A New Political Imagination: Making the Case
... However, we, as human beings, are political too, whether we want to be or not. The troubled and challenging contemporary we are living in, and that heritage institutions are trying to make meanings of, calls for a "new political imagination" (Tlostanova & Fry, 2021) which will be "able to grasp the dynamic of relational complexity" and maintain "a coexistence and correlation of many different interacting and interesting positions with equal rights to existence" (ibid.). My dissertation aims to contribute to this discourse in the fields of museum studies and museology. ...
... And, I want to continue, this is what activist museology would to the museal world, not only specific practices and institutions. This kind of writing intends to bring more questions rather than to suggest solutions, it presumes that if we can "think museums politically" (Zabalueva, 2022b) than the museum landscape can become an arena for the new political imagination in the troubled and challenging times of our shared world (Tlostanova & Fry, 2021). ...
... The museum mechanics, therefore -which operates the divides of modernity, demands the disentanglement of "learning", "knowledge", and "science" from mundane everyday practice, and allows for "trust" -55 Kylie Message cites critical theorist Lauren Berlant on how the "case, as a genre <…> 'hovers about the singular, the general and the normative' but can also incite an opening, an altered way of feeling things out, of falling out the line" (2018, p. 70), and calls the case study approach "a political exercise" -or, as I would argue, an exercise of political imagination (cf. Tlostanova & Fry, 2021) which allows for challenging the existing paradigms. ...
... The co-creation of visions is an effective mechanism by which niche-regime reconfigurations can be fostered, and where alignment in terms of values, goals and action can occur (Bui et al., 2016;Öztekin & Gaziulusoy, 2020). Through dialogues and learning (Kossoff & Irwin, 2021) workshop participants immerse themselves not just in what needs to be created, but also in what needs to be dismantled-the potential blockers of change (Hyysalo et al., 2019;Fry & Tlostanova, 2020). For this, visioning and collective imagination processes need to be inclusive and reflexive of the voices and perspectives that have a say in shaping these visions . ...
... Complementary to the more popular argument about the need for imagination in transformations (Moore & Milkoreit, 2020;Pereira et al., 2019), creativity requires imagination but advances towards concrete outcomes-it is propositional. While a transformative imagination (Fry & Tlostanova, 2020;Galafassi, 2018) is necessary to develop new alternatives that may transcend the status quo (Gaziulusoy & Ryan, 2017), a democratization of creative capacities has the potential to provide more confidence and autonomy in not only dreaming of change, but also realizing it. In the case of food, imagination alone is insufficient. ...
... An important takeaway from the process confirms the pivotal role that creativity (Hansen et al., 2019), and not just imagination (Fry and Tlostanova 2020;Galafassi 2018;Pereira et al., 2019), plays in transformational transdisciplinary processes. The more intentional democratization of creative capacities has the potential to enhance confidence and autonomy in not only dreaming of change, but also realizing it. ...
Food, coalescing a multitude of our societal sustainability challenges, has the ontological power to make or mar the future of life on Earth. While calls to urgently and radically transform our globalized food systems abound, we struggle to discern how such systemic change processes should unfold in praxis, in ways that are appropriate for each context and across multiple scales. The plural and value-full expressions of purpose behind food practices and their transitions open and close different types of future worlds. Our challenge rests not just on knowing what could be done (system knowledge), but on deliberating and acting on why and how it should be realized (praxis). This transdisciplinary orientation demands different knowledges and a pragmatic capacity for moving from judgement to action— practical wisdom. The idiosyncratic and non-linear nature of this task transcends the rational, analytical and universalizable approaches inherited from the Enlightenment and resembles processes of synthesis, creativity, reflection and action akin to design. Emergent design practices that aim to intentionally transition societies to sustainability suggest that it is possible to leverage designerly creative, dialogical, and emergent capacities for imagining and realizing desirable transitions. However, while many frameworks and theories to support intentional food-system reconfigurations exist, there is a lack of case studies that report how these processes are designed and developed. This is even more pronounced in those that integrate design-informed approaches such as Transition Design and that are situated in Global South contexts. Through a three-layered case study developed in the context of Uruguay, this work advances a novel framework that can help design for the complex and fluid nature of these transdisciplinary processes. ‘Food Wisdom’ emerges a novel theory applicable for food system ‘transitions-in-the-making’ from a pluriversal standpoint. The framework reaffirms the contributions of designerly methods and skills, together with the central role that creativity must have when planning for collective processes of learning and change. The six principles that the framework identifies can be used to help nurture wise transitions by design, while still using food’s pedagogical and seductive power for approaching other sustainability-related complex problems.
Alternate abstract:
Los alimentos, que aglomeran una multitud de nuestros desafíos de sostenibilidad, tienen el poder ontológico de dar forma o estropear el futuro de la vida en la Tierra. Si bien abundan los llamados para urgente y radicalmente transformar nuestros sistemas alimentarios globalizados, luchamos por discernir cómo estos procesos de cambio sistémico deberían llevarse adelante en la práctica, y de manera que sean apropiados para cada contexto y sus múltiples escalas. Las prácticas alimentarias están marcadas por expresiones de propósito y valores plurales. Por consiguiente, sus transiciones abren y cierran diferentes tipos de mundos futuros. Nuestro desafío no radica sólo en saber qué se puede hacer (conocimiento del sistema), sino en deliberar y actuar sobre el por qué y el cómo realizarlo (praxis). Esta orientación transdisciplinar exige diferentes saberes y una capacidad pragmática para pasar del juicio a la acción: sabiduría práctica. La naturaleza idiosincrásica y no lineal de esta tarea trasciende los enfoques racionales, analíticos y universalizables heredados de la Ilustración y se asemeja a procesos de síntesis, creatividad, reflexión y acción afines al diseño. Las prácticas de diseño emergentes que tienen como objetivo hacer una transición intencional de las sociedades hacia la sostenibilidad, sugieren que es posible aprovechar las capacidades creativas, dialógicas y emergentes del diseño para imaginar y materializar transiciones deseables. Sin embargo, si bien existen muchos marcos y teorías para respaldar las reconfiguraciones intencionales del sistema alimentario, faltan estudios de casos que informen cómo se diseñan y desarrollan estos procesos. Esto es aún más pronunciado en aquellos que integran enfoques basados en el diseño como el Diseño para las Transiciones y que están situados en contextos del Sur Global. A través de un estudio de caso de tres capas desarrollado en el contexto de Uruguay, este trabajo propone un marco novedoso que puede ayudar a diseñar para la naturaleza compleja y fluida de estos procesos transdisciplinares. La 'Sabiduría Alimentaria’' surge como un concepto y teoría novedosa, aplicable a las 'transiciones en proceso' del sistema alimentario desde un punto de vista pluriversal. Este marco reafirma las contribuciones de los métodos y habilidades del diseñador, junto con el papel central que debe tener la creatividad en la planificación de procesos colectivos de aprendizaje y cambio. Los seis principios que identifica el marco se pueden utilizar para ayudar a promover transiciones inteligentes mediante el diseño, sin dejar de utilizar el poder pedagógico y seductor de los alimentos para abordar otros problemas complejos relacionados con la sostenibilidad.
