Christopher Siters

ENGL 15
Dr Champagne
The year 2020 A.D. will go down in infamy. The COVID-19 pandemic hit everyone

differently, and yet it hit everyone just the same. With the world basically shut down, there is an

interesting dichotomy between the long list of events that seemed to domino into each other and

the fact that there was so much time to fill that people were going crazy trying to cope with it

separately from the actual COVID virus/illness itself. DIY’s and How-to’s sprung up

everywhere: how to bake this or cook that; how to teach yourself (x, y, or z); et cetera. Stripped

down to its broadest, most basic observation…people had time to think. Whether it was about

their sourdough recipe, fingerings for guitar chords, or the state of the world at large and how we

are continuing to survive in continually unprecedented circumstances, we had time to think about

things. Some people had never experienced this type of confinement, this isolation, this

oppression, before lockdown. Some people had never dealt with anxiety and depression,

especially to the extent that COVID caused. And yet, some people have been dealing with these

things for far longer than we realize.

Zadie Smith took this opportunity, like many did, to write. Her book Intimations is an

anthology of essays about various topics following a central theme, which she is able to explore

through the various lenses of her essays. If we look at the definition(s) of intimations (and its

forms)

 Intimation (n.): an indirect, usually subtle suggestion, indication, or hint; making known

indirectly; a slight or indirect pointing to something (as a solution or explanation); clue,

inkling, (Merriam-Webster).

 Intimate (adj.): characterized by close personal acquaintance or familiarity; relating to or

indicative of one’s deepest nature; essential, innermost; marked by informality and

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privacy; very personal, private; of or involved in a sexual relationship, (American

Heritage Dictionary of the English Language).

 Intimate (adj.): characterized by a close or warm personal relationship; deeply personal,

private, or secret; euphemistic (foll by: with) having sexual relations (with); (foll by: of)

having a deep or unusual knowledge (of); (of knowledge) deep, extensive; having a

friendly, warm, informal atmosphere; of or relating to the essential part or nature of

something, intrinsic, (Collins English Dictionary).

Using some of these definitions, we can explore Smith’s essays through various lenses, just as

she used her essays as lenses to explore these intimations, these insights, about the nature of

humanity today, specifically focusing on systemic racism and sexism.

The first essay of her anthology, titled “Peonies” involves an instance involving tulips in

New York City (prior to the pandemic) starts, “They were tulips. I wanted them to be peonies. In

my story, they are, they will be, they were and will forever be peonies….” These “peonies”

seemingly sparked a train of thought (and discourse) about femininity and womanhood, and

ultimately about nature and the nature of submission. She cites a quote by Nabokov (when

discussing his novel, Lolita) about an ape being given charcoal and coaxed by scientists to make

art, and how these scientists were surprised that the ape only drew the bars of its cage, “…hoping

for a transcendent revelation about this ape, but the revelation turns out to be of contingency…

(the) ape is caged by its nature, by its instincts, and by its circumstances,” (3). She uses this to

illustrate her younger self’s burgeoning relationship with being female

At that time, the cage of my circumstance, in my mind, was

my gender. Not its actuality—I liked my body well enough. What I

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didn’t like was what I thought it signified: that I was tied to my

“nature”, to my animal body—to the whole simian realm of

instinct—and far more elementally so than, say, my brothers. I had

“cycles.” They did not. I was to pay attention to “clocks.” They

needn’t. There were special words for me, lurking on the horizon,

prepackaged to mark the possible future stages of my existence…

My brothers, no matter what else might befall them, would remain

men. And in the end of it all, if I was lucky”, I would become that

most piteous of things, an old lady… (3 - 4).

