Month: May 2023

Scholar Saidiya Hartman states that “care is the antidote to violence”, meaning that care can be applied to remedy the complications of violence. To this, Davina Ward, a past student of this course retaliates that, “violence can exist as care”, and supports that these opposing concepts are one and the same. From this tension, I was challenged to reflect on experiences with care and violence in this course. I agree violence can exist as care, but more precisely, I find that care can be often used to disguise underlying violence. 

Care, while not always, can act as a deceitful fraud. While there are many things that I have learned through the semester, many works have enlightened me about the insincere duality that care can present. In the true sense of the term, to care means to express concern or interest for something or someone. It is the authentic supervision and guidance that one can express for another person or group of people. From this, care can be appraised as a beautifully selfless and well-intentioned concept. And yet, as I have continued learning this semester, I have had the epiphany that care can sometimes be used to conceal violence that had been administered. This misleading motive of care has troubled me, as I have always believed in the uplifting and wholesome definition of care. This realization was a reminder of the societal flaw that allows people to get away with dishonesty, selfishness, and corruption. Through art, literature, performances, and more, it has been revealed that people can sometimes claim to act in the best interest of others, and yet their actions lack the true empathy and understanding needed to tend to people in need. 

In opposing care, violence is when a person or group uses force against another. Typically, this word has a negative connotation alluding to physically, emotionally, or verbally harming another being or group of people. Through this semester, one reiterated concept was that violence is often administered by groups that feel superior to another group, and therefore threaten or act aggressively towards a group that they have deemed to be inferior. In Joseph Roach’s 1996 performance “Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance ”, he addressed the concept of violence by claiming that “violence is a performance of waste” (Roach, 1996, pg. 41). With this, Roach references the idea that violence is often performed by a group of individuals that condescends another group as subservient, unworthy “waste”. Through this course, I have been shown many examples of violence that has been administered by government officials and organizations onto specific populations that are patronized and abandoned following detrimental storms. In these examples of violence, government officials claim to be “doing everything they can” to help the people in need, while in actuality this was a lie. These government officials and organizations were using a falsified sense of care in order to conceal the true violence that they were guilty of. 

The film When the Levees Broke directed by Stan Lee exposes one instance of care being used to disguise violence. Lee follows the events before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 hurricane that devastated the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Following the horrific tragedy that the storm presented, the helpless residents of this city looked towards the people that were supposed to provide them with care; The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and former President Bush. In the film, Lee included a short segment from President Bush’s first public response to Katirina in which he states, “Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes. We will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives”. And yet, this speech was given seventeen days after Katrina struck and hundreds of lives were already lost. He insisted that he would provide any necessary care that was needed for the residents of New Orleans, and yet, his lengthy delay in response could insinuate that this care was untruthful. In the film, one victim called out that after “Two, three weeks into the game the president takes responsibility”, in response to his long overdue speech (Lee 2006). Lee further reveals the ingenuine care that FEMA exhibited to conceal its violence against Hurricane Katrina victims in the storm’s aftermath. It is the self-proclaimed mission of FEMA to support “citizens and emergency personnel to build, sustain, and improve the nation’s capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.”. Despite this, many victims of the storm argued that this organization left them abandoned, vulnerable, and with a false hope that help was soon to come. This was seen as FEMA repeatedly told the victims that buses, food, water, and medical personnel were coming to assist them, and yet it took days before this help arrived. They offered a false sense of care that they were not true to, and falsely published that they were actively helping the victims. This was an act of violence; they exploited the people in need, and did not truly care for their well-being. 

From the many works that displayed the events of Katrina and its unfortunate aftermath, it is clear that Katrina victims felt as though this care demonstrated by both FEMA and President Bush was insincere and dishonest. The care should have begun sooner to evacuate the residents of New Orleans and prepare for the storm; the care should have arrived immediately after the storm resolved when thousands of people were crying out for help. The falsity of care was demonstrated simply by its delay. It is this fraudulent care that exposes the true violence that government officials and organizations administered to the helpless victims of Katrina. It is the role of a governing body to protect, care for, and assist all of their people, and yet, none of this was accomplished following this storm. 

And why not? This question gave rise to speculations about the systemic discrimination of certain races and economic classes. New Orleans is a complex city with a multifaceted identity; rich in culture and diversity in some areas, but also challenged by poverty, crime, and stereotypes in others. Unfortunately, these social and economic challenges are often looked at by my government organizations as profitable prey. Author Timothy Brezina alluded to this downfall in government systems, and referenced the inexplicit violence that occurred in New Orleans during Katrina’s aftermath. In his examination, he explained the perversity theory, or “The idea that government assistance creates perverse incentives, and makes people helpless and dependent on the state, has a long history in Western society”(Brenzina 2008, pg.25). New Orleans was vulnerable to this theory as a result of their struggles both before and after Hurricane Katrina; they were led to be dependent on a government that proved to be covertly ill-intentioned. Especially with the storm, Brezina explained how this theory “has been used before to deny aid to disaster victims, and its application to evacuation-related failures appears to represent a novel extension of the argument”(Brenzina 2008, pg. 27). This pattern of government behavior is dangerous as they are able to withhold help from those that need it the most, those who are often entirely dependent on their assistance. As many New Orleans residents were reliant on these governmental systems, this tactic could have been utilized by government institutions in order for them to gain a sense of power and authority, all while concealing the violence they were inflicting upon a marginalized group. Unfortunately, this may be the answer to why the US government did not truthfully care for these victims. 

Outside of Hurricane Katrina, care was also used to disguise violence following Hurricane Maria’s destruction of Puerto Rico in 2017. The wake of this storm left the city of Guaynabo flooded with debris, and the people with very scarce resources. Artist Jhoni Jackson depicted the events and aftermath of this storm through 23 tarot cards, and explained what each card was referencing. His twelfth card was titled “La Ayuda”, or the help, and outlined former President Donald Trump’s mocking attempt to assist the city after the storm. Jackson quoted a resident’s opinions on this visit in explaining “When he came here, they took him to Guaynabo to a chapel; not much had happened there. He went to the prettiest corner of Guaynabo. He came here and instead of giving us food, he gave us paper towels. It was like a joke to him.” (Jackson 2018). Trump visited in order to provide care to the victims of the storm, and yet, his mockery of throwing paper towels at the victims was taken as a gesture of violence. This direct affront offended many, as his “act of care” did not demonstrate any true empathy or concern. Therefore, similar to Katrina, a false sense of care was used to conceal violence taken against the sufferers of the storm.

Despite the underlying violence following Hurricane Katrina and Maria, there have been contradictory examples of honest and well-intended governmental care for storm victims; one example was after Cyclone Fani, a storm that devastated the city of Odisha, India. Prior to this storm, India’s government authorities took extensive measures to warn residents of the impending danger. They prepared hundreds of cyclone shelters and evacuated over one million residents. They deployed thousands of volunteers, healthcare providers, and military personnel both before and after the storm, and thus minimized the fatalities and tragedies of the storm. This vulnerable state experienced an abundance of profound care. The genuine care that the government demonstrated was not delayed, deficient, or for the purpose of self-promotion; there was no institutional violence that suspended their aid. They set a precedent of care for others to follow. 

Spiritual leader Dhali lama quotes “If we are sincere in taking care of others, if we protect their lives and respect their rights, we’ll be able to conduct our lives transparently and that is the basis of trust, which in turn is the basis of friendship.” He emphasizes the beautiful relationship that can develop when genuine care is administered. Furthermore, he suggests that care should not be administered with an expectation of benefits in return. As the care provided for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and Maria opposed this interpretation, I have been challenged by the idea that a falsity of care exists. To counter this disheartening concept that many governmental systems have exemplified, I expect to be more critical in examining claims of care that could be doubtful. It is important to recognize and challenge this ingenuine care to create a society of equity and kindness. Overall, through the works of this course I have been exposed to the duality of care, and from this have developed an appreciation for the precedents of care that uphold the term’s beautiful and empathetic connotation. 

The readings and motion pictures that we have analyzed in class have helped me better understand what violence is, and what purpose it serves. Because of this, I have to disagree with Saidiya Hartman’s quote “Care is the antidote to violence.” Even the dictionary definition of violence, states that it is a strength of emotion or an unpleasant and natural destruction. Although violence itself is wasteful, this does not take away from the fact that the people who carry out these violent acts, act out of emotion and care enough to cause some type of destruction to make their point. When thinking of a word to replace care in Saidiya Hartman’s quote “Care is the antidote to violence”, I seem to draw a blank. The media from this class has shown me that even with love, hope, and all those amazing attributions to society, our world seems as though it will never be able to escape violence; unless of course the cause of the violence itself is completely removed. With all of the brutality and prejudices in this world, it seems as though the only way to stop all of the madness would be to remove the most violent thing on the planet, the human race. 

