The Demands of Writing

What does writing demand of us?

I just read a technically excellent essay on the erosion of public education. The author is autistic, about to be pushed out of her job, and facing the brutal machinery of austerity. Her essay would be well received in most academic circles, I believe. I can describe it as very competent analysis.

But the writing felt dead. Polished, well-structured, deeply informed by Marxist analysis… but lifeless.

She is about to lose her lifeline. She might become homeless. Why don't I feel that?

I understand that audience and purpose influences how and what one writes. While I can't speak for her specifically, I would not be surprised if she was writing with the goal of clarity, credibility, or to be taken seriously in a world that rarely puts weight to the thoughts of autistic women. I understand that: we all write within specific constraints influenced by topic, environment, and culture.

But I look at her writing again, and I only feel impressed rather than horrified at the state of our education system. She is writing from an incredible place - directly within the entrails of a sick system, her own lifeline on the precipice of destruction - but what was delivered is a structural analysis through a Marxist lens.

What does she gain from this?

She gains intellectual acceptance, academic approval, a sanitized understanding of her world within a specific framework.

What does she lose from this?

She loses the gravity of her voice as a marginalized woman in a decaying system. Her brilliant experiences reduced to yet another safe analysis of a public system through an established framework.

Isn't that tragic?

To write something is to will the essence of an idea into this world. It is to create the blueprint for action, to create the scaffolding of another reality. At its core, writing is the manifestation of latent power.

Given this power, what does writing demand of us?

Writing demands blood from your own soul. It demands the cost of something essential: a rupture.

Truth has a cost.

If you write about collapse, I want to feel your hands shake while I read the page.

If you write about precarity, I want to feel the breakdown. The vertigo of consuming fear, the scream into an indifferent and absurd world.

I want to feel the aftermath of your soul bursting onto the page.

I am not advocating for the abandonment of rigor or frameworks. But I am advocating for radical ownership, intellectual courage, and the acknowledgement of your power.

If what you wrote didn't cost you anything to write it, why are you saying it at all?