The liminal space is a profoundly creative one. Artists and writers will sometimes seek it out, engaging in ritual, punctuated by confusion, in a deliberate attempt to disorientate reason and fan the creative flames. I’ve done it myself. Faced with a daunting writing project, I will change up meal times, disrupt sleeping patterns, jumble up (or simply avoid) social interaction, dismantle routine – just so that I can reach this liminal place. This sense of things unravelling. This horizon of possibility.
The present tense is simply too demanding; disingenuously defending the structure of our lives with its illusion of normality, it ends up constraining our vision and obstructing the avenues for change. Liminality frees us from this. It breaches the fortress of the ego and breaks open the bars of social conformity. It allows us to see the world (and ourselves) as we might be, as we could be. As we still could be. Rather than through the temporary prison of the unsustainable now.
‘It is not too late,’ whispers a small voice in my left ear. I turn, surprised to find the butterfly is back.
‘Human and earthly limits, properly understood,’ wrote the conservationist Wendell Berry, ‘are not confinements, but rather inducements…to fullness of relationship and meaning.’ Beyond the bridge, he was suggesting, lies another world. A place worth visiting. An investment worth making. A destination worth reaching. Tomorrow is another country. They do things differently there.
As the shadows lengthen, a grey heron rises noisily from his perch on a dry branch and swoops defiantly across our bow, disrupting my reflection.
‘Life is a temporary thing,’ he croaks.
‘Tell me about it,’ sighs the butterfly.
‘I thought you were gone,’ I say.
‘I am gone,’ confides my friend. ‘I am gone and I am here. I am here and I am nowhere. I am nowhere and I am forever…’
At that precise moment, the reeds part and the river widens.
‘Almost forever…’
The glorious expanse of Horsey Mere reveals its surreal beauty to the infinite sky. The unencumbered wind sweeps us freely into the open water. Our sinews stretch. The halyards strain. The sun on my face is a warm embrace. It feels momentarily like home. And the relief is palpable.
15
Speculative Hyperstition at a Northern Further Education College
Judy Thorne
I get off the train in a humid twenty-first-century summer, and ride my bike down the hill and over a pedestrian bridge high above the wild howl of the Princess Way.1 My wheels labour over the pitted tarmac. It’s a long, straight, flat way to the trade union offices in the Ackfield Business Park, and I am lagging as usual behind Google Maps’ athletic estimates of how long my journey should take. But the low sky doesn’t open, and I arrive at the address just about on time. Boston House is a square, brown five-storey office block with no cycle parking. Inside, an administrator offers me a small plastic cup of orange juice, and the woman I have come to talk to comes in. Ashley is a trade union rep and a social worker in her late twenties. She is taking a course at the college I used to work at, which provides further education to 30,000 adults and teenagers. Her department, Trade Union Education, is based in St Agabus’ Campus, a russet newbuild on the edge of the city centre. New reps learn how to creatively apply flimsy laws in order to organise to defend themselves and their colleagues from being endangered, harassed and fired. I turned up in Ashley’s classroom a few weeks ago to ask the small class if they wouldn’t mind me interviewing them, and she’s one of the two who replied to my follow-up e-mail.
Ashley makes a cup of tea. I ask her what she wants the world to be like in the future.
‘Safe,’ she answers. ‘Things have slipped recently. I would like trade unions to go back to the how they were in the seventies and eighties, and start fighting for everything we had that’s just slipped now, gone. Once we do that, we’ll be able to get back to what we lost. Not work over the hours, not get stressed at work, not get ill, having to worry, going into work sick. I want working people not to have to be afraid. That’s what I would like the future to be.’
Ashley tells me she has a daughter, and she is worried that she might not have much of a future. ‘Before you’ve even started your working career, you’re twenty to thirty thousand in debt. Universities weren’t set up to work like this originally. If we had free education, people would know their rights a lot more, people would be able to understand each other more. I think all this hostility that’s happening at the minute would slowly go away, because there is a class problem going on and also an immigration problem going on at the moment.’ We start talking about immigration. ‘Why not open it up? We used to, years ago. You’re always going to have border control, because there’s always so many houses, there’s always so many jobs, there’s only so many school places. But it’s not working out the way it is at the minute. Obviously people are concerned – we all voted for different reasons [alluding to the recent referendum, when the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union]; but why not treat it as a new opportunity to set up something like what we did in the past with the United Nations? Do the score systems like Australia, but it needs opening up, like it was before. There wouldn’t be so much of a panic and influx if it was opened up throughout the world. The people know that they can’t go to Australia, they can’t go to this country, they can’t go to that one – well, why can’t they? The media say: “They voted out because they’re racist”; they’ve not said: “Well, actually no, they voted out because they want a fair system.” I think there should be sanctions for what the media do to this country. There should be repercussions.’
