Resilience, the gilded cage

Let’s take a step back and unpack the resilience narrative. What is it masking?

There is not much holding us together right now. We are not okay. The pandemic is the final drop in an overfull broken teacup and we know that the container will not hold. We all see it coming. For some of us it has come already. For others, we are tinkering, always, on the precipice. There is so much that is wrong. It is not enough to point at one or two of the cracks as they are integral in linking to each other. We cannot say it is just racism or just capitalism or just a failing social system or just patriarchy or just climate change. Each like a solid block in Tetris holds the other up, each like a single block in Jenga about to bring it all down. And so in a time like this, the narrative around resilience has become much louder. So loud in fact, that we find it spewed to us in articles, podcasts, memes, and wellness apps, from authors and influencers and through pandemic productivity politics. It’s exhausting. I would like to unsubscribe from the JBS (just be strong) WhatsApp group. Andizi.

When I speak of resilience, I am talking about this idea that we can bounce back from any uncertainty or crisis. I am talking about the idea that it is a cornerstone characteristic as to how you will fare in life. I am talking about the notion that if you just have a positive mentality that you can affirm your way out of the structural shit-show of our deep-seated inequities. The word resilience literally means to ‘leap back’, ‘rebound’ or ‘return from’ in Latin. No amount of self-affirming sticky notes beside the mirror will remove patriarchy. No amount of daily gratitude lists will tear down racism or dismantle capitalism.

Ana María Fraile-Marcos makes the point that resilience has increasingly become a virtue to be admired and its rise in popularity is aligned directly with neo-liberalism. The notion is not just to survive adversity but to thrive because and despite it. This is largely unsurprising as resilience relies on the individualistic trope that the person is responsible for overcoming, going through and bouncing back from a crisis, even if this crisis is the result of systemic failings that no one individual can change on their own.

“I would like to unsubscribe from the JBS (just be strong) WhatsApp group. Andizi. ”

Resilience has become so popular that The Guardian proposed it as the word of the year in 2012. Fast forward to 2020 and resilience has entrenched itself in the very fabric of our day to day. Companies have incorporated resilience into their employee strategies, wellness apps have prospered in developing toolkits in how to be more resilient and books have made their way on to prestigious lists for showing us how to thrive despite a deeply flawed structure that informs our very lives.

So yes, I am raging over the popularity of resilience theory and how it has been embedded in our day to day but moreover I am angry that it robs us of the capacity to reimagine the world and actively dismantle flawed structures. Reimagining the world requires us to stop making meaning out of limiting structures that do not serve us. We derive great meaning through our individual private resilience work from the adversity we encounter. This work is also deeply time consuming as we stitch together personal narratives where we center ourselves and our responsibility in certain crises. I am in no way suggesting that we take no responsibility for our lives and the part we play. I am however saying that there is an overemphasis on us being resilient that is a politically convenient tool.

Reimagining the world requires an acute awareness of these structures and how they are deeply flawed. So in a way, wouldn’t it be interesting if we spent half as much time on researching the ways that racism, patriarchy and capitalism practically play out in our lives through the services we procure to the nodes of communities we find ourselves in. It requires a gut-deep recognition of the structural and systemic mess that comprises our world. It also and in my view, most importantly, requires huge amounts of empathy and creativity. We need to work out how to dismantle these structures and quickly. We all know we are running out of time. How do we re-envision a new world? How do we build it? What resources and tools do we have at our disposal that we could use for the better good of all?

We are facing an entirely different and uncertain world, where we can only guarantee the devastating effects of climate change, global health pandemics, continued entrenched racism and patriarchy as well as the re-emergence of fascism. The sharp and incessant focus on resilience creates a gilded cage that acts to limit us from creatively and actively reimagining another world. No amount of acceptance of what is, sustained positivity and mindful breathing will change the world. While these things may certainly be helpful for us personally in our lives, be acutely aware of the political narrative associated with it. I want to thrive. I am sure you do, too. But not in spite of the system. I want to thrive because we have created something new, something just, something worthwhile.