The second step in the DSP asks you to write a brief essay based on a set of readings. Since this assignment resembles those you will be asked to do as a student at Dartmouth, this experience may help you choose the writing course that is best for you. At least, that’s our hope.
These readings should inform your essay, but your essay should not be a mere summary of them. Your argument will be of your own choosing and should demonstrate your own capacity to consider and write something about the topic(s) presented in these readings. You should cite these sources when quoting, summarizing, or paraphrasing them.
Your essay should be about 1000 words long—and no longer than 1250. You may upload your essay as a doc, docx, or pdf.
Readings
– Butler, Judith. Introduction. What World is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology, Columbia University Press, 2022, pp. 1-17.Download Butler, Judith. Introduction. What World is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology, Columbia University Press, 2022, pp. 1-17.
– Asayama, Shinichiro, et al. “Are we Ignoring a Black Elephant in the Anthropocene? Climate Change and Global Pandemic as the Crisis in Health and Equality.” Sustainability Science, no. 16, 2021, pp. 695-701.Download Asayama, Shinichiro, et al. “Are we Ignoring a Black Elephant in the Anthropocene? Climate Change and Global Pandemic as the Crisis in Health and Equality.” Sustainability Science, no. 16, 2021, pp. 695-701.
Placement Essay (Writing 5)
“I pray nobody kills me for the crime of being small.”
The quote cited is taken from a poem written by a bug to its god. No bugs are reading this sentence, but many people with access to a laptop, power to run that laptop, money to pay for power, and a steady and well-paying job that supplies money are. Many readers’ circumstances are the same, or nearly identical. The upper class is not powerless, save for when circumstances are so dire they take over an entire planet. Even then, trapped in our homes, circumstances were relatively cushy compared to those in hospitals, those working in the hospitals, and those who could not afford hospitals. Separation from the haves and the have-nots is distinguished by social inequalities, which sap the energy for social advancement. Those without social capital suffered the most when help was most needed, and those who could help did not because those with capital did not step in. The worlds of science, politics, and religions alienate those who disagree with powers that be, notably Donald Trump’s administration encouraging partisan violence and quashing science and logic. No world was immune to Covid-19, but preexisting differences in those with power and those without were what dictated differences in the worlds’ responses and exposed the weaknesses in a separated planet. The blame for the crisis lies in the gods being addressed, but the responsibility for fixing the crisis has wrongly been delegated to the bugs, tiny things responsible for fixing things exponentially larger than themselves.
The upper class is not powerless, save for when circumstances are so dire they take over an entire planet. Even then, trapped in homes, circumstances were relatively cushy compared to those in hospitals, those working in the hospitals, and those who could not afford hospitals. The brunt of the crisis was put on the vulnerable, like the colonized world and communities of color, because it was assumed that a history of subjugation would accustom them to a future of it (Butler, 2022). Separation from the haves and the have-nots is distinguished by social inequalities, which sap the energy for social advancement. Those without social capital suffered the most when help was most needed, and those who could help did not because those with capital did not step in. The efforts of scientists to voice alarm about the climate crisis were paid little attention by governments, and the planet has never fared worse for it. Socially marginalized or voiceless groups suffered the most because of discrimination, and draconian measures taken to lessen the crisis did more harm than good, such as for women and poverty-struck people, for whom lockdown robbed of autonomy and job security (Asayama et al., 2020). What, then, could be done to relieve the vulnerable of their responsibility?
The people who constitute refuse or cheap labor of the world exist in a separate world from the people considered valuable or productive, but they do not have to be. By incorporating world travel and thereby myriad perspectives into people with the social capital needed to initiate change, responsibility is returned to the most efficient problem-solvers. More than righting the disorientation caused by the pandemic, absorbing multiple perspectives and incorporating them into one’s actions makes the people larger than themselves. Butler argues that when we recognize that things are interconnected and that we depend on each other, we flourish. This same recognition should be used to redistribute power and take action to make the will of those in power mirror the will of the people. People are affected in small ways, routines in their everyday lives, insignificant as a bug. Powerless people, even grouped together, have little power between them. But when people spread their views to people with the power for change, they grow beyond survival and subjugation. They are able to see their visions realized, and this is what threads together bugs and gods.