At the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020, journalist Natasha Lennard started noticing a constant thrum of collective apprehension, epitomized in the phrase “in these uncertain times”.
asserted
Lennard → start → times
The expression acknowledged we didn’t have solutions for many of society’s problems: a globally spreading virus, the rise of the far right and stark “haves v have-nots” inequalities.
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we → acknowledge → right
In the years since, that “uncertainty” hasn’t gone anywhere, risking enabling paralysis – not knowing where to start to fix things and therefore giving up before trying.
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uncertainty → go → things
In her new book, On Un/Certainty: The Uses of Doubt in Dangerous Times, Lennard, who also was an organizer in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, deconstructs the problematic nature of giving in to uncertainty.
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who → deconstruct → uncertainty
She also uses the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1969 book On Certainty to question what is held as “certain” in today’s world, and who gets to make those calls.
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who → use → calls
For example, why does the anti-trans movement get to define what makes a woman?
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what → get → woman
Why do politicians run on the presumption that voters want “closed borders”, when just a few decades ago, neither party saw militarized borders as a foregone conclusion?
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party → run → conclusion
Why do the tech billionaires who invested in AI want us to believe an AI “apocalypse” is inevitable?
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apocalypse → invest → AI
“Even though the book uses Wittgenstein, who was no activist, as a jumping-off point, it is definitely a book aimed at people who want to be thinking seriously about how we continue in this moment of fascist rule,” said Lennard.
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Lennard → use → rule
Below, Lennard discusses how this isn’t the first “uncertain” moment in history, how to disrupt the certainties that don’t serve us and how to fight back.
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that → discuss → us
Tell me why you think the phrase “these uncertain times” is reductive.
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phrase → tell → me
“In these uncertain times” seems like a constant refrain from all sectors, be it political reporting or how we’re thinking about climate decimation, AI-driven futures or futures determined by authoritarian fascist rule.
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we → seem → rule
I think there’s something very true about this being an extraordinary time of grounded reasons for fear and doom, and indeed a lot of uncertainty about the shape of our collective futures.
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this → think → futures
But also, I don’t necessarily agree that we are in a wholly uncertain time, because we, again and again, keep being in the midst of activities of certainty – things taken for granted, rather than proven.
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we → agree → certainty
What are some certainties we take for granted?
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we → take → ?
The certainty of anti-trans bigots on the far right and their complicit bedfellows in the center – and indeed in some of the left – who hold enforced gender binaries all too certain.
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binaries → hold → left
Certainties around the frameworks of the crises that we are in – that they will be forever determined by capital and the drive for growth, and that we face a cascading so-called polycrisis, too complex for ordinary people to know how to respond or intervene.
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people → determine → polycrisis
These certainties keep giving shape and direction to our fears and doubts.
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certainties → give → fears
And it’s those certainties that I want to gesture toward as the very things we need to pay attention to if we really want to understand and demystify this moment of seemingly totalizing uncertainty.
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we → ’ → uncertainty
Thinking outside of paralysis means thinking about how movements and revolutionary histories have broken through what have seemed like political certainties in previous historical moments.
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what → think → moments
In the book, you argue that we’ve seen some certainties ruptured in just the time since Occupy.
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certainties → argue → Occupy
We have seen certainties become unmoored.
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certainties → see → ?
Paradigm shifts don’t happen all at once in some revolutionary spark moment, even though uprisings are often crucial catalysts.
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uprisings → happen → moment
We might look at the 2020 George Floyd uprisings.
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We → look → uprisings
There’s a temptation to say that was just a flash in the pan because it was so quickly repressed and didn’t immediately lead to the social change people wanted.
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people → ’ → change
But some of the networks that were most active against ICE in Minneapolis earlier this year – the neighborhood support networks, the ICE watchers, the militant blockades – were networks that developed around the George Floyd uprisings.
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that → develop → uprisings
Certainties of the Democratic party’s liberal-capitalist orientation – appealing to corporate interests and donors while failing to fight for programs like universal healthcare – have been challenged by the recent success of a number of DSA candidates and Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.
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Certainties → appeal → candidates
We have seen what was considered to be a certainty about candidate electability ruptured through people organizing and door-knocking and meeting their neighbors and working around tenants’ rights.
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considered → see → rights
Part of the question of what we know requires engaging with how we know what we know, which is particularly challenging as higher education is under attack.
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education → know → attack
How can we push back against these attacks?
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we → push → attacks
This moment directly echoes the destruction of records and histories during post-civil war Reconstruction, as WEB Du Bois points out in Black Reconstruction.
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Bois → echo → Reconstruction
The Trump regime is very purposely and specifically decimating higher education – as well as removing records of everything from Black history, LGBTQ history, health studies, and making us all, of course, dumber and less safe, accordingly.
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us → decimate → course
I don’t think we need to rebuild the university and college system into its pre-Trump, pre-enforced-AI status quo ante; it was already decimated and adjunct-ified and unaffordable.
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it → think → ante
Higher education as a valued, free public good should not be beyond our horizon.
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education → value → horizon
It was closer to a reality just a few generations ago: in the UK, for example, there was free tuition until the late 1990s.
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It → be → 1990s
Which is why the work of unions, and unions willing to be militant, in education is crucial now and will be crucial even when the Trump regime falls.
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regime → fall → education
You make clear that we don’t have the answers yet.
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have → make → answers
But in the book, you argue there is still a lot of room left for movements to win.
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movements → argue → room
The book ends with me watching the last presidential election at the home of my friend Sarah Leonard, whom I’ve known since Occupy Wall Street.
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I → end → Street
Trump won, and we hugged goodbye, and she said, “We’re not starting from scratch.”
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We → win → scratch
…and 9 more, not listed.
The Aporia
