Can’t We All Just Cathect Along?
This article has recorded audio. Click “play” to hear Brittani read it out loud.
Photo by Tim Mossholder
Introduction
The year 2022 has brought many things to our attention: our collective acknowledgment that the flow of time may never work the same way again, that it has been a long 2.5 years since the COVID-19 pandemic entered our lives changing them forever, and that the nationalist propaganda we were forced to ingest as children about the alleged liberty and justice for all was really slick copy by the founding fathers, but tends to flounder and flop in regards to its actual application in today’s America (if it ever held up). Poised at the top of an upcoming election cycle, on the heels of new announcements about Monkeypox numbers rising and discovering evidence of Polio in the water supply of certain areas of the country, as our fellow humans are continuing to die from new COVID variants, and the people we love are still shot and killed in the streets with delayed investigations and politically strategic verdicts meted out, I wouldn’t blame you if you caught yourself wondering, “Just how many dumpster fires can be set at once, before our entire society goes up in flames?” Oh wait, historic fires raging on the West Coast anyone?
Even the most optimistic, glass-half-full human being has been having a hard time making sense of the lack of humanity, lack of compassion, the sheer number of daily assaults on the senses and the incredulity on display as those in leadership across industries, countries, and statuses allow their individual interests (and sometimes bad behavior) to take precedent in situations that affect us all. Librarianship is no exception, and many of us find ourselves burnt out, stressed out, understanding how little our humanity means to our organizations, leaders, and institutions—and are at a loss at this point as to what to do about it. We have been asked to grin and bear all of this in most cases, and to continue service with a smile as heaping plateful after heaping plateful of chaos and confusion are served to us.
Exactly what is going on in the world? There are many perspectives floating around about the state of things, and as we all know anyone with an internet connection can broadcast their unique view across the globe. Through this essay, I would love to introduce you to one you may not yet be familiar with. That perspective is of a scholar, colleague, philosopher, and enigma whose analyses of the intersections of race, class, gender, and cathexis– a concept that might be new to you, as it was to me– helped spur on the growth and contextualization of Black feminist thought and also added some necessary lenses and exposition to the work of contemporaries that shared similar tenets like Michel Foucault, Sojourner Truth, and Anna Julia Cooper, among many others.
It is fitting that this publication is coming out shortly after what would’ve been her 70th birthday. Though she transitioned out of the earthly realm last year, her work is still challenging, illuminating, highlighting, and encouraging us all to be more than passing ships concerned with our individual trajectories, while also focusing enough on wholeness of self to be able to embrace the collective from a place of true solidarity. It would be my great pleasure in this essay to introduce you to my girl (and yours too), Gloria Jean Watkins; better known by her pen name, bell hooks!
Who’s That Girl?!
She was Issa, before she proclaimed her awkwardness; Brittney Cooper before she expressed Eloquent Rage! She was our foremother in keeping it all the way real, who walked the walk to free us all despite pushback from colleagues, family members, lovers, and the many others who tried to silence her. She wanted us to all do a better job of loving each other (for real), instead of cathecting. She worked to highlight the importance of intersectionality long before the term was coined. She so beautifully describes the often unfair, complex, and incredibly interwoven experience of Black womanhood with such nuance that I find myself metaphorically sitting directly under a ray of sun every time I am able to interact with a new (to me) work of hers.
She perfectly captures the tensions across joy and pain, warmth and struggle, the journey toward softness juxtaposed with the rugged determination necessary to claim the space to just be. Her ability to describe the experience of Black womanhood with such gentle expressiveness without ignoring the complexity, resilience, hard won groundedness, and perseverance that also comes with it, is in short, everything! In recognizing all of these equally present characteristics existing in the same spectrum together, a special kind of opening can occur. To be fully understood by another is such a great privilege that many of us yearn for, and it is my opinion that bell is able to encourage the unfolding of the truest self in all of us.
Cover art for
All About Love: New Visions (2018)
designed by Jo Anne Metsch.