... Various thinkers from different traditions and discourses have adopted relational approaches within Western knowledge. For example, philosophers like Heidegger, Levinas, and Whitehead incorporated relational approaches in their work (Fry & Tlostanova, 2020). The network visualizations created during the literature search revealed that thinkers like Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Sara Ahmed, Donna Haraway, John Law, Bruno Latour, Tim Ingold, and Pierre Bourdieu have been influential in academic discussion about relationality (see Appendix C). ...
... In many traditional worldviews, relations are conceived of as an inherent feature of the world (Pedersen, 2014, p. 202). For example, relational approaches are common in North American Indigenous philosophies, Southern African Ubuntu, Andean Pachamama, SumakKawsay, Indian correlation principle so-hum, and Eastern mysticism (Lange, 2018, p. 283;Fry & Tlostanova, 2020). For example, 'Chinese correlative thinking' informs a cosmos in which everything flows and the elements are considered a 'species of imagination' due to the perspective of the correlator (Fry & Tlostanova, 2020, Ch. 1). ...
... For Fry and Tlostanova (2020), current problems with epistemological frameworks of creating abstract and decontextualized knowledge are related to the way of thinking that created contemporary problems. Current neoliberal knowledge production favors fragmented and factual knowledge, which is less relational (Fry & Tlostanova, 2020). Therefore, current solutions can "technically be solved," but "political, economic, cultural delivery of the solution" is not precise (Fry & Tlostanova, 2020). ...
Design for sustainability aims to improve conditions within social, ecological, and technical domains by reconsidering how these domains relate to each other. However, the disciplinary conventions of design lack a practical framework for studying entangled relations between humans and nonhuman entities. For addressing this gap, the thesis explores the concept of relationality that emphasizes the interconnected wellbeing of human and nonhuman entities through kombucha fermentation practices. Due to touted health benefits of fermented kombucha tea, the practice of brewing kombucha has been shared among people and becoming more popular in recent decades. Within the thesis framework, the symbiotic relations among microbial and human bodies during kombucha fermentation served as a stage for recognizing the interconnectedness of human and non-human wellbeing. Interviews with kombucha brewers, a remote collective fermentation workshop, and a design probing activity provided insights into the relations between humans and microbes in the fermentation practices. The concept of relationality and the acquired insights about kombucha fermentation practices informed alternative ways of relating to nonhuman beings. Recognizing relationality opened a reflexive space for reconsidering everyday activities and understanding the 'interconnectedness between humans and others.' The sensory experience and embodied knowledge informed the emergence of relational ethics within human-microbe relations in kombucha fermentation practices. The learnings on human-nonhuman relationality aimed to enrich the discussions in design for sustainability by providing concepts and intuitive tools for exploring social-ecological entanglements.
... Baraitser's recurrent idea that the neoliberal time is marked by the demise of the imaginary of the "now time" (Benjamin's Jetztzeit) and the imposition of the temporality of suspension-of the self, of any hope for change, of unfolding future (Baraitser 2017, 161)-is a clear description of chronophobia the way we addressed it with Tony Fry in A New Political Imagination. Making the Case N o t f o r d i s c t r i b u t i o n (Fry and Tlostanova 2021). The Covid-19 pandemic could theoretically act as one collective unifying experience shaking humanity out of its problematic temporal condition, but the situation has not developed in a best way. ...
... Yet, even if we agree with indigenous temporality, it is hard to practice it in everyday life as no one, including the indigenous people themselves, is free from modernity and to continue living in accordance with such ideas and notions could be seen as a rare exception, a specific kind of austerity that is not available to everyone and is almost impossible to put to life in non-communal societies. The small islands of radically non-modern temporalities are only to be found in some downshifting communities or even more rarely, in communities of change (Fry and Tlostanova 2021) that attempt to not just escape the dominant model of time but to create other options and build other lives and other futures in the cracks and fissures, and at the fringes of the frozen late modern time. In the folds and fractures of normative time, other possible temporalities are nested which fall out of the mainstream vector idea of time but may come forward because of its present dislocation leading to increased indeterminacy and temporal heterogeneity. ...
... Baraitser's recurrent idea that the neoliberal time is marked by the demise of the imaginary of the "now time" (Benjamin's Jetztzeit) and the imposition of the temporality of suspension-of the self, of any hope for change, of unfolding future (Baraitser 2017, 161)-is a clear description of chronophobia the way we addressed it with Tony Fry in A New Political Imagination. Making the Case N o t f o r d i s c t r i b u t i o n (Fry and Tlostanova 2021). The Covid-19 pandemic could theoretically act as one collective unifying experience shaking humanity out of its problematic temporal condition, but the situation has not developed in a best way. ...
... Yet, even if we agree with indigenous temporality, it is hard to practice it in everyday life as no one, including the indigenous people themselves, is free from modernity and to continue living in accordance with such ideas and notions could be seen as a rare exception, a specific kind of austerity that is not available to everyone and is almost impossible to put to life in non-communal societies. The small islands of radically non-modern temporalities are only to be found in some downshifting communities or even more rarely, in communities of change (Fry and Tlostanova 2021) that attempt to not just escape the dominant model of time but to create other options and build other lives and other futures in the cracks and fissures, and at the fringes of the frozen late modern time. In the folds and fractures of normative time, other possible temporalities are nested which fall out of the mainstream vector idea of time but may come forward because of its present dislocation leading to increased indeterminacy and temporal heterogeneity. ...
