Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

Editors’ Introduction Alexandra M. Hill and Hester Baer We write from quarantine, during the summer of 2020, when time feels suspended. The convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, racist violence, escalating authoritarianism, and climate collapse have upended the material conditions of life and the foundations of societies around the world, opening onto increasingly precarious futures. As we write, we can only speculate on what the world will look like a few short months from now, when this issue of Feminist German Studies goes to press. The sense of time’s suspension and uncertainty about the future that characterizes our present moment only underscores the illusory quality of the narratives of progress and individualism long trumpeted by capitalism. Even as we are able to partake in the “hollow privilege” of self-isolation, mapping the spread of the virus has only showed us how interconnected we are.1 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, in The Mushroom at the End of the World, critically examines the flawed “assumption of self-containment” which underpins so many systems that structure our lives, from “neoclassical economics” to “population genetics” (28). We are not, in fact, self-containedunits—whetherthat we refers to individual people or individual groups, nations, or species— but are in constant collaboration with others. Tsing uses the term contamination to mean “transformation through encounter,” a natural and neutral by-product of collaboration. In a global moment when we leave the house in face masks and regularly reach for hand sanitizer, contamination is exactly what we fear. And yet, Tsing’s book argues, “staying alive— for every species— requires livable collaborations. Collaboration means working across difference, which leads to contamination. Without collaborations, we all die” (28). If we think about collaboration in the context of COVID-19, we can identify many examples that ensure survival: the surge in volunteers for Meals on Wheels, people who sewed masks or donated personal protective equipment for essential workers, and international labs working together to develop [End Page xi] a vaccine. Tsing argues, “It is unselfconscious privilege that allows us to fantasize— counterfactually— that we each survive alone” (29). The pandemic has stripped us of that fantasy. This is also a historical moment in which we must acknowledge that “[t]he evolution of our ‘selves’ is already polluted by histories of encounter” (29). The deaths of Black Americans Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Italia Marie Kelly, David Mcatee, and Chris Beaty at the hands of the police, and the resultant worldwide protests against systemic racism, should make painfully clear that we do not live in isolation.2 In this context, we must pay renewed attention to how our disciplines and institutions support and benefit from the systemic oppression of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). We acknowledge that, as Mikki Kendall writes in Hood Feminism, “the innately abusive nature of white supremacy has shaped white feminism, seen to it that investment in white supremacy is easier than investment in actual equality for [white women] with all women” (257). As white feminists in German studies, we specifically recognize the necessity of engaging in antiracist work in our personal and professional lives, including ongoing work to decolonize our field and dismantle structures of white supremacy and privilege. It is noteworthy that sales of books on antiracism have recently skyrocketed, propelling texts such as Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk about Race to the New York Times bestseller list. If “[r]eading is an infection, a burrowing into the brain,” and “books contaminate” (Lepore 22), then we are actively seeking contamination in the form of reading. This is not easy reading. It is not comfortable to see the ways in which our own lives and actions emerge from systems of oppression. Tsing reminds us that “contaminated diversity is complicated, often ugly, and humbling. Contaminated diversity implicates survivors in histories of greed, violence, and environmental destruction” (33). If we can bear to accept this complicity, the question is: how will we use collaboration to transform the world? The Mushroom at the End of the World is a fitting source of wisdom as we consider the many intertwined...