She talks about this almost quasi-gender dysphoria, stemming from old Western thought, about

not wanting to submit to the imposed expectations ingrained into societal views of this biological

lottery she has seemingly won. She did not have a problem with being a female but did not want

to live her life according to these socially prescribed timeframes, allowing these “clocks” and

“cycles” to govern her existence, “I refused to countenance the idea that anything about me

might have a cyclic, monthly motion,” (4). The idea of submitting to this natural aspect of the

female, and thereby submitting to the societal constructs surrounding it, was unacceptable to

Smith. She addresses the gender aspect as well, identifying it as “internalized misogyny”,

A man was a man was a man. He bent nature to his will. He

did not submit to it, except in death. Submission to nature was to

be my realm, but I wanted no part of that, and so I would refuse to

keep any track of my menstrual cycle, preferring to cry on a

Monday and find out the (supposed) reason for my tears on

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Tuesday…My moods were my own. They had no reflection in

nature (4 - 5).

Not only is woman “below” man, but she is also, then, below nature; not only is she to submit to

man, but also to nature. She wanted to live (as a woman) as a man, in control of her body and her

life. “But at the hot core of it there was an obsession with control, common among my people

(writers),” (6). Her discussion is largely about the role of a woman and how there are these

double standards for and different ways of living as a woman. Not only is she discussing the

inequalities women face, but also the fact that she was able to choose how to face these

inequalities, by assuming control over her nature; “…the cage…was my gender…tied to my

‘nature’”, “I refused…I wanted no part…My moods were my own…In my story, they are, they

will be, they were and they will forever be peonies….”

“American Exception” is where Smith addresses former president Trump and the COVID

“response” in America. “He speaks the truth so rarely…it has the force of a revelation: ‘I wish

we could have our old life back. We had the greatest economy that we’ve ever had, and we

didn’t have death.’,” (11). She highlights how this caught the audience (America) in a moment of

weakness, because it had a comforting sound, going back to “our old life.” People were scared,

terrified even, because we had never dealt with anything like this, in this capacity, on this scale.

So obviously, the inclination is to go back to our comfort zone because it is familiar and

predictable. The problem with that is some things we cannot return to, some things can only be

solved by moving forward. “Disaster demanded a new dawn. Only new thinking can lead to a

new dawn,” (11).

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The “greatest economy” was ridiculed, Smith calling it “snake oil”; “the economy” he

was referring to is the affluent people, the actual capitalists, “the system”; the system was

working great. With such a public figure making such uninhibited, public comments about race,

sex and sexuality, disability, with seemingly no repercussion, not only did he feel emboldened to

continue his behavior, but others rode this new wave of systemically protected invulnerability,

taking this emboldened feeling even further (see Jan. 6, 2022). But she did agree with one thing:

we did not have death…not in the conventional sense anyway. People died; people died

everyday…but not like this. This was “front page”-worthy death, this was “prime time news”-

worthy death, this was “all anyone can talk about”-worthy death.

She goes on to talk about death absolute, the kind of death everyone faces. In America,

she argues that the “death” we deal with is different; dead people, victims, body counts, body

bags…but these all entail some “blame” on the dead: wrong place, wrong time, wrong skin color,

wrong zip code. Death in America is a social construct,

A plague it is, but American hierarchies, hundreds of years

in the making, are not so easily overturned. Amid the great swath

of indiscriminate death, some old American distinctions persist.

Black and Latino people are now dying at twice the rate of white

and Asian people. More poor people are dying than rich. More in

urban centers than in the country…For millions of Americans, it’s

always been a war (15).

This idea of a “war on (blank)” is rampant in America; everything is a war, “Wars on drugs,

cancer, poverty, and so on,” (13). Using COVID to declare himself as a “wartime president” was
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twofold: one, it shows that this circumstance is a war that can be won and this wartime president

will lead us to victory; and two, using this “victory” to shore up more and more support for an

already…controversial…president. Smith touches on these claims of wartime presidency and

Churchillian sense of duty which are, again, not in and of themselves bad, however the manner

and context in which they are being utilized is perverse and strongly in favor of returning to and

maintaining current systems. Institutionalized systems of oppression, “…American hierarchies,

hundreds of years in the making…”, are largely capitalizing from slave labor. “A rose by any

other name…”; companies paying workers less than the actual cost of living, forcing them to

work 80+ hours a week just to “survive”, all while boasting record profits is slave labor; the

“master” has simply removed the responsibility of feeding and housing their “slaves” and given

it to the workers in the form of a $7.50 minimum wage that has not changed in years despite

inflation going through the roof (and companies boasting record profits).