... Baraitser's recurrent idea that the neoliberal time is marked by the demise of the imaginary of the "now time" (Benjamin's Jetztzeit) and the imposition of the temporality of suspension-of the self, of any hope for change, of unfolding future (Baraitser 2017, 161)-is a clear description of chronophobia the way we addressed it with Tony Fry in A New Political Imagination. Making the Case N o t f o r d i s c t r i b u t i o n (Fry and Tlostanova 2021). The Covid-19 pandemic could theoretically act as one collective unifying experience shaking humanity out of its problematic temporal condition, but the situation has not developed in a best way. ...
... Yet, even if we agree with indigenous temporality, it is hard to practice it in everyday life as no one, including the indigenous people themselves, is free from modernity and to continue living in accordance with such ideas and notions could be seen as a rare exception, a specific kind of austerity that is not available to everyone and is almost impossible to put to life in non-communal societies. The small islands of radically non-modern temporalities are only to be found in some downshifting communities or even more rarely, in communities of change (Fry and Tlostanova 2021) that attempt to not just escape the dominant model of time but to create other options and build other lives and other futures in the cracks and fissures, and at the fringes of the frozen late modern time. In the folds and fractures of normative time, other possible temporalities are nested which fall out of the mainstream vector idea of time but may come forward because of its present dislocation leading to increased indeterminacy and temporal heterogeneity. ...
... Baraitser's recurrent idea that the neoliberal time is marked by the demise of the imaginary of the "now time" (Benjamin's Jetztzeit) and the imposition of the temporality of suspension-of the self, of any hope for change, of unfolding future (Baraitser 2017, 161)-is a clear description of chronophobia the way we addressed it with Tony Fry in A New Political Imagination. Making the Case N o t f o r d i s c t r i b u t i o n (Fry and Tlostanova 2021). The Covid-19 pandemic could theoretically act as one collective unifying experience shaking humanity out of its problematic temporal condition, but the situation has not developed in a best way. ...
... Yet, even if we agree with indigenous temporality, it is hard to practice it in everyday life as no one, including the indigenous people themselves, is free from modernity and to continue living in accordance with such ideas and notions could be seen as a rare exception, a specific kind of austerity that is not available to everyone and is almost impossible to put to life in non-communal societies. The small islands of radically non-modern temporalities are only to be found in some downshifting communities or even more rarely, in communities of change (Fry and Tlostanova 2021) that attempt to not just escape the dominant model of time but to create other options and build other lives and other futures in the cracks and fissures, and at the fringes of the frozen late modern time. In the folds and fractures of normative time, other possible temporalities are nested which fall out of the mainstream vector idea of time but may come forward because of its present dislocation leading to increased indeterminacy and temporal heterogeneity. ...
... Design, facilitation, and the role of dialogical artifacts SARAS' Cycle was highly facilitated and informed by designbased approaches and methods (Section Research approach). This aligns well with recent postulates of the potential role that the field of Design has in fostering transitions to sustainability (Escobar, 2015;Irwin, 2015;Gaziulusoy and Ryan, 2017;Fry and Tlostanova, 2020). Developing communicational and dialogical spaces and artifacts was a key part of enabling very different "voices" to converge into a space and enrich it by contributing from their lived experiences through their multiple roles in society. ...
... They helped facilitate generative dialogues in virtual events and workshops (Manzini, 2016) and enabled people to express different facets of their own creativity (Sanders and Stappers, 2008). This is key to fostering the political and transformative imagination (Galafassi, 2018;Fry and Tlostanova, 2020) necessary to generate inspiration or develop new alternatives that may transcend the status quo (Gaziulusoy and Ryan, 2017). ...
The wicked nature of sustainability challenges facing food systems demands intentional and synergistic actions at multiple scales and sectors. The Southern Cone of Latin America, with its historical legacy of “feeding the world,” presents interesting opportunities for generating insights into potential trajectories and processes for food system transformation. To foster such changes would require the development of collective understanding and agency to effectively realize purposeful and well-informed action toward desirable and sustainable food futures. This in turn demands the transdisciplinary engagement of academia, the private sector, government/policy-makers, community groups, and other institutions, as well as the broader society as food consumers. While the need for contextualized knowledge, priorities and definitions of what sustainable food systems change means is recognized, there is limited literature reporting these differences and critically reflecting on the role of knowledge brokers in knowledge co-production processes. The political nature of these issues requires arenas for dialogue and learning that are cross-sectoral and transcend knowledge generation. This paper presents a case study developed by SARAS Institute, a bridging organization based in Uruguay. This international community of practice co-designed a 3-year multi-stakeholder transdisciplinary process entitled “Knowledges on the Table.” We describe how the process was designed, structured, and facilitated around three phases, two analytical levels and through principles of knowledge co-production. The case study and its insights offer a model that could be useful to inform similar processes led by transdisciplinary communities of practice or bridging institutions in the early stages of transformative work. In itself, it also represents a unique approach to generate a language of collaboration, dialogue, and imagination informed by design skills and methods. While this is part of a longer-term process toward capitalizing on still-unfolding insights and coalitions, we hope that this example helps inspire similar initiatives to imagine, support, and realize contextualized sustainable food system transformations.
... Antweiler suggests to the reader "a thought experiment" she calls the "Museum of Doubt. " It follows the trend of thought that calls for "unlearning" imperialism and colonial history (Azoulay 2019), for new political imagination in the time of ongoing global crises (Tlostanova and Fry 2021), and for "different ways of remembering" in the realm of multidirectional memory as a non-zero-sum game (Rothberg 2009). The imaginary Museum of Doubt would try to "avoid universalisation as much as closure and instead emphasise the impossibility of stitching the images of history into one coherent narrative" (197), it also denies the normativity of morality and the single story of the universal human rights narrative. ...
