Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present - Dylan Riley
Published in 2022 by Verso, London, UK and New York, NY
160 pages
ISBN: 9781839768408
During the 2020 pandemic, many people took to journaling as an escape from the sense of isolation and loneliness that social distancing wrought. Most of us began in earnest, diligently scribbling our thoughts and experiences during such a pivotal and historic time before slowly drifting away from these habits as the pandemic lingered on. Many of us feel as if our daily thoughts and experiences are not worth dedicating to paper and ink, believing that we must at least attempt to say something profound and meaningful in each entry of our daily journals.
Yet, as many avid journal-keepers know, even the act of record-keeping our own seemingly banal and routine thoughts can be a liberating and cathartic experience. More often than not, what we believe to be prosaic at the moment is much more illuminating than we think. This practice can be cultivated and refined through free-write sessions, where one commits to writing whatever comes to mind, forcing the censor in our brains to quiet down for a few brief moments to see what bubbles up from the wells of our being. In his 2022 book, Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, sociologist Dylan Riley offers up over one hundred short essays that he wrote by hand, beginning at the start of the pandemic and ending in the first months of the Biden administration. With this series of brief provocations on sociology, philosophy, and politics, Riley offers a mosaic of critical thought during an unprecedented time.
Overview:
Composed of over one hundred brief essays -- many of which are only a few paragraphs long -- Riley invites the reader to analyze current events, explore social theory, and engage with society with a critical eye. Riley wrote this collection of notes during the pandemic in a notebook, only editing them once while transcribing them from the physical page to a digital document. Drawing on a wide array of philosophers and social theorists such as Weber, Durkheim, Gramsci, Du Bois, Lukács, and many more, Riley calls our attention to the issues of our everyday lives utilizing the distinctly polemical tone that is indicative of the New Left Review, upon which he sits on the editorial board.
Through this collection of brief notes, Riley leaves a trail documenting the use of sociological critique to understand our current socio-political moment. As Riley writes, “These notes are also ‘granny squares.’ They are scraps of thought worked up into little tiles. But whether they will form a striking mosaic will depend on how they are arranged and put together” (85). The topics covered in these brief essays include the political crises spurned by the waning days of the Trump administration, the effect of the pandemic on our psychic life, the role of sociology in analyzing class, race, feminism, and neoliberal capitalism, and grappling with loss and illness. As such, this collection vacillates between the polemically analytic and the deeply personal, as Riley free-writes his thoughts during his wife Emmanuela’s illness.
Riley is first and foremost concerned with the state of social theory. He argues that academia generally regards social theory as an outdated mode of analysis that gives too much credence to the universal, and the ivory towers have instead immersed themselves in the particulars of individual experiences, which are held as untouchable and sacred. Contemporary social theory’s refusal to contend with the legacy of Marx means that progressive literature overwhelmingly relies on legal concepts, such as justice and equality, rather than humanist concepts, such as dignity and meaning.
For Riley, this is a grave mistake. Riley argues that critique allows us to realize our experience and that sociology links theory and experience together in creative and productive ways. Social theory mediates our experience, giving us the language through which we come to give meaning to our experiences. Microverses is Riley’s attempt to weave together the personal and the theoretical, using social theory to understand the world around him.
Two particular groups that earn Riley’s scorn in these pages are the mainstream liberal media apparatus (MSNBC, CNN, etc.) and the popularized, slogan-laden branch of the burgeoning Left in America (perhaps most epitomized by the Sanders campaign and the Squad in Congress). In a similar vein to Zizek, Riley points out that while the idiocy and fascistic impulses of Trump and the Republican party are self-evident, liberals have become intellectually bankrupt, especially in the post-Trump era. Democracy is not suddenly at stake; rather, it has always been illusory and unrealized. The problem isn’t that Trump lies; rather, it is that he occasionally, if unintentionally, tells the truth. The Left wing of the Democratic party, far from radical Marxists, is modest in its aims and weak in its power. For example, he writes, “the US left should talk much less about making society ‘fairer’ (a muddled and basically petit bourgeois notion) and much more about making society more rational or human…to spend less energy on outrage and more on the study and appreciation of the laws of power and its exercise. Isn’t that what Machiavelli was trying to teach us? We had better learn to listen” (39, 44).
Commendations:
Several aspects of Microverses are well worth commending. First of all, it serves as a fascinating portrait into Riley’s mind as we slowly emerged out of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a fascinating experience to read Riley’s spur-of-the-moment reflections, as he wrote them down in a notebook and then edited them as he transcribed them onto a digital document. I loved his comparison of these notes to the “granny squares” that his wife crotchets, in which the sum of the parts makes a more beautiful whole, but is only reconstructed in retrospect. Through these lightly edited notes, complex ideas are compressed to their base parts and clarified through their encounter with the author’s experience. It’s a rapid-fire social theory with a human touch, and I think that this form allowed the work to be brilliantly illuminating in many spots.
Additionally, the brief length of each note makes the entire volume an incredibly quick read. Its slim size and bite-sized chapters also make it convenient for quick on-the-go reading. While some of the notes require more in-depth attention, most of them are brief sketches of thought, provoking more questions than answers. These notes are an invitation for the reader to engage with a litany of interesting concepts and to challenge common assumptions in the field of sociology and political science.