I had the privilege of participating in We Here's Community Study about selected works of bell’s, and it was just the balm I personally needed to soothe–at least temporarily–the wounds of life weariness; partially due to pandemic life taking the wind all the way out of my sails, partially due to being a Black woman in America, and partially due to being a soul on a planet that doesn’t respect my yearning to just be, amongst many other reasons. I’m sure many can relate to this.
bell was most recently, a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College, an author, intersectional feminist, activist, home girl in my head, my academic auntie, and so much more to so many. She’s best known for her perspectives on race, feminism, class, gender, capitalism, systemic oppression, and class imbalance, and the ills associated with class domination, just to name a few. Her body of work was never quite as appreciated as it should’ve been while she was alive, with the academic body politic often emphasizing the more palatable of her works, and often ignoring how they fit into her overall portfolio; however, I strongly believe that her gifts to us through the written word and video clips of lectures she anchored should continue to inform the way we relate to each other for centuries, if not millennia to come.
Important definitions for understanding
the end of the world.
Because words mean things, I’m going to give the definitions of a few words that will further help your understanding as you continue on. All definitions are provided by Merriam-Webster.com (n.d.).
Power: ability to act or produce an effect OR possession of control, authority, or influence over others.
Practical: actively engaged in some course of action or occupation.
Love: strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; Or warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion; or attraction based on sexual desire: affection and tenderness felt by lovers.
Here are two additional words and definitions, you may have never heard of before, also from Merriam-Webster.com (n.d.):
[to] Cathect: which is [the action of] investing [in people, places or spaces] with mental or emotional energy
Cathexis: the investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea
How do we solve a problem like cathexis?
How do we keep our smiles from being frowns?
bell hooks is lauded for her deep intellectual understanding of how our relationship to self and others is informed by the deep internal work that many of us tend to avoid doing due to its difficulty, interconnectedness with the -isms (ableism, sexism, racism, etc.), and the challenge of picking apart the complexity of what makes loving another difficult, as well as people’s lack of understanding of what love is truly composed of. She made sure to remind us that people conflate love with many other words and that alone is a huge part of our collective issue; or , never truly having experienced love, expect that their limited interpretation of what they consider love’s ability, will satisfy our need for a true connection, when all they have ever experienced is cathexis.
This struck me most in our group’s reading of All about love: New visions, perhaps because I am consciously aware that no one is required to love you in any capacity. Even in parent-child relationships where children have no say in whether they want to be or how they are brought into this world, there are no guarantees of love or even basic care. Regardless of how we inhabit our space in this world, though, we are all craving true connection that I would posit most of us want in the form of love.
The lack of love for the collective has manifested in so many ways over the last several years, it makes my head spin! The politicization of masks to quell the spread of COVID-19. The overturning of Roe v. Wade. The empty organizational policy at all levels within librarianship that looks good on paper, but does very little to protect employees from hardship when they may be going through life’s most difficult challenges. Is it any wonder we feel undervalued? Expendable? Dare I say, unloved? Perhaps it will take some reflection on how love was first introduced into our lives–or rather the cathecting that I think more of us are participating in than we even know–to come to terms with how this could be.
“I am consciously aware that no one is required to love you in any capacity.”
In other words, how does our comfort in cathexis affect what we are willing to put up with or allow to be foisted upon us? Are we willing to endure the discomfort of truthfully analyzing and deprioritizing our work lives as our main source of validation, if it means being in fuller kinship with ourselves? Are we yearning for love in our workplaces, even though we have been willing to take the crumbs of its bedfellows – validation, prestige, the privileges of tokenism, or perhaps our own internalization of vocational awe– instead? Do we allow ourselves to be hypnotized by the desire to appear the ‘best’, most compliant employee in exchange for the hope of a living wage, a figurative gold star, or getting the award for best dumpster fire putter-outer?
In All about love: New visions, hooks takes care to define the reason that people assume not only that cathexis is love, but, I would argue, also equate it to respect, tolerance, the desire to get along, motivation, compassion, and a myriad of other usually positively connoted ways of being. Many of us are raised and socialized in settings that claim to value these ways of existing, yet they continually subject us to various forms of violence like abuse, gaslighting, humiliation, and many others. As a result, we have grown to accept and equate these things as loving derivatives in personal relationships, employment scenarios, when seeking support in new ventures, and in other arenas (that I’m sure you have your own examples from).
Why this ‘unsolvable problem’ will remain ‘unsolvable’ in LIS
As bell reminds us, “Whenever possible, it is best to seek work we love and avoid work we hate [but] many jobs undermine self-love because they require that workers constantly prove their worth” (hooks, 2000, p.121-122). What is academia if not the proving ground for members of Gold Star Earners Anonymous? Is it any wonder then that we often equate worth with work? Work with admiration and accolades? Admiration and accolades with value? Value with collegial opinions (which literally have an effect on our livelihood)? Collegial opinions with our inner gauge of how lovable we are this day, week, month, or semester?