The discussion of immigration led into talking about the recession, and everything that has been made scarce since then, that is being pulled out from under people’s feet. ‘People became unstuck when, halfway through the year, mortgage costs go through the roof, they’ve not got the money to pay for it, the properties are getting repossessed, the kids are getting obese because they’re getting one pound ready meals, the parents are getting stressed and sick, and that’s having a drain on the NHS because they’re breaking down with mental health crises. And we’re heading for another recession again next year. Now, they’re going to blame it on the EU referendum, but we were heading for it regardless; things obviously aren’t working. People are losing their homes, they’re losing their lives. We’ve had to ask for advice, me and my colleagues, because the suicidal calls we’re getting from our members has gone up so dramatically in the last eight months.’
How do you think it should be?
‘I think there needs to be a fixed rate [mortgage] that’s set, based on average earnings. Same with the utility bills and same with childcare and rent control and everything. I think that, personally, in the future that needs to be part of the Queen’s speech: “Right, this is what we’ve agreed this year for this country, these are the set rates.”
‘The problem we have got now, though, is that the media are in the back pockets of that many different hierarchy people. It’s going more and more where it’s two or three people that run the country. It’s actually never been allowed before that people would own that much power. This is why I believe in the trade unions. If we went back to how we were before the eighties. We did it then. The working people fought a lot more then. They came out, they marched through the streets. And people listened. I think people are afraid to do it now. Everything that we’ve lost… We didn’t have ASDA and Morrison’s and Tesco’s all them years ago. And we survived then. The supermarkets are crushing the economy. All the markets are gone. I used to love being a kid growing up and going to the markets and the greengrocers and things like that.’
As we move from topic to topic, the utopian horizon seems to hover in the past, but close so you can almost remember it; it was before Britain joined the European Union, before austerity, before supermarkets, before the trade unions were crushed. Since then, everything has been falling away, ‘all slowly collapsing’. ‘But what do you wa
nt the future to be like?’ I ask again.
‘We need to take back control of our own country,’ Ashley replies decisively. ‘I think that’s what it all comes down to. We need to take back control. We could sustain our own, we could look after ourselves, so, therefore, it was very welcome when immigration came, because we were a sustained economy. We’re not sustaining any more. We need to be able to go back to holding our own. And I don’t mean – I think it’s ridiculous when people say it means we need to deport the immigrants. That’s not what I mean, and that’s not what a lot of people mean. It means we need to go back to basics, and how it was when we did have control. Let the producers dictate what they can live off. Let us go back to how it was. And then we can support people like we used to. But all the resources are being cut. All the ways we had of supporting people are gone, and now we’ve been left to this. They say: “Look, we’ve got a multicultural country!” Yeah, but they’re all actually starving to death, they’ve got nowhere to live! They’re not advertising that. They’re so hung on this multicultural country – they’re not sustaining it. We’re all crumbling. We’re all struggling.’
I leave the building via the lift and cycle down the street to get a meal deal from the Tesco Metro I passed on my way from the station. When I get there it’s been boarded up. The rain is still holding off, but the streets are getting darker as the clouds thicken. I cycle on, into the city, to meet with a couple of Business and Technology Education Council economics students at St Agabus’ Campus who agreed to be interviewed.
The first one I speak to is Efuru. ‘You see I’ve got disabilities,’ she says, indicating her walking cane decorated with a colourful botanical print, ‘but I’m trying to go to school. All they say they provide for someone with disabilities is just a bus pass. And I’m struggling. I can hardly walk from here to there. I’ve been bed-bound for years because of my health, I’ve only just had my knees replaced; but the knees won’t last long, so while it lasts I should make use of the time, and get out of the house and do something good, something I’ll feel proud of, something to make me smile.’ Such as studying economics. I ask Efuru about how she would want healthcare to work in the future. ‘Hospitals in the future – they have to be free. So the NHS is just fine as it is. In Nigeria, to get a sachet of Co-codamol is very expensive. And I take a sachet every day. So I have that here, that privilege to have free drugs. I was born in the UK, but, as Africans, they always want to take you back. So I was taken back to Nigeria as a baby. If one parent is a citizen, and you’re born here, you’re still not entitled to citizenship. That’s bad. I wouldn’t want that. I would want it to be, if you’re born here, your mum or dad might not be a citizen, but you’ve got a pass. You can have dual citizenship.’
What would you want Nigeria to be like in the future? ‘I wish they could eject all the government! And put younger ones there. If they could stop the embezzlement and fraud and theft, it might be a better place. We’ve got the resources, but we’ve got thugs, thieves, as leaders. Of course, the way it’s going now, the situation here is getting to be quite similar.’
In what way?
‘In that the ones in power in this country have never lived the lives that they’re affecting. So how can they understand anything? In the future I think the people dealing with the disability system should be someone with a disability. And education – it should be run by the teachers themselves, people who understand the situation. The people in government should be the working people. Women’s rights – of course it’ll be a woman, but they’ll get a woman who’s had some private education, who’s had this that and the other. I think that’s where it all needs to change: from the top.’ Efuru peers anxiously out of the window. ‘My transport should have come at 2.20. Now it’s 2.45. You have to book one week in advance. This morning I came in really early, because you have to take whatever time they’ve got. Even if it means you sit here until nine o’clock. In the future there should be enough cars that they can come straight to where you are and take you where you need to go. And it should be free.’
