coe201_escobar.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:23] Welcome back, everyone, to the Cultures of Energy podcast, it has been two and a half years since we last spoke to you.

Speaker2: [00:00:31] It's been a really long time, way too long.

Speaker1: [00:00:34] And so we're going to spend the next 90 minutes or so filling you in on everything that's happened in our lives,

Speaker2: [00:00:40] Which is mostly comprised of recipes tried in Netflix series denied

Speaker1: [00:00:45] Masks put on contact with other humans. Avoid it because in those two and a half years, I don't know if anybody is just getting the word now. There has been a pandemic, and so the the first reason we could suggest for why it's been such a long lapse is just pandemic chaos, right? That's fair.

Speaker2: [00:01:04] Yeah, I think that's fair. I don't know if it's true, but it's fair.

Speaker1: [00:01:08] We also had a little burnout. I think we did two hundred episodes

Speaker2: [00:01:12] In four years, four years. So that was that was an episode a week, except for taking off like one winter, one one winter week and maybe one other, right?

Speaker1: [00:01:21] We had like one three day vacation that whole time.

Speaker2: [00:01:23] Yeah, but it's OK. Like it was, you know, doing the pot is a vacation in itself unto itself because it is a pure pleasure to do it. I'm really glad to be back.

Speaker1: [00:01:34] Do I miss doing it? And I missed? I missed.

Speaker2: [00:01:38] You also miss interrupting me every once in a while, which is it's always good to wait. Some people

Speaker1: [00:01:44] Need a lesson in taking turns and not hugging other

Speaker2: [00:01:47] People. Yeah, and other people don't. So, yeah, I mean, I'm really happy to be back and we have such a good series that's going to be coming at you, coming along with us over the next ten episodes or so. And yeah, it's been dearly missed.

Speaker1: [00:02:04] So we're kicking off tonight with Joe Rogan as our special guest who's we're going to try to educate him on climate change. Yeah, the reason we're bringing the podcast back is actually because we felt like all that anyone was hearing about climate in the podcast. Space was from Joe Rogan, and we felt like, OK, we need to get back in the game again. We need to write some of those wrongs and so many new Joe. She I don't know you guys dated like, what was it like? You guys had a it was a relationship.

Speaker2: [00:02:30] Yeah, it was more like a one night stand. But then when I heard about his politics, I had to give it up.

Speaker1: [00:02:34] So what was it about? Was it the fear factor that attracted you in the first place? Because I think of him as the guy who forced people to eat spiders and like donkey testicles?

Speaker2: [00:02:42] Yeah, I think it was that and the satin sheets. But then again, you know, as soon as I heard about his denial, that was all we could

Speaker1: [00:02:49] Do well on that Spotify money. I think you can get some pretty high thread counts. That's what I'm hearing.

Speaker2: [00:02:53] Yeah, now that's right. I mean, I think the last time that I paid attention to Joe Rogan was back when he was doing fear factor because I used to teach that at one of my classes

Speaker1: [00:03:00] Taught fear factor.

Speaker2: [00:03:02] Well, a little like a little clip, you know, a little video clip of it.

Speaker1: [00:03:05] Can you give us a little glimpse? Like what? Give us some context?

Speaker2: [00:03:08] It was like an intro to Anthro Class about ethnocentrism and what people eat and what they find taboo to eat and what's revolting to eat. And so, of course, there's so much of fear factor stuff where they eat different insects, right? Which many western North American students go freak out about. Maybe not so much. No, they're more sophisticated now, but back a decade ago, that was that was something that inspired.

Speaker1: [00:03:31] Joe Rogan is kind of a low rent buddy ritual of the Nazarene. The type of intervention?

Speaker2: [00:03:35] Exactly. Well, I was talking to a reporter today and I said out loud that I could strangle Joe Manchin with my bare hands, and then I realized that that shouldn't be on record or it is too late that part

Speaker1: [00:03:48] Humblebrag reporters are talking to you. That's pretty cool.

Speaker2: [00:03:51] Just one, just one small one.

Speaker1: [00:03:53] Just a little one. Well, anyway, but yes, we do have actually a really exciting lineup. We have taken our time and I think we probably put pressure on ourselves to bring back a really good series of conversations because it's been so long and we had thought I thought we would probably, you know, drop in from time to time to do a special episode. But we decided eventually that we wanted to bring it back. It's kind of like a limited run, you know, 10 episodes at a time, and that gives us some time to rest and also some time to reach out and find new people and listen to you about what who you'd like to hear. So we've got a couple of old friends. I don't know if we want to disclose everyone. We've got a couple of old friends and a lot of news. I don't

Speaker2: [00:04:31] Think you should give it away, but it's a really good lineup and it's it's an interesting and diverse group of people for sure, coming at issues of climate, environment, energy from all different kinds of perspectives and angles on the question when you say,

Speaker1: [00:04:46] Oh yes, yes. Oh yes, yes. I mean,

Speaker2: [00:04:48] Always right like that was always part of the method here. But we're doing it again.

Speaker1: [00:04:55] That and stupid pet tricks, and I like to sing from time to time. You know, that sort of thing. You got

Speaker2: [00:05:00] A little. Well, the dog has got a dog, his dog shadow doing. She's definitely kind. A little heftier.

Speaker1: [00:05:07] Oh, sixteen.

Speaker2: [00:05:09] She's it might be. I mean, one of the funnier moments, like a year ago, was when she went to the vet for some checkup or whatever and got weighed, and then they compared her previous weight. Yeah. Adult, wait, I should say. And the vet brought her back out to the car because you weren't allowed to go into the clinic, right? So they deliver the dog back out to the card. He hands her through the window and he's like, I don't want her to come back as a 14 pounder. It's like, Oh my god, it's like talking about a turkey or a small turkey.

Speaker1: [00:05:41] And is he after he dropped the dog? He was kind of like testing his tender bicep from having to lift that huge

Speaker2: [00:05:46] Animal 14 pounder. She could be up at. Yeah, she could be like 15 and a half by now. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:05:52] Had to put on the pandemic. Five. The pandemic forced like that.

