TRANSCRIPT

Episode 2 of CommonS Sense

Hosted by Barbara Leckie and Joel Westheimer

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"Common Sense in Motion”

[Trailer] 

Astra Taylor  00:05

I see common sense as something that is actually in motion. 

Stephanie LeMenager  00:09

We're at a point where coming together, even across profound historical differences and positionalities, I think, is almost the only choice for not only ecosystem survival, but for the survival of anything like a social good. 

Max Liboiron  00:27

What do you need? Here you go. What do you need? Here you go. What do you have? Great. Off we go. That sort of coming together. Everyone pitches in.

Astra Taylor  00:33

And what you see is that what people think, in general, which is kind of what common sense refers to, right, a kind of aggregate doxa or opinion really can dramatically change.

Joel Westheimer  00:49

Welcome back to our podcast Commons Sense. That's Commons with an S. I'm Joel Westheimer.

Barbara Leckie  00:56

And I'm Barbara Leckie. In this episode, we turn to the way ideas of common sense can change. 

Joel Westheimer  01:03

In other words, we don't have to accept the status quo. In fact, our guests, Stephanie LeMenager and Astra Taylor, offer examples of how common sense has already changed. Sometimes in positive ways, sometimes less so. And they also talk about the kinds of changes they imagine for the future. 

Barbara Leckie  01:20

Max Liboiron also introduces an important point that we haven't gotten to yet. The problem with emphasizing the common in common sense. 

Joel Westheimer  01:28

Yeah, Max points out how the common in the common sense can erase difference.

Barbara Leckie  01:33

And so one question to ask is, how to preserve difference as we think about common sense. We'll also talk about mutual aid.

Joel Westheimer  01:41

Mutual aid is basically people helping each other meet their needs directly, no bureaucracy, no waiting for permission. It's not charity, where someone gives and someone else receives. It's solidarity. You need something, I've got you. Let's help each other out. I think neighbours organizing food after a flood, or communities creating support networks. 

Barbara Leckie  2:02

That sounds great. It's the best of people working together. 

Joel Westheimer  2:05

It is. But here's the thing, mutual aid is great for a lot of things, especially fast, localized responses. What it can't do is build a national power grid, or universal health care, or build a bridge. That's why we still need large institutions, especially public ones, that are accountable to people. So it's not either or. Mutual aid is powerful, but it works best alongside strong, democratic systems.

Joel Westheimer  02:57

Okay, let's start off this episode with Stephanie LeMenager. Barbara, you met Stephanie before at Colby College, right?

Barbara Leckie  03:04

Yeah, that's right. She was teaching a course on the commons that I really wanted to take.

Joel Westheimer  03:08

So you were her student. 

Barbara Leckie  03:10

I learned a lot. 

Joel Westheimer  03:12

That's great. Well, in the last episode, we talked a lot about common sense as collective assumptions about how the world is. Stephanie talks about collective assumptions as well, but she focuses on the ways common sense relates to the individual, right?

Barbara Leckie  03:24

And she gives us a more extended understanding of the individual, the idea of the individual itself as common sense, the idea of owning property, being autonomous, being independent, all of these ideas as clustered in the larger sense of, like, how we make sense of our world. 

Joel Westheimer  03:41

And I just want to mention before we listen, that Stephanie refers to a couple of people, Wendy Brown, who's an American political theorist. And who many of you will also know, writer and activist, Rebecca Solnit.

Barbara Leckie  03:53

And Rebecca Solnit is someone who's written a lot on climate, relevant to things we're discussing in this podcast. And she also references Cara Daggett, who's another American political scientist, who I'm pretty sure coined the term “petro-masculinities.” 

Joel Westheimer  04:09

Great term. Barbara begins the interview by asking Stephanie a question about individualism.

Barbara Leckie  04:14

Individualism and self determination are such powerful ideas and concepts in the global north, and especially North America. And do you think it's possible to imagine an equally powerful idea or concept of collaboration and working together taking hold here?

Stephanie LeMenager  04:32

I think it's, frankly, urgently necessary to do so. Exactly what words, what terms we will come to and even who is included in the we that I speak of. Things that maybe don't involve possession in the most common senses, but you know, cultural expressions, forms of protest, forms of moving across a landscape, you know, walking, etc. I mean, there are ways of being public that actually don't even involve property, collectively owned or otherwise. 

