In the twenty-first century, we are beset by crises, large and small. Personal ones, such as unemployment, illness, and relationship turmoil, jostle with environmental, social, and political crises of global scope. We use the same word in so many different contexts that at times we might well wonder if we are robbing it of all meaning.
The word “crisis” welds together the subjective, the intersubjective, and events, forces, and powers that threaten life as usual. The Chinese character for it, a combined one often mistranslated as “danger and opportunity,” is more accurately rendered as “danger and inflection point,” which brings a little stability to the term. The old Hegelian Marxist idea of the abrupt transformation of quantitative into qualitative change or the concept of historical rupture described by Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, and many others originates in and indeed defines various crises.
James Cairns, a professor of Indigenous studies, law...
John Baglow is the author of Murmuration: Marianne’s Book, a collection of poetry.
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