Stories we tell

Abstract

In this commentary, I respond to Ruez and Cockayne’s ‘Feeling Otherwise’ in a moment of intense ‘otherwise-ness’ as a global pandemic upends daily life in a variety of mundane and profound ways. Provoked by Ruez and Cockayne to take up the idea of the stories we tell, I reflect on ambivalence and writing into a world deeply undecided. Although it is not hard to detect accounts of this crisis at both the ‘paranoid’ and affirmative ends of an affective spectrum, there is also perhaps an unprecedented ambivalence seeping into our stories, one which holds potential for disrupting some of our taken-for-granted ideas about how the world works. As we attempt to use stories to make sense of this changing world and to write into being a world we want to live in, we must, as Ruez and Cockayne insist, remain attentive to difference and resist the pull of a universal, masterful story. I suggest getting comfortable—or staying uncomfortable—in the queasy, sweaty space of undecidability.