The question of repatriation and restitution looms large in the museum world today, particularly for ethnographic museums in the former seats of empire that house culturally significant artworks and sacred objects from around the world. But beyond the question of which objects to return, and to whom, museums must also question how to display and curate materials that remain in their possession. What are museums to do with the spoils of empire neatly cataloged and carefully stored in Europe's metropoles?
... Based on this visionary "logic," in one of her last books, A New Political Imagination, co-authored with Tony Fry (Fry and Tlostanova 2021) she is necessarily drawn beyond the decolonial problematic into even more abstract spaces, venturing into the realms of something that closely resembles wishful thinking (even though she repeatedly speaks out against empty utopianism). Together with her co-author she seeks a solution to save the world, facing a near-apocalyptic complex crisis in the Anthropocene era, overlooked by both politicians and traditional departmentalized scholars. ...
The relationship between post-colonial and post-socialist studies is extraordinarily complex. Post-colonialists might argue that it can be approached from different perspectives as well as different power positions of knowledge production. As a result, I have chosen a specific trajectory that intersects and challenges the static power positions and is able to trace the debates and the unfolding of the complex problem over time. As a long-time scholar in this area, and moreover one who has taken many different roads in both fields, I will describe this relationship from the perspective of my own scholarly biography. However, my professional career has spanned several decades and surpassed the transient trends and fashions within this scholarly field. As such, it can only be depicted as an extensive narrative comprising multiple episodes, published in sequence across the double issue of the journal Studia Litteraria, devoted to forms of engagement in contemporary Southern and Western Slavic literatures. Part 3 discusses soft and hard variants of the complex “powers/knowledge”.
... transformative spaces. Arts-based creative practices also enhance understanding through making with our hands (Langley et al. 2018); they enable the integration of diverse types of knowledge (Tengö et al. 2014, Delgado and Rist 2016, Leavy 2020, Chambers et al. 2021, and allow participants to explore what needs to be created and dismantled (Hyysalo et al. 2019, Fry andTlostanova 2020). Moreover, collective visions can lead to alignment in terms of values and goals, necessary for systems-level transformation (Bui et al. 2016, Öztekin andGaziulusoy 2021). ...
... Por un lado, permiten apoyar la identificación y exploración de los problemas de formas creativas y asegurando la integración de diversos conocimientos, tipos y fuentes de evidencia (Tengö et al., 2014;Delgado & Rist 2016). Al mismo tiempo, permiten proyectar escenarios que sean útiles a la hora de explorar cómo desarrollar futuros alimentarios contextualmente relevantes (Mangnus et al., 2019), mientras se logra que los participantes involucrados puedan debatir no solo sobre lo que hay que crear, sino también sobre lo que hay que desmantelar (Hyysalo et al., 2019;Fry & Tlostanova, 2020). El aprovechamiento de la capacidad imaginativa y disruptiva de las prácticas del diseño y artísticas permiten democratizar y ejercitar la creatividad que existe en las personas y que se manifiesta en el día a día, así como ofrecer la predisposición emocional para permitir y navegar transformaciones hacia la sostenibilidad (Galafassi et al., 2018) que exigen nuevas formas de conocer y hacer, pero también de ser (Fazey et al., 2020;Escobar, 2020). ...
Although the food we consume comes from various sectors of our food systems, blue foods have always been relegated or understudied. In Uruguay in particular, several co-existing factors undermine the fisheries sector and the benefit of their products to the local diet and food security. The small-
scale fisheries sector has historically been relegated in public policies and has received little attention from society. Associated with numerous challenges, it currently faces a bleak narrative about its future. In this context, ‘Pescando Transformaciones’ emerges as a transdisciplinary
project to motivate transformative pathways in the small-scale fisheries sector in Uruguay, by confronting the cognitive, technical and creative challenges that this means. This work reports the main results generated by the project, especially describing the
Revista Latinoamericana de Food Design
process of co-creation of products such as a catalogue, visions of the future and a documentary. We offer an empirical case that demonstrates how fishers, artists, designers, gastronomes and researchers can collaborate to spark local and significant transformations, especially from generative processes focused
on creativity and collective action, evidencing the potential of Food Design to contribute to transformative food system processes
... From this perspective, total design is at the core of the onto-epistemic development of European modernity and its colonial drive, which unfolded over the course of hundreds of years (Fry 2015;Mbembe 2019;Woodham 1995;Mrozowski 1999;Mignolo 2011;Tunstall 2013). Later, total design became a key component of the continuation of this expansion-within the framework of accelerated techno-modernity (Fry and Tlostanova 2021). Fry also draws attention to the process of the successive development of total design elements in the contemporary capitalist doctrine, where design functions as an integral part of the processes of social engineering, algorithmization, and individuation (Fry 2015;Harrison et al. 2011). ...
The article presents the concept of postdigital collective memory—a proposal that opens possible research fields for postdigital science and education. Postdigital collective memory is co-created between human and nonhuman beings and technological media, with the latter treated as sensitive sensors. In order to exemplify this concept, the article presents research results from field practices and design workshops conducted by the Humanities/Art/Technology Research Center at Lake Elsensee-Rusałka in Poznań and the prototype of the Sensitive Data Lake (SDL)—a digital environment project incorporating human and nonhuman actants and attempting to restore a shared narrative about a place whose history has been suppressed and has faded from public memory. This lake is one of many examples of what Tony Fry calls ‘total design’: it was created during World War II, through the forced labor of Jewish prisoners, as part of the Nazi expansion into the East; and the project attempted to redesign the environment and remove the local inhabitants. Following the theories that analyze the long duration of ‘total design’ (Fry) and the concepts of transitions design (Escobar), the author’s own Critical Media Design (CMD) method was applied to develop various experimental strategies for design and educational work related to the history and memory of the Elsensee-Rusałka site in the postdigital reality.
... These vital socio-cultural connections are often neglected, silenced, or omitted in ocean management approaches [69]. Such methods also offer avenues to expand the possibility space and even critically reflect on what is seen as 'impossible' [70]. Ortiz [71] describes 'storytelling otherwise' as a process of reimagining and radical unlearning in a decolonial research practice. ...
