Hospicing Modernity: Parting with Harmful Ways of Living

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The future for humanity is uncertain, but knowing who we really are and where we came from at least gives us a chance to build a kinder, more beautiful world.

Machado de Oliveira breaks down archetypes of cognitive dissonance--the do-gooder who does "good enough," then retreats to business as usual; the incognito capitalist who, at first glance, may seem like a radical change-maker--and asks us to dig deeper and exist differently. The book is about the necessary expansion of our capacity for dealing with difficult and painful things, to sit in complexity and uncertainty, to show up to difficult conversations and to exist differently and, put frankly, to grow up. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. This is an outstanding book—truly original and profoundly perceptive in its contents and arguments, and multimodal in its pedagogic approach. It’s a book for the future, yet written to meet us where we are at right now as individuals living with trauma and facing ethical dilemmas about what it means to take meaningful actions under conditions of complexity.It does not matter if you agree or not with the premise that modernity is dying and in need of ‘hospicing. She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back…and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest. And right there—my fellow modern citizen—right there, in the author’s cosmological rudeness, lies her deepest medicine. For fans of adrienne maree brown, Sherri Mitchell, and Arundhati Roy, Hospicing Modernity challenges our assumptions and dares to ask more of us, for the sake of us all.

Hospicing Modernity invites us to participate in a form of fieldwork that connects the very sense of who ‘we’ are with global legacies of harm that modernity and coloniality have wrought. I invite you to read this book as a ritual that can prepare us to do the work that is necessary to interrupt the harm humanity is inflicting on itself and on the planet. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. Drawing on and moving beyond traditions of radical pedagogy, such as those inspired by Paulo Freire, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira has created a powerful tool for uncovering, undoing, and recovering from the deadly ways in which modernity also lives and dies as humans experience it subjectively. But instead of drowning in hopelessness, how can we learn to face our reality with humility and accountability?

This book is not simply a text, it demands reflection and interaction, providing tools and stories that help each of us understand our relationship with modernity. The author puts it beautifully but bluntly: she lovingly does not care about ‘what’ you think: your delusions of ends and means and your sense of self-importance are part of the problem. This produces a unique intellectual practice, full of fresh insight and ideas with the power to challenge her readers.

The claim at the heart of this book is that modernity is an all-embracing mindset that dominates the contemporary world.

Driven by expansion, colonialism, and resource extraction and propelled by neoliberalism and rabid consumption, our world is profoundly out of balance.