Change is not a metaphor

In my first year seminar we were reading about efforts to connect the Anthropocene to the ongoing shockwaves unleashed by settler colonialism, and I happened on a short recent piece by Eve Tuck, one of the authors of the hugely influential essay "Decolonization is not a metaphor." Invited by an arts organization under the rubric of "Invitations toward reworlding," Tuck proposes that we get in the habit of asking each other about our "theory of change." 

What is your theory of change these days? 

It truly is my favorite question. It definitely isn’t small talk, not because it couldn’t be small talk, but because we are out of practice with having discussions about our theories of change. It could be what we talk about when we are on an outing with an old friend, when we are texting before a date, when we wake up startled in the night, tangled in the covers. It could be what we talk about as we brush our children’s hair. What we sing about in songs. What we whisper with our hands covering our hearts and bellies. What we breathe over one another, when it is safe to share breath again. 

When we don’t talk about how we think change happens, we are left to assume that we are operating from the same, unexpressed, neoliberal and colonial theory of change. The default theory of change in settler colonial racial capitalism is that if we document the damage, get enough people to pay attention to it, then together our voices will convince so and so (who is in charge) to give up power and resources. This theory of change makes us over-invest in spectacle and empathy as an emotion that leads to change, in the innocence of the powerful, in the rationality of the powerful, and in their power to wield their power over us. It does nothing to contest the order of power, how they got that power, and their influence over our lives. They are the actors, and we are the acted upon. If we can prove our pain to them, they will be made aware, and this awareness will lead them to lessen our pain. We know this is a lie.

She's not recommending a particular alternative theory, though her work certainly suggests some, but rather making talking about this a common, even a mundane activity "so that we are not reliant on a broken theory of change." (There's a theory of change in trying to open up and reshape our everyday conversations, of course!)

While you’re signing the rider, riding on the subway, writing on the subway, reading your writing aloud at the reading, writing to your readers, writing home, running away from home, making your home, making-meaning, being mean, being refusing, being care, being careful, being kin, being beyond kin, caring for older-than-human kin, being full with care, let us be curious enough about one another and the world and the future to ask, What is your theory of change these days? Let this be the way we know and love one another. ...

Students weren't sure what to make of this invitation, so we'll take it up again next week, trying to articulate some other theories of change. The topic is germane also given where the syllabus is leading: week after next we are reading Parable of the Sower: 

All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.

God 

Is Change.