A Modest Objection To "The Body Keeps The Score"

The present times are rather terrible, both globally and here in the United States.  We who are not of the rich and powerful are under a full onslaught being waged by those who are rich and powerful, and want to bring back the sort of status quo which existed in the early part of the 20th century.  Rights and protections are being rolled back by those who want to revive colonialism and white supremacy.  The effects of their efforts are widespread and tragic, as we have seen and will continue to see in my series of posts on economic precarity and the precariat.

One of the more curious responses to this phenomenon come from those members of the dominant culture who claim to be "woke" or who seem to sympathize with the plight of those of us who have once again become targets of oppression.  One of the expressions of this sympathy consists of framing the discussion of the ways in which oppression and the revival of racism hurts the oppressed in such a way as to imply that this oppression leaves the oppressed permanently debilitated.  And along this line, one book that has recently gotten a bit of press is The Body Keeps The Score.  This book describes the long-term traumatic psychological and physical effects of the stress of living in a hostile society, and its premise seems to be that the long-term experience of hostility, persecution and oppression can produce long-term debilitating effects from which the sufferers of such experiences cannot recover.  (By the way, where did the use of the word "woke" as an adjective come from?  Does the dominant culture really believe that we who are not members of it can't use a more grammatically correct term like "awakened"?)

Now I must admit that I have not yet read The Body Keeps The Score.  But lately I get more than a little uncomfortable when I hear so-called sympathizers going on and on about how our experiences of oppression can produce long-term debilitation that is impossible to overcome.  I get irked by people who imply that our experiences of oppression tend to permanently disable us or to permanently reduce our capacity to fulfill our human potential.  To me, such expressions of so-called sympathy tend to reinforce the message that we who are of the oppressed are thus permanently robbed of our agency.  Such expressions of sympathy seem to imply that we who are of the oppressed should therefore give up trying to overcome our oppression and simply accept damaged lives and damaged identities.  (To use a cheesy analogy, imagine a scene in a space-opera sci-fi movie in which a green-skinned, three-eyed, lizard-faced commander of an enemy spaceship is telling the movie's protagonist, "Captain! As you can see, we've destroyed your death ray, we've damaged your engines, and we've blasted a few new holes in your ship.  Only your neutron torpedo launchers are still working.  Perhaps you should surrender ...")

To those who are unwittingly broadcasting this message I say please reconsider what you are saying.  To those who are knowingly using expressions of "sympathy" to broadcast such a message, I say you're full of garbage.  What's more, I have logical, historical counter-examples to show that you are full of garbage.  To name a few, consider:

Nelson Mandela.  While he was a prisoner of the white apartheid South African regime, he maintained a strict schedule of weekly exercise in order to keep himself in top physical and cognitive shape.  As documented by Alex Soojung Kim-Pang, Mandela found that keeping in good shape helped him to think more clearly and to effectively deal with the frustrations and outrages of being a political prisoner.  It also helped him to show his captors that he remained in charge of his own life and destiny, no matter what they tried to do.

The Polish Underground Schools in World War Two. When Germany invaded Poland during World War Two, the Germans sought to destroy all higher education in Poland.  (The Russians also tried to do this in the 1800's during their involvement in the 19th century partition of Poland.)  This was in order to turn the entire nation into a nation of manual laborers who would serve the Germans as slaves.  Yet the Poles resisted.  One of their methods of resistance - a shining example of building parallel institutions as a means of strategic nonviolent resistance - was the creation of a network of underground schools for their children.  By this means, Polish scientific and technical capabilities were preserved so that they could once again flourish when freedom was won.

Admiral James Stockdale.  I am not a fan of American involvement in Vietnam during the 1960's and early 1970's.  I think that American involvement in the Vietnam war was an expression of American stupidity, narcissism, and hubris which blinded this country to the realities of another people's lived experience and history.  However, I must say that James Stockdale's experience of suffering and survival as a prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese provides great inspiration and insight into how people who must face hostile circumstances can survive and eventually prevail.  To quote Stockdale, "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

The Guiding Lights of the Civil Rights Struggle.  Consider people like Robert Moses, Ella Baker, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, the organizers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Rosa Parks.  Consider Rosa Parks especially - note her quiet, dignified demeanor and the way she carried herself.  See in these people - in their language, behavior and dress - how they communicated the message that they would not let their identity be defined by their oppressors.  

We who are once again targets of oppression have a hard slog ahead.  Part of that slog consists, as Stockdale said, of "the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."  But the purpose of that confrontation is that we might begin to build a strategy to overcome those brutal facts.  I am thinking of two particular works of fiction to which I have been exposed in the last seven years.  One was The Warmth of Other Suns, and it was recommended to me by someone in a reading group that was organized by the management of my workplace shortly after Trump stole the White House in 2017.  I never read the book because I was turned off by the person who recommended it to me.  It seemed that the purpose of the book (and of the workplace reading circle) was to induce us to have a good cry over our shared experience of suffering as African-Americans, in the hope that after our cry we'd feel better and become pacified.  I don't have time for that kind of garbage!

The other work of fiction was a short story that I read this year, in 2023, and it is "Tempus Fugit" by a French woman of Black African descent named Ketty Steward.  I liked that story!  In it, the intended targets of oppression reclaim their agency by overcoming their situation.  Ketty Steward rocks!

P.S. If you have read The Body Keeps The Score and you have evidence that I have misinterpreted some of the press surrounding this book and others like it, please feel free to present your evidence.  I'm not above eating my words from time to time...