinized in the process
Akómoláfé argues that cracks are present in post-activism as spaces for action. These are in-between spaces Spaces of disability The primary cause of disability in the simplest sense is the interplay between an individual’s health condition and their environment, particularly factors of inaccessibility or limitations. “Disability” was the description provided by Akómoláfé, as stated by him A critique of wholeness ”. It is a critique on our prescriptive perfection, and on our fetish for fixing everything endlessly. Moreover, since disability is relational — resulting from an interaction between our wellbeing as an individual and the way our environment supports us — it invites a certain sensitivity to this environment. A navigation of the enabling and, fittingly Disabling Factors present in systems
The cracks of disability — a painting I made around 2016, before getting diagnosed with endometriosis
However, disability is rather broad. There is a treasure chest of embodied knowledge here with regards to navigating the disabling factors in a society, and the ways disability might challenge the incumbent system. Akómoláfé himself mentions the example of his son experiencing Time Differently due to his autism. Even something as simple yet profound as that could warrant an essay of its own; however, for the sake of the scope of this article, I will focus on a specific type of disability: Chronic illness A chronic illness is a long-term or even permanent type of disability. The main reason for limiting the focus here is because there is an incredibly powerful parallel to be drawn between individuals’ lived experience with chronic illness, and the process of societal transitions: both have to find ways to navigate Collapse
Collapse
Hebinck et al. (2022) Write about collapse and Breakdown In the context of societal transitions. The described framework, the X-Curve, represents two distinct — yet interlinked — patterns of build-up and breakdown, consisting of the following phases: Optimization Destabilization Chaos , breakdown, and Phase-out The characteristics of these phases flow from attempting to maintain the status quo, to a sense of urgency arising, to conflict and uncertainty, and finally to navigating loss (see figure below). The phase in which collapse is most likely to take place is chaos, which is characterized as “a phase of a sudden loss of security, collapse of stable institutions and established organisations, and profound political interventions or acute crises” (Hebinck, et al, 2022, p. 1013). In other words: structures that held up our ways of existing before are failing and disintegrating. An Unmaking , while bringing into existence the realization of our inability to fall back onto these structures
The X-Curve framework for societal transitions with pathways for the build-up and breakdown of societal structures ( Hebinck, et al, 2022. )
When describing the lived experience of chronically ill individuals Kralik and Van Loon (2010) Argue that the lives of the chronically ill are characterized by “learning to live with unwanted change” (Kralik & Van Loon, 2010, p. 17). They have to deal with erraticism and unpredictability in many areas of life (e. G. E mployment, life-priorities), and are confronted with the feeling of loss in the form of loss of independence, hope, meaning and purpose (Kralik & Van Loon, 2010). Adapting to these changes, even in such profound areas of life such as hope and purpose, is therefore a constant, active endeavour in the lives of chronically ill individuals
In addition, in his book Gentle Action: Bringing Creative Change to a Turbulent World (2008) , Peat argues that the body can be viewed as a self-organising system. And while such systems are usually quite robust, there are elements that could invite disbalance — what Peat calls “strange attractors” (Peat, 2008, p. 38). Strange attractors are fractal entities that cause the self-organized system to behave in complicated and unpredictable ways, from moment to moment (Peat, 2008). In a way, a health condition does exactly this to the system of the body. With the health condition being chronic, this means the very behaviour of the body becomes more complicated and unpredictable in a long-term or permanent, and Unwanted Way
Collapse is unwanted change, and one can see the parallel between collapse and a sense of loss on a societal level in the X-Curve, and collapse and loss on the personal level in chronically ill individuals. It is here where disability can inspire us to think about new ways of existing with and in the world. In the Words of Akómoláfé : “The cosmos works with disability. It works with loss. It works with failure. The only way for it to produce exquisite fields of novelty is for it to produce disability […] ”. At the end of the road, in the midst of complexity and unpredictability, novel ways of existing can be found in those who already had to invent them
What should be noted here, though, is that finding novel ways should not be the end goal. The argument I’m making is not that we should employ the chronically ill to find new ways forward out of crisis, out of our collective uncomfortable absurdity. That would defeat the notion of post-activism itself and bring us right back to our relentless problem-solving — to responding to the crisis in counterproductive ways. The argument is not to exemplify individuals With A chronic illness, through which we will overcome disability, failure and collapse. On the contrary: the argument is that chronically ill individuals could help us reframe some of the most crucial questions of our time. How do you continue to exist, not Despite Collapse and failure but with it? Is failure even the right word? How do we navigate resistance to that which cannot be resolved? That, which is here to stay with us. In our bodies, in our systems. And perhaps most importantly: how do we navigate our existential emotions around this?