So I do feel like individualism is, first of all, at least in my circles, which of course, are, you know, people who tend to be like minded and relatively left wing. So let me just put that out there honestly, and also say that I realize that's not the world by any means. And I think our latest election just made that pretty clear. But, and I think individualism is not only a term that's become unattractive and a-charismatic for many, many people, but it's also simply impossible to live it, if it ever was possible, you know? I mean, in a way, it's a fantasy, this autonomy, it's always been so. Possessive individualism, though, is kind of a hallmark identity of liberalism. Once we get into something like hyper-capitalism and what some call neoliberalism, it's fairly clear that independence and autonomy have been one of the many things that have been dispossessed of most people. And then, in fact, it's very large amounts of money. It's a kind of access to capital that makes the appearance of autonomy possible.

But, of course, the climate, although it hits those who are in the Global South or who are in conditions of poverty or conditions otherwise, the most profoundly, climate does hit all of us and the mansions and that part of Florida that I used to love as a child. My grandmother did not live in a mansion, but that's a lot of what's there now. They're all tumbling into the sea, you know? And so we're going to have these—we already have these ruined landscapes of modernity, where other forms of sociality will come into being if they haven't already. And I don't think that individualism will make sense anymore, or does make sense anymore as a story of what the human is.

Barbara Leckie  08:35

Yeah, I totally agree. And this idea of independence is so belied by the way we live our lives. I mean, we're dependent on others to just stay alive, and that fundamental fact is not as often, is just sort of ignored in the individualist. . .  

Stephanie LeMenager  08:51

I agree with that. And there's a wonderful book called Disability is the Future. And you know, talking about interdependence as almost synonymous with what was once the sort of degrading kind of idea of a non-normative disability. Another way to talk about this has to do with the relationality theories that are both common amongst many Indigenous cultures, but also prominent in the new materialisms, you know. So, I think, thinking about profound, even sort of at the level of our molecular selves, interdependencies, has become, actually much more common– to use the word that is the center of this podcast– you know. And yet I don't know if there's a popular version of that mode of thought that has the same pull that individualism has had. And I do still believe that the word individualism and the idea of self possession that's central to liberalism has the potential to shame and kind of govern various peoples. And I think this is one of the reasons why we have so many suicidal white men in rural America and so many homicidal white nationalists who, recognizing interdependence, has almost made, you know, mad with rage.

Barbara Leckie  10:18

Yeah, it would be so great if we could somehow do the trick of making interdependence charismatic.

Stephanie LeMenager  10:23

Yes. I mean, for me, it is, but it's almost like you have to have come to a certain place in your reading and thinking and living for that to not feel shaming. And I think about Cara Daggett's work on petro-masculinities and the sort of masculinities that have been subtended and sustained by fossil fuel culture. And of course, those cultures of fossil fuels have been given a great deal of support governmentally. They are not cultures that have in any way been autonomously brought from Earth, you know, without a lot of government subvention. But, I think that we were made to believe, some of us, that, energetically speaking even, independence was somehow real and possible. And there's an interesting way in which gender and a particular kind of self-destructive masculinity that the people of all genders sometimes ascribed to comes out. 

Barbara Leckie  11:22

Thinking about words or terms is also thinking about common sense. The ideas that shape our thinking and are either taken for granted or unspoken, and so almost the opposite of the words. What does the phrase common sense bring to mind for you?

Stephanie LeMenager  11:37

I'd say common sense brings to my mind a kind of pragmatism. If you have common sense, you're going to do the things that don't put you at great risk, that kind of speak to, I'd say, a kind of empirical understanding of what the limits are.

Barbara Leckie  11:59

Like touching a hot stove or something like that. 

Stephanie LeMenager  12:03

Yes, or like, you know, maybe you wouldn't be the person who blows up the Bank of America. I mean, I don't, I don't say that it’s quietism, per se, but I think that common sense, to me, suggests a basic investment in a collective sociality which typically would not be an anarchic one.

Barbara Leckie  12:30

Any examples from your experience of places where what counts as common sense has changed?

Stephanie LeMenager  12:37

I do think what counts as common sense has changed in the way that we live our everyday lives in any part of the world where we have seen, in Mike Hulme's phrase, climate become only weather. So you know, as Hulme says, climate was a contract with a sort of normativity that we projected onto weather events, that's out the window, and anything now that might have been called a 500 or thousand year event, whether it's fire or flood or hurricane, can happen and has quite frequently.

