Autoethnography,Crisis,and Risk

Our Current Crisis

“Rumor grew of a shadow…whispers of a nameless fear” (Jackson, 2001, 1:30-1:40).

Today, our world is battered by nationalism, tribalism, authoritarianism, polarization, and strife (Denzin, 2009, 2010). In the United States, fascist tactics by the current Trump Administration—including illegal invasions of sovereign nations, renditions of immigrants and others without due process, and state-sponsored murders and kidnappings (at home, in the sea, abroad)—top the headlines nearly every day.

Unbelievably, even after the relentless swirling, churning hell of his first term, which ended ignobly in his badly executed attempt to mount a coup, we Americans jumped into that swirling chaos of incompetence and greed—again. We have somehow managed to reinstate that reality show clown, that international embarrassment, our most abominable citizen, Felon 47, to a second term. And he is leaning hard into full-blown fascist dictatorship.

It’s not like they didn’t warn us. He and his cronies promised shock and awe. They declared that they would “flood the zone.” And they have delivered. The list of chaotic shock waves they’ve perpetrated is far too long to cover here. Here is a small sample of what they have done:

• interfered directly with our universities, including forcing changes in our curricula and directly attacking academic freedom.

The list goes on. In short, we are in trouble. People are afraid. And yet, I keep thinking that we must not succumb to fear.

Tyranny thrives in darkness and fear.

This climate of fear has changed all our lives.

We must not succumb to fear.

It is increasingly clear to people of conscience that courage, collaboration, connection, democratic decision making, unity, compassion, and love have become more urgent than ever. Will the resistance reach a boiling point? Will we rise up as a nation?

I hesitate to say that this is a crisis like no other we have ever faced. Human history is overflowing with examples of this kind of willful disruption, chaos, and destruction, perpetrated by power-hungry sociopaths.

Maybe this one feels different, because by now, with all our technology and knowledge and centuries of lived experience, we ought to know better. But a friend of mine, a student of history, pointed out that every government crackdown in our history (against immigrants, against protestors) was often this brutal. Think of deportation crackdowns in the 1950s or Civil Rights crackdowns in Birmingham and Selma in the 1960s, or crackdowns on anti-war protestors at Kent State in the 1970s. Or take your pick of so many others. The pattern just repeats—over and over and over again. These moments did not shut people up. History tells us that government-sanctioned violence both doesn’t work and repeats familiar tunes.

And yet, the millions of Americans now protesting this rabid gang of government goons surely points to the fact that we are in a big moment of crisis, even if it’s not entirely new. This line of thought takes me back to the roots of words.

The ancient Greek verb krinein, the root word of our English crisis, originally meant “separation” or “split.” It signified a moment of judgment or a decision needing to be made, often a moral or ethical judgment. If there ever was a moment that called for such a judgment, it is our current one.

As I write today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis have just executed two citizens—Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti—for exercising their First Amendment Rights. The Trump Administration’s mouthpieces have defended these executions by claiming that these peaceful protestors were “domestic terrorists.” The lies poured off their tongues so fast it almost seemed like premeditated murder. But our eyes and the video evidence tell a clear story: these were executions of peaceful citizens.

Again, if there ever was a “split” (crisis) of conscience calling for a moral judgment, it is in the face of these executions. Of course, these are not the first state-sanctioned murders in our history. The list is far too long to recall here. For students of U.S. history, centuries of public lynchings of black folk (Poulos, 2021)—often supported by law enforcement officials—rise up into our consciousness, as does George Floyd’s 2020 execution (public lynching) by Police Officer Derek Chauvin, just blocks from these 2026 murders.

Disruption, destruction, corruption, distraction: These are the hallmarks of the movement into tyranny.

And yet, the human spirit in its truest form craves liberty.

That’s a split in conscience calling for a moral judgment if I ever saw one. And make no mistake: Writing sentences like these, in a budding fascist regime, is a risky business.

Risk?

When we face a (violent) crisis like this one, we necessarily engage risk. Back to roots: Our word “risk” is rooted in the Latin risicum, which (metaphorically at least) referred to navigating treacherous cliffs in the sea. And yes, these are treacherous cliffs we face, these deliberate and nearly constant movements into chaos being perpetrated by our so-called “leaders.”

