Pluriverse

“In this impassioned call for design for the pluriverse, Arturo Escobar asks how we might translate insights of a relational ontology into politics of transformative change. He turns to the prospects of ‘transition,’ led by autonomous communities and social movements in Latin America and the global South. This remarkable book is a way forward for all who are yearning for the radical remaking of design, as a contribution to decolonizing and remaking worlds.” — Lucy Suchman, author of Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions

“For so long, design researchers have been waiting for social researchers to take heed of the ontological politics of designing. Arturo Escobar does so but precisely to clear a space in global consumerist modernism for urgently needed alternatives. A by-product of this thorough and clear book will be the project of decolonizing the discipline and practice of design.” — Cameron Tonkinwise, Professor of Design, University of New South Wales Art and Design

“In this exciting work Arturo Escobar steps out of the familiar territory we associate him with to engage with the cultural study of design. Significantly advancing thinking about societal transition in the context of climate change, Latin American politics, and the ongoing challenges of decoloniality, Designs for the Pluriverse makes a timely and important intervention.” — J. K. Gibson-Graham, coeditor of Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene

“Building on the call by Walter D. Mignolo and activists throughout Latin America for scholars to embrace a pluriverse of non-Western values, perspectives, and societies, this volume brings together scholars working in various postcolonial, decolonial, and alternative social theory modes. They question the hegemony of the Western tradition from a variety of perspectives, providing arguments for and examples of ways of thinking and living otherwise. Constructing the Pluriverse will be both widely read and well received by scholars across the humanities and social sciences, especially in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, geography, and global, international, and Latin American studies.” — John Pickles, coauthor of Articulations of Capital: Global Production Networks and Regional Transformations

“A World of Many Worlds is one of the most original, forceful, and intellectually exciting statements by critical social theorists in a long time. Readers will be left with the distinct feeling that the epistemic earth has shaken under their feet. Not only that, they will feel better equipped to live in and contribute to building worlds otherwise.” — Arturo Escobar

“It is not easy not to know in advance, not to make objects from one’s knowledge as subjects. But a genuine heterogeneous pluriverse—i.e., reconstituted worlds from the ruins of extractive, extinctionist, anthropocenic, one-world modernity—requires opening to caring and knowing differently. This book teaches how not to propose one’s own common sense, in order to effect uncommoning and so to be part of reconstituting worlds in which encounters can, in the words of the introduction, become ‘the opportunity for the creation of concepts different from those every participating knower brought with them.’ No one becomes ‘the other,’ but also no one remains only who they were before engaging the difficult, urgent political ecology of practices to craft worlds powerful enough to defeat the Anthropocene.” — Donna J. Haraway

In Pluriversal Politics Arturo Escobar engages with the politics of the possible and how established notions of what is real and attainable preclude the emergence of radically alternative visions of the future. Reflecting on the experience, philosophy, and practice of indigenous and Afro-descendant activist-intellectuals and on current Latin American theoretical-political debates, Escobar chronicles the social movements mobilizing to defend their territories from large-scale extractive operations in the region. He shows how these movements engage in an ontological politics aimed at bringing about the pluriverse—a world consisting of many worlds, each with its own ontological and epistemic grounding. Such a politics, Escobar contends, is key to crafting myriad world-making stories telling of different possible futures that could bring about the profound social transformations that are needed to address planetary crises. Both a call to action and a theoretical provocation, Pluriversal Politics finds Escobar at his critically incisive best.

Praise

“Conveying a powerful message about the dire state of the world, Arturo Escobar offers a monumental critique: the crisis we face is civilizational; the tools that modernity has made available are inadequate to the tasks we face; and the only viable way forward entails a radical break from conventional practices. Escobar’s vigorous call to decolonize our imaginaries in order to liberate our individual and collective sense of what is possible is compelling, deeply inspiring, and sure to spark urgently needed dialogue.” — Charles R. Hale, coeditor of Otros Saberes: Collaborative Research on Indigenous and Afro-Descendant Cultural Politics“With optimism of the will and of the intellect, Arturo Escobar does not tell us what is or what could be; rather he contributes tools to imagine possibility differently—to dare think the unthinkable. The pluriverse he proposes is unknown practice, that, however, does not authorize us to think it is impossible practice.” — Marisol de la Cadena, author of Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds