{"id":45493,"date":"2025-04-21T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/?p=45493"},"modified":"2025-07-10T16:32:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:32:51","slug":"key-words-the-pluriverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/key-words\/key-words-the-pluriverse\/","title":{"rendered":"Key words: The Pluriverse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 1994, inspired by 500 years of anti-colonial struggle, the rebel peasant Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) declared war \u2018on neoliberalism, for humanity\u2019 via an armed uprising. The Zapatistas\u2019 explicit aim remains building \u2018a world where many worlds fit\u2019. No phrase better captures the multifaceted concept of the \u2018pluriverse\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Zapatistas\u2019 aspiration to weave better worlds (realities) into being remains beholden to indigenous worldviews and socio-economic environmental relations rooted in the mutual recognition of dignity. The polysemic notions of buen vivir<\/em> (\u2018living well\u2019) in Latin America and ubuntu (\u2018I am because we are\u2019) from Zulu carry similar pluriversal connotations, as do recent imaginaries emerging from Afrofuturism<\/a>, solarpunk<\/a>, degrowth<\/a> and student movements<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than a rigid ideology, the ethos surrounding the pluriverse is eclectic, egalitarian and emancipatory. It aims to combat the debilitating, exploitative and homogenising forces of liberal-capitalist modernity<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, pluriversal politics pay heed to Frantz Fanon<\/a>\u2019s prescient warning: \u2018Let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies that draw their inspiration from it\u2026 Humanity expects other things from us than this grotesque and obscene emulation.\u2019 The pluriverse offers precisely these \u2018other things\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pluriversal politics concentrate on economic justice, ecological sustainability and both material and spiritual wellbeing. Ambitions associated with the term make the case for a world defined by neither surplus populations<\/a> nor sacrifice zones<\/a> but life-affirming relations, economies and institutions based in conviviality, care and solidarity<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put succinctly, the pluriverse seeks to redeem humanity by repairing a planet (dis)ordered by colonial power, class war, racial animus, heteropatriarchy and the machinations of empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its core, the pluriverse is born out of struggles \u2018from below<\/a>\u2019. This means Eurocentric orthodoxies, top-down edicts, elitist institutions and even bourgeois decorum must go. Pluriversal politics also depart from the authoritarian tendencies of professed revolutionary movements and governments that have badly missed the mark regarding actually-existing freedom and democracy. Contrariwise, the pluriverse proposes, rather than imposes, alternatives as a means of breathing life into sustainable and just futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grassroots political struggles and autonomous social movements are rich sources of inspiration for \u2018worlds otherwise\u2019. Movements like La Via Campesina<\/a> (LVC) and their idea of food sovereignty<\/a>, Abahlali baseMjondolo\u2019s<\/a><\/em> (AbM) and its advocacy for the urban poor<\/a>, and the Rojava Revolution<\/a> (AANES) engender pluriversal praxis by confronting structural violence, dispossession, and alienation at the ground level and co-constructing new social relations, shared ethics and collective forms of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagination and cultural production are vital aspects of the pluriverse. As Claudia Jones<\/a> avowed, \u2018A people\u2019s art is the genesis of their freedom.\u2019 In terms of exemplars, think of Amal Abu al-Sabah<\/a>, a young Palestinian artist painting murals amidst the wreckage of Gaza. She has stated the images are an attempt to share her people\u2019s pain, defy despair and illustrate that, even in the face of a genocidal siege and monstrous occupation, visions of a free Palestine endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Zapatistas\u2019 words suggest, the pluriverse represents utopian possibilities<\/a> driven by radical hope, collective liberation and recognition that the oppressed have a right to defend themselves. Instead of systems of domination, the pluriverse embraces the place-based knowledges, compassionate politics and insurgent struggles of subjugated groups fighting for dignity, self-determination \u2013 and new worlds \u2018from below\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Further reading<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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