Speaker2: [00:05:57] I think no no one has enjoyed the pandemic more than the pets who got adopted and hopefully get to stay adopted.

Speaker1: [00:06:04] Yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to think, what else? I mean, we can't we can't or little things will. Dribs and drabs are going to come out about things that happened in the past two and a half years. But I will say that pandemic was obviously experience number one, and

Speaker2: [00:06:17] It was kind of a slow

Speaker1: [00:06:18] Burn. And then you and I, you know, haven't talked for like two years, so we should just catch up to, you know, right?

Speaker2: [00:06:23] So we got to do that.

Speaker1: [00:06:25] Yeah, because honestly,

Speaker2: [00:06:26] We haven't had a chance to be together.

Speaker1: [00:06:28] So podcast. The only thing holding this relationship together for so long and then we just were like, what you know? And so we were just like, let's take a little break. And actually, I think the pandemic did bring us closer together. On a personal note,

Speaker2: [00:06:41] Yeah, that's yeah. I think that's true.

Speaker1: [00:06:43] That's nice because you realize when you have to spend a lot of time with somebody even more than you would normally. And I had to say it, but I know several people who didn't, several relationships that didn't make it, and I'm glad that others did. So not just about the podcast, but more just about quality of life in general. You know, I'm still wrestling with this whole Joe Rogan thing, and I was going to say a crush on I'm still

Speaker2: [00:07:06] Clearly the reverberations from

Speaker1: [00:07:08] Joe. This is stuff I'm still processing, but I feel like, OK, I understand, you know, bald. You know, you like bald, bald or balding, falling balding men. Yeah. So I don't know if there's anything else on our mind. I mean, the only other thing that happened today, because I know probably 90 percent of you are doing work at all is the news drop today that New York Times bought word all and that they're going to not pay wallet for the moment. Initially, I think, was the term that they used. But all I can say is man big puzzle always wins

Speaker2: [00:07:40] Because that's like one of the few paywalled things they have is the is the puzzle stuff and the recipes. Yeah. But, you know, ethically like if you're going to make something available to the world, it should be the news. You know, puzzles are a luxury.

Speaker1: [00:07:54] They sure are. And I

Speaker2: [00:07:55] Don't know. Maybe the recipes are too, but God, they were kind of saved. I think they unlock some of those recipes during the pandemic, especially the ones that were like out of the pantry, like the beans and rice, dried beans and rice and canned shit. Like they opened up that that space

Speaker1: [00:08:09] For the people who want to live in bomb shelters. You know, what's that survival like the the survivalist smorgasbord that recipes?

Speaker2: [00:08:17] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, some of those worked out pretty well.

Speaker1: [00:08:20] I saw something today. There's a there's a Twitter account that something like crazy Zillow or something like that. But I know the computer is like working. Basically, we're recording this podcast unlike the last gasp of my my laptop. And so you can hear it working really, really hard to try to stay alive while we record. So to hang in there, buddy. We don't make it. But there's this. It's called like weird Zillow or something like that. It's a Twitter account. But anyway, it today they had on Zillow somewhere. I think in Nebraska, they're selling, they're selling a missile silo. Oh, go and underground looking for one of those, and it only is $600000. U.s. So

Speaker2: [00:08:59] Where? Where do I send the check?

Speaker1: [00:09:00] We've been looking for a getaway.

Speaker2: [00:09:04] Where do you get cylindrical furniture to fit in your missile silo? Like, everything would have to have like a rounded back, right?

Speaker1: [00:09:11] The cool thing about it is it is a kind of I mean, it's got pretty good feng shui in the sense that it's it's round, it's got a nice it looks very kind of 1960s. And in fact,

Speaker2: [00:09:20] The acoustics are probably pretty good for rocking out anyway. Yeah, yeah. Like band practice in there,

Speaker1: [00:09:25] If if it had windows and were above ground, it might be a really pleasant space. But the fact that it's underground and then the pictures or the pictures of this complex are just all rust and standing water and like, you know, electrical lines dangling into the standing water, it just looks completely hazardous. And I couldn't believe that anybody would buy it, but they were all like, you know, fix it up. And if this is like if you want a novelty place or if you're really into security because I guess, you know, how

Speaker2: [00:09:52] Do you get into it? Do you have to do you have to take a ladder down or an elevator or some steps?

Speaker1: [00:09:58] How big is that? Oh, it's pretty big. I mean, it had a pull missile in it at one point, but you would live in the control room area, which is to kind of circular rooms.

Speaker2: [00:10:06] And that's below ground, also also

Speaker1: [00:10:08] Below ground, but not as far below ground as the missile itself. And then one of the selling points is that it is supposed to be able to absorb a nuclear attack head on and still be OK, but I'm really thinking.

Speaker2: [00:10:21] So you can put your wine cellar down in the silo itself.

Speaker1: [00:10:25] I think it would keep it cool down there. I mean, I think you could kind of put the beer in the standing water and just like, let that cool.

Speaker2: [00:10:30] Like, naturally, you could have like a micro garden. You could do a bunch of mushrooms down. Oh, about two.

Speaker1: [00:10:35] Oh, you could, just like

Speaker2: [00:10:36] A little bit of grow light,

Speaker1: [00:10:37] Could grow mushrooms and do mushrooms down there. I think that's part of that's actually a little bit of subterranean wonder. So anyway, I just, you know, people should check that out in case you know, you've got a few hundred thousand dollars lying around, you probably do, and you just been looking for that special underground paradise. Yeah. You know what I'm thinking, and I know this is a callback to previous episodes, folks. What about a missile size lava lamp? Oh, yeah. Just put it right there and just have the lava lamp right in the center and then you could

Speaker2: [00:11:07] Find a tourist attraction.

Speaker1: [00:11:09] Actually, it's like that museum. What's the museum that has the circular atrium that you walk down? Is that the Hirshhorn or is that the Guggenheim?