... My ruminations on these shifts were triggered in many ways by the book on the new political imagination that we were finishing co-writing with Tony Fry (Fry and Tlostanova 2020) when the pandemic hit. One of the key concepts that we regarded as defining for the current époque was that of unsettlement which also stands in the centre of this quaint book. ...
This book uses an interdisciplinary inter-mediational approach to reflect on the relational complexity of unsettlement as a predominant sensibility of the present époque.
The book tackles interrelated aspects of unsettlement including temporality, the disconcerting effects of the Anthropocene, the biomedical facets of unsettlement and the post-pandemic futures. It uses a chimeric approach combining essayistic and speculative fiction writing methods, negotiating rational, affective and imaginative ways of inquiry, and showing rather than merely explaining. The book poses questions, but gives no ready-made answers, and invites to think together on the unsettlement as a negatively global human condition that can be collectively made into a generative move of resurgence and refuturing.
Contributing to critical reflections on the main features and sensibilities of the current epoque, the book will be of interest to scholars and undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the general public, interested in critical global and future perspectives, in decolonial research, gender studies and posthumanities.
... Las prácticas sabias son idiosincráticas, particulares a cada contexto y situación y no pueden conformarse como recetas que puedan ser replicadas universalmente (Davis, 1997;Wesley-Esquimaux & Calliou, 2010). Se trata de deliberaciones y encarnaciones que materializan nuestra imaginación política y moral (Fry & Tlostanova, 2020) y, como tales, solo existen en la dimensión de la praxis (Mouffe, 2005, pp. 13-14), en el ejercicio de navegar los problemas de la vida, ya no en problemas del conocimiento (Maxwell, 2007). ...
La naturaleza interrelacionada de las múltiples crisis socioambientales que acechan a América Latina exige una acción colectiva audaz, urgente y creativa. Los problemas perversos que se pueden encontrar interconectando estas crisis caracterizan una necesidad de integración genuina del conocimiento (transdisciplina) que pueda articular y trascender el conocimiento académico por sí solo.
https://pub.palermo.edu/ojs/index.php/cdc/article/view/6848
... Despite their positive appraisal of the Swedish and the British citizenship regimes, Kurdish and Palestinian migrants were highly aware of the various thresholds that the society has set up to exclude non-white and Muslim immigrants from achieving equality. It is in this context that Fry and Tlostanova (2021) maintain that ethnic exclusion continues to be a major problem not only for authoritarian regimes but also for the most egalitarian and apparently democratic societies, to which countries like Sweden and the UK belong. Exclusionary citizenship regimes not only target those outside of its national borders, but also marked citizens within the same entity. ...
This chapter engages with the narratives of Kurdish and Palestinian migrants regarding what statelessness entail to them and affect their identity formation, voice, status, visibility and presence in the world in the context of sovereign and non-sovereign identities. It also discusses commonality and differences between these two group in relation to statelessness and how they relate to each other as members of two nations without states. While the Kurds generally regard statelessness as a political device to gain international recognition and support, the Palestinians view statelessness as a dangerous appellation since it is interpreted as turning the Palestinians into a ‘landless’ people and legitimizing Israeli mastery. The question of resistance to statelessness is also highlighted. An important focus of this chapter is to discuss hierarchy of statelessness and suffering that certain Palestinian and Kurdish individuals either endorse or challenge.
... Despite their positive appraisal of the Swedish and the British citizenship regimes, Kurdish and Palestinian migrants were highly aware of the various thresholds that the society has set up to exclude non-white and Muslim immigrants from achieving equality. It is in this context that Fry and Tlostanova (2021) maintain that ethnic exclusion continues to be a major problem not only for authoritarian regimes but also for the most egalitarian and apparently democratic societies, to which countries like Sweden and the UK belong. Exclusionary citizenship regimes not only target those outside of its national borders, but also marked citizens within the same entity. ...
This introductory chapter orients the book toward scholarship on the importance of studying statelessness from sociological, political theory and legal perspectives. It does so by primarily discussing and assessing the work of Hannah Arendt with regard to her seminal conceptualization of statelessness. The chapter also surveys the theoretical and empirical field in relation to statelessness with a particular focus on Kurdish and Palestinian experiences. In the same context, the chapter reviews the evolution of the Kurdish and Palestinian diasporas with regard to their statelessness and the political situation of their contested and occupied homelands. Moreover, I provide a brief methodological discussion in relation to Kurdish and Palestinian diasporas and the individuals that have been recruited to participate in the study and the analysis that guides the narrative accounts of the research participants.
... In the face of the COVID-19 crisis the alleged decline of the humanities has clearly come to its end, making space for their revival and increased relevance in the new context that is discrediting the very status-quo Anthropocene/Capitalocene (Haraway 2016) conditions and assumptions that have normalized the 'decline' before. We believe that the humanities are becoming more important, notwithstanding the interconnected global challenges such as physical and existential unsettlement, climate change and environmental destruction, post-and neocolonialism, racism and sexism, lost teleology and chronophobia (Tlostanova and Fry, 2020), the failure of politics, the increasing derelationality (or narrow specialization) of knowledge, dysfunctional international relations, ontological and technological transformations of reality and the human, continuous erasing of memories and cosmologies, defuturing of human and non-human lives on Earth, and Anthropocene necropolitics (Lykke 2019). Humanities are highly responsive to these shifts, which leads to the emergence of post-, and interdisciplinary areas of inquiry, while simultaneously questioning and renewing humanities agendas, and revamping them for the future. ...
This is an experts` report on the Nordic humanities in the 21st century and also in relation to Covid crisis
... Despite their positive appraisal of the Swedish and the British citizenship regimes, Kurdish and Palestinian migrants were highly aware of the various thresholds that the society has set up to exclude non-white and Muslim immigrants from achieving equality. It is in this context that Fry and Tlostanova (2021) maintain that ethnic exclusion continues to be a major problem not only for authoritarian regimes but also for the most egalitarian and apparently democratic societies, to which countries like Sweden and the UK belong. Exclusionary citizenship regimes not only target those outside of its national borders, but also marked citizens within the same entity. ...
