Climate Change, extraordinary inequities, migrations of people and loss of place, global pandemics – What we are experiencing in 2020 is the socio-ecological collapse of human beings on this planet. As Bruno Latour points out in his essay, “Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime,” the fundamental problem is mentality. It is a mentality that has guided our political economy for the last 400+ years, it is the mentality of modernization, development and growth. This mentality is now seeing it’s limits in the 21st century as we simply do not have the resources in people and planet to sustain this growth.
Latour gets a little heavy handed in his categories of ‘globalization +, globalization minus, local plus and local minus,’ and he gets a little hung up in these dualisms that slightly retract from his thesis that we need to look at the world in a new way. He does note that, “everything has to be mapped anew…even the markers of space and time ‘local,’ ‘global,’ ‘future,’ and ‘past.'” But he never quites offers what this new paradigm would be, what it really means to come ‘down to earth.’ At the end of chapter six he states, “It is not a matter of learning how to repair cognitive deficiencies, but rather how to live in the same world, share the same culture, perceive a landscape that can be shared in culture.” (23) Latour is so close, he needs to take it one step further, to realize that he too is still ascribing to the universalistic, single vision theory of growth, development, and modernization.
The answer to Latour’s ontological political crisis can be found in some of the ideas of the post-development theories such as degrowth and the pluriverse. In Design for the Pluriverse, Arturo Escobar regards these conflicts Latour points out as:
“Ontological Struggles. They refer to a different way of imaging life, to another mode of existence. They point towards the Pluriverse; in the successful formula of the Zapatista the pluriverse can be described as a ‘world where many worlds fit.'”
Escobar, Arturo. Sustainability: Designs for the Pluriverse
Development, 2011, 54(2), (137–140)
2011 Society for International Development 1011-6370/11
www.sidint.net/development/
Latour is struggling to combine notions of global and local, modernity and reactions against it to fit in the same world, when in fact to take the pluriverse perspective, they are of different worlds that can share the same space. This perspective liberates Latour’s categories and celebrates the multiplicity of all the political economic dimensions that the world has to offer.
Similar to Degrowth, the pluriverse offers a perspective in which to construct new realities. Latour was still trapped in the paradigm of the global-capitalist-development schemas, in trying to understand the politics behind them. In a pluriverse perspective, many worlds exist and the narrative of modernity/globalization/development is only one of them. The Paris agreement too is still trapped in that single perspective. The opening language refers to ‘sustainable development,’ ‘eradication of poverty,’ these are all single vision notions that do not take the multiplicity of the world into their perspective. The language of the paris accord agreement is simply greenwashing development, of finding a way to continue the same narrative and paradigm of the last 400 years.
If we want to avoid eco-social collapse, we must embrace the Pluriverse, and transition to economies of Degrowth. Degrowth asks that we consider other social objectives other than economic growth, such as sharing, caring, conviviality and the equitable downsizing of production and consumption. It essentially frees up other ways for other societies to consider paths that they want to take without imposing them to the global capitalistic order through our actions. It embraces the pluriverse, and imagines different ways human beings can exist with each other and this planet.
I generally agree with your criticism of Latour’s text. I find the diagrams simultaneously confusing and helpful in explaining Trumpism. But I think his analysis is on point that it is post-politics, that there’s no object. The concept fo Pluriverse is interesting to me, but the it seems very utopian. I wonder, can sharing, caring, conviviality and the equitable downsizing of production and consumption exist alongside denial of reality and political nihilism?
That’s a good point. I was thinking that a bit myself after I posted this. I definitely think it’s a criticism of the pluriverse. But i want to separate the idea of the pluriverse from the idea of degrowth. Degrowth (from the minimal bits i’ve read) means to transition societies away from growth and to economies of care, instead of investing in things that help with our production and consumption, investing in people + planet in education, healthcare, and the environment. It’s kind of like the idea of Defund but on a larger scale. Though I feel like the pluriverse has some critiques in reconciliation with universal truths (climate change, human rights, etc), I feel that degrowth is something less utopian and something we’ve already been moving towards.
Will be interesting if you look into degrowth models more. You are right that this is a call for a paradigm shift away from growth and development. Is that still a part of the pluriverse idea or is it rather that in the pluriverse there can be multiple forms of degrowth? Good critique of the Paris Agreement.
Thank you for your provocative post. Your mention of the Pluriverse model makes me think of “cosmopolitanism” in the sense that it seems the Pluriverse model is a world of worlds, a contrast to cosmopolitanism of one world/”single community”:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmopolitanism/
Degrowth is also an interesting model to lay alongside the Pluriverse system. One of the issues I have with the capitalist model is that it leads to further concentration of wealth as it makes it that much harder to reach into the special “1% class,” dangerously shifting wealth into the hands of a few individuals, while many who prescribe to the capitalist system compete for a “seat at the table.” Do you think a Pluriverse system can thrive given a Growth model or does it need Degrowth to operate or vice versa?
This is a useful way of thinking about The Paris Agreement and has got to be one reason why it is failing, I am keen to learn more about the Pluriverse – is the Escobar book where you’d recommend I start?