Nnedi Okorafor’s “Spider the Artist” made for an extremely interesting class discussion. There was a TON going on in this short story. When I first read the story, I was almost confused as to what the message or takeaway was supposed to be. It seemed clear to me that the short story was a form of activism (and not just because it was required reading for this class!); however, I was having difficulty discerning what exactly the author was advocating for. A few themes seemed obvious — the dangers of exploitation, colonialism, capitalism, etc. But there were so many little things woven into the story — characters, stories, symbols — that I knew were intentional and loaded with meaning, but I just couldn’t figure it out. Our class discussion led some light on a few questions I had. We talked about how the dad and grandpa were included to provide historical context, and we discussed how the role of music represented the role of escape, healing, and art in the role of human nature. However, there is one question that I am struggling with: Who are the enemies? We discussed this question in class, but I’m still not convinced of a set answer. The zombies are confusing. On the one hand, they’re murderous, corporate-created robots that might imply that technology/AI is the enemy. However, one of the zombies, Udide, ends up being a hero and one of the most likable characters in the story. The “everyday” human, the husband, is one of the least likable characters. So many of the other human characters, everyone except the narrator, are shown to be useless and expendable in the end when they are all killed. Ultimately, I would argue that is the oil corporations who are the enemy. They are the reasons that the world has become the dystopian society that it appears to be in this short story. I want to know how the ending, with the narrator ending up pregnant, has anything to do with this theme, though. I feel like there is significance behind her choosing that as the ending, I just can’t figure out what it was. I plan to reread this short story at some point in the future in hopes that I may find new enlightenment in a second reading.
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I was absent for the discussion last Friday about Spider the Artist, by Nnedi Okorafor, which I feel is both a positive and negative thing. I feel upset about missing the discussion because I think I would have much more clarity about the meaning and dynamics of the piece, yet I’m glad I have time to process it on my own and create my own meaning of it over a longer period of time. While the story offers many alluring subjects, I found the most interesting one to be a bit more hidden. I found myself close reading a part of the first paragraph.
My husband used to beat me. That was how I ended up out there that evening behind our house, just past the bushes, through the tall grass, in front of the pipelines. Our small house was the last in the village, practically in the forest itself. So nobody ever saw or heard him beating me.
I was intrigued by the idea of the forest, and how it provided a type of shadow to hide the crude truth and reality of her life. Her house was hidden “practically in the forest,” masking her injuries and abuse under the trees. She notes that because of this forest, nobody ever saw or heard the damages caused by her husband. In many ways, it harmed her because it hid the reality of her life to the rest of her community. It also hid the reality of life to herself, as when she needed to leave, she escaped past the bushes and through the tall grass to the pipelines. The forest offers her a liberation from her husband, it is somewhere she can go to play her guitar, feel joy and sorrow, and truly acknowledge her own feelings. Her husband does not inquire about where she runs to until later in the story, when their relationship gets better. Only then does he wish to explore the forest which used to mask her injuries and discovers the truth of their relationship, the only reason she stayed around for as long as she did was because of the Zombie. The first paragraph of this story serves as almost an prologue to the story.
I was intrigued by Linda Hogan’s powerful method of intertwining the complicated dynamics of race, power, the environment, and culture in her novel Power. In one of my other classes, an Ethics class, we have spoken a lot about what it means for a population to be culturally devastated; we read a book Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation about the Crow and the loss of their influential tribal Chief and how the implications of the buffalo going away resulted in a paradox for the future of the Crow culture. This book was on my mind a lot when reading Power, as Ama makes a decision in the name of her culture, and to save it, and Omishto works throughout the novel to discover what the Taiga culture means to her personally.
In Radical Hope, Jonathan Lear explains that the Crow faced three choices with what to do with the Sun Dance when the Crow could no longer fight, when their culture began to be devastated. The first choice was to keep dancing, even with a lost meaning of why the Sun Dance is danced. The second was to invent a new meaning behind the dance. The third, was to give up the dance entirely. These three options are ones nobody would ideally pick; it is a loss in every situation. I considered these three choices when contemplating Ama’s decision to kill the panther. The panther has a similar cultural significance as the buffalo does to the Crow, although the animals are seen very differently in both cultures. Ama didn’t necessarily choose any of the three choices outlined by Lear when her culture was facing devastation, yet she made a bold choice to violate some of the deepest beliefs in Taiga culture. The closest option Ama’s actions reflect is the second one, as her effort was one to preemptively avoid cultural devastation and spark rejuvenation for the community and for Omishto. While she didn’t necessarily encourage a new meaning behind the panther, she re-inspired conversation about the Taiga culture. She lost her acceptance in the community as a result of this action, which I believe makes it somewhat more heroic and even more of an act of activism for the environment and for her culture.