This chapter provides an overview of Kurdish migration within the boundary of the Middle East and discusses the Kurdish diaspora formation in the Western contexts. The chapter focus on the strategies of Kurdish diaspora and the limits and possibilities of its effect on Kurdish politics due to structural constraints that it is subjected to in the West. Finally, the chapter argues that the lived experiences of collective suffering and misrecognition haunt Kurdish subjectivities but questions whether the Kurdish diaspora can remain equally active in homeland politics due to normalisation of political crisis in Kurdish lives.
This chapter combines voices from diverse disciplines—linguistics, literature, translation, theatre, and cultural studies—to unpack the above metaphor. Arguing that multilingual contexts emphasize the existence of differences, the discussion examines the complexities of multilingual dramaturgical webs and their operations in contemporary Europe. Through that, this chapter argues that multilingual dramaturgies create platforms for imagining new paradigms of otherness in Europe and seeing it as an inherent element of Europe’s communities, countries, institutions, regions, spaces, cultures, and their (hi)stories. By doing so, dramaturgies also destabilize the idea of Europe and ‘European identity’ as definable, stable, uniform, or unique. As the discussions show, multilingual dramaturgies can provide urgent political, social, and cultural leadership for understanding and responding to challenges arising from living on the rapidly changing continent.
The final chapter revises the results and the theoretical arguments of this study. It specifically discusses how statelessness is conceived, valued and experienced in a world of nation-states and why decolonization of the nation-state as a political template is needed to create more inclusive and pluralistic societies beyond permanent majorities and minorities with disparate power relations. This chapter will also focus on the questions of universality, difference, sameness and equality in the context of the nation-state. As long as the inequality and denial continue within the realms of the nation-states, few societies can achieve lasting peace, conviviality and stability, since inequality and denial are fertile ground for cultivating polarized identities in a world where certain groups establish themselves as subjects of rights and privilege at the expense of racialized and stateless groups. At the end, it is mainly by altering the political normativity of the nation-states and hierarchical citizenship regimes, that a new inclusionary political future can be envisioned and enacted beyond political mastery and subordination.
n What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Madina Tlostanova traces how contemporary post-Soviet art mediates this human condition. Observing how the concept of the happy future—which was at the core of the project of Soviet modernity—has lapsed from the post-Soviet imagination, Tlostanova shows how the possible way out of such a sense of futurelessness lies in the engagement with activist art. She interviews artists, art collectives, and writers such as Estonian artist Liina Siib, Uzbek artist Vyacheslav Akhunov, and Azerbaijani writer Afanassy Mamedov who frame the post-Soviet condition through the experience and expression of community, space, temporality, gender, and negotiating the demands of the state and the market. In foregrounding the unfolding aesthesis and activism in the post-Soviet space, Tlostanova emphasizes the important role that decolonial art plays in providing the foundation upon which to build new modes of thought and a decolonial future.
This research focuses on the phenomenon of digital diplomacy, critically analyzed from the perspective of philosophical psychoanalysis. The study aims to elaborate the theoretical underpinnings of digital diplomacy through employing the conceptual framework of collective individuation and psychotechnologies developed by French critical philosopher Bernard Stiegler. Stiegler’s philosophical conception of contemporary politics under the condition of globalized cultural and economic capitalism is employed in this work to explain the dramatic changes in diplomatic relations taking place on the international arena at the beginning of the new century.
Heidegger's landmark critique of modern technology and its relation to metaphysics has been widely accepted in the East. Yet the conception that there is only one-originally Greek-type of techne has been an obstacle to any original critical thinking of technology in modern Chinese thought. This book argues for the urgency of imagining a specifically Chinese philosophy of technology capable of responding to Heidegger's conception and problematizing the affirmation of technics and technologies as anthropologically universal. Yuk Hui's systematic historical survey of Chinese thought in comparison to the antique philosophy in Europe explains why there is no systematic thinking of technics in Chinese thought. His subsequent investigation of the historical-metaphysical questions of modern technology, drawing on Lyotard, Simondon, and Stiegler, then sheds new light on the obscurity of the question of technology in China. Why has time never been a real question for Chinese philosophy, how has the category of Qi transformed in its relation to Dao in Chinese metaphysical discourse, and how might Chinese thought contribute to a renewed questioning of globalized technics?
This paper argues that the dominant discourse on cosmopolitanism has largely focused on its constitutive character (what the law tells us) while ignoring its substantive essence (human fellowship, subjective good). While recognizing the contribution made by other intellectual traditions, the paper argues that none of the approaches have yet answered basic questions of how to live with the stranger beyond the requirement(s) of the law. The paper is also critical of those versions of cosmopolitanism that privileges subjective preference to members of our community over the stranger, or that advocates eradication of boundaries as key condition for cosmopolitanism. The paper champions subjective equality through dialogue as a key condition for cosmopolitanism. Subjective equality on the other hand defines our terms of global justice.
The term feminism expresses a commitment to resist the various forms of oppression women experience. Drawing from the author’s extensive interactions with the emerging indigenous women’s movement in Mexico, this article explores its political agency and social strategies. Feminist indigenous practices both question and shape the wider feminist movement in Mexico. A certain hegemonic feminism often reproduces the relationship that Chandra Mohanty speaks of when describing the links between First and Third World feminist discourses. She argues that Western feminist discourse has produced a “ ... composite, singular ‘third world woman,’” who is a “powerless” victim of male dominance and patriarchal oppression (Mohanty 1991, 53). Urban feminist analysis in Mexico has given rise to a hegemony that has often defined indigenous feminism as the “other”: exotic, strangely rooted in “culture” and powerless if not nonexistent.
What about diversity and inclusion at the University of Amsterdam? In this report the Diversity Commission presents the study they conducted between March and September 2016. Based on qualitative and quantitative results we develop recommendations on how to make the University more inclusive, on how to further diversify staff and student body, to develop an inclusive language, and be more sensitive to the social and political context of research and teaching.
