Building Good Relationships by Learning from Bad Ones
Building Good Relationships by Learning from Bad Ones
Dlorah Agama
Abstract
This article examines the relationships among the communities depicted in Heinrich von Kleist’s “The Earthquake in Chile” through ideas outlined in Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s work. Kleist’s work primarily concerns the effects of calamities in a discordant community in which care webs as theorized by Piepzna-Samarasinha emerge. The care webs that emerge, however, cannot last long. They are a momentary feature. Despite Kleist’s interest in showcasing the limitations of care webs, his text is not interested in relishing in defeatism. Instead, the text becomes a main site at which to showcase the potential of people coming together to help one another.
Introduction
In Heinrich von Kleist’s “The Earthquake in Chile” (1807), we see a segment of Santiago form care webs after being hit by a natural calamity. People from all walks of life willingly started to share resources with each other as one community. Despite the social structures that separated sinners from saints prior to the calamity, segments of the population that survived came together to share resources with their neighbors. The story showcases the importance of developing and maintaining relationships in the community. But it also emphasizes the significance of the quality of these relationships. In this article, I will examine Kleist’s text through the lens of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s theorization of care webs as means by which to support one another during times of crisis.
The notion of care webs as theorized by Piepzna-Samarasinha values the emergence of complex networks of people in constructing a supportive community. Care webs describe relationships among people built on interdependence and care. Making a care web sustainable is attainable if each individual fulfills their responsibilities in the long term. Collective care, as the author describes it, works best if each member supports the collective. Here, crowdsourcing emerged as one way a collective of disabled queer and trans people of colour could show their support for one another. At its best, the care web Piepzna-Samarasinha describes in their work seemed functional, coordinated, and the collective was unified. People from different backgrounds, going through different waves of life, come together as a community—as a care web. As the author notes, “nobody deserves to die or suffer from lack of access, even if they’ve been an asshole” (48–49).
A similar sentiment can be identified in a key scene in Kleist’s “The Earthquake in Chile.” Despite being discriminated against and marginalized by her community, Josefa did not reject a request for help. After the earthquake had hit the town of Santiago, the social outcasts Jeronimo and Josefa found themselves spared from execution. After being condemned by the community for their controversial actions, the couple felt vindicated and became filled with great joy in finding access to community again in the aftermath of the destruction that hit their hometown. Although they avoided execution, they were still worried about their family’s safety after all the criticism they endured. These worries slowly faded when Don Fernando reached out to Josefa to breastfeed his hungry child. She obliged. Despite having reason to avoid contact with fellow citizens—after all, some of those citizens eagerly hoped to witness her execution—Josefa helped the family in need. She in turn was praised by the people she helped, which gave her a sense of peace and belonging to the community once again. Highlighting this union of peoples, the narrator in Kleist’s text notes,
Men and women of every social situation could be seen lying side by side, princes and beggars, ladies and peasant women, government officials and day laborers, friars and nuns: pitying one another, helping one another, gladly sharing anything they had saved to keep themselves alive as if the general disaster had united all its survivors into a single family. (60)
The sudden warmth, kindness, and generosity from the community were so foreign to Josefa and Jeronimo that one gesture was enough for them to overcome their suspicion grounded in the hardships they faced. The urgency to belong and the collective care expressed in this moment in time supported a sense of security for the couple and their family. They even decided to remain in Chile with the rest of the community despite having forged plans to leave the country in the aftermath of the earthquake. They were starting to finally see the light at the end of their tunnel once they faced hope in the acceptance from the people around them.
But the care web that emerged did not last long. To examine this, we will first turn to Piepzna-Samarasinha’s discussion care webs. Describing the sensation of accomplishment when the care web started to work, Piepzna-Samarasinha writes, “At its height, it was everything good that social media made possible—instant connection with a million people with shared identities and interests, who could listen to you when you were in crisis or answer a disability question that no one near you knew the answer to” (37). Crowdsourcing indeed also emerges as a valorized mode of community in Kleist’s text, where immediate bonds were formed among the community of Santiago, bringing together the rich and poor, sinners and saints alike. Solidarity emerged as social structures started to break down. But this only lasted for a while. Forming care webs felt easier to do than sustaining them, which is also something that Piepzna-Samarasinha noted depended on the difficulty to maintain interdependence in the face of social and cultural differences as well as embodiment. In Kleist’s text, the care-based social structures that emerged likewise started to fail.
The tragic ending of Kleist’s text indeed points to the inability of the care web to last beyond the moment. Protagonists Josefa and Jeronimo once again faced criticism from the people of Santiago, who were reminded of their status in the community prior to the calamity. The scene escalated quickly with everyone’s fury fueling the hatred that Josefa and Jeronimo almost eluded. The focus on community, mending relationships, and repenting changed once the social dynamics reverted back to the hatred and oppression widespread prior to the earthquake. Josefa and Jeronimo were killed in the end, which positions us to question what the whole point of the text is. Why was there a such great emphasis on what seemed like collective care only for the text to refute the capacity of care to sustain in the long term? Is it just another tragic story that provides nothing more than entertainment for its readers? Maybe not. Digging deeper, “The Earthquake in Chile” could teach people about the importance of making good quality and lasting relationships by narrating a story about the exact opposite of this. The text established that Josefa and Jeronimo’s relationship with the rest of the community was poor and disconnected. This is why the moment when they felt the community’s support after the earthquake made available a whole new reality for them. The text then illustrated what can be possible in a community and how frail that care-based relation is.
Kleist’s text requires readers to see beyond the few pages of Josefa and Jeronimo’s story. In the grand scheme of things, cultural texts like “The Earthquake in Chile” serve as a reminder for us to remember that the quality of relationships matters. Though Josefa and Jeronimo somehow experienced what it is like to belong in their community, they did not have a good relationship with the community to begin with. Josefa’s selfless actions were not and will never be enough to reconcile with the people of Santiago. As much as readers might desire a happy ending for the couple, good bonds are not formed overnight. More robust social infrastructures for interdependence are required in order to help all involved see their place in care webs. The text showcases that striving to build good relationships with others also requires more robust, broader social formations that reach beyond a small collective in order for collectives to thrive. While “The Earthquake in Chile” teaches us that we should not only extend kindness when it is convenient, but that kind infrastructures should guide all we do. This goes for Josefa and Jeronimo as well as the rest of Santiago. In the grand scheme of things, the world is a place for everyone to not just simply coexist, but to live together and support each other regardless of background. Josefa and Jeronimo may have never fully experienced the true beauty of what a community really is, but we the readers of their story might learn from their experience and try our best to create a world in which kindness and care can thrive.
Dlorah Agama is an undergraduate student in the Speech Sciences program at the University of British Columbia. Born and raised in the Philippines, she moved to Vancouver to pursue higher education. Dlorah completed her first two years in the UBC Pharmaceutical Sciences program before shifting to her current one. With a passion for assisting those with hearing and balance disorders, she is determined to become a pediatric audiologist in the future. She is currently volunteering for a research lab focusing on middle ear problems. To gain more exposure to the younger population, she also took on a job as a behaviour interventionist for children with special needs. Besides her enthusiasm for the speech science and audiology field, she is heavily involved in other volunteering for non-profit associations. Currently, she is the director for community engagement in the UBC Cancer Association where she thrives in her role as an organizer, speaker, and leader.
Works Cited
Kleist, Heinrich von. The Marquise of O—, and Other Stories. London: Penguin, 2004.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work Dreaming Disability Justice. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021.
Picture: “Hands Touching” by https://www.flickr.com/photos/154614564@N07/.