Hogan, Linda. Power, W.W. Norton and Company, 1999.
Lear, Jonathan. Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Harvard University Press, 2008.
Nnedi Okorafor’s Spider the Artist provided an interesting ‘sci-fi’ point of view on environmental injustice. While the premise of Artificial Intelligence robots guarding and inflicting violence on the populations surrounding a pipeline is a daunting and uncomfortable notion, it is not that far off from a possible real future. In this way Spider the Artist reminded me of one of our class’s very first readings, Margaret Atwood’s, It’s Not Climate Change, It’s Everything Change. In her article Atwood provided three possible scenarios for the world’s future under climate change. While some futures seemed more improbable than others, two provided an image of the future that privileged some while inflicting violence and suffering on others. Specifically, Atwood’s scenario for the future that predicts wealthier countries who have, or can, invest in alternative energy and shelter themselves from the rest of the world. Both this scenario in Atwood’s article and the issues presented in Spider the Artist bring to light the issue of who suffers the consequences of oil production, environmental injustice, and climate change. While oil continues to flow freely and fairly cheaply in the United States, it is easy to forget that people are living with, and suffering from, the oil origins.
With pipelines and fracking projects being proposed and carried out in the United States, it’s easy to adopt a “not in my backyard” attitude, but the ugly truth is, as long as the world is consuming oil, these undesirable, and unhealthy infrastructures that wreak havoc and violence on those who live in their proximity, have to go somewhere. When looking at stories such as Atwood’s predictions for the future and Spider the Artist the problematic and harmful nature of oil is strikingly clear, and it seems that the solution lines in alternative energy. While alternative energy is much cleaner and less harmful to live near, the evil forces presented, as I saw it, in the form of Zombie robots, is really the corporations and government that allowed violence to be inflicted on those who live near the pipeline. While oil presents inherent and problematic harms to the world, and especially to those who live near it, it seems that Spider the Artist presented argument that corporations and government are the root of the problem for causing harm and violence on the people they exploit. I wonder if a shift to renewable energy wouldn’t in its own way lead to violence and exploitation of marginal people?
Atwood, M. (2014, July 27). It’s Not Climate Change It’s Everything Change.
Okorafor, N. (2011, March). Spider the Artist.
When I read Nnedi Okorafor’s short piece “Spider the Artist,” I found myself thinking back on my experience in South Africa. One of the major issues that I had when I was in South Africa is that I would talk to people from home and they would constantly ask “How’s Africa?” I would instantly get irritated because it was indicative of the way that the Western world views the continent of Africa. I would become annoyed because if I was studying in Spain, people would not ask me how studying in Western Europe was. Every country in Africa typically falls into the “generalization” of Africa instead of the unique individual nations. I thought that this idea rang true in Okorafor’s piece as well.
When she discusses how the robots are in Nigeria to patrol the oil pipeline, even though the pipeline goes through Nigerian people’s yards, it made me think about the history of many African countries and how they have continuously sold themselves to the Western world and the result has always been disastrous for the African country.
I think this cartoon depicts the way that South Africa have sold themselves to China. China has been and continues to be the most significant trading partner with South Africa, and China has approved a 1.2-billion-dollar investment into Johannesburg. However, the development investment has had some pushback because China is using this to mask the fact that they are getting millions worth of raw materials from South Africa in return. Okorafor’s story rings a similar note but instead it uses U.S. oil companies and their transgressions in Africa.
I think that the story is partially a statement about the history of African countries being exploited by Western countries. One line of the story resonated with me and caused me to reconsider its true meaning. She wrote, “You should also pray that these Zombies don’t build themselves some fins and travel across the ocean.” I thought initially that this was the idea that the robots defending the pipeline could come over and wreak havoc on the American people, but then as we discussed in class, I felt like it was more of a warning of do not let the news of the devastation and the bloodshed get across the ocean. I think her message gets back to the central idea that most of the time we have no idea where our food, oil, and materials come from and what it took to create the commodity. Many people do not realize what happens to the indigenous people when the major corporations go into the country and transform the landscape. However, that is often glossed over when we are buying the materials and is not even on our minds. I thought Okorafor made this message clear when she referenced the government and the fact that many of Nigerian people do not trust their government because they sold out their people for the benefit of their own profit margins. The story did a great job of not just saying the issues that she had straightforwardly, but rather used fiction to help the reader arrive at their conclusion and to see the point she was trying to illustrate the entire time.