Nearly every page of this book has a contentious or provocative point that, while occasionally veering too hard into reactionary rhetoric, gives the reader plenty to think about. He is equally virulent against both the mainstream liberalism of the Democratic party as well as the self-aggrandizing moralism that defines a particular strand of American leftists. It is undoubtedly true that the words and actions of the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while radically left-wing as opposed to the rest of the Democratic party, amount to little more than milquetoast critiques of capitalism’s inherent trend toward inequality. Arguing for greater inclusion into the social structure through progressive taxation and greater social safety nets rather than overcoming the capitalist mode of production, these figures, no matter how well-intentioned are insufficient against the steady rise of neofascism within the United States.
Critique:
On the other hand, Microverses suffers from several shortcomings. First and foremost, while I commend Riley on the vulnerability that comes with publishing a notebook of unedited thoughts, the brief sketches foreclose any deep analysis of any one particular event or issue. While some of the notes concern widely-known recent events or detail his thoughts regarding his wife’s illness, others require the reader to know some of the competing discourses and debates within the field of sociology. Even in the most personal essays, he continually employs an academic timbre, holding the reader at arm’s length. He seems caught in an epistemology of radical rationalism and tends to outright reject anything that doesn’t fit within his preferred paradigm. As such, this work serves more to provoke the reader to think in new or counterintuitive ways rather than provide anything close to a cohesive narrative or critical framework for analyzing everyday life.
Speaking of provocations, the tone that Riley employs throughout the book might work to alienate readers further. When referring to other theorists with which he disagrees (especially Bourdieu), he makes many snide comments and snarky takedowns. There is so much shade thrown throughout these notes, which, while entertaining, tended to detract from the work’s overall impact. It occasionally turns the work into more of a diary of frustrations against his colleagues in the UC Berkeley Sociology department rather than a cogent analysis of everyday life.
Relatedly, when turning his criticism toward political figures, Riley often targets those who, in theory, are closest to him ideologically. For those who are familiar with his work in the New Left Review, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. But often Riley’s criticism tends to be narrowly focused on a small subsection of American social democrats/democratic socialists (think the average DSA member or Jacobin reader). Even when there is a valid criticism to be made of this group, Riley chooses to instead paint with a broad stroke, constructing convenient strawmen for him to tear down. Even if his critiques were well-placed, they are too often levied against those who could be potential allies in fighting against the neoliberal status quo. The severity of his critique came off as a litmus test for ideological purity, which the Left doesn’t need any more of if we have any hope of building a movement of solidarity to overcome the forces of capital. While some of his critiques are razor-sharp and witty, they more often than not miss the mark. As such, Riley’s overly pessimistic and defeatist stance, when coupled with his caricatures of those ideologically adjacent to him, runs the risk of alienating everyone except those who agree with him.
Finally, there are a few essays that raise huge red flags. His critique of racial capitalism The most problematic and frankly concerning issue is his note about Title IX and the power dynamics between students and professors. In Note 91, he writes,
Doubtless, professors do abuse their positions at times, but what is strange about the attention this particular relationship draws is that, viewed in the wider context of a deeply unequal and exploitation-riven society, it would seem to be among the least characterized by “power differentials” (although the meaning of “power” is never clear in this discussion). Can the professor fire the student? No, he cannot; if anything the threat now goes very much the other way….Really, the professor has control only over two things: grades and letters of recommendation. But given that students can receive these from several potential providers, even this is at best an oligopoly power. So why the professor as a source of concern? The most obvious answer is that he (and in this context it really is a he) is an easy target. Usually lacking independent wealth, professors need their jobs. More importantly, perhaps, the professor is the subject of politically transversal cultural disdain. Perpetually adolescent, arrogant, out of touch, and unaccountable, he is a perfect object for the disciplinary project of bureaucratic “feminism.” But this has about as much to do with fighting patriarchy as the IRS does with instituting socialism. (103-104)
While Riley makes the correct distinction that professors are occupying increasingly precarious positions, especially with the decrease of tenure-track positions in favor of adjunct positions and yearly-renewed contracts, his vitriol once again finds the wrong target in this constructed fantasy of “bureaucratic feminists” who are intent to destroy the lives of male professors. Riley simply hand-waves away the reality of power dynamics between students and professors. While this imbalance is typically enough to keep undergraduate students quiet when it comes to reporting code of conduct violations (even though most reports that are filed are not acted upon), there is a much stronger power dynamic between professors and the graduate students that they advise. The fact that Riley simply rejects this very real problem and makes the male professor the center of victimization is just one example of how he often paints his perceived enemies with a broad brush and centers his positionality.
Conclusion:
Overall, Microverses is an insightful glimpse into the daily musings of a prominent sociologist during the tumultuous years of 2020/21. While the unedited nature of these notes leads to some unevenness and even some troublesome thoughts at times, there are plenty of gold nuggets of insight to be worth the quick read. From page to page, the reader will undoubtedly find some notes that they identify with strongly, others they will vehemently reject, and most others will fall somewhere between (or simply remain indifferent to). Those who are irritated at the shallow political and social culture in which we find ourselves will likely commiserate with Riley’s pessimistic voice.