Jessica Gaitán Johannesson on The Nerves and their Endings

Jessica Gaitán Johannesson has a problem with the word ‘we’. “When it comes to speaking about global crises, like climate collapse, humanity is often placed on one side and the non-human on the other side,” the writer and climate activist explains from her home in Edinburgh. “Suddenly humanity’s like this one unified thing, but environmental collapse is not caused by 'human nature' – it’s caused by colonialism built on racism.”

Gaitán Johannesson’s latest book – a collection of essays titled The Nerves and Their Endings – seeks to pull apart the homogeneous 'we' of climate crisis discourse. Through a series of bold and deeply affecting essays, what many of us think of as binaries – the internal and the external, the human and the non-human, the crisis and the response – all collapse in on themselves to occupy a single space, often on a single page.  

Also a fiction writer (her novel How We Are Translated was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize) and a poet, Gaitán Johannesson’s turn to essays has been relatively recent in her career. “I thought I was going to write more fiction!” she says with a laugh. “It was the situation itself and reality which re-routed me. Writing any of these essays’ ideas as fiction would have felt like avoiding something. I think if something presents itself as this real, then write about it as it is – write it as reality.”

This reality is as political as it is personal in the book. Essays on Gaitán Johannesson’s experience of anorexia, her time as a member of BirthStrike and a climate activist, all exemplify the multiple levels through which we experience, and respond to, the climate crisis – in the body and in the world around us. “I think the idea of responding to a crisis is really key because the [climate] crisis is so intangible for so many people. I think we can only start with our own reactions. We’re all forced to respond in some way, even if we don’t think we are, because not doing anything is also a response in itself.”

In writing this collection, it was essential to very specifically describe the context in which the essays were written – some even have postscripts of exact years. “I didn’t want to write a collection of personal essays that were just sort of political by default or could be interpreted as political,” she explains. “I wanted to always name the political and the collective context in which these personal things happened and then ask: Where does that leave us? What bigger questions does this raise? How does that relate to this person or that person?”

Gaitán Johannesson calls the climate crisis a “crisis of connection”, and bridging gaps between people, places and ideas is woven into the very fabric of The Nerves’ structure. Between each of the essays are short fragmented pieces of writing that are part-poetry, part-lyrical essay. “I call those bits the nerves,” she says. “The fact that we feel disconnected to non-human environments and people who we deem different, is the very core of why we are where we are. So, the book starts with that feeling, the places in the body where we feel: the nerves. Those “nerves” became a way to feel without figuring out what I was trying to say.”

When we are speaking, it is July and we are a week away from Scotland hitting its highest ever temperature on record. The urgency of the climate crisis has never felt more claustrophobically demanding, and yet the book industry is still failing to reckon with the emergency we’re in.

“I’m frustrated with the idea that writing about the climate crisis is somehow enough or activism in itself,” Gaitán Johannesson says. “For me, writing is not enough and, because there is such a thing as a book industry, with the privileges involved and the money-making of it all, I think viewing books as activism to the extent that you idolise can be detrimental. Of course there are brilliant people doing good things, but you need to look at the context in which books are produced. There’s a reason, after all, that the book industry says that books are going to save the world!” 

This shared tendency to place people up on pedestals is a deeply troubling part of both climate activism and the book industry for Gaitán Johannesson. “If you were constantly waiting for the perfect thing or person to 'save' us, then you wouldn’t do anything,” she says. “This idea that you can create perfect things, or you should sacrifice yourself for your art, or you should sacrifice yourself to save the world is a toxic notion that’s tied to patriarchy and capitalism. Embracing things that are imperfect but are really present, that are really truthful… Well, that’s sort of how I got over the fear and finished writing this book.”

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Jessica Gaitán Johannesson & Amanda Thomson: Climate Change is Personal and Political, Edinburgh International Book Festival Northside Theatre, 16 Aug, 2.15pm
The Nerves and Their Endings is published by Scribe, 11 Aug
The Nerves and Their Endings launch, Lighthouse Bookshop, 16 Aug, 7:30pm