Bodies and brains

“My brain couldn’t stop me, so that tiny but mighty intestinal diverticulum did.” Brilliant and important piece from Shannon Mattern about burnout, but more importantly, about how systems of exploitation and abuse are created and recreated. Mattern is writing about academia, but as is so often the case, I think the experiences she describes are likely familiar in many other contexts. The whole thing is worth reading but I’ll call attention to two points: one, that bodies have a way of making decisions for you in those moments when your mind is unable or unwilling to do so. (I’ve written of my own body’s intervention, and I know many others with similar stories.) And two, refusing to care is its own kind of harm. Mattern admits to being short on solutions but I think she hints at one framework for thinking about them: abolition, not as refusal or elimination, but as a practice of cultivating new worlds—one experimental step at a time.