Pathways to Agency

This week’s reading entitled “The Affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies Curricula”, was written by none other than Sarah Ray, our professor, and it was about, well, us; environmental studies students. It was slightly unmooring to read such a definitive accounting of the emotional journey that Environmental Studies has been as we all sit tapping our feet in anticipation and terror of entering the “real world”. As I read this piece and witnessed the ensuing class response, I saw the clear juxtaposition of the “affective arc” and our many current locations within the arc (journey, constellation?). Sarah Ray writes about the “affective arc” as if it is roughly linear, while also acknowledging that it looks different for different students. As I sat looking around at the sea of my beloved peers, and heard their many frustrations, it was clear that even in our last semester, we are all in very different places in regards to affect. Some of us do seem able to embrace “critical hope” while I think others are afloat in a sea of fear and hopelessness, not only for the “environment” as a whole, but for our own individual futures as we are ejected from the safety and structure of academia. I think many of us experience this “arc” less as a linear progression of emotions and more as a constant ricochet between apathy, despair, anger, and joy. Hope, to me, often feels distant and baseless.

 Perhaps the question is less “what inspires hope, and how do we sustain hope?” and more “ what makes us feel able to get the work done?” maybe the answer to the latter question is not hope, perhaps hope can serve to impede rather than facilitate agency, as Derrick Jensen says in his essay “Beyond Hope”, linked here: https://orionmagazine.org/article/beyond-hope/ 

“When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to “hope” at all. We simply do the work. We make sure salmon survive. We make sure prairie dogs survive. We make sure grizzlies survive. We do whatever it takes….. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.” 

It is admittedly difficult to harbour hope when it feels as though the best we can really ask for are small victories and momentary joy in the face of so much daily tedium and hardship. For me, it’s often helpful to embrace the wide spectrum of negative emotions rather than be rigid in seeking an elusive hope. I am so often assuaged with “prescriptive hope” (as our own Samantha Stone puts it) and joy, and my lack of ability to muster these emotions becomes, for me, a reason to isolate, which effectively separates me from any sense of agency. I think that perhaps it is less important to examine “hope” as a specific affective state than it is to look for alternative pathways to agency.