I feel incredibly lucky to have entered graduate school with something not every grad student has: a rooted community. Part of me always thought I’d move away for school, as I’m a person who yearns for adventure and change. Choosing to attend the University of Washington for a third time (BA + MA, and now PhD) came with a tiny bit of regret. I had to choose it, because you’re supposed to choose the department that’s most aligned with your research interests and has multiple professors you’re excited to work with. Yet, a part of me also thought: this is a safe choice, because I’m not giving up anything. I didn’t move all the way across the country or the world to be here. Most of my family of origin, chosen family, friends and beloveds live here still. People I’ve organized with, built with, created with, and fought alongside are here. I have a support network. I have a plethora of shoulders to cry on and hands to hold.
I entered the academy feeling both adrift and anchored. Although I do sometimes feel like the university is not meant for me and I have no idea what I’m doing and that I’m behind somehow and I don’t belong—most of the time I actually don’t feel this way. That’s partially because I do hold many privileges that make me legible to this institution. But mostly, it’s because of the rootedness I have. It’s because I’m resolute in my commitments to collective liberation. My communities are the stakes of my work here.
This is something I’ve learned over time, through community work and community struggle. Now, as the first quarter of my doctorate education comes to an end, I’m realizing again that to do the work I want to do, I have to be active in my alignments. I have these generative geographic connections, but it’s more than that. I learn more and more every day how futile it is to search for belonging; instead, we must build belonging.
In Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s 2013 series of essays, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study, they draw on the theory and practice of Black Radical Tradition to critique academic structures. I find inspiration from their conception of the undercommons because it helps me understand my relationship to the university and to those in it. The undercommons refers to the spaces where we—people of color, queer people, otherwise marginal people—make meaning with each other. “To enter this space is to inhabit the ruptural and enraptured disclosure of the commons that fugitive enlightenment enacts […] on the stroll of the stolen life, the life stolen by enlightenment and stolen back, where the commons give refuge, where the refuge gives commons” (Harney & Moten, 2013). How do we build these spaces? How do we build these relationships? In the ivory tower, I wonder how we can study, plan, and intervene in ways that negotiate with the institutional powers that we have to deal with, yet still resist them. I think the answer might be: with each other.
I believe that in the undercommons, we can find what sustains us while we are, as Moten and Harney say, “in but not of” the university. It’s incredibly hard to do work to change institutions. As Moten and Harney say of the subversive intellectual: “Her labor is as necessary as it is unwelcome.” But we owe it to our communities to try. So when Moten and Harney ask “what is that work and what is its social capacity for both reproducing the university and producing fugitivity?,” we should think about what that work looks like in its everydayness and its long-term possibilities.
It looks like sharing resources rather than hoarding them. Engaging in collaboration rather than competition. Writing together, researching together, dreaming together.
Building playlists together. Breaking bread together. Sharing snacks. Opening your door.
Asking for help. Offering help without being asked.
Forwarding opportunities, even if you’re going to apply too. Passing along PDFs. Reposting about a place on campus that’s giving out free food or resources. Sharing calls to action.
Finding what inspires you (breathing into) and conspiring with those who get it (breathing together).
Acting with abundance.
Opening new possibilities.
The undercommons is not a whimsical or utopic space of perfect collective action. The struggles within and against institutional powers are always messy, exhausting, and contradictory. So when I suggest possibility as key, I am not being fanciful. Undercommons are not something you find, but something you create in collectivity. I feel grateful to all the undercommons I’ve been invited to contribute to this quarter, including the ones here in the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity and the ones outside of the university. I hope that these are what will continue to sustain me as I continue my journey. This first quarter as a doctoral student has been grueling in many ways, but I’m also excited for the possibilities ahead and the connections I want to deepen.
We can find refuge in each other.