Speaker2: [00:11:17] Well, I think we should definitely invest.

Speaker1: [00:11:18] I mean, it'd be good, especially if you are, you know, thinking about becoming like a Bond villain or something like that. It's that type of space in many a Bond villain spot. Ok, folks. So do you want to announce our first guest, the possibility of this, this incredible cast of characters we've assembled?

Speaker2: [00:11:36] Yes. Who's number one? With great pleasure, I am introducing Arturo Escobar. Escobar, who we spoke to recently about pleura reversal politics, among many other kinds of reversal things and political things. And it is was was when we were doing it is now when we'll be playing it, a super engaging conversation with Arturo. And it took a long time to get it together for us to to finally get together with him and connect. But he was. He's been on our list for a long, long, long, for a long time. And so so we're finally able to connect with him. And he's such a gracious and brilliant intellectual presence. It's it's just a joy to be around him, even when it's digitally mediated, as it is in this case.

Speaker1: [00:12:24] So much so it's kind of

Speaker2: [00:12:26] Special, too, because I don't think he has. He doesn't have a lot of mediation out there, like he's not all over YouTube, et cetera. You know what I mean?

Speaker1: [00:12:33] Yeah, that's true. So I mean, he's he is a little special. He's one of these like sleeping giants, I think, in anthropology and philosophy. And I got to know his environmental studies. Yes, I got to know his work on development, you know, way back

Speaker2: [00:12:47] In the day. Yeah, that's kind

Speaker1: [00:12:48] Of what he started with. Yeah, he was one of the people who helped kind of Port Michel focus work over into anthropology.

Speaker2: [00:12:55] And so he's been doing ecological stuff for many decades now, too, like he was one of the OGS for that.

Speaker1: [00:13:01] That long he was actually really early on the kind of cyber anthropology bandwagon to, he's got to say, from way back when there's one of the first. So he's always been kind of ahead of the times. And I think with this work he's been doing together with Marcel de la Codina and Mario Ba'asyir on reversal politics, this is just really, really refreshing work for our times. And I think has a lot to say to an anxious leftist audience of which I suspect many of you belong to whom to which to which I suspect many of you belong to as well. Good grammar. No, no. I kind of sock that those close. I'm not used to speaking out loud guys again, literally here.

Speaker2: [00:13:42] We're a little. We're a little rusty. We're like the missile silo. Like, where is it, Nebraska?

Speaker1: [00:13:49] Yeah, why not? It's called Nebraska. I'm sure they're all over the place.

Speaker2: [00:13:53] Rusty. Like that,

Speaker1: [00:13:54] Rusty. We're standing in a little bit of dirty

Speaker2: [00:13:57] With a bunch of dangling wires hanging off of ourselves.

Speaker1: [00:14:00] I mean, the pictures are like, you know how when they do it, Zillow and they try, they're trying to shoot stuff in a way to make it look like it's attractive because we've seen this in our own occasional like Zillow, Zillow Hunts over the years. You find these things that are shot with like, really nice nice lenses and from particular angles to make themselves look bigger. And all of that this they just didn't give a shit. They were just like here, like, you're like, here's another rusted stairwell. That's great. But it was kind of like yours. There's got to like if if you're in the market for this sort of thing, you got to be able to see the nice bounce of this missile silo and you'll be ready to go. Ok, folks, I think we are at that point where we have to to turn it over, but we're looking forward to coming back and being with you again. In the weeks to come. We'll be releasing one episode a week deity willing. And until then, I think Simone has a little something that she likes to say at the end of our interests.

Speaker2: [00:14:54] I do IRA.

Speaker1: [00:14:57] Whoa, look, check, check your cheat sheet that I made for you, right?

Speaker2: [00:15:02] There is it go pod.

Speaker1: [00:15:03] She's looking for it. I did. I didn't actually go Pod, go pod. God, you would often say, Go Arturo.

Speaker2: [00:15:11] Oh yeah, go Arturo. So welcome, Arturo Escobar, we're so glad to have you here on the podcast, I think you're coming to us from North Carolina, is that right?

Speaker3: [00:15:42] That's correct,

Speaker2: [00:15:43] Simone. Ok, great. We're thrilled to have you here, as I said, and we've been reading your new work, the book Plus Reversal Politics, The Real and the Possible, which came out recently and which seems to be a sort of a companion. I was thinking our volume two to designs for the reverse, and so it's really nice to see this expansion and development of all the ideas or some of the ideas and some new ideas that come across in this book. And so we wanted to begin by asking you how you came to this project in the first place. Like what? What was your inspiration? What was your motivation? What brought you to begin to really think deeply about plurilateral politics?

Speaker3: [00:16:28] Ok, well, first of all, thanks a lot for the invitation. Simone and Dominique, I'm really glad to be here in this podcast. And actually, this book has a peculiar history, because liberal politics, you are right that it is connected somehow with designs for the Clippers, which was published in 2018, but universal politics that actually was written originally mostly in Spanish and came out as a set of essays in Spanish under the title, although possible, is possibly another possible is possible. And then you had a long subtitle and it became pretty personal politics in English, thanks to my university editor, which is a wonderful writer who decided to to publish it in English as well. So the story in the underlying stories that it was produced mostly for initially for Latin American context, which is always in my mind, in anything that I write and that I do. But this story goes back, maybe to the early 2000s when we started thinking about the concept of the producers and the we here is especially Marisol DeLuca, Anna Maria Glasser and myself. Mario Blazar spent a couple of years in Chapel Hill and in 2004 2006, I believe it was. And at that point in time, we started sort of thinking about that, and we use the term political reality, at least during those years. And then it was it really became part, especially in the context of the work that we were doing.