The idea that caring could be the remedy for violence does not align with the violent examples we have seen in class. Over the course of the semester, we have looked through all different types of storms and the effect that these storms had on their victims; We got to scrutinize both real and fictional accounts of people living through these storms. In both cases, there is never a time where I believe caring could have resolved the cruelty that these people had to endure. There was never a storm where there was ever nobody that cared about what was going on, there was just never anybody with supernumerary money and power that cared enough to make a difference. Therefore, I believe that Saidiya Hartman’s quote could only reign true if the care comes from those in a position of power, so is this statement true at all then? If it only matters if certain people care then can we say that care is an antidote? In this case, I think it would be better to say the Government putting forth the money and empathy needed to help people is the antidote to violence. When looking at this compared to the storms, it seems as though this is also an unworkable antidote for violence. The government, in most of the situations, did not show enough urgency or preparedness which led to the loss of lives and expensive destruction.  

During the semester we watched Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, a documentary that shows the audience the tragedies that occurred before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. In all stages of the storm, they show the passion and anger that these victims were feeling and they did care about the well-being of their city and its people. The reason that all of this destruction was able to happen is that the government only cared about its agenda and disregarded the safety of the people of New Orleans, or most specifically, the minorities of New Orleans. The government showed urgency in getting the wealthier side of New Orleans evacuated and safe. Although everyone deserves to get help evacuating, if they did not have enough people to help evacuate everyone, why would they focus their attention on the people who have means of traveling and have the transportation? Rather than the people who will have to risk everything just to evacuate their homes, and who will have a much harder time being able to travel safely. Even good Samaritans who had access to transportation were helping those who could not leave and were stuck, the film showed people with motor boats picking up people who were stranded with no resources. The people cared about each other and their city but the government showed them that they were not a top priority. The government’s careless attitude towards the residents of the lower ninth ward was not only present before and during the storm but also after. It was even mentioned in the documentary that they were not checking houses for survivors or victims, they were marking houses saying they had no bodies when they did have someone who passed away in them. So not only did these survivors have to live through that storm but some had to come back to their homes to find that the government did not do its job and find someone they know deceased in their “cleared” house.   

  When looking at these actions compared to Saidiya Hartman’s quote “Care is the antidote to violence”, you cannot help but wonder if this would reign true when comparing it to the violence that arose during Hurricane Katrina. Again, no one is allowed to say that nobody cared about what was happening during Katrina, it was just that the people who did care did not have the money or status for their caring to make an impact. It was even mentioned in the documentary that the government has the money to send people to the moon and put billions towards the military, but they were not able to rescue many people from the hurricane or start helping clean up the destruction until about four months following Katrina. This just shows where the government’s priorities are, and that they are in fact in control of the severity of the majority of violence that occurs, they just do not care enough to stop this violence. 

Patrick Smith’s “Blood Dazzler” brings you through the emotional journey of surviving Hurricane Katrina with poetry. These poems show the importance of the city and what the true meaning of it was to its people. They also show the dark truth behind the lack of support that they received from the government. Specifically, the poem “Up On The Roof”, explains how they were left stranded on their roofs begging for help from anybody that went by. For days these people had to watch people who could help them fly by and not even give a second thought to them. Helicopters were even able to fly over them and record them at their most vulnerable state and use that for profit, but they were not able to stop to help them in any way. They cared enough to report on the devastation and give terrifying statistics, “Cameras obsess with your chaos. Now think how America sees you: Gold in your molars and earlobes. Your naps knotted, craving a brushing. You clutch your babies regardless, keeping roaring your spite to where God is”(Smith 23). The government was able to exploit the people of New Orleans, showing them begging for help and at their lowest points but did not do anything to stop this. This also gave these survivors false hope, “Up on the roof, stumbling slickstep, you wave all your sheets and your blouses, towels, bandannas, and denims and etch what you ask in the morning: When are they coming to save us” (Smith 23). The only thing the government cared about was how they were being seen by the rest of the world, not how they were going to save these people. In this case, Saidiya Hartman’s quote “Care is the antidote to violence” may be a little too vague to compare to this situation. This is because the government did care, but they cared about their image and saving the wealthier parts of the city. This is where applying this quote the real-life devastations can be tricky because both the people of the city and the government cared, just about different things, and the violence still occurred.

Today, violence constantly surrounds us, whether it is fictional or it is real, it always seems to be present in our world. After thinking about Saidiya Hartman’s quote “Care is the antidote to violence” in comparison to the course’s central views, I have gained a better understanding of this quote. There is an absurd amount of brutality in our world and the extinction of violence does not seem like it will happen in the near future, but this is not to say that we cannot strive to reduce unnecessary violence. I do believe that there will always be immoral people and violence will always be a part of human nature, so when thinking of an antidote to violence the only one that seems like it would be effective would be human extinction. Until this happens I believe that we as humans can only strive for improving the state of our world rather than looking for an instant solution, because a problem like violence will not be instantly solved. 

This course provided me ways to think on and improve how I engage with classmates and literature of all kinds through the framework of learning about hurricanes.  I learned that what I do best is observing and drawing connections, even though it takes time for me to gather the churning thoughts out of my head.  Through this circulation I was able to think more on the relationship between care and violence and pick out the examples that I thought would help my self-reflection.  Throughout this course I learned that there are times when care is attempted but accidentally results in violence, and when violence is performed in order to achieve care, especially when confronted with surviving a natural disaster or recovering from one. 

I noticed that the idea of violence appeared many times in our discussions and in several of the books we read and films we watched.  As unsettling as it may be, violence must come up in a course about hurricanes because of the natural destruction they bring, followed by human recovery.  Saidiya Hartman’s quote “care is the antidote to violence” fits in this situation, with rebuilding communities and lives after an enormous natural disaster.  For example, Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke details the entire timeline of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, showing footage of floodwaters, rescues, survival, and recovery.  His documentary is filled with accounts from people that lived in the Lower 9^th Ward and surrounding communities in New Orleans that were affected the most, the first responders that got people to safety, politicians that were in power at the time, and many more.  The ending credits of the documentary show every person that was interviewed with a picture frame around them, presenting them as equals that all had a place in the story of Hurricane Katrina.  This documentary shows the way that care is an antidote to violence by showing the recovery and the care provided to the affected communities after surviving the hurricane and the negligence that followed.  In class we even started with the end credit sequence to ensure that we saw it, so we would not get stuck in the grief of the rest of the documentary.  This care given to us by Dr. McCoy and the care Lee gave to portray the people he interviewed as individuals and equals was a part of the antidote to healing from Hurricane Katrina.

I still subscribe to Hartman’s view that care is the antidote to violence, but I want to examine how care can be attempted but in a way that still results in violence.  A passage in Davina Ward’s essay about how violence can exist as care stood out to me, as she describes a scene in When the Levees Broke where a mother buries her young daughter after she drowns in the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.  Ward writes that “[the mother] had to bury her daughter in an act of preserving her memory, however, it was a great violence to herself. Burying her daughter was a violence that she had to inflict on herself, her body wracked with sobs is a testament to that. However, in this violence is the last act of care she can perform for her daughter. Here violence is also an act of care.”  Laying her daughter to rest was a final act of care that the mother can give but it hurt her to do so as shown by her weeping.  Ward describes how it felt to watch this part of the documentary in class, saying that it was a raw moment that made many people emotional.  I found that this scene resonated with me because my own mother had to bury my older brother two months after he was born after he died from health problems, and the hymn that was sung during the procession in the documentary was one that I hold very close.  I personally associate the hymn “Soon and Very Soon” with hope and family because of how I often hear it sung in church during the Advent season, having the song mean that soon the savior will be coming to us instead of vice versa, and it was one of the many hymns my mother would sing to me as a child.  Hearing it in this context and with my family history made watching this scene difficult for me, even though I was warned that the death of a child was coming.  I thought that by staying and watching the scene I would show that I care and empathize with the tragic event, but ended up inflicting violence upon myself in the form of emotional memories.  A similar story from When the Levees Broke that came up when I thought about care resulting in violence was one about a man and his elderly mother at the convention center.  The high temperatures and lack of food and water was making it difficult for him to get help for his mother, and he was receiving no answers other than the promise that busses would soon arrive to bring people to better shelters.  It was heartbreaking to watch him recount how he looked over to her and saw she had died in her wheelchair and how her body was left outside the convention center under a sheet until it could be dealt with.  A major theme of the documentary is that the response to Hurricane Katrina was not adequate, and that letting people suffer like this is the worst form of violence a government can do to its people.  This man did not intend for his mother to die even though he did his best to care for her in this situation.

