Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible

 

Every now and again, you come across something which seems to shine a bright spotlight on something that was previously hidden in the shadows.  “But, of course,” you say to yourself.  “Now I see.”  I had this experience recently as I read something that my daughter who is working on her MEd sent to me.  It was a chapter from the book Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible by Arturo Escobar who is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of several books.

Arturo Escobar

Escobar deals with the “politics of the possible” and writes about how our commonly held ideas of what is real and attainable get in the way of the emergence of alternative visions of the future.  He looks at the experience and practice of Indigenous and Afro-descendant people who are protecting their land from extractive industries in Latin America and shows how they are bringing about the pluriverse, “a world of many worlds”.  Escobar feels this is key in creating a myriad of different possible future stories that could bring solutions to planetary crises.

The book is written is scholarly language that can feel a little daunting but underneath it is a striking clarity.  Escobar feels that the planetary crisis that we face “is the crisis of a particular world or set of world-making practices, the world that we usually refer to as the dominant form of Euro-modernity.”  Therefore, he reasons, “If the crisis is then caused by this heteropatriarchal capitalist modern world, it follows that facing the crisis implies transitions toward its opposite, that is, toward a multiplicity of worlds we will call the pluriverse.”  If the diversity of these worlds is infinite, then the narrow Eurocentric vision of the world can hardly have exhausted all the possibilities, he argues.  Here, is a good example of how another point of view that is Latin American based sees the dominant Eurocentric worldview; as simply one among many.  I found that very refreshing.

If the Eurocentric worldview is seen as the only one, then what does not yet exist is impossible, concludes Escobar as he writes, “Here again we find an insightful formulation of the es [Epistemology of the South] framework: what does not exist is actively produced as nonexistent or as a noncredible alternative to what exists.”  This sentence elicits an image of Europeans with blinkers on in my imagination.  I hear this kind of thinking all of the time.  For example, when people discuss electricity derived from renewable sources, they often bring up the problem of storing the energy created.  Thus, they conclude, renewable electricity production is a bad idea.  When I hear this, I think, well, clearly, we need to develop better ways of storing energy so that we can use renewably produced electricity.  But most people discard the idea as implausible since it does not yet exist.

Another key area that Escobar writes about is the network of interrelations that makes up the world.  He writes, “To put it abstractly, a relational ontology of this sort can be defined as one in which nothing pre-exists the relations that constitute it. Said otherwise, things and beings are their relations; they do not exist prior to them.”  This is clearly different than the idea that things are disconnected and autonomous and that they then choose to relate to one another.  The relational ontology (ontology deals with the nature of being) that Escobar writes about is a bit of a mind puzzle for anyone brought up with Newtonian and Cartesian science.  But it is well worth puzzling over.  The first thing that springs to my mind is procreation in which a new life emerges from the relationship of its parents.  But, relational ontology goes deeper than that.  The African word Ubuntu is sometimes translated as “I am because we are” or “I am because you are.”  This example of relational ontology is worth thinking about. 

Escobar quotes the anthropologist Tim Ingold who says “these worlds without objects ‘are always in movement, made up of materials in motion, flux, and becoming; in these worlds, living beings of all kinds constitute each other’s conditions for existence; they ‘interweave to form an immense and continually evolving tapestry.’”  In this way, everything contributes to the inter-relational weave thereby creating the conditions necessary for existence.

It is easy in a comfortable home with lots of food to eat and the money to pay for it, to forget that we are a part of this tapestry.  But, stop for a moment and think about where today’s ingredients for the meals you ate came from.  Think about the soil they grew in, the rain that watered them, the people who tended them or fed them, who prepared them for sale, who drove them to the all the places they needed to go before they got to the store where you bought them.  Think about the electricity that powers all of your conveniences and the fuel that heats your home, the people that built your home and the places where all the materials came from.  Very quickly, you will understand that you exist because of all these others.

Another key to the future is a new story says Escobar as he writes: “Given that we cannot be intimate with the Earth within a mechanistic paradigm, we are in dire need of a new story that might enable us to reunite the sacred and the universe, the human and the nonhuman. The wisdom traditions, including those of indigenous peoples, offer a partial guide toward this goal of re-embedding ourselves within the Earth. Within these traditions, humans are embedded within the Earth, are part of its consciousness, not an individual consciousness existing in an inert world,” writes Escobar.  He goes on to quote a Nasa Indigenous leader from southwestern Columbia: “Somos la continuidad de la tierra, miremos desde el corazón de la tierra” (We are the extension of the Earth, let us think from the earth’s heart).

What stories could emerge from the earth’s heart, I wonder.  Instead of taking an “objective” viewpoint and talking about relationships, how can we think from the relationship?  How can we understand ourselves as embedded within the earth?  These may seem to be very heady questions but without this change in thinking, we in “the west” are likely to keep on going around in circles of despair and destruction.

I invite you to think about this and to listen for stories the come from the earth’s heart.  I imagine that they can only be heard from within the relationship.

Arturo Escobar (2020) Pluriversal Politics: The Real an the Possible. Duke University Press: Durham, North Carolina.