It's no longer common sense to assume that your house, for example, let's say you, as I did– following in the liberal tradition, finally, at a relatively old age, because of professor salaries– and, you know, I managed to buy myself a house, right? And so I had this house, but there's no, it's no longer common sense to think that that's somehow a secure haven or a sanctuary or a thing that's going to last. And it's no longer common sense to think that you don't need a go-bag or that you don't need an escape route. And I think the part that we're working on in terms of the new common sense with these very real dangers to our sheltering– even those of us who are privileged individuals, relatively speaking or privileged families– is how to really coordinate with others in the neighbourhood and in the region to try to create greater safety for ourselves, for our domestic animals. And that's where solidarities are being born in new ways, in my own every day. I've seen this up and down the West Coast of the U.S. I used to live in a very hot fire region, and now live in a region that also hosts quite destructive fires and air quality issues that can be devastating and that obey no boundaries. So they're not only affecting the most impoverished or underrepresented. Most people can't even buy homes, so it's not even a question of ownership, it's just, you know, where are we safe? And I think the common sense answer to that now is, well, actually, nowhere. 

Joel Westheimer  15:05

That was Stephanie LeMenager talking about how common sense is changing in response to climate change. 

Barbara Leckie  15:11

Her comment about blowing up the Bank of America as not being a common sense move, also reminded me of a comment Larry Glickman made in our first episode. The blowing up of the World Economic Order is also not considered common sense. 
 

Joel Westheimer  15:25

So as the climate crisis progresses, I wonder if we might get to the point where things that don't seem like common sense now, become common sense. Let's shift to a different angle on common sense. You may recall that we met Max Liboiron in episode one, and Max offers some qualifications on common sense that are important to bear in mind. 

Barbara Leckie  15:46

That's right. And in fact, their different angle has to do with difference itself. They're trying to remind us that when we gesture toward the idea of a commonly shared understanding, or even a common world, a common space, it can suggest an erasure of difference. And what Max wants to remind us of is the problems that come up when we think about common sense as a unified understanding that's shared by all people. And this is such a good point, and I think it's an easy one to think we're trying to promote in our podcast, like some sort of shared idea. So I was grateful to Max for raising this point, and they also give us a few really wonderful examples of what they're saying.

Joel Westheimer  16:30

I really like that idea of preserving difference. Here's Barbara in her interview with Max.

Barbara Leckie  16:42

Yeah, it's really interesting, because I think of common sense now in, you know, where I'm living, in probably a lot of North America, as really dictated by ideas of freedom to own things and to be an individual who makes a choice without consulting others, and that has consequences that can be really bad. So I'm just thinking about your comment about how the common sense, like being born into a world like, yes, that's where we are, but then common sense can have real implications that can be pretty terrible for people's lives, as we're seeing now in the U.S. But anyway, that's just a reflection. My question is, do you think there are ways for, let's call it, Indigenous common sense, to begin to chip away at market economy common sense to the point where we have a kind of displacement of the current dominant model of common sense with something different?

Max Liboiron  17:41

Oh, god, I hope not. [Laughter] I don't want a new dominant universalism– so when I talk about dominant knowledge systems, there's like, a different dominant knowledge system on the rez than there is in New York City or something like that, right? But the problem with dominance is that it shouldn't scale to the size of a country, or the size, you know, that sort of stuff. That's not okay. So I think, so I think this comes back to a real key tension in, especially, what in the United States and other places called left politics, struggles pertaining to power. Where there's a political respect for difference, Indigenous versus settler, that sort of stuff. 

But the dominant paradigms don't actually respect difference and actually seek to alienate them in the name of good. I'm leaning really heavily on this amazing piece by Jones and Jenkins that's called “Rethinking Collaboration.” And they sort of talk about, one of them is a white settler, and one of them is Maori, and just like, they like each other, they're friends, they're on board with each other. And like, it's, it's still don't go. And so they talk a lot about this very left ideal of mutuality, this like, coming onto the same page, this sort of stuff, coming to the table together. And they talk about how this ideal of mutuality actually reduces difference, and there's this idea of equality. 

We're not the same. Indigenous people are rights holders, not stakeholders. There's actually a very important difference there. And it gets rid of structural power differences, differences in perspective, difference in histories, and those have to get downplayed for this weird and I think fairly screwed up ideal of a shared perspective. The difference in cosmologies, the difference in knowledge systems is actually good. Yeah, so this, this look for coherence as the thing that is inherently good and our sort of goal, I think it's a fantasy. I think it's a redemptive fantasy of unity that I don't support. So, I think now that you're all like, boo, that sucks, there are alternatives to similitude. 

