Everything Is Learned
I had to cut a sizeable chunk from the interview with Thea Riofrancos that I published earlier this week because we talked for a long time. Here is some new bonus content from our discussion:
I think you're an excellent writer, both academically and for more popular audiences. Do you have any writing tips?
Thanks for saying that, and for asking. Some of it is just it being inculcated from a young age in certain ways—what good writing was, reading and being read to, all this stuff matters because it's not a natural ability. Everything is learned.
I think one of the things that's made me a good writer to the extent that I am is writing for non-academic audiences: writing op-ed pieces, writing essays, even social media. Sometimes the character constraint is helpful, or the immediate pushback you often get, if it's not too annoying, can be helpful for clarity. You're like, “Oh, damn, I didn't express myself well if 15 people thought I meant that.” So I think that there's a discipline imposed by writing for public audiences, in live and vibrant debates in which people disagree.
We know every human has the capacity to understand these things. Any human can understand what hegemony is, what ideology is, what the state is, what a corporation is, as long as it's expressed, at least at first, in some words that they already know. That's something that I've learned to do from writing for popular education. You use the word, and then you explain it parenthetically. Then you can keep using it without explaining it anymore, and then you've elevated the discourse level a little bit. Respecting your readers’ intelligence but not assuming things is the sweet spot. I’ve learned to do that in public writing with any editor that’s pushed me on it, which is almost every editor: “What does that mean? What's the simplest way to explain that?” That's an excellent exercise and you can do that yourself once you learn, but the first time I did it was because an editor made me do it.
The second thing is very related, which is teaching. I teach exclusively undergrads. They were just in high school, and now they’re in college and they're learning about, in my class at least, racial capitalism, global trade, climate change, and all of these topics in an intro comparative politics course. And I only assign them real readings. No textbooks, we're going to read Lenin, Luxemburg, Max Weber, and Marx. It's taken work and a lot of trial and error, but you learn eventually how to make a really complex set of ideas totally intelligible to a 19 year old such that they can also have an opinion on it, they can see the relevance of what Luxemburg says about imperialism to the contemporary world order. They can see the origins of capitalism and slavery because they read Eric Williams, and they get how it connects to Black Lives Matter. They can draw those links. I tell my students, “No such thing as dumb question.” In fact, my favorite is just for someone to be brave and say that they don't understand what's going on. As you know very well, this all carries over to organizing and facilitating meetings, trying to make sure that people are on the same page and have a shared field of reference and no one's referencing some historical event that no one else has ever heard of.
So it's a desire for everyone to feel understood and seen and included in the conversation. I think the more public and out there you put your writing and your speaking, the more you're forced to do that. Whereas academia almost pushes you in the other way. The economics and the status hierarchies of academia are not auspicious for clarity, intelligibility, and accessibility of writing, and I think academic writing is not good. I've tried to actually bring my public writing skills into academic writing, so I write a little differently than some other scholars do. I don’t want to sound anti-intellectual; I think being intellectual is a really important part of the human condition and I think it’s something everyone can do. I'm not anti-intellectual, I just am anti a certain extra esoteric, extra verbiage, extra hard to understand writing, or at least just no attempt to meet your reader where they might be at.
And reading. You read, and if you step back a little bit, like: What is this writer doing well? Why do I enjoy reading this? And try to backwards engineer it. I've done a little of that, too, which is helpful.
If I ever write anything that you have questions about or do not understand, please feel free to reach out!
I love these two articles about farmworkers in California and Washington in which you can hear about their experiences, knowledge, and organizing. In the US, farmworkers are some of the most important yet most exploited segment of workers (an all-too-common correlation). In most parts of this country they lack even the most basic worker rights and protections as they toil for little pay and face exposure to dangerous pesticides and heat. They intimately understand the need for a just transition to a sustainable, agroecological food system that places power in their hands.
Gas stoves, cooktops, and ovens are obvious polluters since they use fossil fuels, but the extent to which was not fully understood until recently. A new study has shown that their leaks of unburned methane produce most of their serious planet-warming effects, and the burning produces not only greenhouse gas emissions but significant amounts of toxic air pollution in your home that over time can cause serious health problems.
The US embargo of Cuba has had numerous devastating impacts on the people of Cuba and the environment for 60 years now, and it is time to end this cruel policy. The United Nations has called for its end for 28 consecutive years, and the US has continued to defy the international community. There will be no just and sustainable future, no stopping the climate and ecological crises, without total international cooperation and a project of global shared humanity. But even despite an embargo (and military threats) from the most powerful country in the world on its doorstep, Cuba has been on the cutting edge of modeling what a society that values people instead of profit can do with healthcare, education, and agriculture. I wonder what they could do without our boot on their neck.
Berlin is considering a plan to make a huge section of the city free of personal automobiles, and it would be the largest such area in the world. We can do this in urban areas here too, like we saw early on during the pandemic. Far less air and sound pollution, much safer streets for cyclists and pedestrians—more livable, human-centric cities are the way of the future.
