Inheritances
Rachel Magnusson
Warren Magnusson with his daughter Rachel in 1983. Photo: Sharon Walls.
Like most teenagers, I wanted to be nothing like either of my parents. My life was going to be much more adventurous, creative and engaged. Besides, it was ludicrous to assume I could aspire to be anything like my father, who went to University at sixteen, studied at Oxford, and could nonchalantly provide names, dates and detailed historical context on any possible topic at the kitchen table. No, I was going to be my own person.
Now, in my mid-40s, it is easy to see that I wasn’t successful at escaping his influence. I set out to study literature and theatre and then found myself studying political theory. I thought I might be a high school teacher and then found myself running citizens’ assemblies. I dreamed of living in a cabin in the woods and then found myself living in cities, eventually working for the City of Vancouver to design and manage spaces for public life. Turns out I was Warren’s daughter after all.
Of course, these markers of influence – political theory, democracy, cities – are a bit of a distraction, a decoy. They suggest that Warren and I simply shared the same interests. I don’t think we did, really. Instead, I think what I inherited from my dad were some core assumptions about the world and people that led me, in a roundabout way, to shared places and terrains.
When I consider this, I see two basic tenets that guided him as a person and a thinker: people are capable and be humble because the world is complex. The second of these tenets was the most obvious to me growing up, and likely also the most obvious to his students in the classroom. He would let me speak with assurance and make a righteous argument about how things ought to be. He would give my declarations space, letting me revel in my brilliance and certainty. And then, gently, he’d ask a question. Something simple. I’d find, somehow, the definite picture I’d painted begin to loosen, swirl. Maybe I’d made it too easy. He didn’t offer an answer or a way out, instead he’d hold the unraveling picture with me: it had just become interesting. The complexity didn’t scare him, it drew him. He wanted to hold it with you and marvel. Wasn’t the world an interesting place? Don’t be angry that you don’t know; relish it.
The first tenet, however, wasn’t so directly expressed. Likely because he would have been too embarrassed to assert such a simplistic belief. Nevertheless, this belief, this hope is so clearly at the root of all his thinking. As he states in the first sentence of his final book reflecting on his academic career: “This book is haunted by an old idea: the thought that people could actually come together in their own communities and decide for themselves how things ought to be” (Magnusson 2015, p. 3). It is this idea of the capacity of people and how it gets perpetually set aside and ignored in our political thinking that led to his study of local democracy and social movements, his critiques of the state and sovereignty, his arguments about seeing like a city. There is nothing simplistic in these journeys of thought – he details the complexity with care and appreciation – but there is a simple belief motivating his efforts. And this belief, this fundamental generosity towards others, quietly grounded not only his academic work but also his relationships with colleagues, students, friends.
Now that I am older, and now that Warren’s gone, I hope to try to hold these inheritances more consciously and more deeply. They are not assumptions one can possibly live out all the time – a neat and pithy answer is thrilling, and, god, can people ever be dumb and disappointing! And yet. And yet, what I want for most in my years ahead is to come back to and practice these inheritances from my dad and their profound wisdom, their profound challenge.
References
Magnusson, Warren. 2015. Local Self-Government and the Right to the City. Montréal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Dr. Rachel Magnusson is the Associate Director of Street Activities at the City of Vancouver and is Warren's daughter.