“Becoming ‘woke’ in the wake time” (2020)

W. Anne Joh

Have you ever encountered a catastrophe so horrible that the sun darkened, the moon didn’t light, and the stars fell off from the night sky? Have you ever experienced feeling so terrible that your keening cries shook the powers in the heavens? Have you ever felt the crushing weight of the sky falling upon you? Mark 13:24-37 alludes familiarity to such a time of suffering and loss. The text at once refers to total cosmic disturbance and exhortation to stay awake, to persist in the responsibilities of keeping attunement to the present alive. Many scholars note its familiar apocalyptic overtures. According to Richard Horsley, the most “apocalyptic sounding part of the Markan speech is precisely in this passage which focuses on the climatic restoration of the people.” This historical background of this passage, for Horsley, is within the context of “sharp political-economic-religious conflict prevailing throughout early Roman times in Palestine.” Protests, numerous resistance and renewal movements and recurrent repression by Roman military actions and decades of extensive popular discontent haunt this passage. Making sense of this passage is troubling because it alludes to the challenge of making sense out of what must surely seem senseless. This text notes a world of unmitigated shattering catastrophe that blurs the boundaries of the past, present and future. It is what some refer to as trauma time. Perhaps we need not try so hard to understand or make meaning during such an event, but we are to stay mindful of timing as in the fig tree. When we witness a fig tree with softening of its branches we know leaves will sprout and summer is near. It is, however, easy to miss the softening of fig branches or the sprouting of its leaves. It is only being attuned with all our senses we can witness this softening and blossoming of leaves and be prepared to welcome summer. This kind of being awake and alert to a slowness takes patience, persistence, care and awakeness to time. But being awake further connects with being in the wake and in contemporary parlance being ‘woke.’ Christina Sharpe explores lexical use of being awake and in the wake through contemporary racialized violence targeting African Americans and the lasting legacy of both violence and resistance and survival in the face of such ongoing apocalyptic times or what she refers to as wake time. Not so different from the mandate to “stay awake” in this Markan passage, Sharpe’s notion of being in the aftermath of something, being awake in the wake of trauma, especially devastating and violent death as one of lived solidarity, remembrance and resistance is paramount to how we interpret and live out the contemporary present apocalypse. Yet another contemporary use of referring to someone who is politically conscious as one who is ‘woke.’ Staying awake, staying ‘woke’ even in the wake. 

Many of us understand time as both Chronos and Kairos. Imperial and colonial projects often interpret time as linear Chronos, especially for historical progress. However, in many world views different from colonizers’ reliance on Chronos, Kairos sense of time anchor many indigenous and ancient world views. The former (Chronos) interprets time as sequential and linear, while the latter (Kairos) interprets time as more of an auspicious timing. Kairos time bears witness to the collapse/convergence of linear time as past and future into the present moment. 

Palestinians have suffered much to even live through the linear times of darkening of the sun or the moon that offers no luminosity. They do not relinquish yet hope for a better world with deep abiding trust in the Kairos time. The passage reminds Palestinians and those in solidarity to stay “woke” in the wake of devastations. Kairos time is the present moment in which the histories of the past and the hopes and promises for potentials of an otherwise world-making ruptures into the Chronos march of time. For those who live amid apocalyptic times, in the wake of devastations, and yet still work toward liberation and hold on to hope, we must hope one another to stay awake and to be ‘woke’ as an obligation to one another in this present Kairos moment.