What happens in the event that we earn a silver star instead or when we publish an earth-shattering text that cannot be pimped on news outlets or used for monetary gain outside the field because ‘no one’ respects or believes in the intellectual prowess of those who are ‘just librarians'? What happens when we make a small administrative mistake despite our other laudable accomplishments, or when we become so jaded and exhausted by this constant proving that we throw the whole star chart into the figurative fireplace?
Who and what are we then?
You may never have had the space to ponder such a thing. If not, there is nothing to fear. It is a loving gesture to do so, and may be your first foray into rebelling against the disingenuous cathexis that is often lurking underneath the respectability politics of this profession. We must each be open to allowing a complete unfolding of self to occur; only then can we tackle the personal exploration necessary to answer such a succinct, yet deeply powerful question. I invite you to make room for this exploration, and in doing so, to reclaim the love that you have for yourself, perhaps for the first time.
Let’s take it back; back into time. Can you remember what it felt like when you first had a sense of learning right from wrong? Victory from defeat? What about the context that the lesson may have been in? Chances are you can recall that memory or at the very least the consequence of being ‘on the wrong side of right’ in that scenario. However you were handled in the “triumph” of your right choice or the realization of your “wrongness” began to shape everything about the way you saw the world from the actions of childhood playmates at recess, to the way you choose to trust or not trust adults even as an adult yourself now, to the degree of safety you feel in workplace settings.
The way we are handled by others in loving or unloving ways has a tremendous and long-lasting effect and can leave us clamoring for cathexis –even when it is toxic or we know it is not good for us–simply to continue existing in a space with some semblance of perceived protection. When you revisit that memory with today’s mind’s eye, did your choice at the time affect your ability to grow in self-compassion, self-trust, or self-love? Or, did it start you down the path of second guessing, indecisiveness, or self-doubt? If you have been held hostage by these antitheses of love, I want you to know it’s very possible you were:
being manipulated into a set of societal norms based on a power or authority structure forced upon you, and/or;
being guided by someone who thought they should teach you practical discipline, or may have been trying to set you up for survival.
While likely well-intentioned, hooks (2000) instructs us to assess the adults who had a hand in teaching us how to navigate the world, as well as the adults we interact with now through the eyes of childlike honesty. She explains:
“It is no accident that when we first learn about justice and fair play as children it is usually in the context where the issue is one of telling the truth. The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. How many of us can vividly recall childhood moments where we courageously practiced the honesty we'd been taught to value by our parents, only to find that they did not really mean for us to tell the truth all the time?” (p. 78)
If you have grown weary of speaking up for what is right, representing the dissenting opinion for the benefit of the collective, knowing eyes will roll in the faculty meeting when you open your mouth, or any other scenario which has rewarded your unveiling with contempt, I want you to be recognized and validated here. I see you. I hear you. You are valid. You are necessary. You are loved HERE. I want you to ground yourself in love daily, and take breaks when you need them. Practice firm boundaries. Grow your cut off game and wield its tools expertly.
Why understanding the difference between love and cathexis is key
“When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called ‘cathexis’” (hooks, 2000, pg.9).
The effects of cathexis and cathecting with one another are often so strong that in the same action that one insists is an act of love, they can also justify actively hurtful or neglectful behavior. If we find ourselves befuddled by trying to make sense of this, there is plenty of room for exploration here. Cathecting itself is not wrong or bad. What is key is establishing that we have a choice in the degree to which we engage in cathexis. We are convinced otherwise, but we do have the ability to take ourselves out of scenarios where we recognize our human desire for love, but have settled for cathecting instead. We can, and should, seek love outside of the walls of our institutional roles and responsibilities, and outside of those places, spaces, and people in any area of our lives who have proven they would prefer to stick to their own definitions of love, instead of the mutually agreed upon, co-created versions that should be a part of any healthy relationship.
Being able to recognize the difference between the two is important because we can get caught up in our own ways of seeking love derivatives, which appease us temporarily, but can betray us in service to our own intrinsic motivation to play our part in our surroundings, in our institutions, and alongside those who have shown us derivatives of love within them. This can result in us giving away our power or feeling powerlessness, while being repeatedly disappointed by the actions we continue to experience can create a space of double-consciousness in which the institutional self and the true self can no longer operate as one. If you find yourself stuck in this space, you are not the only one!
