![\"Candy-Chang_NOLAStop](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_Candy-Chang_NOLAStop-calling-me-resilient-C.jpg\")
Photo of a flyer posted in New Orleans by the
Louisiana Justice Institute, 2015.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
This discursive tactic is a symptom of what political theorist Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism, a political strategy that pushes neo-liberal policies in the aftermath of a shocking catastrophe.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - See Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism<\/em> (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2007).<\/span> Often sold as solutions to or palliatives for the problem, such policies are cloaked in generally acceptable, but largely unremarkable language that is meant to dissuade any form of protest. Those who are unperceptive or otherwise preoccupied ought to pass on by, satisfied with the fact that their strength has been recognized: we are focused on resilience thinking<\/em>! Yet, as feminist theorist Sara Ahmed observes, \u201cSometimes the repetition of good sentiment feels oppressive.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Sara Ahmed, \u201cEmbodying Diversity: Problems and Paradoxes for Black Feminists,\u201d Race Ethnicity and Education <\/em>12, no. 1 (March 2009): 46.<\/span> The praise of resilience flows downstream from those who benefit from the structures to those who are forced to endure them, as if to congratulate them for surviving the lopsided obstacle course of lived experience in a post-welfare era. In this context, overly enthusiastic and frequent expressions of goodwill are strategically exploitative, meant to quell the anger of those who would protest the policy-makers\u2019 actual objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such discursive techniques are not restricted to policy-making situations but filter down into everyday aspects of social and political life that are influenced by the same neo-liberal principles. Ahmed explores how good sentiment is pushed onto those embodying diversity within organizations such as the university as an expectation for being \u201cafforded\u201d the opportunity of being there. By hiring a Black faculty member and appointing that individual as lead on the Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) committee, the organization has satisfied the requirements of EDI without necessarily having to address the structural racism embedded in the organization\u200a\u2014\u200athere is representation<\/em>. Just as in circumstances of disaster capitalism, those who are vulnerable and exploited have adapted in order to thrive, they are resilient<\/em>.Praise is manipulated by the powerful as a technique of oppression to maintain the social order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n If we take what Washington says seriously, then resilience is an inadequate response to addressing challenging situations. Instead of acquiescing to the language of resilience, which can be a pacifying form of toxic positivity, Washington demonstrates that refusal is a viable political alternative. The same year that Washington\u2019s words made their way onto protest posters, artist E. Jane wrote her own refusal of resilience in NOPE (a manifesto)<\/em> (2015\u200a\u2013<\/em>\u200a16). What began as a Facebook status update moved onto a screen-print on silken fabric, the manifesto overlaid on an ombr\u00e9 purple to blue background, bordered with digital roses. Dead centre it reads, \u201cI am not grappling with notions of identity and representation in my art. I\u2019m grappling with safety and futurity.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - E. Jane, NOPE (a manifesto)<\/em>, accessible online.<\/span> With this statement, E. Jane challenges the reductive tendency for discourse about the works of Black and queer artists to become solely about identity and representation. Instead of exploring the artistic content in any depth, general conclusions with flattening effects are quickly drawn. If a Black queer artist makes an artwork, then they are forced to speak from the position of the Black queer artist as it is recognized by a system that feeds off its own progressiveness through a kind of implicit, congratulatory narcissism. But, as E. Jane writes, \u201cNone of this is as simple as \u2018identity and representation\u2019 outside of the colonial gaze.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - E. Jane, NOPE (a manifesto)<\/em>.<\/span> It is exactly the implication of simplicity that is so frustrating\u200a\u2014\u200anothing about this is simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When terms such as resilience are used to minimize systemic issues as minor hiccups, resilience becomes synonymous with the capacity to endure the norm. Instead of acknowledging their expressed concerns regarding safety and futurity, Black and queer experiences are dismissed as disputes regarding differences of identity and representation. This approach is a clear instance of the straw man fallacy, in which those in power falsify the real issue as something else to subvert addressing the core arguments of those protesting. Claiming that oppressed or vulnerable people are resilient functions in much the same way: those in power emphasize the capabilities of the oppressed or vulnerable to endure hardship as a way to avert attention from their own failures to address the issues that initially caused harm. To this point, Washington originally spoke out against President Barack Obama\u2019s use of resilience to refer to the citizens of the Gulf Coast after the 2010 BP oil spill that took eleven lives and caused severe environmental degradation. Instead of meaningful environmental action, Obama praised the people\u2019s resilience and prayed for brighter days. Two presidents and twelve years later, oil continues to spill every year in the United States. Within our current political reality, resilience suffers from a neo-liberal disembowelment, stripped of its hopeful connotation in the service of maintaining the inequality of the dominant political order. Resilience here has no guts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With consistent reminders of the system\u2019s ineptitude, refusal appears increasingly desirable. Refusal has the dual benefit of functioning simultaneously as a challenge to the neo-liberal co-optation of resilience and as a method of futural projection that enables possibilities unrestricted by the current dominant principles. Afro, queer, and