In my thinking I realized that another part of the relationship between violence and care is that violence is sometimes performed in order to achieve care, especially in times of survival.  Self-defense is a common way of carrying this out, like in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One where survivors of a zombie plague must clear out the remaining undead to rebuild society.  The leftover “stragglers” are described as harmless and only interested in staying in familiar places they once went to when they were alive instead of chasing after flesh.  The main character, Mark Spitz, is sympathetic to the stragglers yet knows that they must be disposed of quickly, unlike others who do not see stragglers as formerly human or potentially dangerous and often make fun of them.  There are even instances where a character that has been infected will kill themselves to not become a skel and harm others.  The characters in Zone One perform the necessary violence needed to rebuild after a traumatic event.  The theme of necessary violence in order to provide care for the sake of survival continues in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow when characters must burn books to keep warm during an apocalyptic winter storm.  The act of burning books has long been associated with hate and the erasing of ideas, which the film acknowledges by choosing not to burn certain books in order to preserve the past if human society does get wiped out.  Rebuilding a community after a disaster is an arduous task that no single person or group can do alone, and sacrifices in the form of violence must be made.  The more I thought about committing acts of violence with the intent of care, the more I thought about my second semester at Geneseo when I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved.  Morrison uses the story of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who escapes with her family to freedom but makes the choice to kill her daughter rather than see her in slavery again as the basis for her character Sethe, who endures the same thing.  Violence with the intent of care has stayed with me throughout my time as an English student and it feels appropriate that I choose to include it now.

I would like to go back to what I said in the beginning of this paper about the course concept of circulation, circling back to it if you will.  When one thinks of a hurricane, the image of a vortex of clouds comes to mind, along with waves crashing over shorelines and trees bent in the wind.  Many times I have found myself much like those trees, unable to stand as strong as I can against the storm of thoughts that form and not fighting to make sense of what I was thinking.  This semester I realized that I do not always have to sound smart or perfectly eloquent when contributing to discussions, and I found that the best way for me to get my ideas out is through writing.  I value the practice of stepping back and thinking through what I want to say, and I feel like I can properly do that when writing a paper.  I can slow my churning thoughts and find the best ways to communicate what I want to say.  I can now say that care and violence swirl together like a hurricane, and I have found myself in the eye where I can collect myself in the calm of the storm.

Life can not be lived on a scale. Yet, multiple cultures find themselves centering their idealized life in terms of balance. To have a home life and a work life. To live for oneself, but also be a representation of a life lived for your family, your cultural groups, and your society. The scale represents the separation of these lives lived, of these tasks being individualized, and yet to live between these two: there is nothing but pressure. 

The existence of these idealized versions of life stems from understanding the importance of the individual. The care we put into ourselves is how we make it through each day. While we still must care for others and the world we live in, we can only care for the external when we maintain the internal. Therefore, equating ourselves to that of a life lived compartmentalized would suggest we are able to somehow produce enough care for all aspects of life to run smoothly. Yet, there is no discussion on what happens when one portion that has been locked off from the rest changes. To give extra care in this “balanced” system, can only be a result of neglect in other portions of life. In trying to provide more care where it is needed care must be lost in other elements, occasionally resulting in more malfunctions later down the road. This then leads to the violence of caring. 

To look at the origin of these terms for a moment it is important to understand where care and violence root themselves. To care, according to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, is to be in  “a disquieted state of mixed uncertainty, apprehension, and responsibility”, yet violence is an “intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force” (Merriam Webster). The very definition of the word care exists in a state incapable of being balanced and yet somehow we continue to restrain it to be that. When looking at the definitions side by side, it appears as though one must feed off the other. You can only care when there is violence of some sort, but violence can only ensue when people care. Perhaps playing on the common dilemma, if a hurricane makes landfall, but no one is around to feel it, was it ever really there at all? While there is no doubt that the hurricane’s path exists and it existed in its form, there was no impact to be cared for, so did any violence ever really occur? 

Semantically, ideals of care and violence can be shared and argued but ultimately these words have no universal meaning. What could be care for one may be violent to another. The only power these words hold is the power we have given them. To care is good and to be violent is bad according to societal standards. Yet ultimately one can not exist without the other. 

Within my life I have been no stranger to the relationship that exists between these two words. For a long portion of my life I found myself taking care of my health, as it seemed fit for both myself and my family. While protecting myself through medical testing, hospital trips, or even just days where it felt im;ossible to do nothing but breathe I made sure to take care of myself. I would drink water, eat when I could and stay safe at home. That care is what everyone expects a sick child to receive. But in that same breath I missed life. I existed in school as an empty desk that my classmates knew should be filled, but got used to being there. I existed as an occasional call to friends to ask about their lives and how it felt to grow up, to come of age. As a show pony at family gatherings to catch sympathy hugs and then lay down in someone else’s bed when the lights or conversations became too much. The care that was keeping me safe, that was restoring me to my health destroyed any sense of community and self I could have had when most people expected to find it. While my friends were experiencing first dates and sports events, I would simply lay.

All of this being said, I moved forward away from that care but also away from the violence of being stunted in my education and my social life. Knowing one end of the extreme I’ve decided that the care for solely my health was one that would destroy my life. So I moved forward in my education, moved forward with my social life, never fully recovered because not everything goes away with care, but yet you persevere. But now what takes the place of this care has been placed in too much care for my education and social life that results in neglect for my health, which then forces me to take a step back and care for my health again making myself incapable of continuing the care for my education and social life until the balance is restored. But it can not stay restored because deadlines don’t change because you can not get out of bed. There are choices to be made, places to put care, but with every choice that is made there is violence on the opposing end. 

To examine the push and pull of violence and care from a literary perspective, Shakespeare’s The Tempest the balance of the two and the imbalance of care lays at the very foundation of the story. A story full of magic, family dynamics, and power contains only one female character. A character who is not even fully understanding of the power dynamics and shifting of the world that is taking place. Yet, the real imbalance is found in the story of the main anti hero Prospero, Miranda is just dragged along through it.  Prospero is raised in the place of potential power, yet his yearning for knowledge, specifically knowledge of the occult. He is meant to be a noble, but his want for this knowledge, the care he places into furthering his learning of magic makes him disinterested in being a future ruler. Therefore, he gives it up. He understands that his care for his studies outweighs his care of his family’s lineage and his rightful place as the Duke of Milan. This results in him and his daughter being banished, to seclusion where he is able to care for his magic and for his daughter, but where he longs for his position back. So he ensues violence on his own brother, his own people for the sake of redemption. He continues to care for his daughter and his magic keeping them separated from the rest of life, only leading to more violence. His daughter knows not of his power, of his family lineage and is not able to have relationships beyond this island until the story unfolds. Until he is able to restore his position as the rightful Duke of Milan and go home with his daughter. But the care he has put into his magic and the care he has put into his relationship with his daughter is violent. The search for power and knowledge overcame him and left his daughter alone and in the dark with only him to care for her. She experiences the violence as a result of her father’s care not only for her, but everything important in his life.

On a more grandiose scale, Zone One by Coleson Whitehead deals with a more interesting understanding of care. The story tells of a post-apocalyptic torn lower Manhattan that struggles with the war of the survivors of a plague and the infected.  The main protagonist Mark Spitz tells tales of him and his fellow civilians through the worst days of the plague and his current state in Manhattan. What is so compelling about the story is what I would consider to be the manufacturing of care.  The civilians “must” clear the streets of the infected bodies caring for their own safety, but also actively commiting violent acts on those that were once just like them, erasing the last bit of their lives. But what is more fascinating is the civilian creation of care for these people. Telling tales and making up lives for those infected before the plague, entertaining themselves, taking care of their minds, but creating an effigy of the lives lost. The novel discussed at great lengths the effect of post- apocalypse stress disorder, and this method of making light of the situation and doing a very human thing, creating through all of this destruction, is pivotal for the care of the community. Yet, in the same breath they are destroying people that have now become “othered” because of the plague. 

The words care and violence are neither positive or negative words in my eyes. They exist merely as the roots for us to explain life through different avenues. Where one can feel cared for others may feel hurt, when you intend to care violence may result, and violence can take the form of care through certain lenses. Therefore, I wager the idea of removing the idea of “the balance of care” and instead suggest to live life by weighing the results of care in the forms of violence that may result. Some acts of destruction are worth caring for oneself, some forms of care are worth others losses, and all forms of care can and will be violent so long as you care with passion. 

Care and violence are two words often viewed as diametrically opposed. A polarized binary often with moral attributions. When I first approached this paper, I was still thinking within this framework. Violence, the performance of waste that it is, is bad and conversely, care must be good. Having talked some of these thoughts out loud though, it became glaringly obvious that this binary, like most any binary, is not going to be able to contain the multitudes of complex situations that these ideological ultimatum frameworks claim to be universally suited to. Working within the binary makes one’s self an arbitrator who must judge situations one way or another, to declare it to be care or violence. Strangely enough, it was thinking about the realms of post-apocalyptic fiction that got me more interested in arbitrating and evaluating these shades of gray. 

