What we know

“what you know (or might eventually know) might be exceeded by that which what you know (or might eventually know) cannot contain’

Marisol de la Cadena

If we only do what we know,
Resting in the comfort of certainty,
Measuring with familiar yardsticks,
What we know is all we’re ever going to get.
And what we know is not only not enough, not now, not ever
What we know holds us back, gets in the way, prevents us from knowing and becoming otherwise, and potentially better attuned to the world and the perils of our times.

We desperately cling to what we know, our disciplines, our tools, methods and procedures. As if they can save us, when at best they bring us a comforting sense of stability while everything around us is afloat. The house may be burning, but at least we have our methods. And I get it, it does feel good to believe, if only for a moment, that we know what we are doing.

Even when we don’t, knowledge and claims to knowledge are used to instil paralysis, to channel a conservative force seeking to maintain what is over what might be.

“We know this and this, hence that is not possible”

“That is not compatible with what we already know”

Or simply

“We know this will not work”

Often touted as realism, wrapped in the guise of necessity or inevitability, these claims lock us in place, insisting that what we already know to be true holds the secret of our future and the path we must take to get there, the only path we can take.

We pretend that knowledge is something we can uncover and map, as if there is a truth to arrive at somewhere down the line, if only we know this and that. We can gather and hoard knowledge, the more the better, bring it with us and use it to build robust foundations for our fortresses with walls so thick they might never be breached. They certainly make it difficult to hear what people on the outside are saying. And then we can sit there, atop our towers, observing the territory we have acquired with our knowledge, our little kingdoms, where knowledge is also a commodity, something we can bring to the marketplace and sell for profit and power.

So many of us then perform the knowers, those who know, as if that grants us some sort of superiority over those who don’t. And let’s not forget that we were the ones who decided what could be called knowledge to begin with.

However, knowledge could also have a very different function, to get us moving, together, in perpetuity. Not driven by the desire to one day know, to obtain stability or power, but, quite simply, to move on, letting go the idea of knowledge as something you can rest comfortably in.

There is no ideological assurance here of a teleologically ordained trajectory, just the humility to get on with the task, though the final destination may not be very clear. All that matter is the going, the movement

Rosi Braidotti

If knowledge is movement, there is no point where we know enough, where we can stop moving, and in this vision, to know is not to become certain, assertive, confident or to make strong, irrefutable arguments. No, we would have to leave these (masculine?) ideas of strength behind, we would have to come out of our carefully built fortresses to encounter those who know otherwise, those who know things we cannot believe or accept as knowledge.

In contrast, we would have to be loosened by what we come to know, to be transformed and become otherwise, to willingly risk everything we think we know and who we we are, all the time. This would call for a far more humble, cautious approach, listening more than talking, inviting conversation over monologue, relationality over individuality. It is not about what I know, but what we can know together, and where that might take us.

I short, maybe knowledge is not something you can obtain and have for yourself, maybe it is not even a search for the truth, but merely the impetus for the perpetual motion that is necessary for us to live together differently?

I really don’t know.