Vol. 10: Silence, Complacency, and Comfort in an Age of Collapse

Published May 2025

The Ethical Anarchy of Care: Ethical Action; Without Principle

Jordan Cassidy, Acadia University

How do we transform ambivalence into care in a world where carelessness reigns? This essay takes up this question phenomenologically by engaging with the work of Reiner Schürmann, Martin Heidegger, and Emmanuel Levinas. Schürmann’s approach to deconstruction draws out a theory of ontological anarchy, which seeks to release thought and action from the constraints of metaphysical principles. To anchor ethical action in something other than the principles of an “arche,” this essay turns to Heidegger’s existential structure of care. To conclude, Levinas provides the existential thrust of Heidegger’s primordial structure of care with the irreducible ethics of the Face. Together these thinkers provide a foundational basis for an anarchic, action oriented, everyday politics of care. This foundational contributes to the politics of carelessness and care and may provisionally be understood as an “ethical anarchy of care.”

Echoes of Silence: How Digital and Academic Spaces Perpetuate Gender-Based Sexual Violence

Heidi Lamb, University of Manitoba

This paper investigates how silence, complacency, and comfort intersect in digital and academic spaces to perpetuate gender-based sexual violence (GBSV) within Canadian post-secondary institutions. The analysis reveals how both digital platforms and academic institutions reinforce societal norms that normalize violence. Digital spaces, through algorithmic amplification and toxic online communities, enable the spread of harmful narratives, while academic institutions often prioritize reputation management over victim-survivor justice, perpetuating systemic inaction. Despite these challenges, the paper highlights transformative opportunities for resistance, particularly through online feminist activism and campus-based movements that challenge entrenched cycles of complacency. By examining the interplay between digital and institutional silences, this research emphasizes the necessity of integrated strategies—including educational reform, digital accountability, and survivor-centred policies—to address GBSV. Ultimately, the paper advocates for a cultural shift that transcends digital and institutional boundaries, fostering resilience, accountability, and collective action in the fight against systemic violence.

Identity, Community, and the Future: A Queer Theory Approach

Isla Parker, Acadia University

In the midst of the 2024 United States election, I (an American international student in Canada) wrote this essay as I watched from afar the US’s decent into the far-right being solidified with the election of Donald Trump. This essay is personal and emotional as a reflection of the personal effect these politics have on so many people and the emotional tole it is taking and will continue to take not only on US citizens but on people all over the world. In this context, this essay reviews Himani Bannerji’s criticisms on identity politics and Gary Kinsman’s “neoliberal queer” alongside contributions of similar concepts from other notable authors to explore the importance of solidarity. Starting with Bannerji, a groundwork is laid explaining the role of capitalism in constructing difference, and its need for racialized and gendered separation to make people exploitable. The idea of the neoliberal queer is then taken as a specific contemporary example of the way in which separation and difference are created. This concept highlights the queer experience as fundamentally in opposition to systems of power. It also shows how the queer experience can still be co-opted in awkward ways which attempt to integrate queer people into the existing power structures which ultimately operate against them. Finally, I discuss the implications of constructed difference with consideration of Social Reproduction and Marxist theories, both of which assert that the current systems of power keep people separated in the name of productivity for those in power. This is what leads me to the conclusion of the essay: that solidarity is the ultimate way to be in opposition to oppressive systems of power.

Breaking the Cycle: Healing Internalized Ableism and Trauma in Neurodivergent Individuals with IFS and ACT

Theresa Kelly, King's University College at Western University

This paper explores the impact of internalized ableism on neurodivergent individuals, examining how societal expectations centered around neurotypical norms contribute to feelings of inadequacy, trauma, and self-doubt. It investigates the intersection of internalized ableism, trauma, and neurodivergence, demonstrating how they perpetuate silence and compliance as coping mechanisms, particularly in the context of societal collapse. Utilizing an intersectional approach, the paper analyzes how these factors are compounded by systemic oppression and environmental instability. Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are presented as potential therapeutic interventions to foster resilience, challenge ableist paradigms, and promote self-acceptance and authenticity. The paper explores how neurodivergent individuals can reclaim their narratives in spaces that have historically excluded them, emphasizing the importance of breaking the cycle of silence and compliance to build supportive communities crucial for resilience in times of societal stress.

Book Review: Refugee Lifeworlds

Viplav Subramanian

Encouraging its readers to re-conceptualize and re-evaluate theorizations on the taxonomies of refugee, practices and politics of seeking refuge, material associations of the “Global South” with the Cold War between the Western and Eastern Blocs and the significance of autotheory, Refugee Lifewords, by Y-Dang Troeung explores the afterlives of Cambodians post cold war.