It's time we took off all masks

 

Change. Almost everyone calls for it. But how many truly want it? And how many are capable of embracing it as it rises? 

Because change is already happening. It is not a random, sudden event. It is a dense, sinuous process. Preferably, it should be an aspiration. But it is increasingly becoming but a reaction. Because of a dilapidated planet, of inequality, of capitalism, of the patriarchy, and of colonialism, which have been the main modes of domination for quite some time.

Despite their ubiquity in social life, these ways of creating hierarchies are quite often invisible in their interconnectedness. Capitalism takes new forms, even in communist China. Colonialism could have expired following the independence of former colonies, but it is still here, having shattered imperial forms into dependence, into racism. And even though the patriarchy may seem weakened at certain times, partly due to feminist advances, sex discrimination has not ceased yet. On top of it, the pandemic context has only come to reinforce such realities.

On the one hand, the worst of the world, death drive, exclusion, discrimination, inequality, and greed use the pandemic to do what human life and nature have lately been exploited for: business. 

But also, on the other hand, an exalting humanism in the form of solidarity, of care, of resistance, and of the creativity of protecting lives collectively. It has never been more obvious that, in order to effect real transformation, we must cut loose the three heavy shackles that have bound us to the modern conception of nature: life as a commodity. Racism. And sexism.

For forty years now, the world has been living under the assumption that there is no alternative to current society, to how it is organised, to how our existences are administered. Always spinning around. Work, or the lack of it. Consumerism, or the desire of it. Time, or its absence. Networks of sociability, or the loneliness that exhausts us. Employment or unemployment insecurity. Refusing to struggle for a better life out of fear that everything will get worse. We live in an eternal present. We are told the past cannot be reappraised; that there is no use going in search of the future, considering the bitter surprises that may come. It is either this present or barbarism. However, if we look around us, we see but cruelty.

We imagined democracy as the government of the many for the benefit of the few. Now, what we have is a government of minorities, or of elites, for their own benefit. The concept of development promised better living conditions for most of the population, but what we are dealing with now is a growing inequality among people, groups, and countries and with an imminent environmental catastrophe. We live with the feeling that what we do is already done amongst ruins—political, ideological, environmental ones.

In Community as Immunity, keeping in mind its nuances, multiple dynamics, and layers of understanding, such was the big picture that was painted, the diagnosis that was made. We get the impression there are a lot of people writing about this world, but not with the world. A world which, to a large extent, is known among many artists, thinkers, different creative agents, and some communities (from Amazonian Indians to racialised people from Bairro da Jamaica, from the Rio de Janeiro LGBTi+ to Chilean feminist women, among many other polysemic realities). What do they know? They know what it is to live amongst ruins and how to resist and innovate from them. They have learned to create community, to fight for places of speech, and to create new modes of participation and self-organisation. Today, such an experience is more valuable than ever. More than development, the key for the future is engagement. The conservative idea that there is no alternative to the way of life that has been imposed upon us has started fading. The only reason there are no alternatives is because the democratic political system has long stopped discussing them.

But there are countless other places—like the aforementioned ones—where they have been nourished. Because they have been removed from the political system, such alternatives increasingly enter the citizens' lives by the back door—through pandemic crises, environmental disasters, or economic collapses. Alternatives show themselves in the worst possible way. That is why, sometimes, they may emerge as but a reaction as they take the form of fascism, hyper-capitalism, or securitarian exceptions. We must make them enter our lives by the front door, in an emancipated way, as a statement of new ideas that makes room for multiples knowledges, temporalities, differences, recognitions, and distinct productivity formats. In Community as Immunity, the time, space, and pleasure of making them coexist were fought for. Someone has said that it is not enough to take off our pandemic masks. We must take off all masks. The ones from the past, for us to look at the present and the future. The ones from the present, for us to better live in the now. The ones from the future, for us not to be afraid to dare.