Deepening the divides already present and even creating new ones, sowing seeds of

turmoil and unrest for the wrong reasons; American hierarchies are not so easily overturned, and

this wish to go back to “our old life” is one way to resonate with an audience, bringing up this

nostalgia for when things were “better.” Not actually better, obviously, but better for these

capitalist institutions who thrived off keeping workers busy, who now have workers with nothing

but time; better for the people because we could go outside. And there was no death.

While this plague has come to America, ethno-racial, psycho-social, socio-economic

factors all still dictate who bears the brunt of this burden, because more Black and Latinx people

are dying than whites, more poor are dying than rich, etc.; the virus map of New York is denser

along the same lines as income brackets and school ratings, because death has been in America,
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but it was disguised, concealed to mask its true nature according to these institutionalized

systems of oppression; for many Americans, it (Death) has always been a war.

Regardless of what the war is for or against, war changes people, changes society; once

essential things become obsolete, and things once taken for granted become invaluable.

Death has come to America. It was always here, albeit

obscured and denied, but now everybody can see it…Death comes

to all—but in America it has long been considered reasonable to

offer the best chance of delay to the highest bidder (16).

But she sees this as a turning point in the narrative because war changes people. We as a planet

have suffered collectively, we have seen the consequences of non-action, and, for Smith, it is not

going to be an easy road, but now there is no going back.

One potential hope for a new American life…that the next

generation…might find inspiration…in the peacetime words

spoken by Clement Attlee, ‘…Why should we suppose that we can

attain our aims in peace…by putting private interests first?’ (17).

Smith seems to be intimating the importance of public interests rather than private. We should be

focusing less on increasing corporate revenue and focusing more on increasing public access to

healthcare and other services; less on expansive (yet still ineffective) police forces and more on

community programs and rehabilitation programs. The current system of capitalist oppression

stems from the import of private interests, “what do I want?” regardless of how it affects others:

“I want a beach-front condo” turns into “no holiday bonuses this year”, which is something some

people may rely on because they were barely scraping by in the first place and now this extra
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money they anticipated no longer exists. The longer we continue to support privatized corporate

wants before public needs, the larger this gap between “the haves” and “the have nots.”

The biggest struggle for many during COVID was “what do I do now?” What is to be

done with all this free time, now that the world has virtually stopped? In her essay “Something to

do”, this led Smith to a conversation about who she is and why she writes

In each generation, a few too many people will feel moved

to pen an essay called, inevitable, “Why I Write” or “Why Write?”

under which title you’ll find a lot of convoluted, more or less self-

regarding reasons and explanations…Only a few of them are good

and none of them…see fit to mention the surest motivation I know,

the one I feel deepest within myself…seems to be at the truth of

the matter for a lot of people, to wit: it’s something to do…Now I

am gratified to find this most honest of phrases in everybody’s

mouths all of a sudden, and in answer to almost every question. (19

- 20).

She acknowledges the fact that many times we do things just to do things, and that is not

necessarily a bad thing; it is an honest thing. None of us had any idea how exactly to spend

quarantine, and the lack of structure and guidance proved to be formidable, as more and more

people began struggling with anxiety, depression, and the like,

Watching this manic desire to make or grow or do

“something”, that now seems to be consuming everybody, I do feel

comforted to discover that I am not the only person on this earth

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who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this

time aside from filling it (28).

This is a question we ponder occasionally, “what do we do with our time?”, and usually it

is just that, just things to do. Her quote has almost a sado-masochistic feel in the “misery loves

company” sense, however it is really being used in a positive light here, as a shared human

experience that none of us knows what we are doing.

