How to escape our collective paralysis in ‘these uncertain times’
Author Natasha Lennard discusses how to disrupt the ‘certainties’ that don’t serve us and how to fight back At the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020, journalist Natasha Lennard started noticing a constant thrum of collective apprehension, epitomized in the phrase “in these uncertain times”. The expression acknowledged we didn’t have solutions for many of society’s problems: a globally spreading virus, the rise of…
Key points
- Natasha Lennard's new book On Un/Certainty examines how doubt and certainty shape political paralysis.
- She argues that certainties around borders, gender, and capitalism are taken for granted rather than proven.
- Lennard says movements have broken through political certainties, citing the 2020 George Floyd uprisings and recent electoral wins.
Journalist Natasha Lennard, an organizer in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, has published a new book titled On Un/Certainty: The Uses of Doubt in Dangerous Times. The book deconstructs the phrase 'in these uncertain times,' which became a constant refrain during the Covid pandemic in 2020 and has persisted since.
Lennard argues that while there are real reasons for fear and uncertainty about the future, society is also shaped by unexamined certainties that are taken for granted rather than proven. She uses philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's 1969 book On Certainty to question who gets to define what is held as certain.
Certainties that shape our fears
Lennard points to certainties around border regimes and the necessity of so-called border security, as well as certainties held by anti-trans bigots on the far right and their complicit allies in the center and some of the left. She also cites certainties around capitalism and growth that frame crises as too complex for ordinary people to address.
These certainties, she says, give shape and direction to our fears and doubts. She argues that paying attention to them is necessary to understand and demystify the current moment of seemingly totalizing uncertainty.
We're not starting from scratch.
— Sarah Leonard
Ruptured certainties and ongoing resistance
Lennard notes that certainties have become unmoored since Occupy. She cites the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, saying that networks active against ICE in Minneapolis earlier this year developed around those uprisings. She also mentions that certainties about the Democratic party's liberal-capitalist orientation have been challenged by recent success of DSA candidates and Zohran Mamdani's campaign.
She acknowledges that movements may not have the formula for overthrowing capitalism or fascist regimes, but she insists that we are not starting from scratch. She quotes her friend Sarah Leonard saying, 'We're not starting from scratch.' Lennard concludes that while she doesn't know if we will win, we do know how to go on.
