Stepping into a tricky new year
On setting intentions, finding community, and embracing complexity
Dear friends,
Ugh, it's been hard to muster up enthusiasm for the start of this new year. We're staring down a terrible political groundhog day, and it seems I'm not alone in feeling depleted from 2024. But that's not the energy I want to carry into this new year. How to find a different headspace?
I'm writing this from New Orleans, where this year's MLA convention is being held. The horrible attack the city faced during New Year's festivities gave a somber undertone to the fierce joy I have seen every time I have visited. On an individual level, I've felt a bit out of step at this conference: Conflicted about attending because of MLA leadership's decision regarding a proposed member resolution (more on that below). Adrift because I wasn't presenting. Self-conscious once again not to have a university affiliation listed on my nametag, even though I've based so much of my work on celebrating a wide range of professional paths. I'm deep in my career at this point, and yet these anxieties still bubble up, sometimes more strongly than others.
I am able, at this point, to act the part of a thriving and confident person even when I'm not feeling it, and you know what, it's fine. As expected, the conference brought moments of connection—reunions with friends and colleagues I rarely see; an improvised Inkcap happy hour with plenty of laughter; the chance to see some of my writing out in the world. Panels gave me food for thought; I'm still ruminating on Rita Raley's comment that our collective focus on generative AI shouldn't be the risk it poses to the humanities, but rather to the concept of research itself. At some point, it wasn't an act anymore; I settled into the rhythm and logics of the conference, and stopped feeling like an outsider.
But I wonder—is it a space of belonging I want to claim as my own? The member resolution that MLA leadership refused to allow to go forward was in support of the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement to protest and take action against ongoing horror that Palestine has faced at the hands of Israel. To explain their decision, the MLA cited "fiduciary responsibility," a line of reasoning that Matt Seybold has critiqued sharply. Numerous past presidents of the MLA have denounced the decision, and two Executive Council members whom I greatly respect resigned from their positions because of it. I don't give much labor to the MLA anymore—I'm not on any committees, and while I often volunteer my time at the convention, I didn't this year. But I also didn't participate in the protests, and I continue to have a ton of respect for the work the organization does on many fronts. I'm not making the decisions, but I'm complicit nonetheless. And sometimes I wonder: is it worth it?
As a convention, the MLA feels much more generative now than it did when faculty interviews were carried out in hotel rooms (a practice that will never not shock me). But I wonder if this is really the best we can do, the best way for colleagues to connect and share thinking. I went to very few panels, and the ones I attended were uneven; some were packed to the gills, while others were nearly empty; some vibrated with fresh thinking while others felt dry and detached. (To be fair, I missed a lot, including what sounds like a phenomenal plenary with Jesmyn Ward and Jericho Brown). For me, the most meaningful conversations that I had were around the edges—in the hallways, over coffee, while browsing books. If the margins are where the meaning is, how can that become central? Can we collectively find ways to hold spaces for connection and exchange without the apparatus of a high-cost, high-stakes conference? Zoom isn't the way—covid years showed us that—but still I wonder if we can do better.
I don't know what this would look like, and I don't know how to make it happen outside the structures and resources of institutions and professional associations. I think that's what this entire experiment with the idea of the Inkcap Collective has been about—finding ways to make space for mycelial growth, mycorrhizal connections, nutrient return.
On my last evening in New Orleans, I had the pure joy of hearing Aurora Nealand and the Inquiry Quintet at the Spotted Cat. The improvisation and communal music-making of a small ensemble like this one is what I imagine collective scholarly work to be at its best. I watched the musicians reading each other like books, observing breaths, tracking muscle movements. I saw them turn inward in concentration, watched their minds and bodies work to create something entirely new right there in front of us. I saw them delight in each other's accomplishments, closing their eyes in enjoyment and smiling as unexpected notes sang. When we are at our best together, it looks like this—improvisation on a foundation of hard work and expertise; collective creation that feels joy rather than diminishment in another's success.
I didn't know Nealand's work before that night, and immediately followed her Instagram (which, I'm conflicted about that too because of the awful decisions Meta has been making... nothing feels simple). On New Year's Day, I saw that she had shared a beautiful post—a reel in which she's singing and playing a haunting melody on the accordion, with misty grey-blue water rippling in the background behind her. In the caption she writes: "Perhaps it is IN these shared spaces that we will find hope. [...] I sit by the water to shed myself, to hear the world as it is, to notice the noticing. I sit by the water and wait to revel in the prospect of altered balance."
Perhaps an altered balance is on the horizon—and if it is, I think Nealand is right that we will find it in spaces of community. May we all find the strength and resilience we need as 2025 unfolds, and may we enter it with all the fullness of emotion that we carry—joy and despair, hope and rage. May that complexity move us toward action, every day.
With warmth,
Katina