In response to this, Smith comes to the realization that, “…I also don’t want to just do

time anymore, the way I used to,” (27). She also quotes writer Ottessa Moshfegh (about “love”),

“Without it, life is just ‘doing time’,”, (25), incorporating this into Smith’s love with a capital L,

this all-encompassing (romantic, platonic, etc.) [L]ove, this idealized form essential to life and

the universe. Accordingly, she takes the stance that regardless of how busy we are, or how much

we try to distract ourselves, this absence of [L]ove will make itself known because “…still all of

that time, without love, will feel empty and endless,” (26). This is what she is referring to when

she said about not wanting to just do time anymore, because without love, it just seems

meaningless. We need to look at why we do things. Are the things we do from a place of [L]ove?

While Smith does acknowledge that we have no idea what we are doing, and thus inherently

have to fill time, but without love it really is just filling time, doing time, wasting time.

In the last essay of her book, titled “Postscript: Contempt as a Virus”, Smith uses insights

she intimated from the COVID pandemic as well as using it as a parallel for contempt. The

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines contempt as: the feeling or

attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn; the state of

being despised or dishonored; open disrespect or willful disobedience of authority of a court of

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law or legislative body. “Contempt is disapproval tinged with disgust,” (Random House

Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary). She starts off with

You start to think of contempt as a virus. Infecting

individuals at first, but spreading rapidly through families,

communities, peoples, power structures, nations. Less flashy than

hate. More deadly. When contempt kills you, it doesn’t have to be

a vendetta or even entirely conscious. It can be a passing whim…

And likewise with contempt: in the eyes of contempt, you don’t

even truly rise to the level of a hated object—that would involve a

full recognition of your existence. Before contempt, you are

something less than a whole person, not quite a complete citizen.

Say…three fifths of the whole. You are statistical. You are worked

around. You are a calculated loss. You have no recourse. You do

not represent capital, and therefore you do not represent power.

You are of no consequence (73 - 74).

We can see that Smith is talking about racism, as she points out the “three fifths” concept from

slavery, but really this can be applied to any marginalized groups (Latinx, LGTBQIA+, etc.). She

talks about how dangerous this contempt can be because it is not even something noticeable

sometimes, it can come about so subtly and just quietly plant itself, slowly growing.

Continuing with this, Smith looks at the George Floyd case, “You’d have to hate a man a

lot to kneel on his neck till he dies in plain view of a crowd and a camera…But this was

something darker – deadlier. It was the virus, in its most lethal manifestation,” (76). This started
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a revitalization of anti-racist rhetoric in the media, citing police brutality and the absence of

repercussions for those (publicly) observed committing said brutality; it has passed the point of

“this is what we think is happening” to “this is a video that was taken, showing it IS happening

NOW.” The people who are allowing “this” (to encompass a broad range of current events)

cannot continue to allow it; those who actively allow this and want it to continue need to be

removed from whatever position they occupy that has the power to allow this; those who

passively allow this need to either do what needs to be done or also be removed from their

position. The system needs dismantled.

Smith suggests that “Patient zero of this particular virus stood on a slave ship four

hundred years ago, looked down at the sweating, bleeding, moaning mass below deck and

reverse-engineered an emotion -- contempt -- from a situation that he, the patient himself, had

created,” (77). The patients, the sufferers of this virus see the symptoms (such as poverty) as the

cause; for example, the cause of declining literacy rates is due to increasing poverty…but

poverty began with systemic oppression, with contempt. This posits questions such as “has

America lived with the virus that we don’t fear it anymore?” or “do enough Americans want to

change America?” Smith breaks away from this hinting, this intimating, and clearly states

Real change would involve a broad recognition that the

fatalist, essentialist race discourse we often employ as a superficial

cure for the symptoms of this virus manages, in practice, to

smoothly obscure the fact that the DNA of this virus is economic

at base. Therefore it is most effectively attacked when many

different members if the plague class – that is, all economically

exploited people, whatever their race – act in solidarity with each

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other…If our elected representatives have contempt for us, if the

forces of so-called law and order likewise hold us in contempt, it’s

because they think we have no recourse, and no power, except for

the one force they have long assumed too splintered, too divided

and too forgotten to be of any use: the power of the people (81 -

82).

The fact that she so explicitly states this, amongst all the intimations throughout her

anthology, should speak volumes about what she is saying.

