Activists have already changed the world and it is important for us to remember that change is possible in our discourse; it can be hard to keep from being at best discouraged and at worst paralyzed by fear and anger over particularly heinous events, events that have already taken -- and are continuing to take -- place all over world. Remembering that in knowledge there is strength -- and in that knowledge, hope -- is an important element in developing a new voice in post-colonial study.
One strong and positive resource has come from a writer by the name of Rebecca Solnit. In her new book, Hope in the Dark, she says that regaining a sense of hope merely requires looking through the screen of history. Yes, many of us may feel that women's rights may be slowly eroding under the current administration, but we're certainly better off than our counterparts one or two generations ago. Racism may seem entrenched and segregation rampant, but think of the irreversible strides the civil rights movement made.
Twenty years ago, it was unimaginable that the Berlin Wall would come down or that Nelson Mandela would become president of a reformed South Africa. The future is unknowable, but our actions will shape it: "Wars will break out, the planet will heat up, species will die out," Solnit writes, "but how many, how hot, and what survives depends on whether we act."1 She sees resources for hope. While she admits that racism hasn't disappeared, she notes, "but it isn't as oppressive as it was in 1955." Sexism persists, but the status of women in this country has improved -- in 1960 there was no such thing as sexual harassment law and you couldn't get birth control without proving that you were married.
The world has changed, and if you think you can't change anything, then it feels acceptable to go home and watch sitcoms. Solnit believes that if you can show people that they are responsible for what the world is like, they will have to do something. And a lot of people doing a little something can make for big change.
The world is never going to be perfect; as Solnit notes, environmental activists didn't "save" the whales, though some species have been kept from extinction. The rain forest is still threatened, but 15 years ago no one was talking about it. "You have to have room in your philosophy to be pleasantly surprised," she writes. Take gay marriage. "I love the wonderfully weird ways history works, and gay marriage, which I think will prevail, is an example. We radicals wanted Matt Gonzalez [a liberal contender for Mayor of San Francisco] to win," says Solnit, who worked as a precinct captain on his mayoral campaign. "But the more conservative guy wins the election and takes this wild and crazy civil rights stand -- which I'm not sure Gonzalez would have been in the position to do. Newsom found the heroism and a commitment that I don't think he knew he had, and it triggered the rest of the country -- as though everybody was waiting for something to happen and it happened here first."2
After twenty years as an independent scholar of the West, Solnit says, "I have realized that the purpose of activism and art, or at least of mine, is to make a world in which people are producers of meaning, not consumers. And that is connected to the politics of hope."3
So my hope is that, as we travel together through these modules, you will look for hope and feel motivated to act instead of despairing and feeling down. If at any point you are feeling discouraged, look at how far knowledge can get you, and look at how you can take that same energy and put it into small positive acts that will reinforce hope in others as well as yourself.
One parting quote from Rebecca Solnit that she says is one of her mottos: "In order to get struck by lightning, you have to go on really long hikes."4
1. Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Nation Books, 2004).
2. Heidi Benson, "Move Over, Joan Didion," San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, June 13, 2004, 7.
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