Speaker3: [00:18:11] Marisol and Mari and myself part of this shift shift from political ecology to political theology. And we can talk about that later on, if you wish. But what I realize now thinking in retrospect about the concept of the pluralism for reversal politics is that it was something that was emerging already from different domains, in different spaces, in social theory and in social life, both in activist life and in the academy. And so our particular take had to do with focusing on struggles in Latin America as what we started to call ontological struggles over not only the territories, but over territories of life or ways of being and and one making. And so that was the first connection that I wanted to trace. And the second connection is that was a time. And I think this is true for almost everything that we are doing today, including the two of you with the work of an emergency. So an emergence that was connected to an emergency and emergency, obviously is the environmental emergency, environmental emergency, the climate emergency by beyond the climate and which really to me, what it means is that the Earth itself is like the great emergent today in contemporary times. So it was a new way of trying to understand.

Speaker3: [00:19:42] I'm trying to name that global emergency, which is the climate crisis. And now maybe two more points. And then I'll stop. We can see where we are. The second point is that the universal politics is really part of an ensemble of concepts, especially three. And the first one is and they come from Latin America. Also, although not only from Latin America, especially the Second World, the first one is civilizational crisis. And this is a concept that has been especially used by indigenous movements in Latin America since about 1992, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the discovery and conquest of America, meaning by that that the contemporary crisis is a crisis of a particular civilizational model, the Western capitalist and so forth. Colonial model model of social life. And hence, this is the second concept that we have to engage in civilizational transitions or social ecological transitions and transitions to the reverse. And that's when we started to use. And especially, I started to use the concept of transitions to the Pluribus in connection to post development, to thinking beyond development. What? Well, we have to engage in these transitions to reverse. And in a moment, I will tell you the way in which we understand that concept. But the third concept was the concept of the concept of relational or radical interdependence, which is really rapidly merging so many different fields.

Speaker3: [00:21:18] And again, is social life as well. And meaning by that that that is connected to questions about ontology, obviously, that if the one making practices that are causing ecological crisis to reside, I. And so forth is a tourism theology is based on a dualism theology, then that we need to go back and continue to develop a different foundation or a different fundament for life itself, for understanding life, which is that life. It really is based on radical interdependence or the interdependence of everything that exists. So a lot of people call that relational. That's the way I call it in defense of the rivers and rivers and politics and in something else right now with two or two different friends that I can tell you about every time. Ok, so at that point in time, we started talking about transition studies, previous studies and eventually presidential politics. I prefer said politics, meaning that if conditionality is about life, then and we need to reconstitute, then we need to reconstitute life itself and the conditions for life. Every politics has to do with has to be centered on that reconciliation of life, hence in a professional manner. So how do we use the reverse? And then and then I'll stop. I promise.

Speaker1: [00:22:53] No worries.

Speaker3: [00:22:54] No, it's perfect. Ok. So in two senses, I don't know if this is particularly my take or this is also shared by other people. Mario. But I think I think so. So the universe is connected to a different point in life. It really is about understanding life itself again in terms of rationality. This comes from social theory and philosophy, and it comes from social practices of the careful life weaving of life. And the second is that it is connected to the struggles of making life, and that's the connection to design. But everything in a way is making life. We can call it wall making practices. So in that context, the universe. Let me say that I I define the protocols in two ways with two different meanings. The first meaning is that the Pluribus relates with the ceaseless flow of existence, life as a stream, the stream of life, life as something that is always becoming. And in the making and in relation to the first meaning more than social theory is comes on the short end, really trying to provide a cogent understanding of life in that sense because it stems from the dualism, theology, etc., etc. But the second sense is a more direct political sense, which comes from this hypothesis, which is that the problem is, is or means a world where many worlds fit for the world of many worlds. And this is in like a counterproposal to the idea that that the Earth or the world is made up of a single world, a single world defined according to the historical experience of the West Capitalistic. You know, in terms of neoliberal globalization and competition and entrepreneurship and efficiency and consumption, and in terms of the individual and so forth. So against the globalizing, the globalization of that idea of a single word, the single way of being that has been so prevalent, especially over the past 70 years, seven decades of globalization and development, then the reverse becomes a counterproposal to that to interrupt that process of trying to fit old walls into one. Ok, so in two senses, we use the pluribus, and I think I will stop there for now.

Speaker1: [00:25:18] Hauteur, that was a brilliant synthesis. I think of the project. Thank you so much. That's so helpful, I think, for our listeners to hear it. So in such a kind of pithy and elegant form. I wanted to pick up on this last point that you raised about. I guess we could call it the mono verse of European colonial modernity, which, as you say, was a world making project. It was a project that put forward a single kind of realism as being the realism to which everyone must subscribe. And it's a realism that's predicated on dispossession and extraction and domination. And I guess, I guess my feeling is that, you know, the Pluribus has always been there, right? It's just been in many ways, you know, repressed by this European colonial modernity. And now, perhaps because of the fractures in that system, because that system has realized it has no future or because we are realizing the system has no future. We're beginning to see the reverse again. Is that a fair way of describing it? I mean, how much of this is about the crisis within the global world that European colonialism made? And how much is it about indigenous peoples, you know, making their voices heard asserting their politics against that one world order that's driving the the possibilities of this moment, do you think?

Speaker3: [00:26:38] I think you summarized it really well, Dominique. I think, yes, the Pluribus is a response to several hundred years, and we can debate on when did it start? Of maneuvers of the Universal Project of Modernity or modernity as a universal project. And the idea of the there is a single real with single possible or at least maybe be possible within that idea of a single region. So precisely what grievance and politics has to do. And this is the beginning of the book, especially the introduction of Chapter one, not the preface to the English edition, which is which is a different kind of text into the chapter. One of the book is precisely about questioning this idea of a single real and a single possible and trying. Open up possibility to many kinds of different world making practices, different kinds of wordings, and as you also say, indigenous peoples and other peoples like after the sentence in Latin America, with whom I work more closely in Colombia in particular, have been instrumental in that opening as well. But indeed, the reverse was always there and because reality was always relation and relational and interdependent. So in that sense, I mean, we have always been together. Anything you say is a misconception is an illusion that we have been individuals and there were separate entities and separate nations, and that objects and subjects have intrinsic existence in and of themselves.