So, what is the distinction between crisis and risk?

In my own understanding, crisis is the split in our consciousness/conscience that calls for a response, a moral judgment, an ethical stand. It is what Communication scholar Michael Hyde, in his discussion of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, refers to as the call of conscience. The call issues forth from the Other: Where art thou? And the response of conscience must follow: Here I am! (Hyde, 2001).

As for risk, it lies in the moment of response (Levinas, 1981). Whenever power is being wielded with increasing violence, any response is risky. Let’s not kid ourselves. None of us are safe. In fascist regimes, first the “leaders” come for the activists, then they come for the journalists, the artists, the writers, and the professors. Why? Because we are truth-spreaders.

Every day I ask myself: What on Earth can we do in the face of this onslaught?

I know one thing they won’t stop me from doing: Writing. And I may even write in ways that move hearts, even when heads are stuck in the mud or buried in the sand.

And I will not stop teaching.

I will continue to speak truth to power.

And maybe, even in defiance, I will cry, as moments like this call for bitter tears, dropped for our (possibly) dying shared humanity.

Maybe we should all have a good cry.

In their famous anthem, the great mythic rock band, the Ethnogs, intoned, “And then there’s autoethnography…it’ll make you cry…”

Indeed.

I have cried, even as my words spilled onto the page. I have often written through (and with) a broken heart.

But I also know from experience that a broken heart healed is stronger than before.

And sometimes, I have found my way to some small measure of healing.

Healed, I find a spark inside myself, a flash of spirit.

So after tears, these days, there is a growing part of me, the spirited rebel who wants to fight, who wants to move from despair toward anger, who wants to stand up, to recall and enact the words of the poet Thomas (1953):

Do not go gentle into that good night

I sit here today, engulfed in wonder, teetering on the brink of despair, but raging against the dying of the light, hoping desperately to find the courage to be (Tillich, 1952) in spite of the anxiety that this particular historical moment brings. And I try to remind myself that, up until now, my track record for surviving the many disastrous moments I have witnessed, and experienced, across my 67 years on this planet, is 100%.

My survival grade is an A+.

I’m batting .1000.

All of us here, writing and reading these words, are surviving, at least for now.

But am I—are we—thriving?

What could take me there?

What could bring us all to thriving?

Is that even possible in this moment?

Yes, we are witnessing—suffering—a rise of fascism across the globe, not just here. The problem is particularly acute right now in the United States, where kakistocracy (rule by the incompetent) has married oligarchic kleptocracy and its cousin narcissistic sociopathy. In short, our nation is surviving what my sons would call a “shitshow.” It has “this won’t end well” written all over it. When you have your hands on nuclear power, making shit up as you go is never good.

Risky indeed.

And then I remember that, even out of the horrifying death, destruction, and mayhem of the Great World Wars came renewal in art and in writing and in music. Even amid all the chaos of war, great works were being constructed. Out of the absurdity of existence in and between the all-pervasive horror and destruction of war on a worldwide scale—two world wars in a span of less than 30 years, and punctuated by a Great Depression, no less—emerged a revitalized version of a philosophical movement known as existentialism. This movement, at least as expressed by the likes of Sartre (1958), Camus (1955), Percy (1960, 1983), Frankl (1959), and Tillich (1948, 1952), called on us to embrace the creative impulse—and the possibility of joy and hope and renewal—that animates all human meaning-making. Our lives are what we make of them, these philosophers who wrote literature—and passionate “autoethnographic” essays—declared.

Thinking about this took me back further into history, contemplating how the suffering of slaves gave birth to Gospel music, which in turn grew into jazz and the blues and eventually rock ‘n roll and hip hop.

During the time in-between World Wars I and II: in music, jazz was exploding; in art, surrealism and cubism were blossoming; cinema was playing with new technology, and with the noir aesthetic, exploring the magic of light and shadow and sound and suspense; and so on. In other words, despite all odds, in a time of crisis, creative endeavors of all sorts were finding new avenues to speak into the human condition.