Art by Paulina Rebeldía — a huge inspiration for me on rethinking illness, the body and healing
Nihilism
Disability can offer the opportunity to feel out novel ways of existing. However, actually Sensing This opportunity poses a challenge in this regard, and there is one major pitfall for us to come to terms with when looking into the post-activist abyss. When we realize we are at the end of the road, when the cosmos has manifested its failures: how do we steer clear from apathy towards the world? How do we not lose ourselves in nihilism? This is a challenge many chronically ill individuals actually face during the onset of their symptoms and after diagnosis — though this experience is mostly pathologized as depression One paper Calls it Dysphoria : a kind of dissociative and negative experience of life — a description much closer to the emotional dimensions of nihilism than the psychosomatic checklist of depressive symptoms. With this being so common and so correlated, we are confronted with the question: in the face of the collapse of our bodies, of systems important to us; how do we avoid the feeling that nothing matters anymore?
The whole point of post-activ Is M is not to think in solutions, but to ask better questions. Should we really avoid apathy? What if letting the waves of nihilism come over us is part of the collapse we are attempting to embrace? As mentioned before, sometimes our response to the crisis is part of the crisis, and our tendency to stubbornly prevent things from falling apart is a part of that. As Akómoláfé mentions : we have to Stop We have to fall apart. We have to experience collapse of our ways of being in order to find novel ones. With regards to nihilism, when our old structures of meaning fall victim to failure and Nothing Matters anymore, doesn’t that open up space for new meanings? And when we break away from Everything That stopped working, doesn’t that make the Nothingness That replaces it post-activist? Indeed, Akómoláfé states that Post-activism is nihilistic Nihilism senses the shortfalls of everything, through which nothing starts mattering. He even writes there is a deep care present in the way nihilism escapes the already known — being so existentially in love with and alive in the world that you can only conclude that nothing matters
So, what if nihilism is a natural reaction to unwanted change? The way Akómoláfé puts it : “The job of the caterpillar is to resist the butterfly”. As the caterpillar, we cannot become or embrace the butterfly before we have fully disintegrated in our cocoon. We have to embrace nothingness first. A stage where we are neither caterpillar nor butterfly. There is value in experiencing this abstruseness, confusion and uncertainty. For example, in his book Team Human , Rushkoff states that confusion can offer an opening to experiencing ambiguity and awe. This in turn, can evoke a strengthened sense of meaning and a decrease in stress and apathy. A similar thing tends to happen when we face chaos — where even in unpredictability we can find the predictable (Peat, 2008) Experiencing these nihilistic dimensions can actually open us up to new ways of being in the world, which, paradoxically, might decrease our nihilistic tendencies. There might not be a way to steer clear from nihilism. There is only experiencing it, navigating Through It. What if it is actively part of the process of loss, and a way to practice stopping?
Let’s fall apart together
Chronically ill individuals have extremely valuable embodied knowledge on navigating collapse and unwanted change. There is a strong parallel between their lived experience and the process of societal transitions, where collapse is seen as an integral part of adapting to change. Whether it is by living with collapse itself, or navigating the nihilism it can invoke, individuals with a chronic illness symbolize hope in times where an incredible amount of unwanted change is happening and the stakes are high. They can aid us in reframing crucial contemporary questions about the failure of systems and loss — an area containing a wealth of untapped and under-researched knowledge. We have to practice stopping, and embark on a search for an absurd relaxation in the post-activist abyss: becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable, embracing nothingness in everything — yet, embracing also each other, as we fall apart together
Hi! I’m Mae. I’m a sustainability researcher with a special interest in art and emotions surrounding societal transitions. In particular; how they can help us question, unlearn and (re) shape the power dynamics and injustices of our world today. I approach these issues through a queer and embodied lens, as I am nonbinary and disabled. Thank you for reading! Find me on BlueSky Or LinkedIn