Apocalypses find their origins in violence, usually. They are seen as cataclysmic, violent events, and the post-apocalyptic new worlds that exist following their tumultuous point of origin are generally portrayed as more violent than the ones that came before it. Even if not more violent per se, post-apocalyptic worlds and stories often uncover these tensions, emotions, and capabilities for violence; there is a claim that these violent instincts are being released simply because now they can be. Take for instance the discussion of straggler torture in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, or the hundreds of “raiders” that players are meant to gun down without hesitation in video games like the Fallout franchise. The torture and humiliation inflicted on the stragglers by some Connecticut sweepers is contextualized as a productive outlet for one’s PASD (Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder); it was considered “occupational therapy” (Whitehead 102). These stories demonstrate that the worst capabilities of humanity are being made manifest because the pre-apocalyptic society is no longer containing them. Beyond the immense physical violence that apocalypses usually entail, the diasporic nature of these events is likewise emphasized, adding another layer of emotional violence and strain as people are separated from loved ones, support networks, and their geographical homes. However, the best post-apocalyptic stories do more than dwell in the realm of Hobbesian fanfiction, they demonstrate the physical and emotional resilience of humanity as well as emphasizing the importance of “caring” in a violent world. 

Post-apocalyptic survival is a prime example of the interconnected nature of care and violence. The recently released HBO show, The Last of Us, is a post-apocalyptic work that demonstrates the complex morality that arises with the focus on survival, it demonstrates the necessity of violence in survival, and shows how care can be contextualized through relationship prisms. Joel and Ellie, our protagonists, develop a chemistry and dynamic through their travels across a post-apocalyptic America together. On this journey they encounter Infected, zombie-analogous beings, their fellow humans, as well as environmental and medical factors that threaten their lives and require violence. As the audience, we see Joel and Ellie’s relationship progress, informed by their shared traumatic encounters as well as their wealth of interactions telling jokes, talking about the world before and each other’s lives, they begin caring more about each other and find kinship and family in this post-apocalyptic world that has previously taken theirs away. Both Ellie and Joel use violence to defend themselves and each other from a dangerous world. They do so in the name of care. Self-defense and self-preservation loom large in post-apocalyptic media and The Last of Us highlights how self-defense extends beyond ourselves and covers those we care about, our communities, and friends. 

In fact, while apocalyptic worlds are often viewed as materially and categorically worse than our own, etymologically these worlds may be more alike than they seem. The word “apocalypse” is derived from the ancient Greek word for “revelation”; breaking it down further into its two components, apo and kalyptein, an apocalypse can be understood as an “uncovering of what’s concealed”. The best post-apocalyptic media reflects this notion, often factoring in the violence that existed prior to the cataclysmic uncovering and tempering the dagger that “things were better before” with evidence that all was not well prior to the apocalypse. Ultimately, post-apocalyptic media encourages us to care in the face of cataclysmic violence, to do what we can (within reason) to survive and protect the ones we love, and to consider and stop the violence we inflict upon each other and our world, the apocalyptic pressure that will build up and demand release. 

Examining the role that both “memory” and “forgetting” play in post-apocalyptic media is fascinating for this very reason. Nostalgic notions of returning a world to its prior state clash with the realistic acknowledgments of past faults as well as the knowledge that the world can’t return, but can move forward. The Fallout series has a brilliant name for this rose-tinted nostalgia: “old world blues”. Numerous characters, factions, and groups in the Fallout universe hope to restore “the old world” (with all the ambiguity that exists within this term). The games do a lot of work in showing the horrid conditions of life before the nuclear war and demonstrate the role corporations, individuals, and institutions played in creating the post-apocalyptic landscapes the games take place in. The pre-apocalyptic faults and pressures are both remembered and forgotten in the Fallout games, revealing yet another binary which upon closer inspection contains multitudes. Understanding an apocalypse as an “uncovering”, there is nothing added to create them; it is the violent release of pre-existing pressures that can no longer be held in. In many cases, post-apocalyptic media is examining how we exert the violence of the apocalypse on ourselves by ignoring the apocalypse’s origin and likely contributing to the origin.

However, apocalypses are perhaps most famous for expressing that humanity is not alone in our ability to remember and forget. Ray Bradbury’s famous short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” is perhaps the most famous example of this in speculative fiction, and  portrays nature’s reclamation of the post-apocalyptic Martian landscape; it’s featured in The Martian Chronicles. This natural process, of the land remembering itself, is juxtaposed by the humming routines of the mindless mechanized drones who continue carrying out their programmed tasks. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One adds to this discussion when considering the role that stragglers play within the world. Not ravenous and relentless like their skel peers which they physically resemble, the stragglers and their appearance of memory is of much interest to many characters in the story. I say “appearance of memory” because it is unclear what semblance of memories these stragglers possess, only that they do possess something– some inkling to travel to a certain location or strike a certain stance– Whitehead writes: “The general theory contended that stragglers haunted what they knew (Whitehead 64)”. Another section describes the stragglers as “trapped in a snapshot of their lives” (101), trapped within a memory.  However, this position of being trapped is not universally assigned to them, the actions of the Fortune Teller, particularly the curl of her smile and the biting of Gary demonstrate that stragglers are not static, fixed, and trapped (284). Like the land remembering its shape, stragglers too possess memory even if in ways that can not be wholly understood. 

To look at a more metaphorical apocalypse, Shakespeare’s The Tempest offers a look at the interconnected nature of care and violence, particularly whilst examining the relationship between Prospero and Miranda. Not quite the world-wide uncovering we expect from a  traditional apocalypse, the lives in exile of Prospero and Miranda may still be understood as a personal apocalypse. Driven from their home in the court of Milan, Prospero and Miranda were pushed out by factional pressures and familial betrayal. Years of Prospero neglecting his stewardly duties in favor of his arcane studies created this tumultuous pressure; its apocalyptic uncovering occurred when Antonio, Prospero’s brother, usurped the throne of Milan and forced Prospero and Miranda into exile (Act I Scene II). Circling back to something said before, here we again see the diasporic nature of apocalypses. One could argue that in addition to shirking his duties as Duke, Prospero likewise demonstrated a lack of care for Miranda, repeatedly rebuking her for supposedly not listening, gaslighting and isolating her, and keeping her from the greater world. And yet Prospero is also positioned as the caring, protecting father who would do anything to keep Miranda safe in this dangerous post-betrayal world. 

In addition to literary works exploring apocalypses, these “uncoverings” cannot help but be contextualized in our own world. Much like how hurricanes and other cataclysms are used as literary devices to “wipe the slate clean”, apocalypses follow a similar form. This rhetoric likewise forms around real cataclysmic events like Hurricane Katrina and it’s hard to argue against the perception of Katrina as an apocalypse. The dreadful devastation and loss of life were not just apocalyptic in-scale, but in the sense of a true apocalypse, Katrina uncovered the many corrupt, inefficient, problematic, and unacceptable pressures and systems that exacerbated and caused the apocalypse. Whether we recognize it or not, our world is a post-apocalyptic one; epidemics, disasters, wars and genocides all dramatically alter our status-quos revealing the pressures that give rise to the tempestuous apocalypse in the first place. Centering the idea that apocalypses are real, have happened, and will continue happening is important as it reminds us that the “apocalypse”, often thought of as the end of the world, is in actuality a liminal transitional period. Understanding too that addressing and alleviating these pressures before the apocalypse can prevent them or their scale. 

This brings me to perhaps one of the most positive portrayals of a post-apocalyptic world, the world of Ooo in the cartoon series Adventure Time. By the time of the events of the main story, the world is removed from the apocalypse by a whole millennium. New societies and people populate the world, humans become fewer in number, but the world just keeps on turning. The series’ final episode even ends on this note, foreshadowing a nigh-apocalyptic event that seemingly eliminated characters that we knew, but not the world of Ooo itself. Music plays a large role in the show and it is somewhat fitting how the communal group number “Time Adventure” stops the apocalypse by uniting the previously aggrieved and conflicting groups through the powers of memory and harmony. In my mind, this is still an apocalypse, just one with a different revelation than we are used to. In this apocalypse harmony is what is revealed. To borrow a phrase from the song, apocalypses “will happen, happening, happened”; apocalypses, like care and violence, reject a simplistic moral reckoning that reduces the factors and pressures of, and responses to, the apocalypse into a simple genre-savvy box.  Apocalypses demonstrate the capacity for both care and violence, even and especially in times of severe stress and duress. And most of all apocalypses highlight our capacity to move forward, in some form or another, and to confront these pressures before they are thrust forth through traumatic events.

