Dasein, Care, and Community

I attended a great event on the pedagogy of care and kindness this week that was hosted by my university. At the event one of the speakers suggested an article on care and as I was reading it, it framed the argument with Heidegger’s concept of dasein and care. I am always a big fan of thinking through dasein and mitsein and I realized this gave me an in for what I had also been contemplating a lot this week at work which is, how do you create community? Or maybe more importantly what are the different types of communities that have appeared, been reinforced, or have been created out of sheer need, because of this pandemic?

Dasein, for those of you not into Heidegger, is literally being there or there being. It is about being in the world, and this being in the world is framed in a being that is necessarily aware and is very much about relationality and different aspects of care.  This there being is still present in a pandemic world but the temporality of care has been highlighted because now it is very much about finding a way of relating to others, a re-emphasis of authentic connection.

This is where my thoughts on community and care intersect. This ability to find authentic connection, of relating to others in a pandemic world, even when you share interests or frameworks is really difficult. On one level, we are there, we are with others, even if we are not physically there. We are in the world with others. However, we have been so trained to be in the world in certain ways, ways that have been taken away from us because of the virus, that it seems as though we have stopped being with others completely.

My colleagues and I have been trying to find ways to create and sustain community so that those who feel disconnected, or lonely, or even just need someone to talk through ideas with, can have a space to do so. But, virtual rooms do not seem to be the space that folk are looking for for this connection and it’s been difficult to find what that space or place looks like in a pandemic. How can we best connect in a way that doesn’t reinforce more screen time, more technology that folk may or may not have, more ableist frameworks? This is the big question.

I see folk on Twitter talking about needing to find community, and some find great community on Twitter aligned with different interests or even geographical positionally. But what is the best way to transcend a necessary reliance on one kind of technology (Zoom room, Twitter hashtag, Voice thread) for that connection to happen?

How do we hold space for each other in a pandemic? Where does that space holding happen? How do we relay that space holding to others? 

If you read this blog, please use the comments function or respond to me on Twitter if you have any ideas or insight on how we can best reconnect or build community at time when physicality is not permitted, and that not everyone has the same access to technology? I know there needs to be a multiple means approach, in true UDL fashion, but I am curious to see what you believe those multiple means are. 

Books I Read Last Week:

In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics by Sarah Sharma

See review of Sharma's book here

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life  by Lulu Miller

See review of Miller's book here

Paradise is Here: Building Community Around Things that Matter by Ruth Nutter

See review of Nutter's book here