To be sure, tyranny always wants to quash art, as it expresses the human spirit’s urgent need for liberty. Indeed, throughout history, in the face of tyranny, humans have fought for freedom—with words, with art, with music, with education, and sometimes with harsher, more metallic and explosive weapons.

Still, words can carry a lot of weight.

Patrick Henry reportedly shouted, “Give me liberty or give me death!” That was a clarion call for revolution!

In the aftermath of World War I, William Butler Yeats wrote:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity (Yeats, 1921).

He seems to be describing the last 10 years, whether that time is 1911–1921 or 2016–2026. In both moments things started to fall apart, and so did our convictions. And then the world started to go to pieces.

Crisis indeed.

And, as I said, almost any response against such a violence-infused crisis is always risky.

To face these moments of crisis, we need to reawaken the heart of humanity, the center of our shared lives together on this fragile planet! Here we are, in this moment, challenged to create something new, something transformational, something that can overpower this iteration of tyranny.

Here we are, in the midst of chaos brought upon us by the disastrous re-election of a criminal sundowning narcissistic sociopath and his fresh team of greedy ignorami and sycophants and kleptocrats, wondering how we might keep going, how we might take a stand, how we might make our way through the terrible joke setup: “A demented Adderall-addicted billionaire narcissist, a Ketamine-addicted billionaire narcissist, an alcoholic sexual predator, and a brainworm-infested heroin addict walk into the White House…”

Damn. I cannot, for the life of me, think of a punchline for that one.

And then there is that little matter of our out-of-control climate, along with actual wars across the globe, economic chaos, and even direct attacks on us—we mild-mannered college professors and our students, and on and on and on. And let’s not forget illegal military deployments to American cities, and the constant threats (and acts) of violence against “the enemy within.”

As I write this, Gaza is rubble, Ukraine is in ruins, Minneapolis is quaking with (out)rage, and the clown in the White House has (illegally) demolished the East Wing of the White House—that last one a fitting symbol for the destruction of our democracy.

But I digress.

How do we get from here to where we need to be?

How do we make our way from standing on the cliff in the dark to that leap of faith (Kierkegaard, 1980) that will be required to go on? Where is our opening? What are we called to do, coming up out of the heartbreak into the light of day?

The French word “Coeur” means heart and is the root word from which our English courage comes. It seems to me that we need good people of courage to take the lead here.

It seems to me that we autoethnographers may be well-positioned to step into the void first, or at least early. Hear me out. We have, after all, been writing out of heart and courage and conscience for many years now. And because we have written from these spaces in human consciousness, we may know as much about them as anyone. There is something about the act of writing autoethnography that lodges the words in our bodies, even as these words emerge from our embodied being-in-the-world.

So…what if we find our way to write into and through this moment of disruption, to dig ourselves out of this nightmare? Years ago, in the wake of 9/11, I wrote of the fateful synergy that can arise from big disruptions (Poulos, 2002, 2004). Moments like the one we are facing now are archetypal (Jung, 1959, 1964, 1989). They are like that moment when the universe was created, out of the Big Bang, or like the aftermath of a great fire, or a great storm, or an earthquake, or an epic flood. There is upheaval, even destruction…then gradually, something new emerges. Sometimes, the rubble left behind requires us—all of us, despite our differences—to step in and help with the rebuilding, the renewal. Through the ages, the eternal cycle is one of disruption, even destruction, then creation (Campbell, 1949). These moments require the energy, born of courage, that can sustain us in our work.

In the fall of 2024, our sons, who live in Western North Carolina, found themselves caught in the grips of the biggest storm in a century: Hurricane Helene. Eli, our oldest, a computer programmer and jazz guitarist—and as such used to improvising—lives in Asheville. He rode out the storm with his wife and their dogs, their house emerging intact and mostly above the flood waters, but without power or water for weeks. Still, they were relatively unscathed. So, Eli and his cycling buddies quickly and spontaneously organized themselves and rode their bicycles door to door throughout North Asheville, checking on their neighbors, bringing them food and water. They did not hesitate. Nor did they ask what political persuasion their neighbors subscribed to. They just acted. They improvised.