By Laryssa Olsen

As I find myself at the close of both this semester and my college career, I reflect not only on my own learning over the past few months or these four years. Instead, I appreciate how learning alongside others has impacted this growth. I am not the same student, friend, or human being that I was when I began this journey to become an educator myself. I do not learn in the same ways, have the same study habits, or have the same ideals that I arrived with at the threshold of Geneseo. While I recognize that this chapter of my life is closing, I anticipate the next story that will begin as I continue moving forward with the peers, colleagues, and educators who have supported this journey from its very beginning or have accompanied me somewhere in between. Toni Morrison’s second book of her trilogy, Jazz, serves as a model for how we can persevere through the obstacles in our lives given collaboration with those around us alongside an understanding that progress is not always forward, but may appear cyclical as well.

At the beginning of ENGL431, my classmates and I were asked the question, ‘what are we thinking about as we stand at the threshold of this course’? At its inception, I began thinking about this question with some of my own questions. How are we in conversation with our own thoughts as well as those of our peers? How is the literature we read in conversation with each other? In order to talk about the place where I am now, I find it necessary to return to these questions which I began the semester with. And, I believe that I may have found some answers! Collaboration is how we build and create the conversations which are pertinent to our learning and growth, understanding that our ideas are meant to be shared and respected given the unique and personal lived experiences that we all bring as individuals. Our collaborative essays I feel were the greatest indicator of how learning and growth is an interactive process rather than an exclusive one. When writing a singular piece with seven other scholars initially startled me, it’s the thinking, relationships, and writing that was produced that has reinforced learning as a social sphere. One constant among each collaborative essay this semester was understanding that our thoughts and learning are meant to be shared and discussed. More frequently than I could recall, individual ‘aha!’ moments led to excitement felt by the whole group as we determined how to incorporate these revelations into our final work. These were the pieces that put together the whole of our collaborations, our writing as a patchwork quilt of our learning and thinking. My learning and my peers’ learning coexist, I learn from them and they learn from me through this cycle of my personal thoughts and their response and vice versa. Learning is not an independent journey, it is one which demands collaboration. It is here that I find the conversations which I initially questioned before I had the opportunity to think and learn collaboratively. 

Morrison’s work is another example of how we answer my second question posed, how are there conversations among the literature which we are reading? The conversations amongst Jazz and Dante’s Purgatorio I found to be the epitome of progress as not always forward, sometimes cyclical even. Dante’s Purgatory limits sinners to move forward towards Paradise through their own strength against sins in collaboration with the prayers of the living. Only through these means can sinners find themselves reaching the firmament. It’s yet again cooperative efforts that yield the final result. Jazz similarly embodies this same construct, as its characters search for atonement and redemption emotionally following the betrayal of adultery and the physical violence of homicide. It is through collaboration of the one who injured, Joe, and who has been injured, Violet, that they are able to bridge the barrier which was wedged between them. Purgatorio expresses that this is done through confrontation of past vices in order to reach salvation. Violet and Joe begin at the threshold of their own Purgatory’s, Violet haunted by Joe’s betrayal and Joe haunted by the aftermath of violence towards those he loves. While they grapple independently, no progress is made with their atonement. It takes confronting these vices jointly where they can finally reach their paradise, spending their time together walking through the city or getting milkshakes but more importantly, “A lot of the time, though, they stay home figuring things out, telling each other those little personal stories they like to hear again and again…” (Morrison 223). Collaboration is found in these small moments of their lives, repairing their relationship through conversation and revisiting their past in order to prepare for their future. Moving forward requires them to acknowledge the past while not dwelling on it, and thus the cyclical nature of atonement is recognized. 

It is this cycle of recognition of the past, present, and future that came into play throughout our collaborative work this semester. Instances of allusions to Beloved are observed in Jazz, and in order to move forward with our second piece, our Jazz/Purgatorio collaboration, we returned to our previous collaborative essays and referred to past class notes. One example of this would be in order to understand Jazz and Violet and Joe’s benefits of living in New York City, we must understand the struggles of Sethe in Beloved based on her residence in the South. For Joe and Violet, leaving behind Virginia was also leaving behind their ‘Hell’ and in Harlem they could pursue opportunities that weren’t available to them such as earning more money for less labor or having a community of their own where they are accepted. This conversation among Morrison’s work shows both the collaboration between her novels and within our collective writing. 

With the past, present, and future in mind I must also take this approach when thinking about what is next for me, as I close the door of the past four years to stand at the threshold of a new one. It’s also not necessarily a door I am completely closing, as I will be continuing my education in the Birth-12 Literacy and Reading Masters program here at Geneseo on my way to becoming an elementary teacher. Recognizing this next step I reflect on all the steps before this, even way back to when I ran a school for my siblings and the neighborhood kids out of my basement. My love for learning has been instilled in me by my parents who are both educators and furthered by the stellar teachers which I’ve had throughout my primary and secondary school years. Whenever the question was asked of me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, the answer always was to be a teacher (and specifically whichever teacher I had that year in school!). Being a teacher is the one constant which has always stayed with me throughout the past 22 years. From teaching stuffed animals the water cycle in my room, to volunteering in high school to teach kindergarteners about habitats, to student teaching and having a class who looks to me for help on their multiplication facts but also when they’re having a tough day and need someone to talk to- this is what I’ve seen myself doing my whole life. My role models are not the celebrities we see on TV or the business leaders on the cover of Forbes, it’s the Mrs. Boscola’s, the Mr. Karlson’s, the Mrs. Hudgins’, the Miss Evans’. When I think of the type of person I want to be, my goals are as simple as impacting the lives of students just as these teachers have done for me and bringing the same love for learning to my students as I have found.  When I think of what brings me happiness, it’s watching light bulbs go off as two of my third graders understand how to round to the nearest place value after working with them until they get it and my kindergarten class seeing me down the hallway and running to hug me after gym to tell me how much they missed me the last 30 minutes of PE. When I think of a lifetime ahead of me learning alongside my students and them learning from me, I think that’s all I could ever ask for. 

The path ahead is not one which I will be walking alone. It’s with the family and friends who have cheered me on and picked me up when I fall, the professors who have metamorphosed the way I think and look at things, and the teachers who I now work alongside rather than sitting at one of the desks in their classroom. The path ahead stems from the culmination of a lifetime of collaborative learning from both my teachers and my peers and someday soon, students of my own. The close of this chapter only leads to the next story, and I’m thinking that it’ll definitely be one worth reading!

I’d like to begin by acknowledging that intense emotions and acting out of one’s character is not an accurate representation of that person or people. It stems from some kind of trauma or disaster. The outrageous acts and emotions are an outlet from what is felt inside. It’s almost as if the brain is making them distract themselves by doing and saying things out of their normalcy. Then again, fear and desperation makes people do wild things. I was talking to a coworker last week about how they knew a person who had robbed a store about a month ago. In my head, I was thinking, “Why would they share this information with me?”, or “Why would they even talk about it in general”. Personally, if I knew someone who did a terrible thing I would just keep it to myself out of perception of being associated with them one way or another. But as she kept talking, she explained that the man was going to lose his house. Foreclosed. A family of six without a home. The man of the house was absolutely desperate and wanted to save his family, so he did something crazy and unlawful. If we talk about ethics, this situation isn’t black nor white. The point is that when people are scared and their behind is on the line, it’s a fight or flight reaction. 

Most people don’t roll out of bed in the morning and plot how they’re going to hurt someone or something. The thoughts rolling through their minds are not in the destructive category. Grief and pain are often associated with memory. It’s the actions played out that often have good intentions, but poor results. It’s hard to think clearly when you’re in that state of mind. Being a human being, we’re wired by emotion. You can’t control it. We’re not robots where you can press a button and your mind stops racing or you put a pause to intrusive thoughts. It reminds me of the film, When The Levees Broke, and there’s one woman in particular that was interviewed who lost a child. There was a camera on her so I’m sure she left a few details out regarding her reactions and post-traumatic stress. Or, quite frankly any of the disasters that we have gone over in this course. There’s a lot of photos and background information. Textbook education for lack of better words. We see the science and the before and afters. It still hits you like a truck when the course material is on your computer. For me, I’m an empath. I see those pictures and I see the people interviewed and I picture myself living through these terrible experiences. I don’t have a single idea how these people have fought the pain and grief. I don’t know how they picked up the pieces and rebuilt their lives. I don’t know how they wake up every day with the memories that I’m sure eat them alive every damn day. We all walk around with masks on to some extent. No one is one hundred percent transparent about anything. Maybe that’s the secret to living? There’s a difference between being alive and truly living.  Are they just going through the motions? I ask quite a few questions and my curiosity gets the best of me, but for now, I’d rather not even know the answers. 

