What are the things that make us a “we”? What are the differences that become lost when we define “we”?
I had an epiphany when I was 11. It was a bad day in the tween social world, where I had not yet determined that being over eagerly nerdy won’t win you friends until you’re post-collegiate, and I felt excluded by an everyone else that seemed very strongly allied against me. But as I railed against certain girls in my class, I began to realize that at any time, each of them had a different “everyone else” ––and in fact, theirs included me. There was no single unit against the big whole. It’s really either of the following things: either we are all one and one and one and one, or we are always on the verge of our own simultaneous exclusion and inclusion. “Everyone else” is a myth.
I’m almost 30 now and I still don’t believe in “everyone else.” But what does that mean for “we”? If there is no strongly formed group based on the principle of exclusion, can we have strongly formed groups based on belonging? The optimist in me says yes: that by defining ourselves by who we are, rather than who we are not, we create at the very least a kind of safety in numbers. But I think this may be a case where optimism is not only wrong, but actually deeply problematic. When we form a collective, the first thing we tend to lose is the potential for reevaluation. In fact the need for evaluation of belonging and shared goals actually increases, rather than decreases, over time. The absence of reevaluation creates a blindness akin to active omission.
It may be safest to define “we” through action. “We” are 100 bloggers answering questions assigned to us by Open Engagement in the days leading up to the conference. “We” are the people cleaning this house at the moment, because the house is dirty. “We” is a temporary state: it disbands as actions are over. We, as the readers of this blog, are uniquely situated to understand that. Who better to know the value and strength of temporary participation than those aligned with socially engaged practices? We come together to answer questions through our work, and share time and space (physical and virtual) in the service of that work – not in the service of our individualism. There is a genuine collective spirit in “we” not because of the plural form of the word but because “we” can take on the aspect of seeming unity. “We” is a front that allows us to move forward: created by action to complete that action.
I caution all of us, though––as I name us an “us” and hold us here, together––to always keep forming “we.” This is destabilizing. To truly include, we risk the potential of our own exclusion at any moment. This keeps the doors open in a real way. “We” is scary, and to make it meaningful, we must keep it so.
About the contributor: Chloë Bass is a conceptual artist working in performance, situation, publication, and installation. Recent work has been concerned with the accumulation of the everyday, particularly through social interactions and the formation of self. She is currently an honorary fellow of Utopian Practice at Culture Push, where she’s developing a reverse tourism project called The Department of Local Affairs. A native New Yorker, Chloë lives and works in Brooklyn. If you are nearby, she would love to have you over for tea. If you are far away, please enjoy her website: chloebass.com.