My name is Jeremy Trombley. I have a Master’s degree in applied anthropology, and am currently working on my PhD at the University of Maryland, College Park. My interests are in environmental controversy, science and technology studies, post-constructivist theory, and activist/cosmopolitical research methods. I have done research on coal power in western Kansas, traditional cultural properties (TCPs) in rural Nevada, and aquatic invasive species (AIS) on the Eastern Shore. My goal is to become a professor and continue to do research and advocacy in order to build a better world.
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About This Site
This blog is an intervention. It’s intention is to make a difference in the way we engage with the myriad entities (human and non-human) with whom we are intertwined. It takes the view that existence is a perpetual process of becoming, and as a result, there is no end toward which we can aim, no “happy ever afters” (thank the gods for that!). It is a process of “becoming with” not of “imposing upon” – a process of building relationships and allowing oneself to be altered and affected as much as one alters and affects others. “Nothing is reducible to anything else” Latour tells us – that means there is no ultimate ground, no essences, no structures, systems, or totalities. There is only the rich intertangling of heterogeneous beings working with, against, for, and in spite of one another.
The name “Struggle Forever” comes from Kim Stanley Robinson’s utopian novel Pacific Edge. It refers to utopia as the process of building a better world – one free from injustice and oppression. The world doesn’t stop, and neither can we. Things are continually changing, emerging, and decaying – injustice and oppression can creep in at any moment. We must be constantly on guard, constantly trying, in our own ways, to make the world better, and, once we have done so, we must continue to work in order to maintain it. There are no easy answers here, no one shot solutions – no revolutions, no politics, no diplomacy – “nothing short of everything will really do.”
Everything we do is situated within a social/ecological context, and everything we do makes a difference – the question is, what kind of difference are we making? I call for a more conscious and conscientious practice that aims to make the world better rather than replicating the existing patterns of injustice and oppression. This can be done in our everyday lives – a smile to a stranger, a helping hand – or it can be done in more extraordinary ways – running for office, direct action protest. The world will never be perfect – it’s much too dynamic for that – but through this continual struggle we might gradually push back oppression and injustice inch-by-inch, and, to borrow another Robinson quote, “together we may crab sideways toward the good.”