You see the messed up people in this world who are held behind bars physically or mentally. It makes you wonder if at one point they were an average citizen working a nine to five job and driving a nissan altima. They had dreams and goals they wanted to achieve. Then, their world was flipped upside down. Trauma and fear changed them. You’re never the same person as you were the day before, but there’s some instances that you just can’t recover from. There’s no more climbing the ladder. There isn’t this five to ten year transformation that reveals success and happiness. They get a taste of undeniable pain and they’re stuck in it forever. The memory forces them to not know anything else other than suffering. So, they go deeper. The world sure as hell can’t go up in their minds, so they throw the towel in and dig for hell instead. No one chooses this. This life is damn beautiful, but you can step into burning hell within an hour. A flip of a switch. A snap of a finger. That’s how quickly your life can change. That’s terrifying. 

We’ve dug deep into tragedy starting with the first day of class with the tot-tanic slide and bounce. Looking back, I couldn’t think of a better way to begin this class. It was a perfect introduction to the course with something that was tragic, being transformed into something fun. The course concepts of memory, trauma, moving on, and history if you will. I had never thought of something like this before, probably because I had never seen it. However, there are clues and metaphors out there that simulate the idea of the tot-tanic and it has changed my perception. Not necessarily good or bad, I just see certain things differently. Then, we dove right into Unfathomable City to tie into the viewing of “When The Levees Broke”. I feel like as a society we don’t care about things unless it affects us personally. It’s selfish and sad, yet undeniably true. Our course readings throughout modules, the Blood Dazzler, and reading The Tempest, everything just makes sense. There is a method to the madness. For the majority of the semester, I felt like we were stuck in the disbelief of tragedy and loss. Our readings didn’t leave any other option. However, it’s totally okay. This is life and you don’t get to hand-select a time when heartbreak, loss, or tragedy strikes. That’s the beautiful misery of it and why it hits so hard. If people received a text message, “Hey, your life is going to crumble to pieces today”, they would have an idea and be able to prepare… not realistic and the opposite of how life truly is. I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to participate in this class and have exposure to the topics and conversations. I enjoy experiences that I can keep in my back pocket instead of just crossing them off as credits I need. This course was honest and real, everything that I would want out of my time here as a student at Geneseo. Thank you.  

Violence and care, when thought about in general terms, seem to be opposing actions. My first thought regarding violence is causing intentional harm, regarding care the first thing to come to mind is providing intentional warmth. There are infinite variations of how a person can demonstrate either care or violence, and these demonstrations can be maximal or minimal. When thinking about care, I don’t immediately attribute it to in response of violence. Care, in and of itself, does not necessarily need to be prompted since random displays of affection and acts of kindness do exist, no matter how scarce they may sometimes seem. However, considering these two concepts together, it is clear how care could be considered the remedy to violence, as asserted by Saidiya Hartman, “Care is the antidote to violence”. If a person is harmed whether it be physically or emotionally, care in the form of medical attention or emotional support can be administered in response to the violence inflicted. This train of thought is quite straightforward to follow and seemingly difficult to dispute, which is why the counter notion of, “violence can exist as care” (Davina Ward) felt very confusing at first glance. This statement almost seems to be a paradox, and begs the question of how two acts that appear to be opposites of each other can also exist as each other at the same time. Through the entirety of Ward’s essay she thoroughly explains and supports her stance in such a way that allows the reader to understand and compels me to agree with her. In comparing Hartman and Ward’s positions, it is possible to see how both work in their respective contexts and I believe that care can both be the antidote to violence and it can exist as violence. Thinking about how these two viewpoints can both exist and be true at the same time has highlighted what I have learned this semester: While we are learning and absorbing content, even out of a classroom setting, it is important to consider different perspectives and to think deeply about how concepts are connected and the ways in which they can be related to each other to form meaning. 

        Contemplating Ward and Hartman’s statements led me to the conclusion which I stated earlier; that they aren’t necessarily opposite arguments but can be formed into a both/ and statement. In turn, this realization made me think about everything we’ve discussed and been focusing on for the duration of this course. We have been following themes, questions, concepts, etc. throughout everything we’ve worked on. The class notes from the very first day state, “In a both/and that will follow us all semester, . . .” (McCoy, 1/25/2023). Both/ and has indeed followed us all semester. While reading Unfathomable City we searched for evidence of both/ ands of the city of New Orleans that the authors, Rebecca Snedeker and Rebecca Solnit, detail. In one description of New Orleans it is both, “. . . a city that holds tremendous violence and what might be considered the opposite of violence: collective, confident, urban rejoicing in public, over and over again, in parades and music and greetings from strangers on the street” (Snedeker & Solnit, p. 4). It can be difficult to grasp how two very different illustrations are describing the same place but nothing has just one feature. Violence is present, as it is almost everywhere, but so is community, unity, and celebration. There is violence but there is also care. There is so much to consider and so many different aspects attached to anything that exists. Regarding what constitutes care or violence, Ward says, “it is just a matter of perspective”, this can be applied to most situations in life. Everyone has a different place that they are coming from and has had unique experiences that influence how and why they think the way they do. This course and the central issues we’ve addressed have taught me to try and think through my thoughts and why they are happening, what exactly they are leading me to or what I need to be considering in more depth. I’ve learned how different concepts are able to be related in a multitude of contexts. Hartman said, “Care is the antidote to violence”, at a book event. However, the essay “Free Us All” is able to use Hartman’s assertion and apply it to prison reform, “Her words offer a potentially powerful feminist frame for abolition. Effective defense campaigns provide thousands of people with opportunities to demonstrate care for criminalized individuals through various tactics” (Kaba, 2017). Here, it seems Kaba is saying that care in the form of effective defense campaigns is the antidote to the violence felt by criminalized individuals. It is also possible to consider this scenario through Ward’s lens, the government is imprisoning individuals they deem to be guilty, by doing this they think they are providing care to their law abiding citizens while performing violence on the people they are imprisoning, therefore, violence is existing as care and it depends on perspective. 

I found it fitting that we started and are ending the course focusing on the same idea, that something can both be this and be that. This makes the semester spent engaging in these concepts feel like it’s come full circle, completed a circulation. The course has been a circulation, in multiple contexts, but most of all our class has been circulating around our course concepts and content, moving back and forth and sharing ideas and interpretations between each other. We’ve returned and connected to previous concepts and we’ve discovered new ones along the way, it has been a journey. In a way, this course itself and the actual participation of it, could be related to its namesake, Hurricane Stories. While, obviously, this class has focused on stories about hurricanes, moving through the class has been like a hurricane story in and of itself. I don’t mean to state this in a way that diminishes the actual experiences of and pain felt by real hurricane survivors by comparing the enduring of a hurricane to taking a class, but the structure and way we have moved though the course has reminded me of the storms we talked about. We started slow, picking up speed as we collected course concepts. We pushed through book after book, or material. We circulated connections and observations in our group work, building off of each other’s momentum and getting stronger. We’ve finally, or almost, reached the demise, when it’s over and the impacts never leave us. I’ve learned to think about things in a way that I never really did before, “It is not just to do with the subject matter of what you are thinking about or learning, but how you think about it and how you learn” (Williams et al., p.2). Being reflective has been a major part of the course and a part of our thinking processes throughout. Reading, learning, and thinking experiences are things we remember and, “Like performance, memory operates as both quotation and invention, an improvisation on borrowed themes, with claims on the future as well as the past (Roach, p. 33). No one’s memory is a concrete clear image of exactly what happened. I may not remember every exact detail of every class but the way my thinking has changed as a result of everything we did has strengthened my ability to be reflective, not only academically but also as a person. 

“Care is the antidote to violence”, stated Saidiya Hartman’s. This quote made me think of everything we’ve discussed throughout this course. Is care the antidote to violence? This question can be answered in so many different ways. I can concur that the quote “care is the antidote to violence” is both truthful and is not.  Care refers to the feeling of concern or interest that is attached to the importance of something. Whereas violence refers to the use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community. However, the word that is of most importance is antidote. Antidote is something that relieves, prevents, or counteracts. Hartman suggests that care can counteract violence. And while it can, it also cannot, as Davina Ward, a Geneseo alum, argues the point that, “violence can exist in care”.