Efuru’s car arrives just as the campus is closed by teachers gathering to picket the college. Dozens of them are already outside. I watch the car leave from the window. Instead of the old dirty white bus I thought I’d seen drive past the first time, this was a sleeker vehicle, bearing the dark green crest of the Disabled People’s Dromocracy, familiar now after they rolled out their comprehensive city transport system. On my way out, a teacher hands me a flyer: the strike will be indefinite, it says, across all universities, schools and colleges in the country, until the cuts to further education funding are reversed.
I go to a nearby Costa to talk to a hard, femme young woman called Vanessa, who came to England to study economics after she got fed up with her make-up artistry business in Toronto. ‘People are so focused on fast food. It’s too fast-paced and go-go-go. I guess I want the world in the future to be a little more environmentally friendly. In Canada, we’re all about mass-producing meat and dairy. But there are real problems with that. It would be better if we supported local farms. Eating healthily and not eating meat should be a right, not a privilege.’
What else, apart from food?
‘I guess generally I just want everyone to chill, just have some chill,’ she says. ‘Like when your parents were kids. Now you can’t even call your friend or go to your friend’s house because you’re constantly messaging her on, like, 50 apps. Everyone’s distracted all the time. They’re not in reality.’
What needs to change?
‘If everyone’s phones all just broke! Then that’d make a better future. When all the phones broke, people would come back to reality. People would appreciate life more. You’d spend more time with your friends. You could stop trying to be a certain way, being pretentious, and just chill, and appreciate the world around you. That’s how I would want the future to be.’
A few days later I go to catch a train to another northern city, where Ashley’s classmate Greg lives. When I get to the station I order lunch, a potato salad, at the station café. The Starbucks sign is still there, but it’s been wrapped in the bright blue hessian of the Producers’ Union. The café is run by a couple who’ve recently moved from Yugoslavia, and now own a market garden in the city. A brass plaque on the wall reads ‘Project Funded by the New United Nations.’ After the EU referendum in June 2016 things happened dizzyingly rapidly: now most of the Asia-Pacific region and the Organisation of African Unity is part of the Global Schengen Agreement, and the Middle Eastern countries will be signing the treaty this week. A revamped UN has been given unprecedented powers to manage this process, and is funding countless new ‘Openness and Sustainment’ projects, of which I guess this is one. My salad isn’t ready by the time my train arrives. When I ask for my money back I’m informed stiffly that this isn’t a fast food joint.
On the train, I read a newspaper someone’s left behind, the Daily Mail. ‘WELCOME HOME TO ALL NEW DUAL-NATION CITIZENS,’ the front cover reads. Since the owners of most of the national newspapers were imprisoned, and the presses bought by the National Union of Journalists, editorial lines have begun to wobble. Inside, there’s a minor story about the Brick virus fix being stalled, and a ‘Who’s Who’ guide to the Working People’s Technocracy, which has succeeded the Wilson government.
To get to where Greg lives I cycle through an estate of cream stucco houses, past shuttered supermarkets, up a tall hill from which you can see the whole city, past an abandoned pub and to an eerily quiet square of clean newbuilds, blank and pale against the white sky in the windless early afternoon. In the centre of the square is a flat expanse of bare earth. I lock my bike to the fence and ring the bell. A blonde woman with a Slavic accent welcomes me in and makes tea for me. I’m uncomfortably early and Greg isn’t there yet. Three children with long hair are playing a video game in the living room. Greg hurries back and we go upstairs to a room he and Ana refer to as ‘the Institute’, which overlooks the empty square. He asks
me whether I looked at the link he sent me about it. I guiltily admit I haven’t, so he explains that since 2008 the family have co-run a home-based activist artwork called the Domestic Dissent Institute – ‘this weird alternative space which is the spare bedroom of our home, that is given over to radical activity’, Greg explains. ‘Whether that’s performance makers who come and stay with us for a bit – this is the bed that they sleep on [gesturing towards the neat bed next to us] or radical work that we do outside in galleries or on the streets or as part of social movements. And we fund it all with 10 per cent of all the money that comes through us: the work that me and Ana have in the university, child benefit, and so on. That all goes in a pot, and then we fund things.’
I ask Greg what he wants the world to be like in the future. ‘The best saying is “Everything for everyone”. I want the world to be a place where everything is for everyone. Huge corporations just need to be cut up and divided and everything for everyone. We need to move away from fossil fuel addiction into renewable energy. So we’ll be riding around on…self-propelling, or community-propelled, transportation devices; that will be completely normal to us all. Food needs to be sustainably produced. Cuba leads the way. It isn’t utopia, but it’s the first place in the world to reach a point of sustainable development. They divide as little as possible the means and the ends, or today and tomorrow. I think your consciousness gets made in resistance. You can’t grow a revolutionary consciousness unless you’re engaged in revolutionary activity.
‘But, even though our consciousness is trapped in the present which created it, and what we want the future to be like now will be different from what we want in the future, I think we still have to insist on the question of what we want now, to start from where we are. So give me more! Like, you know, how would housing work?
Economic Science Fictions Page 27