The Brooklyn Rail

I turned forty this year, and I feel that at this age, both as a woman and a professional, “radical” becomes a word you have to re-situate, almost physically. I think that is because so many versions of radicality, tied to neoliberal futurities, have rushed in and collapsed so fast that the term now feels stark, paradoxical, and newly difficult to hold.

What is radical is often not the kind of impulsive, reactive systems that we’ve generated in terms of communication, particularly in relation to algorithmic intelligence. The principles of ecology are inviting us to think about longevity, and to think about processes of transferring knowledge in ways that have duration and a quality of renewal.

There’s so much loss at this point that what is radical is really to carry with us the histories that are being erased right now with autocratic and nationalist systems. I come from a minority culture, and it has always invited me to think about extinction differently. Practicing radicality is actually to defeat extinction today.

When I talk about ecological processes, I’m talking very broadly about processes of conservation that protect linguistic inheritances, for instance. I was reading an article by the People’s Archive of Rural India, a platform I’ve worked with. They’ve been doing incredible work on languages that are very close to extinction—recording them, animating practitioners of those languages, and recording their histories. That, for me, is radical, because it starts like that.

On one hand, there’s so much being extracted from us through monetized social media platforms that data-profiles every aspect of our lives. And yet there are systems of retrieval of cultural knowledge that are non-extractive, that are trying to prevent extinction mechanisms from being so fast-paced.

When I think about Indigenous and cultural practices, I feel connected to many stakeholders simply through learning from them. Take a Sámi artist like Outi Pieski, who reflects on matrilineal culture within her Sámi heritage, on the matrilineal as a way of understanding custodianship and the rights of nature. These frameworks sharpen our awareness of extractivism in native landscapes that have been cared for and safeguarded for generations.

I feel there are constant gestures toward realigning with and affirming certain ways of living and certain ways of art making that counter the glossy, algorithm-serving ways to connect and make culture happen. Those are the practices that feel most radical to me today.

I am also drawn to circular forms of production—ways the art economy can feed other economies and have a regenerative impact. Otobong Nkanga is a brilliant example. I have known her for years, and I admire how she has built a circular economy around her practice, where resources gained through art generate impact elsewhere. In Athens, she founded a space that reinvests in the creative community; in Nigeria, she is developing projects in sustainable architecture and organic cultivation. There is real truth in that approach. And I think truth is radical.

The truth force that artists possess links them to ethical and versatile ways of operating within the creative scene and the art market. In this way, there is circularity of resource sharing. I think that is truly radical, and particularly so when women and collectives have been doing this work for many years.

When I was younger, I thought about the frontier of what is progressive and radical in terms of future building, technologies, and systems that signify an avant-garde. But living through a climate emergency and a post-pandemic world, I truly think we need to reassess. Visual culture is being shrunk down into short-term digital forms, and we need to renegotiate what feels radical today. It’s not about the given image of what is radical. Thinkers like Ursula K. Le Guin, an anarchist feminist and radical thinker, were very clear about ecology as part of speculative futures, about diversity of culture and ecology as central to imagining futures. I draw lessons from figures like that.

The term radical fails when data-based intelligence trivializes and deadens repositories of culture, when everything becomes instant gratification and commodification. Radicality becomes a rupture without meaning. We’re being pushed into regressive spaces that create false urgency and false radicality, particularly through corporate-owned platforms and tools. These adaptive modes are causing extinction.

People often don’t connect data to land and water. As cultural workers, our job is to make these paradoxes visible aesthetically, to decode them, and to make them abundant in the public sphere. Activists, environmentalists, poets, and artists who carry generational knowledge can move between the deep past and the deep future and discern what’s happening now. That, I think, is radical.

I recently read something in Jacobin that stayed with me: “Love requires attention, affection, and reciprocal flow—a natural cycle of giving and receiving. Capitalism can easily commodify the first two, but the third resists the market.” As we become time-poor, we lose capacity; we turn toward consumerism and fear, and we disconnect from the natural world. These shifts are dangerous. They are accelerating, and if we do not stay alert, the consequences will be disastrous.