The Last Word: Writing in a Time of Emergency

The primary aim of this article is to illustrate the significance of writing and thinking creatively as well as critically within the context of today’s highly globalized world. The reader is invited to assess the value and urgency of “the last word” as an antidote to the dictates of the U.S. global empire in the current third decade of the twenty-first century. The story of the endangered hedgehog serves here as the starting point for an original anatomy of the close interconnectedness of the geopolitical, economic and environmental crises that define the historical present. The article contends that against this climate it is absolutely necessary that we reclaim resistance, as a beautiful, breathing word, by means of which citizens—both within and beyond the borders of the empire—may envision a state of being that defies the strangle-hold corporate America has on policy, on language, on the very perception of our selves. Last but not least, the article argues that this is a moment during which active citizens can acquire the skills of right-action and solidarity from those who have the most to teach us: the targeted, the marginalized, the undocumented.