There are alternatives to coherence that maintain these really crucial differences. One of them is the coalition. So my favorite coalition is the Cowboy Indian Alliance. It's like rangers in northern Nebraska and southern South Dakota, and like the two different Sioux tribes, Rosebud and Great Sioux Nations. They came together first in 1986/87 to deal with the weapons testing, the Honeywell weapons testing in Black Hills, which is a sacred space. They're more famous for 2014 and the Keystone XL Pipeline protests and climate change. The cowboys and Indians are not buddies. They do not agree. They do not have similar values. They do not share language. They did not attempt mutuality. They stayed difference and came together. And because of that, they scared the pants off of people, people in power, right? Because they didn't need that, with like, if those folks can get together, oh my god, some of the, a lot of the tactics of power don't work anymore, right? 

And there's also, there's a treaty that takes this up, the Two Row Wampum, which is sort of in the Connecticut down to New York area, a bunch of different Indigenous groups, which is literally, like, it's not coming together. It's like, okay, settlers, okay, Indigenous folks, we're going to walk in two lines, straight lines, down this, down this Wampum Belt, which is symbolized in this treaty. You stay on your side, I stay on my side. But we're walking towards a similar future, like the same future, but we're not mixing, we're not merging, we're not the same, except the fact that that treaty was quite broken by the settler side– that I think is a really valid way to think about moving together without trying to sort of, this quite violent similitude or coming together that I think people think is not just important, but like the only condition for change.

There's another alternative to similitude and collective action, which is mutual aid. Right? You're seeing it right now, gangbusters, with the LA fires. I lived it in Hurricane Sandy. I was part of a bunch of mutual aid networks where, like, everyone pitches in, everyone does their chores. But there are massive differences in every moment, and no one's trying to smooth those out. And that's part of why it works, mutual aid networks work. That there's, there's not the like, okay, who likes this and who agrees with it? Doesn't matter. What do you need? Here you go. What do you need? Here you go. What do you have? Great. Off we go. That sort of coming together, I think—so mutual aid and coalitions—I think are two really great models for collective action that doesn't rely on the collective being “samey,” “samesies togethersie,” that sort of thing. 

Joel Westheimer  22:27

Max is really careful to think about how common sense works, and I especially like their point about how dominance shouldn't scale. They're critiquing the idea that social unity relies on shared perspectives.

Barbara Leckie  22:38

And offering us a way to think differently about these issues, for example, coalitions, mutual aid.

Joel Westheimer  22:43

Listening to Max talk about mutual aid actually makes me think of our next guest, Astra Taylor, a writer, filmmaker, and activist who also talks about mutual aid. You interviewed Astra just after the American election.

Barbara Leckie  22:58

Yes, that's right. It was three days after the American election, I believe, and the mood of the interview you're about to hear, the conversation you're about to hear, is very much marked by that moment. But to go back to your comment on mutual aid and to go back to a more positive, inspiring note, Astra gives us a lot of examples here of how common sense changes. We know that common sense changes, but it's helpful to locate some examples in time, in time that we can remember, that can help us to think about how we want to move forward ourselves.

Joel Westheimer  23:31

This is a time when we can all use thinking about how to move forward. 

Barbara Leckie  23:35

Yes. 

Joel Westheimer  23:36

Astra Taylor.

Astra Taylor  23:37

I would define common sense as something we're in a fight over. I almost see my work as an activist and as a writer and as a filmmaker, as the work of trying to transform common sense. I think sometimes people refer to common sense as though it were immutable and something that reflects an imaginary middle or majority. And I don't see it that way. I'm someone who does have a strong commitment to social change. I think I also have a pretty rooted historical worldview. And what you see is that, what people think, in general, which is kind of what common sense refers to, right, a kind of aggregate doxa or opinion, really can dramatically change. And sometimes that change can be very slow in plotting, and some of it can actually be extremely rapid and almost non-linear. You can almost forget what was common sense a few months ago when there's something that sort of breaks forth and creates a new, a new paradigm. 

So, you know, I find it really interesting how what we think, again, it is, it's not just something that comes spontaneously from us. We inherit everything, language, ideas, historical context that shapes how we think. We're shaped by current events, you know, we're shaped by past events. And of course, those things create habits of mind. And so, you know, in some ways, that's what that's what common sense is. But, it really can, it can shift. 