Degrowth is a rejection of the illusion of growth and a call to repoliticize the public debate colonized by the idiom of economism. It is a project advocating the democratically-led shrinking of production and consumption with the aim of achieving social justice and ecological sustainability. This overview of degrowth offers a comprehensive coverage of the main topics and major challenges of degrowth in a succinct, simple and accessible manner. In addition, it offers a set of keywords useful for intervening in current political debates and for bringing about concrete degrowth-inspired proposals at different levels [en] local, national and global. The result is the most comprehensive coverage of the topic of degrowth in English and serves as the definitive international reference.
This paper aims to provide an overview of surveillance theories and concepts that can help to understand and debate surveillance in its many forms. As scholars from an increasingly wide range of disciplines are discussing surveillance, this literature review can offer much-needed common ground for the debate. We structure surveillance theory in three roughly chronological/thematic phases. The first two conceptualise surveillance through comprehensive theoretical frameworks which are elaborated in the third phase. The first phase, featuring Bentham and Foucault, offers architectural theories of surveillance, where surveillance is often physical and spatial, involving centralised mechanisms of watching over subjects. Panoptic structures function as architectures of power, not only directly but also through (self-) disciplining of the watched subjects. The second phase offers infrastructural theories of surveillance, where surveillance is networked and relies primarily on digital rather than physical technologies. It involves distributed forms of watching over people, with increasing distance to the watched and often dealing with data doubles rather than physical persons. Deleuze, Haggerty and Ericson, and Zuboff develop different theoretical frameworks than panopticism to conceptualise the power play involved in networked surveillance. The third phase of scholarship refines, combines or extends the main conceptual frameworks developed earlier. Surveillance theory branches out to conceptualise surveillance through concepts such as dataveillance, access control, social sorting, peer-to-peer surveillance and resistance. With the datafication of society, surveillance combines the physical with the digital, government with corporate surveillance and top-down with self-surveillance.
Born in Eastern Europe, educated in the West under the guidance of Martin Heidegger and the phenomenological tradition, and forced to flee during the Holocaust because of their Jewish identity, it should come as no surprise that Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt’s ideas intersect in an important way. This book demonstrates for the first time the significance of a dialogue between Levinas’ ethics of alterity and Arendt’s politics of plurality.
Anya Topolski brings their respective projects into dialogue by means of the notion of relationality, a concept inspired by the Judaic tradition that is prominent in both thinker’s work. The book explores questions relating to the relationship between ethics and politics, the Judaic contribution to rethinking the meaning of the political after the Shoah, and the role of relationality and responsibility for politics. The result is an alternative conception of the political based on the ideas of plurality and alterity that aims to be relational, inclusive, and empowering.
This Handbook offers several papers on Nietzsche’s main philosophical topics supplemented with sets of papers dealing with biography, relations with other philosophers, and his individual works. Topics covered by the papers include Nietzsche’s biography, family, attitude towards women, his sickness and madness, his interest in the views of other philosophers, his principal works, values, epistemology and metaphysics, and his idea of will to power.
Kontingenz und Tragik sind in der Moderne eng miteinander verbunden. Alles scheint möglich, doch immer weniger ist auch wahrscheinlich. Mit der Potentialisierung des Realen und der Unbestimmbarkeit des Ungewissen rücken Endlichkeit und Vergänglichkeit, Verlust und Gewalt, Freiheit und Simulation verstärkt in den Blick. Die Suche nach neuen Bearbeitungsmustern für Unfälle, Katastrophen und Risikoszenarien wird verstärkt. Wie die Beiträge des Bandes zeigen, bietet in dieser Situation die moderne Kunst ein ernstes Spiel der Erzeugung und Stilisierung der tragischen Kontingenz und der kontingenten Tragik.
In Can Non-Europeans Think? Dabashi takes his subtle but vigorous polemic to another level.'
Pankaj Mishra
What happens to thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical pedigree? In this powerfully honed polemic, Hamid Dabashi argues that they are invariably marginalised, patronised and misrepresented.
Challenging, pugnacious and stylish, Can Non-Europeans Think? forges a new perspective in postcolonial theory by examining how intellectual debate continues to reinforce a colonial regime of knowledge, albeit in a new guise.
Based on years of scholarship and activism, this insightful collection of philosophical explorations is certain to unsettle and delight in equal measure.
A discussion of peace continues here, but moves from a conjunctural critique of the concept to examine the political and ideological contexts. There will be a critical, historical and contemporary politically framed focus upon nationalism, idealism and cosmopolitism. The argument put forward will acknowledge that geopolitical tensions and climate change are currently transforming perspectives of how the relations between the Global North and Global South are seen—including acknowledging those perspectives from indigenous cultures. Again, but in the context outline, Unstaging War will be introduced strategically and futurally as an opening into another way of thinking and acting in recognition of the redundancy of the concept and institutions of peace and its accompanying political ideologies.
This book presents the concept of ‘unstaging’ war as a strategic response to the failure of the discourse and institutions of peace. This failure is explained by exploring the changing character of conflict in current and emergent global circumstances, such as asymmetrical conflicts, insurgencies, and terrorism. Fry argues that this pluralisation of war has broken the binary relation between war and peace: conflict is no longer self-evident, and consequentially the changes in the conditions, nature, systems, philosophies and technologies of war must be addressed.
Through a deep understanding of contemporary war, Fry explains why peace fails as both idea and process, before presenting ‘Unstaging War’ as a concept and nascent practice that acknowledges conflict as structurally present, and so is not able to be dealt with by attempts to create peace. Against a backdrop of increasingly tense relations between global power blocs, the beginnings of a new nuclear arms race, and the ever-increasing human and environmental impacts of climate change, a more viable alternative to war is urgently needed. Unstaging War is not claimed as a solution, but rather as an exploration of critical problems and an opening into the means of engaging with them.