Speaker3: [00:28:08] We begin to realize that that's not the case, and that was never the case. So in a way, yes, we're going to a new understanding about life and you're grounding for life as well in both your social practice. And that entails, at the same time, the crisis of that hegemonic or dominant way of motive worldin because it is indeed behind the catastrophe, so to speak, that we are witnessing today, but also is is a reflection as well of the what we can call the eruption of what cannot exist within the terms of that modern technology. And that includes all of the peoples that you describe. People are struggling to have a voice. People who are struggling to have their way of being the way of doing the way of knowing respected are counted. So yes, that's why we say sometimes that is not is not it definitely. I mean, it's something that tries to name both something that was always there and something that is re-emerging and re-emerging in part comes with particular kinds of peoples and bodies and cultures and movements. And it also comes in social theory and philosophy.

Speaker1: [00:29:29] Absolutely. Arturo the Beautiful. And I just wanted to follow up by asking you to to talk a little bit about how this realization impacts leftist politics, because I get the sense you really care about leftist politics and that you feel as though the traditional left sometimes underestimates the radical relationally of the pluribus and often is sort of either tricked into sort of the one world ontology. Or perhaps it somehow stands to have some advantage in that one world ontology. But precisely, this idea that, you know, the plural verse is a place of radical local possibilities is something that the Left sometimes doesn't believe can scale to the challenges of fighting, as you put it, the monsters of capitalism or globalization. So where do you see here a sort of a new way forward for leftist politics?

Speaker3: [00:30:22] That's that's a very difficult question. That's besides the question that I tried to address in the privacy of the English edition. So let me tell you about the preface. The preface was my attempt to provide the best possible response I could give at the time to what were some of the main concerns by the reviewers because the book had been published in Spanish, but it had to go through a review process anyways for the press and the reviewers really pointed at at this question What is the connection between left politics and progressive politics? Can left politics and progressive politics work in tandem, work together, or are they always at odds? And my answer to that was that in principle, they can work together to counter hegemonic politics can lead to a universal politics, but it needs to radicalize itself, especially in a way the ontologies itself from still being too much wedded to that ontology of intrinsically existing existing subjects, objects and actions. And one of the consequences of still being trapped within that ontology is, for instance, a politics that continues to rely too much on the notion of an enemy. So the enemy is external to us. But if we are serious about the insights of additionality radical rationality, then of course there are no enemies. I mean, we are all in this together, and it's very difficult to construct the politics without the notion of an enemy. I mean, to some extent, I think Chantel Moore's idea of antagonistic politics, which is the politics of adversaries but without enemies that are enemies, gets close to it. And it's very difficult to to talk to people on the left about politics without enemies. Right? It. Go ahead.

Speaker1: [00:32:13] Oh no, no, no. I wanted to hear you finish your thought.

Speaker3: [00:32:15] No. There was a wonderful quote from from Martin Luther King that we discovered recently for this book on the same. Relationally that I'm writing with two younger colleagues, colleagues, McAllister, while at UMC Chapel Hill and three of the studies, and Kriti Sharma, who is a biology postdoc at Caltech and the quote basically says that we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny. And it speaks about an ethics of love and care for everybody on Earth. And so to us, that means the bodies with our enemies. We all have to take care for the weave of life. The web of life for the network of interdependencies that really are an account for the bodies, places and communities that we in which we live and that we are. But that's that's that's that's one part of the problem. The problem that I see in many responses on the left to the idea of politics and politics is a certain fear of considering what could be called the end of modernity. But I think we have to come to that eventually. And but they didn't use this fear among many people that were going to give up the wonderful things that the modern it doesn't. It's not the question. That's not the issue. The issue is a very different one.

Speaker2: [00:33:43] I mean, it strikes me too in thinking about, in part, Dominic's question and the way you've been responding to it. It really reminds me of this question of scale that I felt kept inhabiting the book too. And in the question of politics, sort of liberal, progressive, leftist politics and reversal localized, territorially based, space bound world making politics or the kind of homeopathic politics that you mentioned from Gibson Graham, that there's a way in which the left and the right as well has kind of deluded legitimated all these arguments that are in favor of these local struggles that are the kind of autochthonous indigenous reversal struggles and that that's a problem of scale. And you write that the story of this sort of incremental shifts and different sorts of world building the story is maybe not as thrilling as recounting the saga of the great capitalist machine and its potential overthrow that there's a kind of thrill to that, but that we need to decide, identify ourselves with those operations of capitalism, masculine ism, colonialism, racism, homophobia, et cetera, in order to recognize what's happening in the world today. And it's not about creating more individual rating or individualism, but actually localizing and sort of losing that fetish of revolution that's been so central to leftist politics. But, you know, from from the vantage point of the left, the question arises, but how are we going to change the world? And that's how we come back to that one world again. And so it seems to me the response is how are we going to collectively change these many worlds, not just the world? And I don't know if that's part of what you're tapping into, but it strikes me that there's a real dissonance of scale here, and you talk about this more in the book, too around globalization and where different theoretical actors kind of position themselves in globalism and globalization. But I just wanted to to hear your thoughts on the kind of scale of politics and how those those are kind of fit in fitting together. They're not fitting together in very comfortable ways.

Speaker3: [00:36:01] Yes. And that's that's a hugely important issue in connection with with the relationship between the left left politics and universal politics and universal politics. I'm sorry. And first, I mean, let me say a few things. The first one is that it's very real that the actually existing left, at least in Latin America, have disempowered, disable and sometimes actively repress different kinds of levers of politics, especially coming from indigenous peoples, environmentalist and feminists. That was the case in Bolivia with Evo Morales. That was the case in Ecuador with Rafael Correa. That was the case with even with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, with Lula in Brazil was mostly there were regimes based on a conventional notion of the left that actively undermined the different kind of politics that many indigenous groups and environmental groups and families were trying to put forth. So that's that's a reality, and we have to contend with that second. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that and I think you hinted at this, that our subjectivities, especially our, I guess, our modernist subjectivities on the left, are very, very much permeated by this desire for. Theory for success for the Great Revolution, for convergence, and there is something wonderful about that, and I don't disallow that completely, especially the idea that somehow and my generation Latin America grew up with that conviction, that sooner or later the revolution was going to happen. So we were eager about that. We wanted that.