If we look at these essays, it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint what exactly Smith is

referring to, what she is trying to impart on us, the readers; but that is the point, is it not? She is

using these hints, these clues, these intimations to guide the reader, because honestly, we can

find several layers of meaning behind each work, I am sure. Looking back to some of the

definitions for intimation, we can say that she is definitely not telling us directly what she means

(occasionally, she does), they do feel very personal, very informal in tone, but this does not

detract from the severity of her message(s).

She talks about her own private struggle with gender and submission, and how she was

able to take control of her life; the underlying dichotomy between control and submission, which

Smith has accepted needing both aspects, as she put it,

When I was a kid, I thought I’d rather be a brain in a jar

than a “natural woman.” I have turned out to be some odd

combination of both, from moment to moment, and with no control

over when and where or why those moments occur. Whether the
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“natural” part of my womanhood is an essential biological fact or

an expression…of an acculturation so deep it looks very much like

roots growing out of the bulb, at this point in my life I confess I

don’t know and I don’t care. I am not a scientist or a sociologist.

I’m a novelist. Who can admit, late in the day, during this strange

and overwhelming season of death that collides, outside my

window, with the emergence of dandelions, that spring sometimes

rises in me, too, and the moon may occasionally tug at my moods,

and if I hear a strange baby cry some part of me still leaps to

attention—to submission. (9 - 10).

The female narrative does not have to be submission…entirely. It is impossible to resist 100% of

the time, and we cannot always choose when we submit, like at the sight of a tulip. In a broader

sense, no one must submit to something that they object to…misogyny, racism, homo/

transphobia. Just because society has accepted this as the norm does not mean it has to be. Smith

seems to be saying that (while not always bad) submission is a necessary evil, but that she wants

to be more in control of that submission; do not submit to nature because you are woman, submit

to nature, because it is nature, and at a certain point we all must submit to nature.

In the same avenue as submission, “American Exception” talks about the submission of

the people as a whole, both to COVID, as well as to the institutionalized systems of oppression.

Electing leaders who do not have the people’s, all the people, interests at heart, time and time

again; no one should be able to be a “career politician” unless they are effective in their work. It

is not so much that we are digging ourselves deeper so much as it is we are allowing them to pile

themselves higher. She also highlights the importance of love, and how doing things out of love
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makes such a difference, rather than “just doing something”, because love is not something to do,

it is something to be experienced, something to be lived. We need to live this love, this [L]ove

and this hope. Smith even admits that she hopes the next generations of Americans will “find

inspiration not in…bellicose rhetoric but in peacetime words,” (17). She uses this idealized

Love/life and Death absolute to illustrate the dichotomy striking the world right now. Using

these parables of life and death may seem extreme and cliched, but if there is still hope for the

future, we need to use the pandemic (as Smith did, as well as using Smith’s work itself) as a

wake-up call that things need to change (governmentally, economically, socially, etc.). We can

see that she is trying to reach people, trying to form connections on common grounds…

womanhood and feminism, capitalist exploitation of the working class, “what do I do with all

this time?” What will it take to unite us? While she does express this hope, she ends “Postscript”

with these words, “I thought if that knowledge became as widespread as could possibly be

managed or imagined that we might finally reach some kind of herd immunity. I don’t think that

anymore,” (83). I hope she is wrong.

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References

contempt. (n.d.) American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011).

Retrieved July 28, 2022, from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/contempt

contempt. (n.d.) Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary. (2010). Retrieved

July 28, 2022, from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/contempt

Harper, D. (n.d.). Etymology of intimate. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved July 22, 2022,

from https://www.etymonline.com/word/intimate

intimations. (n.d.) American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition.

(2011).

intimations. (n.d.) Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014.

(1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014). Retrieved July 22, 2022,

from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/intimations

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Intimation. In Merriam-Webster.com thesaurus. Retrieved July 22,

2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/intimation

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Intimation. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved July 22,

2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intimation

Shakespeare, W. 1597. Romeo and Juliet.

Smith, Z. Intimations. 2020. New York, NY. Penguin Random House LLC.