"The story unfolds through a decisive account of the career of Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950), the most famous American geographer of the twentieth century. For nearly four decades Bowman operated around the vortex of state power, working to bring an American order to the global landscape. An explorer on the famous Machu Picchu expedition of 1911 who came to be known first as "Woodrow Wilson's geographer," and later as Franklin D. Roosevelt's, Bowman was present at the creation of U.S. liberal foreign policy." "A quarter-century later, Bowman was at the center of Roosevelt's State Department, concerned with the disposition of Germany and heightened U.S. access to European colonies; he was described by Dean Acheson as a key "architect of the United Nations." In that period he was a leader in American science, served as president of Johns Hopkins University, and became an early and vociferous cold warrior. A complicated, contradictory, and at times controversial figure who was very much in the public eye, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine." "Bowman's career as a geographer in an era when the value of geography was deeply questioned provides a unique window into the contradictory uses of geographical knowledge in the construction of the American Empire. Smith's historical excavation reveals, in broad strokes yet with lively detail, that today's American-inspired globalization springs not from the 1980s but from two earlier moments in 1919 and 1945, both of which ended in failure. By recharting the geography of this history, Smith brings the politics - and the limits - of contemporary globalization sharply into focus."--Jacket.
Undoing democracy : neoliberalism's remaking of state and subject -- Foucault's birth of biopolitics lectures : the distinctiveness of neoliberal rationality -- Revising Foucault : homo politicus and homo oeconomicus -- Disseminating neoliberal rationality I : governance, benchmarks and best practices -- Disseminating neoliberal rationality II : law and legal reason -- Disseminating neoliberal rationality III : higher education and the abandonment of citizenship -- Losing bare democracy and the inversion of freedom into sacrifice.
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
In this brief reply to the essays by Edwin Etieyibo (2017), Thad Metz (2017), and Elisa Galgut (2017), I argue (a) that African morality is neither biocentric nor ecocentric in the sense of accepting that “there is no significant moral difference between animal and human slaughter and rituals,” and (b) that African modal relationalism is problematic in both its empirical assumptions and its normative counsel. I concede that anthropocentrism, whether this involves the view that only human beings merit moral treatment or the view that any human is necessarily superior to or more significant morally than any other animal, is not essential to African morality. There exist several resources in African philosophical thinking for deriving a nonanthropocentric and nonspeciesist ethical orientation. The task, however, is a formidable one that requires imagination as well as intellectual consistency and honesty.
Design came to name modernity's way of worlding the world. What is at stake in decolonizing design is our relation to earth, and the dignifying of relational worlds. The task of decolonizing design brings us to a three-folded path: to understand modernity´s way of worlding the world as artifice, as earthlessness, to understand coloniality´s way of un-worlding the world, of annihilating relational worlds and, to think the decolonial as a form of radical hope for an ethical life with earth.
At a more fundamental level, the mode of precedence is introduced to challenge modernity´s metaphysics of presence and its reduction of experience to empty time. The question of precedence delinks from western's philosophy grounding dichotomy between immanence and transcendence. The mode of precedence brings to the fore a temporal relationality that is always already ahead of any formation in the field of immanence, in the surface of the present.
Can we think of relational design as a decolonial form of being with earth and of worlding the world? Can we think of design as a mode of listening?
This book tackles the intersections of postcolonial and postsocialist imaginaries and sensibilities focusing on the ways they are reflected in contemporary art, fiction, theater and cinema. After the defeat of the Socialist modernity the postsocialist space and its people have found themselves in the void. Many elements of the former Second world experience, echo the postcolonial situations, including subalternization, epistemic racism, mimicry, unhomedness and transit, the revival of ethnic nationalisms and neo-imperial narratives, neo-Orientalist and mutant Eurocentric tendencies, indirect forms of resistance and life-asserting modes of re-existence. Yet there are also untranslatable differences between the postcolonial and the postsocialist human conditions. The monograph focuses on the aesthetic principles and mechanisms of sublime, the postsocialist/postcolonial decolonization of museums, the perception and representation of space and time through the tempolocalities of post-dependence, the anatomy of characters-tricksters with shifting multiple identities, the memory politics of the post-traumatic conditions and ways of their overcoming. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017. All rights reserved.
Irreversible processes are the source of order: hence 'order out of chaos.' Processes associated with randomness (openness) lead to higher levels of organisation. Under certain conditions, entropy may thus become the progenitor of order. The authors propose a vast synthesis that embraces both reversible and irreversible time, and show how they relate to one another at both macroscopic and minute levels of examination.-A.Toffler
Decoloniality is, in the first place, a concept whose point of origination was the Third World. Better yet, it emerged at the very moment in which the three world division was collapsing and the celebration of the end of history and a new world order was emerging. The nature of its impact was similar to the impact produced by the introduction of the concept of "biopolitics", whose point of origination was Europe. Like its European counterpart, "coloniality" moved to the center of international debates in the non-European world as well as in "former Eastern Europe." While "biopolitics" moved to center stage in "former Western Europe" (cf., the European Union) and the United States, as well as among some intellectual minorities of the non-European followers of ideas that originated in Europe, but who adapt them to local circumstances, "coloniality" offers a needed sense of comfort to mainly people of color in developing countries, migrants and, in general, to a vast quantitative majority whose life experiences, long and short-term memories, languages and categories of thoughts are alienated to life experience, long and short-term memories, languages and categories of thought that brought about the concept of "biopolitics" to account for mechanisms of control and state regulations.
As models for procedural knowledge or knowledge of what to do, Production Systems have gained some importance in both artificial intelligence and the behavioral sciences. A major advantage of these systems is their ability to offer a modular representation of procedural knowledge: each rule occurring in a Production System model can be used to represent a meaningful unit of (potential) behavior. The set of rules making up the system can be conceived as a representation of the system’s behavior potential. To use Production Systems as models of actual behavior, however, requires some kind of process-control in order to put rules into a right sequence of applications constituting the behavior of the system. In this article, we will introduce a particular representation of process control in the form of a programmed control structure. This control structure governs the successive application of the rules in a Production System. The set of rules together with a programmed control structure will be called a Programmed Production System, abbreviated as PPS.
Events which are staggered out according to time and reach consciousness in a series of acts and states also ordered according to time acquire, across this mulitiplicity, a unity of meaning in narration. Signs which signify by their place in a system and by their divergency from other signs (and the words of historically constituted languages do present this formal aspect) are able to confer an identity of meaning to the temporal dispersion of events and thoughts, to synchronize them in the undephasable simultaneity of a story.