Speaker3: [00:37:45] We wanted everybody to converge on that. And we realized all the damage that was done at the same time when the beautiful dream was brought into into the real world, so to speak. So today it seems to seems to me that we are going to the opposite extreme while emphasising difference multiplicity divergence. The census, all of these different things that escape subjectivity. And we have to, in a sense, try to find a happy medium, a way in which we can protect what is particular and place based and unique about each struggle. But at the same time, to try to broach the question of how do we bring how these stories can come together so not to escape, OK? Because that's a different issue. I consider this a question of scaling up. It's not a question of connecting with each other to to achieve horizontal effects sort of radiating out. So this is a whole new set of metaphors that people are using for that. Obviously, the rise of the metaphor, the terrorism is one of the most interesting and useful ones. In my case, how these small experiments and resistances that are happening all over the world in all kinds of different fields can rise dramatically connect with each other. This sort of expands horizontally. There are new metaphors of by cilia, for instance, this is a new candidate for trying to give us a different imagination for how things can come together and have effects that go beyond the local, but nevertheless preserve the integrity of what is spoken with.

Speaker3: [00:39:27] Please place the place based. So maybe one final thing about this is that I think we have these two open questions in social theory today and also in activist practice that the question says, What is social change? What is radical social change? We used to know what social change was. I mean, the Liberals have an idea was how social change happened out of individual actions, transforming institutions and forming nation states and so forth. Marxists had a different idea class consciousness, so forth. Struggle, class struggle, revolution. But once we realize that neither of those two is possible or sufficient, or that there might be elements of both in a new understanding of social change, then where do we go? So that's that's the first open question. And the second question is what is a radical alternative? How do we recognize one when we see it? So there's quite a bit of work on that as well. On trying to figure it out from this notion of progressive politics and radical rationality and taking seriously the demands for social justice and for environmental justice and for energy justice and for community justice from people all over the world. How do we come up with compelling ideas about both? What makes social change possible? What is social change and what is a radical or transformative initiative or alternative?

Speaker2: [00:40:50] And I think the radical is really important here because it has been such a key word of the left for so long in the sense of overturning certain forms of political economic orders like capitalism or autocracies. You name it right. But there really is something more fundamental about radical, and it is about affecting or changing the kind of fundamental substance or nature or essence or being or ontology, maybe of something in a really far reaching way. And so this idea of radical interdependence or radical relation is really quite powerful as a juxtaposition between radical and relational and how that might get formed. And I think about the interdependence and that idea that that second part of the interdependence word how frightening that must be to kind of petro masculine heteronormative modernity of the present. That idea of dependence is absolutely terrifying for many people in the world, and it just strikes me that there's there's a lot of fear operating around the possibilities of of really making those leaps into something that exposes our fragility, our interdependence upon each other, releasing the idea that we have enemies, as you mentioned, but also interdependency on our biomes, on the non-human others that we share this biosphere with the Earth system that we live with and hopefully inhabit into the future. There's a there's a vulnerability there that I think is. Terrifying for many events, reposts and the anthropocentric mindset that that the West has cultivated over these many hundreds, thousands of years. So I just wanted to point that out because I think it's striking in a kind of in an emotional way, in a kind of an effective way. How that the anxiety around the dependence part, the interdependence and what that might mean for for some people economically.

Speaker3: [00:42:49] I think that's what it will say, Simone and reminded me of something that season-ending the great Indian psychologist, political psychologists said once. And I think is quoting in designs for the Pluribus. He says something like the pathologies of isolation, meaning by the other pathologies of living under the ontology of subjects and objects. And separation has already proven to be more lethal than the pathologies of connection. And it's not like the pathology of modernity, the pathology of tradition. But and he, as he clarifies, it's not a question of choosing one pathology over another, but or trying to retrieve and recuperate the ability of interdependence to provide clues and tools for rebuilding and reconstituting the wars in which we live. And it's really frightening. And I think with the COVID pandemic, we're seeing a little bit of both at the same time. On the one hand, we realize how interdependent and interconnected everything is. But on the other hand, what led to social distance ourselves from each other from the natural world in many different ways as well, because the virus might be anywhere? And so that that fear is very civil civilizational fear of connectedness and interdependence that has led to different pathologies of isolation as we know well. And the US is one of the most striking cases of that because the US is in a way, sort of the utopia of individualism. And I think where we're seeing that today, even with the difficulty of people agreeing on something that seems to be so seemingly simple as to wearing a face mask, we don't even have to get into the vaccine. I mean, that's a more complicated issue. But even when wearing a face mask mask becomes an issue of individual or so-called individual rights, but the individual, as we know an anthropologist, we all know that the individual doesn't exist in most other communities in the world and many athletes and many others, and it doesn't exist. It didn't even exist in the West before the advent of modernity.

Speaker1: [00:44:58] You know, I was just thinking, as you were talking, that, you know, one of the reasons I'm sure people in the American left, which is a very, you know, deeply liberal left might be pushing back against some of the reversal ideas is by how much they've come to cling to the idea of the real in opposition to these increasingly hallucinatory right wing politics, right? The you know, the paranoia and the anxieties, which I think you're right, they are part of the dystopia of radical individualism and disconnection that has been part of the United States culture from the beginning and its frontier history, but often today gets recapitulated as a kind of noble, sovereign individuality. But it's an absolutely insane individuality in many ways. And so the left says, no, we need to have one world. We need to have a world of facts we can cling to. Right. But I think what they're underestimating then, is the fact that there is in fact, the better worlds that they're looking for are not to be found, as you put it very, very well. You say again, this is from the same preface text you say aren't the true romantics, the people who insist that more of the same will lead to lasting improvements?