Meanwhile, our youngest, Noah, who is an organic farmer and drummer—and so also used to improvising when called upon—was riding out the storm on his farm in the foothills of the North Carolina mountains. Much of their 44-acre farm was inundated with flood waters. They sprang into action in the middle of the storm, standing hip-deep in water, rescuing their animals. As soon as the water receded, they were loading their trucks with produce and delivering food to FEMA sites in Asheville, donating what they could spare to help others. Again, they didn’t question. They knew people needed food. So, they just acted. They improvised.

It is this kind of spirit of action, this improvisation, this collaborative spirit, that I think we all need to take up. We need to figure out ways to organize, improvise, and act. And one of those actions is—or at least could be—writing.

During the French Resistance, Albert Camus, who had tuberculosis at the time, was unable to fight physically. So, alongside his friend Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus wrote and edited the underground newspaper Combat. And he continued to write his way into meaning and action until his death in 1960. His famous interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus shows the tragic hero straining to push his rock, against all odds and with great struggle, to the top of the mountain, only to have it roll back down again, and the labor to begin all over. But Camus focuses on the downhill journey—Sisyphus’s short moment of respite—and declares that this is where Sisyphus has time to contemplate his fate and thus find and claim his freedom. And, like Sisyphus, says Camus, we must all find our way to revolt against the tyranny of our circumstances, against the finitude that constrains us, and create a path to true freedom and creative/generative action. We all have a rock to push. And perhaps an opening—a moment where we find the strength to move into action.

I have always taken heart from such stories.

Indeed, it is stories of overcoming odds and making your way in the world that truly animate and invigorate my imagination. And I have read so many of those stories—and in some cases songs and poems and performances—written by you, by all of you. I have read your stories of trauma and loss and abuse and deep despondency, stories of secrets nearly ruining lives, stories of mamas and papas and partners, stories of misery, of suffering—stories that nearly break your heart—which, as Behar (1997) noted, are just the kind of stories we need, the kind of stories worth writing…and reading. These are stories that take your readers, your listeners, to the edge of despair, then bring us back from the brink, help us to step into the future, help us to find possibility, help us to locate our own hearts and there find strength and sustenance. And, of course, there are stories of everyday, ordinary experiences punctuated by breakthroughs to sacred time and space, and even to joy and ecstasy.

These are the murmurations of life-writing, swirling back and forth, up and down and across, moving in elegant patterns we can only hope to decipher.

These are stories that require courage.

These are stories that make courage possible.

And I believe I—indeed, I believe we—have the courage in us to stand up and take back our nation and our world from these grifters and con men, from the liars and cheats and thieves we have somehow allowed to elevate themselves to power.

I believe we have to.

When humans commit unconscionable acts, those of us with a conscience must speak out, stand up, and take action.

Our (Risky) Business

In my youth, I was gripped by literature and films that featured the rise of a dystopian world—a world where power and greed and violence somehow got out of hand, where dark forces shoved humans into that terrifying and oppressive place in which tyranny holds us all in suspension, in nameless fear. In all these great stories, there were those who held out hope—who, through courageous actions, against all odds, triumphed over evil. In my reading and watching, I was, like these heroes and rebels, searching for a new hope. We all were. We were searching to break the chains that bound us; we were searching for possibility. Perhaps we were searching for renewal, for freedom, for a world where love and laughter and compassion overcame evil. In all these stories, even the darkest ones, there was always a ray of hope, no matter how thin.

It never did occur to me that these books and films were prophecies of how bad our world would actually get. They were fiction, intended as cautionary tales against falling into the grip of tyranny. My friends and I did not believe that we would ever really be entering some weird mashup of 1984/Brave New World/2001/Lord of the Rings/Star Wars/Lord of the Flies.

I am honestly sure we never thought we would actually descend so low as we have now.

Maybe we were naïve.

Or maybe our only truly unlimited renewable resource in our once united-now-divided states is denial. Something about what we are experiencing now surely seems different than anything my young friends and I thought possible. It’s way too close to apocalyptic for my blood.

100 years ago, Gramsci (1930/2011) wrote: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters (p. 311).”

Are we still living in the time of monsters? It sure seems so.