I’m a sucker for short stories. Mostly because I have the attention span of a fly, but also because they get right to the point. Nnedi Okorafor’s short story Spider the Artist , a unique blend of science-fiction and environmental activism, puts forth several strong narratives, none of which go unnoticed. The one that I found most compelling involved the impact that advanced technology has on our society. Some people (like those who watch popular Netflix show Black Mirror) believe that advanced technology has no place alongside humans because it will almost certainly turn against us. Others, like famous futurist Ray Kurzweil, are more optimistic about the matter. I would put myself in a group with Mr. Kurzweil, and I would argue that Okorafor speaks of the Zombies — or mechanical spiders — not to warn humans against technology itself, but to warn humans against technology falling into the wrong hands.
The majority of AI applications, surprisingly, don’t involve giant mechanical spiders that kill humans trying to destroy oil pipelines. Most try to solve problems by improving humans’ lives, rather than trying to end them. However, videos like this one (please watch, it’s very powerful) and stories like Okorafor’s make us weary about the future of technology. I argue that those stories are not intended to teach us about the dangers of AI, but rather about the dangers of how humans can use it. AI can be trained, just like humans, to do the right thing. It can be made to serve the greater good. However, the people who designed the mechanical spiders (Zombies) designed them with hate in their hearts. They designed them specifically to target and kill humans who try to mess with their profits. Okorafor argues that when powerful technology falls into the wrong, evil hands, bad things happen.
Furthermore, I drew a parallel directly from the spiders to climate deniers. Instead of solving the root problem (oil dependency), they try to mitigate the symptoms (people trying to take the oil). This costs lives, money, resources, and above all: our planet. Instead, the people could have chosen to flip the switch and use the technology for good. As preposterous as they may sound, here are some of my propositions:
- Ride the mechanical spiders to work! No more cars.
- Use the mechanical spiders to run errands – less need for transportation.
- Allow them to teach the students! More personalized education, students stay at home for school
All of these suggestions, admittedly silly, are nonetheless examples of how not to abuse powerful technology. Powerful, corrupt people, when given access to this technology, will always use it to drive up their profits. We must take it upon ourselves to develop new forms of AI and use them to improve the state of our planet — this would make Okorafor very proud.
I’ve been putting off writing this blog post because every time I start to think about ideas, I get caught up in the overwhelming complexity of everything we’ve talked about in class. I can’t solve one problem until this other thing gets changed, which won’t change unless these societal values change, and those aren’t going anywhere unless this other thing happens… forever. In another class, we referred to this type of problem as a “wicked problem” – characterized by the involvement of many different stakeholders as well as the fact that solving any single aspect of the problem ultimately results in the creation of one or many other problems. As one author wrote, these problems aren’t ever finished – work simply stops due to exhaustion, frustration, lack of resources, or simply boredom.
And so often, that’s how it feels to be someone heavily invested in issues surrounding climate change, inequality, prejudice, or discrimination. In my mere 20 years of existence, I have seen so few victories – and so, so many failures – on the part of politicians, businesses, and individuals in the face of dire threats to our planet and our society. In many ways, it has become a spiral downward, with each new challenge building on the divisions and problems introduced by the last.
Just in my lifetime, I’ve seen the aftermath of the Gulf Wars turn into 9/11 turn into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq turn into more terrorist attacks turn into growing hatred and discrimination towards Muslims turn into white supremacy turn into two different narratives about the world encouraged by media and the Internet and our own stubborn unwillingness to change — and to what end? What lives have been saved? What beauty has been created out of this cycle of destruction and blind hatred? Have we really created a better world for anyone but those who profit from war?
And climate change – with a body count far less visible and root causes far more entrenched in our livelihoods and cultural identity – can at times feel like the cherry on top of a diseased, incurably mangled sundae. Our society seems incapable of coming together and agreeing on the simplest subjects – Nazis are bad, children’s lives are more important than guns, women and black people should be treated equally to white men – so how on earth are we going to do something about a problem that nobody can see and that will affect our poorest, most vulnerable brothers and sisters first?
