Naps against capitalism

When you hear the word manifesto, it’s unlikely that daydreaming, napping, and resting are the first things that come to your mind. But that association is what Rest Is Resistance aims to create. Poet-theologian Tricia Hersey weaves together personal narrative, lyrical theology, and political theory to leverage the political power of rest against “grind culture,” which becomes shorthand for systems and ideologies—in particular, White supremacy and capitalism—that jeopardize human flourishing.

Rest Is Resistance repeatedly returns to its central premise: resting, opting out, slowing down, napping, and daydreaming can function as political practices through which individuals and communities resist the systems and social relations that degrade human beings and shortchange them of their divinity: “We must spiritually disconnect from the shenanigans of grind culture while physically still living in it. A metaphysical and spiritual refusal must be developed deep within. Capitalism may not fall in our lifetimes, and it is not redeemable, so the work is to begin to reclaim your body and your time.”

At times, Hersey sounds like an intersectional Bartleby the scrivener, with an “I’d prefer not to” ethos repackaged for an anti-capitalist movement that eschews class reductionism. She does not pull punches as she attends to the ways capitalism and grind culture enable and are enabled by social maladies such as ableism, racism, and sexism.