This is why it is imperative that we recognize that we can have objective love of, and for, our institutions and organizations, but they do not have the ability to love us back. Therefore, we need to cultivate the ability to ground ourselves in self-love without expecting an equal trade from them. Not unlike those in our personal relationships who we have to love ‘from over there,’ institutions that cannot meet us with transparency and a willingness to grow are no different than individuals we care for but can only take so much of. Learning this separation between self and institution does not necessarily come naturally. It can disappoint us to recognize that our institutional partner is as petulant as a toddler who missed their afternoon nap, and that can be hard for us to accept. It can help us to think of our institutions as personified entities that have shown us how they will continue to misbehave, violate our boundaries, and set us up for disappointment again and again. It is up to us to be firm in our resistance to their bad behavior, just as I hope we would do with the people in our lives.
“…it is imperative that we recognize that we can have objective love of, and for, our institutions and organizations, but they do not have the ability to love us back.”
If we know that we can only expect so much from our workplaces, it can help us manage our expectations. In the words of the infamous RuPaul, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else?”. The institutions we inhabit might like projecting themselves in democratic, benevolent, and egalitarian terms, but they are not set up for loving us. So should we really be surprised when we are maligned, thrown under the bus, or subject to repercussions once we won’t subject ourselves to being an institutional show pony anymore, or when the pressures and constraints simply become too much to bear? A simple misunderstanding, someone else’s unresolved trauma, or our realistic assessment and petition for change can show up in career-changing ways that can’t be undone. Are we then meant to stretch out our hands for the gilded handcuffs?
When operating from a place of self-love, I argue, and I think bell would agree, it is a lot easier to inhabit our individual cog in the machine and reject the shadow-like antithetical substitutions for love, instead of grinding up against someone else and making sparks. It’s much easier to ignore our needs and settle for crumbs. It is much easier to wake up, toil for 8 hours, go home, go to sleep, and repeat endlessly until we retire. We’re not doing that anymore. We deserve better. When we are realistic with ourselves about the vessels which will pour into us, and those that will seek to drain us, we can wield cathexis like a tool. One that benefits us. Remember cathexis, in and of itself is not bad or wrong, but is usually a substitute for our true desire. This distinction can also allow us to be clearer on our motivations for caring for and working with our neighbors, colleagues, family members, co-authors, and co-investigators; (insert other cathexis partners here). Much of life is easier to navigate when you have a true sense of self-care, self-compassion, and, you guessed it: self-love.
In closing, I present you with this very fitting quote by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. bell often spoke of him as her teacher for understanding the importance of community and observing through his leadership within the Civil Rights movement, the transformational nature of real love’s ability to invoke change. His words so eloquently put fitting punctuation on all that she has given us:
Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change...What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
[“Where Do We Go From Here?” (1967, SCLC convention) Powerpoint]
I hope with this invocation, you will accept the invitation to open, unfold, and step staunchly into your power and restore its connection to your purpose whatever that may be. It is perfectly acceptable for that to manifest in exercising justice toward yourself through a well-loved life, mostly devoid of the cathexis many of us are participating in, seeking instead overflowing cupfuls of reciprocation that have an earnest chance to bloom into something that will love you back.
Thank you for everything, bell. Rest in Power.
References
Association of Research Libraries. (2022). Sharing Power Decolonizing: Perspectives and Practices {Dr. King’s SLC Convention Experts} [Powerpoint Slides]
Charles, RuPaul Andre. (2022). Quotable Quotes. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/76756-if-you-don-t-love-yourself-how-in-the-hell-yo
Ettarh, Fobazi. (2018). “Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves.” In the Library with the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
Gayles, Joy Gaston. “Does Anyone See Us? Disposability of Black Women Faculty in the Academy.” Diverse, 17 Aug. 2022. https://www.diverseeducation.com/opinion/article/15295726/does-anyone-see-us-disposability-of-black-women-faculty-in-the-academy?utm_campaign=5872&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua
hooks, bell. (2000). All about love: New visions. HarperCollins.
hooks, bell. (2018). Cover image. All about love: New visions, by Metsch, Jo Anne. William Morrow.
Merriam-Webster.com. (n.d.). Cathect. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cathect
Merriam-Webster.com. (n.d.). Cathexis. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cathexis
Merriam-Webster.com. (n.d.). Love. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love
Merriam-Webster.com. (n.d.). Power. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/power
Merriam-Webster.com. (n.d.). Practical. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/practical