And so for example, I mean, my work as an organizer has focused on the abolition of what I see as unjust debts. So I've worked a lot on student debt cancellation in the United States. And ten years ago, if you had polled Americans about whether or not student debt could or should be canceled, I'm absolutely sure it would have been single digits. And now, if you polled people, I think there'd be overwhelming support. And people would say, well yeah, we know student debt can be canceled because it has been canceled, and that's only real. Common sense has only shifted because a small group of us took up this fight ten years ago, when everyone said we were ridiculous, and we made it our mission to shift the narrative, to create new horizons of imagination, and to also do a lot of hard work fighting policy makers. 

So common sense, I see common sense as something that is actually in motion, as opposed to something that's really set in stone. I mean, I think there's a case to be made that we're in the middle of an ongoing revolution on so many issues. I mean, I think it's, it's hard for someone born, like I was in 1979, to imagine how different common sense was before that time. We've had massive shifts in terms of consciousness around race and gender, social equality and also climate, right? I mean, we know, for example, common sense isn't where we want it to be in terms of addressing climate catastrophe and all the sort of environmental harms that are happening. What we call common sense is radically different today than it was before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, before we had a photograph of the whole earth from space, which completely shifted common sense. Suddenly, people started to imagine themselves as little, tiny specks on a coherent, blue-green planet. They'd never seen themselves that way before, before the first Earth Day. 

And so, common sense is something that's actually really fluctuating, and we're both sort of embedded in it and outside of it. And so I think we get to ask ourselves, what, which way do I want this to go next? What do I want to be? What would I love to have be the common sense of future generations? And another way to frame that is, what would I like to be judged for? Right? When future generations look back at me, what value would I like to hold that they would be like, I can't believe that was common sense. That's so, you know, that's so astonishing. That's so astounding. And you know, I've got a few ideas. I mean, I'd love to see generations from now looking back and being absolutely disgusted by the way we treat non-human animals and the way we consume them. To be aghast at the fact that everything we buy is wrapped in plastic and cardboard boxes shipped across the planet. You know, that we are engaging in agricultural practices that are laden with pesticides, which means they're dependent on the fossil fuel economy instead of regenerative and that we just thought that was okay. So I think there's all sorts of ways that we should be trying to shift common sense, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because we should want to be judged harshly down the road.

Barbara Leckie  28:00

That was Astra Taylor talking about the way that common sense can shift. Her comments reminded me of a comment that Larry Glickman made in our first episode, Joel, when he was referring to the fact that revolutionary transformation is possible. 

Joel Westheimer  28:16

I love that. 

Barbara Leckie  28:17

Yeah, I do too. And that phrase itself echoes with a comment that Astra makes in this episode, referring to the new horizons of imagination, and the way that, to have any sort of revolutionary transformation, we also have to be able to imagine it. 

Joel Westheimer  28:29

Yeah, imagining it means, requires a new narrative, right? If we're going to shift our sense of common sense, we need a new story to tell.

Astra Taylor  29:22

The commons refers to something that is commonly managed, commonly held, commonly owned.

Carolyn Lesjak  29:28

All the open fields in Britain were gone. 

Heather Menzies  29:29

There's a place for everyone to land a share. There's no, there's no fences. It's an alternative that involves people and where responsibility is shared and democracy can be revived.

And what we're going to do in the next episode is look at one possible story, and that's looking at common sense through the lens of the commons. 

Joel Westheimer

And in our next episode, our interviewees will tell us about the definition of the commons, the way that the commons can help us reclaim a different form of common sense, and the way it might help us take action in the climate crisis.

Barbara Leckie  29:01

And we could even think about this podcast itself as a kind of commons.

Joel Westheimer  29:04

Yes, we could. The podcast is a commons, a public conversation.

Barbara Leckie  29:08

Right. 

Joel Westheimer  29:09

So join us in episode three of our podcast, Commons Sense. That's Commons with an S. 

Joel Westheimer  29:44

I want to remind our listeners that bios of the people we interview are on our website,
commonspodcast.com. And you can also find information on any people referenced in the interviews.
Again, that's commonspodcast.com.

​

Barbara Leckie 

Support for Commons Sense comes from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada, the shared online projects initiative at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, and
from Re.Climate Canada's National Center for Climate Communication and Public Engagement.
Special thanks to our producer, Mary Stinson, our sound producer, Rheanna Phillip, and to CKCU 93.1
FM.