Speaker3: [00:46:10] Yes, exactly. And it makes sense. I mean, again, it makes sense to try to cling to the certainties that we know that seem to be, I mean, good certainties, ethical certainties, about rights, about individual rights, for instance, about about the rights of minorities. All of that is very important. But at the same time, we're beginning to see the shortcomings of basing an entire politics for reconstituting life, which is what has to happen today on the basis of these certainties that shelter ideas about individuals that are very problematic ideas, about about the state, about state apparatus, about rationality, about what's realistic or what's real and what's not. And in the last instance about this, about rationalism, it's about trying to make sense of the world only through this particular kind of rationality that is so wedded to the ontology of separation and to so wedded to science and technology. And in the last instance, also a very patriarchal. So is the question of the mandate of masculinity because it's about control. So the left also dreams with the control of the state of the control. The economy, the controller, what have you so is the sense is masculinity in this sense in an ontological sense, understanding perpetually as an ontology that privileges control, hierarchy, appropriation, denigration of others and ultimately violence and war. So all of that is involved in that in that defence of the modern, even the modern in its critical instances.

Speaker2: [00:47:51] I wanted to know Arturo, as you've been working on this project and thinking through such the important delicate terminology, the important philosophy that sort of tied up in each of these bundles of terms. I wonder if you struggled with calling it politics at all, whether that term ever sort of got got stuck someplace because of its because of its associations, because of its baggage, for lack of a better word, with power and with status and with hierarchies and with governance? I mean, is there a way in which politics as a as a term that obviously has deep and also varied definitions and roots? Is it is it challenging for us to work with and to kind of to really feel it differently? And here I'm thinking of a few other places in the book where you bring up this idea of sentiments, which is a kind of an amalgam word in Spanish or said to Sarmiento where it's feeling, thinking, but all all combined into one word, which in many ways is quite different than politics or the political. So I wanted to hear you think through that, that that question of the political and politics as a framework.

Speaker3: [00:49:12] Yeah, I think that's an excellent question as well. And I think you say already, Simone, what what I could say, maybe I can add that we are wrestling with that question now. And we with McAllister while and Sharma in the book, we are writing about additionality because one of the principles of the book is that what we are seeing today is the political activation of rationality, sort of the the resurgence and the and the and the new kind of emergence of relational ways of being and doing and thinking. And but but but it's always we're always finding ourselves falling into this slippages back into a more objectifying ways of thinking about politics. And so one of the things that we're trying to understand this book we're writing is how even in the most progressive kinds of left that we can think of, there is always a slippage back into an ontology of intrinsic and existing objects and subjects and actions. And the reason why is that so is because it's almost impossible to avoid it altogether, because most of this and most of these languages are deeply enmeshed in the history of ontological dualism. Any any of it that we choose. History, politics, obviously the disciplines, anthropology, modernity, universality, all of them have. I mean, they are trying. They are eager to name something that is known, dualistic. And this is maybe the paradox of positively social theory, but in the sense, it's still doing it in a theoretical way that is inherently inherently nationalistic and dualistic. So yes, I mean, we have to what struggling with that question and I'm not being able to give you a really good answer to that now, but hopefully at some point in time, we'll have a better answer that I can tell you now.

Speaker1: [00:51:11] I wanted to ask Arturo. I'm not sure everyone knows that you've had a very, very diverse career yourself in terms of your own intellectual history. You know, beginning in the sciences and moving through, you know, studying nutrition and then into development and finally into philosophy and anthropology. And along the way, I imagine you have found new ways of conceptualizing your own critical practice. I'm fascinated by your turn towards design, perhaps as an antidote to development or an alternative, but also this this recent interest that you talk about in this book about the need for care, the need to sort of shift from a model of development to one of care. And I wanted to just give you a chance to talk a little bit about that and where you see the possibilities for a care based. I guess I'm a little leery to use the word politics right now after the last discussion. But but I sort of a care based engagement with the world, a care based ontology, perhaps as the basis for what you call an autonomous design ethos.

Speaker3: [00:52:17] Yes. Well, thanks for the question, Dominic. And it's a question that I to good extent announced in the preface to designs with the blue device, which is how did I come into this domain of design? And I start right away by saying that today, if you asked me this, how do I define design today or designing because it's mostly natural? I would say that designing is an indication that design designing is a practice for the healing and the cabinet, or an invitation for us all to become carers and weavers of the web of the interdependencies that constitute the places and bodies and landscapes that we are in, which we exist. So why did I have this sort of turn towards this time? And this time understanding was something that was always with me from maybe from my engineering days and from certain projects in Latin America in the 1980s. But especially I discovered that in the writings of a number of designers, I was finding insights and inquiries that I wasn't finding in the social sciences or the humanities, or at least not in the same way. And I thought that was really, really interesting. And I realized little by little that designing, at least in these relatively small circles of design studies, critical design studies we can call them was really emerging as a very important domain for thinking about life and for thinking about the making of words and the making of the world, the production of the world.

Speaker3: [00:53:57] And that was fascinating. And of course, to me, it gave me some concepts and tools and languages to go back to the question about post development, how what was really possible. I mean, how do we shift from the kind of politics and policy in which development is the central organizing principle of them and of social life as a whole to a way of thinking and being and doing where or in which that integrated development has been removed has been displaced and something else can be displaced. So there's something else could be, you know, when we were good living a different way to understand what life is about in Latin America. Some people call it a boomtown as well. That's from southern Africa. I am because you are. I exist because they were in their 60s, and you could also be designed in special autonomous design. And then what I tried to do in that book was to to follow the lead of some people who were already engaged in a significant reorientation of design and ontological reorientation of design. So design in a pretty, very and relational way. And today, you know, we have already a good set of propositions for what designing relationally or designing for diversity might meet.