            During this course we wrote a collaborative essay referring to a cyclone or typhoon of our choice. My group chose Cyclone Fani. The formation of Cyclone Fani began on April 26th, 2019, in the Indian Ocean, where it was originally labeled as a tropical storm. This storm was due to extreme global warming, as well as depressions that developed in the Bay of Bengal. The storm made landfall early Friday, May 3rd, with winds equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane (Reid). During this catastrophe, the Odisha government took leadership. Leadership as one of this class’s course concepts, refers to the ability of an individual or a group of people to influence and guide followers or members of an organization, team, or society. The Odisha government not only prepared for Cyclone Fani to the best of their abilities, but they assisted their people during and after the cyclone proving that care can be an antidote to violence. Although the types of care the Odisha government performed didn’t stop the cyclone from hitting, the care performed helped their people and state in many different ways. “Roughly 2.6 million text messages were sent to locals in clear language before cyclone Fani hit, keeping those potentially affected alert. Regular press briefings were made by officials to update people of the approaching cyclone. People were repeatedly advised over all forms of media not to panic and given clear do and don’ts” (Quartz). Clear communication was key to India’s record-breaking evacuation, 1.2 million people were evacuated in just two days. In addition, these people were not just evacuated and left to fend for themselves, seven thousand kitchens and nine thousand shelters were made available overnight for survivors. Although Cyclone Fani was proving to be very powerful, the control the UNDRR (the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) had over the disaster relief was able to minimize the damages and casualties of the storm. During cyclone Fani, government authorities in Odisha, along India’s eastern flank, hardly stood still. India’s coast guard and navy deployed ships and helicopters for relief and rescue operations on Friday. Air force units and the army are also on standby in vulnerable states (CNN). The Odisha’s government took as much control as possible while the cyclone was striking their home. After cyclone Fani hit, the Odisha government announced financial assistance for families that were affected and relief packages (Outlook India). Their government’s priority was to assist the people affected and then fix up their state from the aftermath of cyclone Fani. This supports that, “care is the antidote to violence”. The Odisha government counteracted Cyclone Fani by caring for their people and their state. They prevented as much hardship as they could. 

During this course we watched, When the Levees Broke, which is a documentary film, directed by Spike Lee about the devastation of New Orleans, Louisiana following the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina. Throughout the film, residents of New Orleans discuss how they were impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. They also discuss how New Orleans is rising from the ashes after such a tragedy. We also read excerpts from Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, which also refers to Hurricane Katrina. “…Unfathomable City plumbs the depths of this major tourist destination, pivotal scene of American history and culture and, most recently, site of monumental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill” (Solnit). When the Levees Broke and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas shows many ways in which “care is the antidote to violence” through the actions of Hurricane Katrina. Compared to the way Odisha’s government prepared and reacted to Cyclone Fani, the United States government prepared and reacted to Hurricane Katrina in a way that show how violence is the antidote to care. The violence that struck New Orleans was not just from Hurricane Katrina but also from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who didn’t take the time to properly mantel the levees. The residents of New Orleans felt very passionately that the U.S government wasn’t doing much to help in the first few days and weeks. “Imagine that even though the levees failed, and people were left behind, everyone in a position of power had responded with urgent empathy so that one was left to die on the roof of the attic, and the dehydrated elders, the hungry children, the stranded population of New Orleans’s poorest neighborhoods were rescued and protected” (Solnit, 130). Many residents that were part of the documentary, expressed the feeling towards the fact that if the levees were made and installed properly, most of the damage done on New Orleans could’ve been avoided. If the United States government took the time to care and to fix the levees before Hurricane Katrina hit, the aftermath would not have been so crucial. 

Davina Ward countered that “violence can exist as care.” Their essay, “Metropolis Final Paper”, does a fabulous job implying that violence can exist in care and care can exist in violence. They used an example from When the Levees Broke. Ward discusses that in the third episode Kimberly Polk is introduced. Kimberly was the mother of a little girl named Serena who was killed in Hurricane Katrina and later found in the Lower Ninth Ward. “The documentary also shows scenes of Serena’s funeral in which the audience is forced to confront Kimberly’s suffering” (Ward). This act refers to our course concept of memory, the faculty of encoding, storing, and retrieving information. Kimberly buried her daughter in an act of preserving her memory and because she cared deeply about her daughter. However, Ward discusses that this form of care was also a form of violence. Burying her daughter was a violence that she had to inflict on herself due to the performance of the horrific Hurricane Katrina. This act of violence was also an act of care.

            Ward gets me thinking of another scene in When the Levees Broke that reassures care is a form of violence. Days after Hurricane Katrina hit, the United States government and FEMA still had done close to nothing for the people of New Orleans. Due to this, there was a scene of people looting the stores. Some people were looting for necessities while others were stealing valuable items, they might later be able to make money off of. After Hurricane Katrina hit, many people in New Orleans needed their medications, families needed formula for their babies, and everyone needed water. The people that stole for necessities were committing a crime however most of them had no other choice. My first reaction was that looting is bad no matter the circumstances. But after thinking about that scene and watching the babies cry because they were hungry, I may have done the same thing as those baby’s parents. These acts of looting for necessities prove how care can be a form of violence. 

As discussed in one of my previous essays, Violence and its Aftermath, I allude to the fact that sports are activities where people perform acts of violence which ultimately causes waste. Using Ward’s way of thinking, sports can connect to the idea that care is a form of violence. In my previous essay I shared that people play sports for many different reasons: they may love the game, they make a living off of it, are able to support themselves and family, and/or they play because they have talent. Whatever the reason may be, people ultimately have some sort of care for the sport. Whether that be the sport itself, the way it makes them feel, or the people around them, their teammates, coaches, or fans, most sports include some form of violence. That violence may cause broken bones or possibly lifelong physical impairments. Therefore athletes care for their sport but in a way that could cause a performance of violence. 

This course and Davina Ward’s “Metropolis Final Paper” essay demonstrates that Saidiya Hartman’s quote, “care is the antidote to violence”, is both factual and nonfactual. There is no one way to define how care is the antidote to violence or how care is not the antidote for violence. I am still unsure if I could sum those both up in just a few sentences. However, I have learned how care counteracts violence and how care is a form of violence/violence is a form of care. Its everyday occurrences that allow us to see how care and violence work hand in hand. 

Cheyanne Carney, Rachel Cohen, Mia Donaldson, Kyra Drannbauer, Mar Leeman, Kathleen McCarey, Marie Naudus, Aubrey Ouderkirk, Owen Vincent

Toni Morrison’s novel, Paradise, is the third and final novel of her trilogy. Similar to how she built Beloved and Jazz to parallel the works of Dante, Paradise can be set against Paradiso to create a conversation between the two works. In Dante’s Canto XIX the Eagle of Divine Justice appears to Dante the Pilgrim to discuss the true meaning of justice. They conclude that just because you cannot perceive it in your human body, it does not mean that justice is not there. The Eagle says that Divine Justice is not comprehensible to mortals (Canto XIX, 99). It says that rulers who claim to be Christian are not actually Christians because they do not follow the word of God. The portrait of the Eagle shows its eye represented by David while each star of its eyebrow is representative of a different man who relates to the Bible: two Christians, two Jewish people, and two Pagans. Each one has a different perspective on religion. It is interesting to look at something 2000 plus years old and the different views on it. This can be helpful to understand how people today have different interpretations on modern day issues. Morrison pulls from this idea to show how people have different interpretations of the Oven in her novel. David founded the Judaean dynasty which will eventually diverge into Christianity. Constantine worked at the council of Nicea to decide what books belong in the Bible and in what order based on what is important to the image Christianity is trying to put forward. People can take passages from the Bible to back up their arguments while twisting them for their own use. The second Christian, William II of Sicily, led a Crusade and died for his faith. Hezekiah was granted a longer life by God after he prayed to remind Him of his Jewish faith. Trajan, one of the Pagans, being a Roman Emperor, granted a widow compensation for the death of her son and wrote to Pliny the Younger wanting to know how to handle Christians in his empire. He had wondered if he should execute young Christians and sacrifice them to an idol was enough to control them. The final man represented in the eyebrow is Rhipeus, a pagan as well. Rhipeus was a Trojan war hero who Dante claims was given a vision of Jesus before Christ’s coming. He died defending his city from the Greeks. Rhipheus is also a character in Virgil’s famous work, The Aeneid;  “uniquely the most just of all the Trojans, the most faithful preserver of equity; but the gods decided otherwise” (Aeneid II, 426–8). These men followed Christian teachings and practices without always being Christian, leading them to become part of the Eagle of Divine Justice. 

The Oven in the center of Ruby holds a special significance for all members of the town. Originally built by the residents of Haven, another Black town founded before Ruby that forced the founding families of Ruby away due to their comparatively dark skin, the Oven was taken apart and moved to Ruby piece by piece when the fifteen families moved out of Haven to found their own town. After being moved to Ruby, the Oven was rebuilt incompletely; the plaque on its  lip is now incomplete, and the residents of Ruby cannot agree on what the original writing read. The plaque reads “Furrow of His Brow”; older residents claim that the original text read “Beware the Furrow of His Brow” while younger residents prefer to interpret the leftover text as “Be the Furrow of His Brow.” When it was built in Haven, the Oven was a vital resource to the town; all the families used it for their daily cooking, and eventually it became an important gathering place for the entire community used for weddings, meetings, and baptisms (111). The Oven shifts its purpose after the rebuilding, a symbolic gesture of the origins of the Convent, yet the rebuilding of the Oven signifies something much larger than a simple plaque with the motto of the community: the Oven represents the separation of the men and women within Ruby, both physically and metaphorically. The only community members to move and reassemble the Oven were men, while the women resented the decisions to prioritize the Oven over the resources they needed for the community. The act of rebuilding it allows for an idolization of this symbol, a sign of devotion that only the men who participate could wear, and an opportunity for a power dynamic of the separated. Seneca describes the change represented by the Oven as the following: “A good thing, she thought, as far as it went, but it went too far. A utility became a shrine (cautioned against not only in scary Deuteronomy but in lovely Corinthians II as well) and, like anything that offended Him, destroyed his own self” (103-103). What once stood for a symbol of a unified community now separates it.