Indigenous futurisms span out in the open clearing ahead once the present is found to be lacking any substance. Acknowledging the potential of strategic un-cooperation, Brooklyn-based American Artist refused social media participation in 2015 with their online performance action A Refusal<\/em> (2015\u200a\u2013<\/em>\u200a\u200a16). A visit to American Artist\u2019s Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter pages from 2015 to 2016 would turn up a series of blue rectangles reminiscent of an early internet \u201cloading\u201d screen on which one would expect to find profile pictures and biographical information. By draining the content-rich networks of their fuel\u200a\u2014\u200aor their lived experience\u200a\u2014\u200aAmerican Artist challenges the idea of exposure, opening the question of who profits from our vulnerability. Although vulnerability can promote a community of care grounded in an openness toward the sharing of experience, it is also easily co-opted as an opportunity for capital gain, monetary or otherwise. Vulnerability appears thus simultaneously as a source of artistic, political, and social hope and as an unfortunate perversion of this hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can we imagine vulnerability beyond its possible exploitation? Cauleen Smith marries the resistance necessary for protest with the vulnerability required for care in her 2017 series of banners, In the Wake: A Procession<\/em>. Born out of feelings of grief at the loss of Black lives to ongoing racial violence, Smith coined epigraphs of protest and sewed them onto colour-rich, sequin-adorned fabrics. The epigraphic statements of three banners read, \u201cI\u2019m so black that I blind you,\u201d \u201cmy pathology is your profit,\u201d and \u201cGive it or Leave it.\u201d On the opposite sides are symbolic images reflecting the statements: a pencil poking out of a blood-spurting eye, a diamond dripping blood between two crossed guns, and an open hand with a blue heart. The glistening satin fabric offers a critical juxtaposition to the imagery and text, functioning as its own form of refusal. In this series Smith utilizes grief and anger to conjure statements of emotional resistance that challenge the erasure and enclosure of resilience thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jack Halberstam writes, \u201cThe path to the wild beyond is paved with refusal.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Jack Halberstam, \u201cThe Wild Beyond: With and for the Undercommons,\u201d introduction, in Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study <\/em>(New York: Minor Compositions, 2013), 8, accessible online.<\/span> Crucially, refusal is not inactivity but an enabling force that rejects the call to order oneself according to an unjust logic. Refusal breaks down the token placations associated with resilience thinking, which projects a future only according to the power structures of the present. Acquiescence to the praise of resilience reaffirms the legitimacy of an illegitimate order premised on oppression, racism, and inequality, and, as Ahmed observes, \u201cto get over it before it is over would be to keep things in place.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Ahmed, \u201cEmbodying Diversity,\u201d 51.<\/span> To refuse is to recognize that the choices on offer are all against you. For American Artist, the shade of blue in A Refusal<\/em> represents \u201cthe state prior to evolution.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - American Artist, \u201cA Refusal,\u201d accessible online.<\/span> To refuse is to clear the way for what E. Jane identifies as needed: \u201cWe need more people, we need better environments, we need places to hide, we need Utopian demands, we need culture that loves us.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - E. Jane, NOPE (a manifesto).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n On a spring day, Smith\u2019s banners were taken down from their display at the 2017 Whitney Biennale and carried in a procession through the streets of Manhattan\u2019s Meatpacking District.12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Cauleen Smith, \u201cIn the Wake, a Procession,\u201d ASAP\/Journal<\/em> 3, no. 2 (May 2018): 303.<\/span> Through song and dance, with processional joy and protest, Smith\u2019s banners charted a path of refusal into Halberstam\u2019s wild beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An artist, writer, and researcher, Kristen Lewis is pursuing a PhD in Art History at Concordia University examining the concept of non-participation in contemporary interactive art. Her artistic practice explores the body through creative writing and contact sound recording.<\/p>\n![\"Cauleen-Smith_Breath_1\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_Cauleen-Smith_Breath_1.jpg\")
I Am Holding My Breath<\/em>, from the series
In the Wake<\/em>, 2017.
Photo: courtesy of the artist, Mor\u00e1n Mor\u00e1n, Mexico, & Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"American-Artist_Refusal_01\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_American-Artist_Refusal_01.jpg\")
A Refusal<\/em>, screen capture, 2015-2016.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Labor, Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"American-Artist_Refusal_03\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_American-Artist_Refusal_03.jpg\")
A Refusal<\/em>, screen captures, 2015-2016.
Photos: courtesy of the artist & Labor, Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Lewis_American-Artist_Refusal_02\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_American-Artist_Refusal_02.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Cauleen-Smith_Fear_1\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_Cauleen-Smith_Fear_1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Cauleen-Smith_Nothing-Left_1\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_Cauleen-Smith_Nothing-Left_1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Cauleen-Smith_Nothing-Left_2\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_Cauleen-Smith_Nothing-Left_2.jpg\")
Cauleen Smith<\/strong>
Fear Looks Back At Me\u2009<\/em>; I Have Nothing Left 1<\/em>\u2009;
I Have Nothing Left 2<\/em>\u2009; Pigeons Are Black Doves<\/em>,
from the series In The Wake<\/em>, 2017.
Photos: courtesy fo the artist, Mor\u00e1n Mor\u00e1n, Mexico,
& Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/108_DO_Lewis_Cauleen-Smith_Pigeons_1.jpg\")
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