Speaker3: [00:55:18] What does it mean to design from the inside of interdependence? What does it mean to design based on the premise that life is constituted by the radical independence of everything that exists? How to contribute through design to the realisation, re localization and autonomy of local autonomy over the making of life? How do we regain to design the ability to make life again as opposed to. The making of life that's happens for the most time, for the most part in contemporary society, so that that's basically what we mean by what I mean by autonomous design and universal design. Maybe one final question the question of care. The question of care has obviously many. The genealogy of the concept of care is multiple. I will refer to one here that may be a little bit less known than than others, which is from Latin American feminism's and which is the notion of politics in the feminine and the politics in the feminine is the feminist and essentialist capitalist politics that is centered that places the care of life at its center. And that has to do with production and reproduction of life, but also has to do with life beyond the human life that also considers seriously the entanglement with humans and spirituality and so forth.

Speaker2: [00:56:44] Yeah, those are wonderful passages on many of that Latin American feminists whose work I haven't yet read, so I was really excited to see them represented in the book to our total. So good things to look up and find if you haven't already we come in towards the end. So we wanted to end with just one final question, and it has to do with something that's so central to the book and to your work. And that is relational ontology that we've been talking about. And I wanted to ask whether you have whether you might have an exercise for us, a practice that we might enact in relational ontology, like there's a way to exercise that. And in the in the book, you have this wonderful evocation of a river trip that a father and daughter take Afro-Colombian folks that you've been working with and you talk about the forest and the mangrove worlds and the canoe and this sort of capacity of nature being born, growing up, learning in this kind of relational world that they're able to create a relational ontology where you write, and this is really so striking to me that nothing pre exists, the relations that constitute it, that it's very profound. I mean, moving into the worlds of physics almost. But I wanted to ask how. For those of us who aren't narrow for us or who aren't near a river, for those of us who are in, you know, we're speaking to you from Houston, Texas Propolis, you know, the this kind of the center of so much ugly modernity. And you know, there's a passion flower out on the fence, out in the front yard and there's some butterflies around it. So there's a there's a moment of of the world there, but I wonder if you have practices for us in or a practice in relational ontology that we might follow in our in our daily lives as as we are kind of working through the modern world that we're reluctantly currently a part of?

Speaker1: [00:58:46] Yes.

Speaker3: [00:58:47] Well, yeah, I can. I can suggest a relatively simple but very difficult to do exercise. And and before I proposed the exercise, let me tell you that in Buddhist teachings are some of the most wonderful, profound and applicable ideas for how to transition from living on relationally to living more relational. One book that sometimes I recommend to people is a book by Pema Chodron was actually North American Buddhist nun and spiritual teacher. The book is called When Things Fall Apart and it's a tough book because a book that stays well, you start by saying, you think you have choices. No, you don't have choices. We don't have choices. We either we live relationally or we don't live. Life is isolation. Life is interdependence. Life is contamination. Life is all of these different things. We have the fiction, the illusion that life is not that. So, but by Buddhism in general, and I don't even think you need to develop a profound meditation practices to get there. I mean to to realize some of these ideas. But just to read some of the text, including some of the classic texts of Buddhist philosophy. I mean, Buddhist philosophy of mind has been around for 2500 years, trying to understand something so complex as reality and the mind. And and and and it's three very useful. So the exercise might be something like this from the time you get up to the time you go to bed at night. Right. At least they at least every 15, 20 minutes, every half an hour. Try to observe how you navigate throughout the day in a way in which you act.

Speaker3: [01:00:31] Actively participate in the production of the non-relationship, which you actively participate in. Making life your life in terms of separations as an individual. Separations in space in your own home and your own room for your own objects. Your own projects as you get out of the house going to school separations among bodies of knowledge, you are a student racial divisions, separations in your families, separations all over the place. And then the second part will be try to imagine it or otherwise try to imagine reconnecting with the flowers outside, as you suggested with the grass, with the trees, with other humans, with the cashier that is selling you or charging you for what you just put in the market. Look at that cashier at that cashier or that that person that is receiving your money or your credit card as if it were the first person that you saw a human being. And you'll see how you see that person in a very different way, in a very different light. And you might feel a connection to that person and so on and so forth. So that that's, I think, is a good exercise from the time we get up to the time we go to bed, how we are so actively being so actively constructed as an individual and and how difficult it is to do otherwise and to be otherwise. Because the world is designed to construct us as individuals, as separate individuals and humans separate from the non-human and mind, separate from body and soul.

Speaker1: [01:02:12] That's a wonderful exercise, and we promised to try it and also to recommend it to everyone who's listening to give it a shot because, you know, Arturo was occurs to me that you talk about the need to sort of rethink cities and cities are such fascinating places because on the one hand, you have all the sort of technologies of one world modernity there, but you also have this immense density of webs of relations naledi all at the same time. And I think what you're suggesting is is so much more valuable actually than, say, you know, advice on how to recycle or something like that, although of course, people should recycle, too. But this idea that you know, you're challenging, you're challenging that one world modernity at its very heart in a way, and that maybe there's even a way of thinking about a city that could be a reversal because it is plural reversal, right? We just have to recognize it and, you know, adapt ourselves to it.

Speaker3: [01:03:03] It definitely is true reversal. And there is actually is in urban studies. The trend to authors in the UK call it the relation, actually the relational term in urban studies. And it's about seeing, as you would say, seeing the city as made up of a web of relations with others. Humans are not materiality, animals, plants in the city, other humans in the city spaces places all of that images. And it's really fascinating what is going on in that field now.

Speaker1: [01:03:37] It is so Artura, we are going to bid you farewell, but such a fond farewell, thank you so much for taking time with us today to talk about your work, your marvelous new work reversal politics. And it sounds like there's an exciting new project that's in the making, too that we're going to be actively anticipating,

Speaker2: [01:03:56] And we heard it here first. I think so. That's a good. That's good. It's good to look forward to. Yeah, I'll just say thank you to Arturo for taking the time today to talk with us about your work. It's really very, very, very inspiring. And I'm going to follow the exercise and also spend more time meditating on the book itself because there's so much good work in there and so much thought. It's it's a really, really, really rich book that I'm going to continue to get a lot out of.

Speaker3: [01:04:25] I know when thanks so much to both of you. Really, really, really appreciate.