I really, really hope that this sinking, hopeless feeling will pass and I’ll start to feel like our problems aren’t so impossible again. Maybe I’m just feeling this way because of the shooting in Florida, which has been in the back of my head ever since I saw the news alert, a constant reminder of the hundreds of lives that we have lost, mourned, and forgotten over the years in our neverending cycle of gun violence in America. Maybe this is just a manifestation of a common pattern in the mental health of environmental scientists (or the effects of climate change itself on the brain – once again, all problems are connected.)
In class, we discussed how to live “well or justly” in a world of different perspectives, and our of habitual optimism, I postulated that we should look for our shared values as a society and build upon those foundations. If we can agree on empathy, generosity, patience, peace, accountability, honesty, and cooperation, maybe we can remake ourselves into a civilization that puts its money where its mouth is. The way to begin to do this, I suggested, is through rethinking how we educate our children. Representation, celebration, and understanding of diversity and differences; thoughtful discussion of right, wrong, and the gray area between; questioning the status quo; encouraging creativity and autonomy rather than conformity and compliance — would this make a difference? Is it even possible?
All four of my grandparents were teachers, and in the room where I slept during visits, my grandmother had a poster of the famous poem, “Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.” And as I think about that now, I have to agree. Humans are good at making things far more complicated than they have to be; we focus on extraneous detail, minute differences, specific nitpicking particulars, and we forget that we’re all only here on earth for a few decades – shouldn’t we focus on being kind and helpful while we’re here?
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All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum
(Here’s a picture of the exact poster my grandparents have)
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
The story Spider the Artist by Nnedia Okafor really incited in me a sense of dread of the future and dread for humanity. In her story, the oil companies Shell and Exon were only mentioned as a concept, an idea that none of the villagers understood. They strip the African lands and destroy their villages all in the name of advancement, but advancement for who? Not the villagers, in fact the villagers are hardly seen as humans by these companies. Death and the risk of death has become a common occurrence for the villagers as the zombies become integrated into their lives and they seem to live day by day just like animals with no hope for the future and no passion. But even so, who are the humans and what does it mean to be human and who in the story is truly human?
Is Andrew the husband human? Ever since the beginning of the story, he is seen as the villain. He beats his wife for no apparent reason and always seems to be driven by either anger or exhaustion. Despite being the man of the house, the story portrays him as more animalistic than human.
But on the other hand, the zombies are not human either, they are merely intelligent machines with no emotion except destruction. They portray the conquerors who seek to enter into the village society merely for the sake of wealth.
Andrew and the zombies occupy two different sides of the spectrum with one hot and one cold and neither one of them fully human. But then who is human in this story and how is it defined? In the story the only two characters portrayed as human are the Udide Okwanka and the main character. Despite one being a villager and the other being a spider, both of them show passion, love, and interest, characteristics that are distinctly human but not displayed by either Andrew nor the zombies. Two completely different beings and yet both so alike and so human. This idea that humanity and the lack of humanity is not merely one sided extends beyond this story and is also an integral part of Linda Hogan’s Power as well. In Power, we see through Omishto that the blame for her tribe’s decline and loss of direction lies not only with the white people but also within the members of her own tribe.
At the beginning of class last Friday, our class came to a consensus that we wanted our collective midterm activism project to be focused on encouraging Duke to divest from oil companies. While the idea sounds nice to environmentalists like us, one main message has been echoed in just about everything we have read/discussed so far: money rules the world. That being said, in order to present a practical and efficient argument to the Duke Endowment fund managers we must couple environmental justification with a recommendation for how they should reallocate their endowment funds. In other words, we must explain to them the concern everyone should have for the environment and present to them other, socially good securities they can invest in while making comparable returns to what they made previously while investing in oil companies. According to http://www.pionline.com/article/20171009/ONLINE/171009830/duke-endowment-returns-127, Duke’s endowment fund returned 12.7% in the past fiscal year. Via the latest SEC filings, DUMAC (the group that runs Duke’s endowment fund) invests 45.77% of its market share in PDC energy (Oil and gas company), and another 5% in Carrizo Oil and Gas.http://www.secinfo.com/d1gb4d.jd.d.htm For the non-Econ majors out there, that’s not good for us environmentalists. This report shows that a large bulk of Duke’s endowment fund is invested in the oil and gas industry and that it does not look like they are making strides towards “Divesting from oil.” To compare, Harvard’s most recents return in their endowment fund was 8.5%, with their largest investment being in Aduro Biotech (27%), a company focusing on engineering immunotherapy for cancer. There are better answers out there, Duke. It’s time to become an activist.
