The Infeasibility of Rest (and Liberation)

One of the things that I enjoy most about teaching is that even identical material can generate unique conversations because the collection of students in class is always different. Yet, I have noticed that across the dozens of ethics courses I have taught at Villanova, one refrain remains constant – “it’s not feasible.”  When analyzing moral problems, students often share a common vision for how things should be or what individuals or collectives should do. At the same time, the clear ethical demands are almost undercut by a single appeal to “feasibility.”  For instance, while it would be good to provide a living wage to every worker, it is simply not feasible. The invocation of feasibility often undermines any further conversation on the matter. Whenever feasibility is brought up in class, I challenge my students to recognize its constructed and contingent nature. To return to the earlier example, it was unfeasible to establish a federal minimum wage in the U.S. until 1938 when the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was passed.¹  

I appreciate how Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire approaches feasibility in his work. In A Pedagogy for Liberation, Freire discusses “untested feasibility,” which is the feasibility of “…the future which we have yet to create by transforming today, the present reality. It is something not yet here but a potential, something beyond the ‘limit situation’ we face now, which must be created by us beyond the limits we discover.”² In other words, Freire acknowledges the danger of reifying limits and insists that they often ought to be transgressed to create conditions ripe for formerly impossible possibilities to occur. In fact, for Freire, the ideology of infeasibility shores up the oppressive status quo and to contest it is essential to the creation of a less evil and more humane society.³ As a scholar of religion, I find Freire’s insights all the more compelling because of their theological grounding, informed by the Roman Catholicism of his mother. In his writing, Freire speaks of God as a presence in history, who propels world transformation by “providing the vision of what human completeness and social justice looked like.”⁴ Though Freire insists that human beings are and must be the actors who change conditions in society, God is the source of the vision and hope that feed this work. 

While I appreciate Freire’s insights and I am committed to challenging infeasibility in the classroom, I continue to struggle with it in my own life. Unlike my students, my difficulty with feasibility is less related to specific ethical issues, though giving close attention to the injustice and ugliness of the world in my work takes a toll. Rather, I am tired, so tired, from endless professional demands and caretaking responsibilities and many days, rest seems to be the most infeasible thing of all. In Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey highlights how commonplace my experience is as grind culture, an unholy collaboration of capitalism and white supremacy, permeates U.S. culture and ties our worth to our productive capacity and reduces our bodies to machines. In particular, grind culture socializes us to think of rest as something that must be earned, “a luxury, a privilege, or a bonus we must wait for once we are burned out.”⁵ I know this is true for me. Drawing on black liberation and womanist theology, Hersey refutes this understanding of rest. She argues instead that “rest is not a privilege because our bodies are still our own, no matter what the current systems teach us….Our bodies and Spirits do not belong to capitalism, no matter how it is theorized and presented. Our divinity secures this, and it is our right to claim this boldly.”⁶ Not only is rest a basic part of being human and a human right but Hersey emphasizes that it is fundamental to the work of liberation. Rest is an act of embodied resistance to capitalism and white supremacy and a portal to imagination, healing, and hope, all critical to “our collective survival and our present and future thriving.”⁷ It is difficult to think clearly, much less dream and pursue justice, when you are exhausted. 

As this year comes to an end and the infeasibility of both rest and liberation weigh upon me, I will be focusing on two insights from Hersey:  

• Acknowledge your socialization in grind culture. Resist by repeating mediations such as “I am worthy of rest” and “I cannot wait for the perfect space or opportunity to rest.”⁸  
• Expand your definition of rest. Rest can look like a twenty-minute nap; it can also involve closing your eyes for ten minutes, taking regular breaks from social media, deep listening to a full music album, or laughing intensely.⁹  

Rest is something we all deserve and must fight to embrace, for ourselves and for our collective liberation.  

References: 

Hersey, Tricia. Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto. New York, NY: Little, Brown Spark, 2022. 

Kirylo, James D., and Drick Boyd. Paulo Freire: His Faith, Spirituality, and Theology. Boston, MA: Sense Publishers, 2017. 

Shor, Ira, and Paulo Freire. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1987. 

Notes: 

1. It is important to note, though, that the Fair Labor Standards Act excluded domestic and agricultural workers, who were overwhelmingly people of color, from many of its requirements. 

2. Shor and Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 153. 

3. Kirylo and Boyd, Paulo Freire, 7. 

4. Ibid., 6. 

5. Hersey, Rest is Resistance, 28. 

6. Ibid., 28-29. 

7. Ibid., 11. 

8. Ibid., 149. 

9. Ibid., 84-85.