You may have heard. We are going through this whole “re-branding” process. We’re switching it up. We were once the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” We’re moving into our next phase: “Land of the Oh fuck! What are we?” Land of the unlawfully renditioned, home of the terrified, home of peaceful citizens assassinated by agents of our government?

Maybe we’ve just lost it completely. Our collective mental health may be in question, so it seems that there is perhaps no more fitting symbol for our current situation than a cackling, shouting chainsaw-waving, nazi-saluting tech billionaire helping a narcissistic badly dressed orange-tinted raving lunatic (likely demented, surely sociopathic) billionaire, flanked by a bevy of other (sociopathic?) tech and Wall Street billionaires, as they destroy our system and insert some kind of kleptocratic/oligarchic/tyrannical/apocalyptic/idiocratic white supremacist pseudo-Christian nationalist hellscape in its place.

In the May 5, 2025 issue of The New Yorker, Jill Lepore writes, “In case of emergency, break open a book” (Lepore, 2025). And while I will never lose sight of how great literature has been a salve for my soul in times of crisis—even dark, existentialist novels like the one I finished recently, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment—I will make my own dictum: In case of emergency, write!

So: Come and write with me. Work with me. Improvise with me.

In moments like this, I find myself thinking, maybe the anxiety that defines our time in history is contagious, like the plague, like COVID-19. But I also find myself wondering if courage—defined as the strength of mind and spirit, the heart, to face danger, fear, or difficulty—could also be contagious. Could it be that we all can (and possibly will) find and act out of that place of strength that seems hellbent on eluding us? Can we stand strong, together, even as we are buffeted about by the winds of this storm? Can we find possibility in this darkness and fear? Can we craft a beautiful future from this precipice on which we find ourselves? Can we turn away from the swirling chaos and build a bright, beautiful new world? Can we banish the monsters? Can we defeat the creeping shadow, overcome the nameless fear?

I, for one, can’t let go of courage, of heart. Not yet.

I keep thinking: Maybe together we can, once again, learn to say “Yes!” to life. Maybe together we can stop tyranny in its tracks. Maybe we can win.

Let’s create the world anew!

And keep writing…

Postscript

So, the editors ask, rightly: “How do you imagine the practice of writing in this academic community rippling out to enact change?”

For my response, I turn to the work of Freire (2021). In Pedagogy of Hope, Freire argues that hope is an ontological imperative. Like Kierkegaard and Tillich, he sees hope (a sense of possibility) as a necessity for navigating the treacherous cliffs of darkness and despair. But hope here is not a passive feeling. It’s a cry for liberation from oppression. He adds that educators play a central role in this liberatory project. As writers, as teachers, as activists who oppose tyranny and the oppression that it enacts, we must act beyond our zones of comfort.

So, beyond writing, I for one am protesting and teaching and doing what I can to push courage outward beyond my own three feet of personal influence. In direct defiance of MAGA-incited threats (yes, I have received threats in the mail and online), I am currently teaching my graduate seminar in Communication Ethics and Social Justice. The title is not accidental. And yes, I am teaching the roots of ethics, social justice, compassion, virtue—all of which is anathema to the current political “leadership.” And I urge my students not to cower in fear, but to make changes in their own spheres of influence that will ripple out into their communities and beyond. The conditions we are currently facing are not just matters of politics. It has gone way beyond politics, beyond left and right and center.

We now face the very destruction of what it means to be human.

We cannot just stand by and let that happen.

Which brings me back to conscience. The root of this word is the Latin conscientia, which translates to “knowing together” or “knowing within.” If there is anything that makes us human, it is the capacity to know together what is right and what is wrong, what we ought to do, and what we ought not to do. Can we, together, move the needle from individual conscience to collective conscience? I do not know. But we must at least try, by doing everything within our power to enact a change in our conscience.

And I do believe that affecting the hearts and minds of students and readers is one clear pathway toward making such a change. This is the judgment called forth by the crisis we are currently enduring. So: Teach. Write. Act. Speak truth to power. Do what you can to make change happen in your circle of influence and beyond. Do it together, with friends, with your communities. Rise up and write and act and teach.

This is the nexus of our risk. This is our risky business.

May the Force be with us all.