The Oven has become a focal point for the town of Ruby, a place for residents to meet and gather, and has offered them guidance through the inscription written on the lip. The inscription, which has faded over time, has become a source of debate between the young and old generations of the town. In the meeting of the town at the oven, Richard Misner speaks to the   crowd, telling them their main priority was “‘clarifying the motto’” (Morrison 86). As this is a source of great tension, Reverend Pulliam finds offense in the term “motto,” declaring the inscription is a “command,” stating matter of factly that the inscription is “‘not a suggestion; [it’s] an order’” (Morrison 86).  The specificity of the language used around the inscription of the Oven highlights the intensity surrounding the debate on what exactly is written on the Oven. While the older generation is adamant that the inscription is “Beware the Furrow of His Brow,” the younger generation interprets it as “Be the Furrow of His Brow.” The older generation is outraged by the suggestion that instead of Beware, it reads Be The. Upon hearing the younger generation’s interpretation, Nathan Dupres declares: “‘You can’t be God’” (Morrison 87). The older generation is afraid of the power the younger generation is giving themselves in their idea of what is written on the Oven. The older generation believes that if the younger generation thinks the Oven is telling them to “Be the Furrow,” that they will play God and begin to question the power of the older leaders of Ruby as well. To refute this idea, Destry, a representative for the younger generation, calmly states: “‘but we are obeying Him. If we follow His commandments, we’ll be His voice, be His retribution” (Morrison 87). Over time, as the inscription faded, the hold the Oven has on the people of Ruby has lessened in the younger generations. The younger generation of Ruby has a looser interpretation of the inscription, symbolizing their break from the harsher standards that the older generation has put in place. Later in the novel, the story of Zechariah and the inception of the Oven is revealed, including its original inscription of “Beware the Furrow of His Brow.” Zechariah created this command that was “more than a rule. A conundrum” that had “multiple meanings: to appear stern, urging obedience to God, but slyly not identifying the understood proper noun or specifying what the Furrow might cause to happen or to whom” (Morrison 195). The inscription was meant to instill fear and pressure an allegiance to God, forcing the younger generation to follow in the lead of the older generation disguised as a devotion to God. While both interpretations are practically the same, the perspectives that the two generations hold present the main conflict. The older generation maintains a strong devotion to God and fears that if the younger generation begins to question the wrath of God and their allegiance to him, they will also question the older generation. The older generation uses fear to remain in power and quotes the inscription as evidence for their laws and beliefs. The debate over what is written on the Oven is not so much about the actual words, but what the two interpretations would mean in terms of power dynamic in Ruby. 

The relatively minor differences in how the characters of Paradise understand the oven’s engraving speak to the constraints of language itself; these syntactical disagreements are relatively minor—amounting to no more than a few words different—but speak to much larger social differences between them. Language is tangled up in everything that we do: we use language within every sphere of human understanding, from maintaining interpersonal relations to seeking justice. Our dependence on this limited medium not only lends itself to pitfalls, but also to a necessity for collaboration in order to reach a synthesized understanding. In the case of Paradise, the Oven’s readers undergo an extended form of collaboration in order to reconcile an ongoing, intergenerational disagreement about what exactly is written on the oven. The process of rebuilding the Oven involves disagreement, disillusion and, ultimately, distrust, as a consequence of generations worth of language-based misunderstanding. In an argument with Delia, Patricia beckons: “Did [the older women] make you welcome right away, or did they all wait for the Oven to be reassembled or, the following year, when the stream came back, baptize you just to they could speak to you directly, look you in the eyes” (Morrison 200)? Conversations about the Oven are tied not only to the object itself, but also to intergenerational dramas; characters’ feelings about the object cannot be separated from the complicated feelings they harbor toward both those who built and rebuilt it. 

Is it possible for the citizens of Ruby to truly move beyond their own worldviews towards a community that advocates for all? It is clear that every perspective the reader perceives within the novel itself is limited by the character’s internal biases and opinions. For example, the older generation, particularly the men, are unable to accept that the younger generation have different perspectives on the future of their community. This is exhibited through the inability to come to a possible compromise on the inscription upon the Oven’s lip. It is not merely about placing oneself in a position of power, but rather what it represents to each generation. One of the older members of the town notes, “That was the deal Zechariah had made during his humming prayer. It wasn’t God’s brow to be feared. It was his own, their own. Is that why ‘Be the Furrow of His Brow’ drove them crazy?” (Morrison 217). In this way, the founding generation and their subsequent children cannot truly be so different. They both seek to protect their sanctuary of Ruby from malevolent forces of whiteness and colorism. However, once the town is finally established and safe, “a town which has ninety miles between it and any other” (Morrison 3). Moving past their earlier ideas of being the fearful furrow of their own brow, the older generation is completely confused as to why the younger generations will attempt to bring this back. To the older generation, the Beware is a symbol of their defiance against a society that oppressed them. Dovey thinks to herself at one point, “[the] ‘Furrow of His Brow’ alone was enough for any age or generation. Specifying it, particularizing it, nailing the meaning down, was futile. The only nailing needing to be done had already taken place” (Morrison 93). The younger generation has a similar view, in a way. They believe in a more active form of protest and justice than the elders of the town, who believe that they will remain safe if separated mostly from the outside world. In addition, the town as a whole cannot comprehend the thoughts and actions of the women who seek out the Convent. The Convent is practicing worship in a way incomprehensible to the townsfolk, in collaboration and harmony with one another. Whether it reads ‘Be’ or ‘Beware’, the men of Ruby still live by the Oven’s words when they set out to systematically hunt and kill the women of the Convent. The citizens of Ruby crave the power and justice associated with the Eagle, but ignore his condemnations of those who claim to be Godly men and use this power for evil deeds. 

Upon reflection, however, it is difficult to imagine a truly just and satisfying end to any of the works within Morrison’s trilogy itself. Justice is a powerful ideal, exhibited by the Eagle, but is it possible in any of these circumstances? Toni Morrison artfully crafts her works in the trilogy consisting of Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise, in a way that highlights that justice is not always the outcome. The definition of justice is complex as it is, though Morrison adds layers to an already difficult interpretation. Throughlines of justice connect the three novels. In Beloved, the reader is left questioning how they can support a character like Sethe, a woman who killed her daughter out of mercy. Morrison creates Sethe in a way that leaves the reader in turmoil, knowing why Sethe did what she did but not sure if they can support the act itself. Jazz revolves heavily around justice with the novel focusing on the murder of an innocent girl by her older, married lover. In the novels, the actions of the characters are morally wrong and should be unforgivable, but the way in which Morrison writes her characters makes the reader question their own morals and definitions of justice. She is able to build empathy within Paradise through the ostracization of the women in the Convent, offering realistic characters with complex backgrounds such as Mavis, a mother who leaves her children in the car while she grocery shops and returns to find them dead. Although Mavis committed this horrible act, readers can empathize with her because Morrison shows her as more than just her crime; she is a real person with real emotions. Morrison handcrafts these characters that speak to the readers, creating authentic storylines that force the audience to self-reflect on the decisions they would make if they were in the character’s shoes. This examination of love and justice being statements that must coexist is impactful for readers who might see them as inherently contradictory.

It is surprising to us that our interpretation of the trilogy has changed in such a drastic way. As a group we came to the conclusion during our last group endeavor that love was the main theme and throughline throughout Morrison’s trilogy. Now, it is clear that Morrison’s works center on an idea of justice that might be impossible to attain, and certainly is for her characters.  Are we then as readers to simply accept the Dantean explanation, “And so the vision granted to your world/can no more fathom Justice Everlasting/than eyes can see down to the ocean floor” (XIX, 58-60)? The simplest explanation may be that we cannot fathom what the characters within the trilogy are experiencing. We may catch brief glimpses into their thoughts, see their hopes, fears, and shame. But we will never experience being in these impossible scenarios as Black men and women in situations where justice must be served but would abuse them even more. Morrison’s unique perspective and incisive exploration of the ideal of Justice in contrast to real-world implications is particularly impactful in forcing readers to reexamine our concept of justice.