Decolonizers of the imaginary

Christoph D. D. Rupprecht1*
crupprecht@chikyu.ac.jp

Ayako Kawai1,2
ayako.kawai@anu.edu.au

1) FEAST Project, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto (Japan)
2) Fenner School of Society and Environment, Australian National University

Note: This manuscript represents a pre-peer-review version / preprint of the paper

submitted to ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies on October 8th, 2018.
It is based on presentations at and generous feedback from participants of the AAG 2017,
Degrowth Malmö 2018 and Degrowth Mexico City 2018 conferences.

Keywords: degrowth, decolonization, more-than-human, radical imaginary

Abstract

The human radical imaginary, or the capacity to see in a thing what it is not (Castoriadis
1987), determines the possibilities we consider when we think about how the world should
look like. Sustainability research pioneer Donna Meadows has thus called the power to
transcend mind sets or paradigms out of which a system arises the most potent leverage point
for interventions. One barrier to such interventions is the colonization of the imaginary by
capitalism, the root cause of environmental destruction and addiction to economic growth.
Latouche argues as part of the debate on degrowth that the colonized Western imaginary must
thus be decolonized. In this paper, we ask how this might be achieved and propose
(re)introducing human traditions of seeking knowledge that transcend established Western
norms and conventions. Drawing upon concrete examples, we describe four types of
decolonizers and how they might help decolonize Western imaginaries: 1) Future
generations; 2) past generations; 3) non-humans, and 4) spiritual beings and concepts. We
conclude by briefly outlining ways to invite these decolonizers of the imaginary individually
and institutionally.

Introduction

It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth
and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; and perhaps that is due to some
weakness in our imaginations.
(Jameson, 1994, xi)

Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen
very carefully you can hear her breathe.
 Arundhati Roy, Confronting Empire, World Social Forum 2003

Industrialized societies and people socialized in their contexts are struggling to find
modes of being less destructive for the environment, the people exploited through global
capitalism locally and afar. Alternatives to capitalism have been proposed since its early
stages. The violent oppression of attempts to implement them, for example of Chile’s Allende
government, suggest these alternatives are not without appeal. Yet socialists, anarchists,
communists, degrowthers and other proponents of alternative economic and political orders
often struggle to gain sufficient political support for large-scale system changes. This can
only partly be explained by historic experiments and their sometimes-disastrous outcomes.
But what if we could envision a better world, a world enticing enough to radically change the
goals and shape of the industrialized societies responsible for the majority of environmental
damage?

Imagining alternatives to the current system is surprisingly challenging. Meadows

(1999) proposes a list of leverage points, places to intervene in a system. Those most
malleable to change, such as subsidies, taxes or standards, she argues, are also the least
effective. Instead, more effective places to intervene are the goals of systems and the mindset
or paradigm out of which the system arises. The most effective one in Meadow’s list is the
power to transcend paradigms. Paradigms she defines as “the shared idea in the minds of
society, the great big unstated assumptions – unstated because unnecessary to state; everyone
already knows them, [… the] deepest set of beliefs about how the world works” (1999, 17).
With Thomas Kuhn, she suggests working with active change agents and “the vast middle
ground of people who are open-minded” to change paradigms. The power to transcend
paradigms in turn entails “to let go into Not Knowing, into what the Buddhists call
enlightenment”, because “if no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to
achieve your purpose”, and “it is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw
off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, found religions, get locked up or
‘disappeared’ or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia” (1999, 19). Yet she also
cautions that with increasing effectiveness of a leverage point, the resistance of the system to
change likewise rises.

What holds us back from letting go of our belief in particular paradigms? Fukao
(2012, 90) identifies what she calls the colonization of the soul, something that occurs when
“the process of learning works to suppress as much as possible the affect that is directly
coupled with our own feelings, or when the process of learning is malevolently used for this
purpose, […] in the context of the home, the workplace, a rural community, a circle of
friends, or through the media in the form of ‘education’ or ‘propaganda’”. She holds this
process responsible for economic development as well as environmental destruction. Like a
curse, it forces individuals to act against their own interests without allowing them to escape
and take a different action (Fukao, 2012, 88f). To escape, Takebata continues the argument,
means to remove ones framework of reference (2012, 143). This requires a profound change
of mind that is difficult to achieve, as not questioning the assumptions underlying everyday
life is the choice requiring less effort. However, this choice unconditionally and uncritically
reinforces one’s worldview, which in this case is identical with Fukao’s curse that forms
one’s frame of reference. Fukao here uses the metaphor of a lid on the colonized soul that
isolates and oppresses it, while the persona above the lid reproduces the curse by rejecting the
possibility of change (Fukao, 2012, 22; Takebata, 2012, 167). Similar to Meadow, the goal is
then to recognize the fatalistic worldview as nothing more than one possible worldview,
striving to open the lid on the soul, and achieving a meta-recognition to act in a way oneself
can be at peace with (Takebata, 2012, 167).

How do the dynamics of transcending paradigms and decolonizing the soul play out
on a societal scale? Castoriadis provides insight by examining two additional questions:
“What is it that holds a society together?” and “What is it that brings about other and new
forms of society?” (1984, 148f). He argues that societies are held together by the “institution
of a society as a whole”, including its norms, values, language, tools, procedures and ways of
doing things, in addition to individuals themselves (Castoriadis, 1987, 1984, 149). Validity is
ensured sometimes by coercion and sanctions, though more often by adherence, support,
consensus, legitimacy, belief. These reflect a more fundamental process, “the formation
(fabrication) of the human raw material into a social individual, in which they and the
‘mechanisms’ of their perpetuation are embedded” (Castoriadis, 1984, 149f). Society is thus
an ever-shifting “magma of social imaginary significations, […] spirits, gods, God; citizen,
nation, state, party; commodity, money, capital, interest rate; taboo, virtue, sin”(Castoriadis,
1984, 150). The imaginary quality of the significations is derived from their independence
from elements existing in reality, as well as from their dependence on being instituted and
shared by a collective.

The key leverage point or escape from the curse, however, for Castoriadis lies in the
radical imaginary – “the capacity to see in a thing what it is not, to see it other than it
is”(Castoriadis, 1987, 81). It creates the imaginary significations that institute society (the
social imaginary, or for individuals the actual imaginary). Castoriadis thus answers his
second question about changes in the form of societies by arguing that it happens through a
process of creation of new significations (1984, 157f). He uses the rise of capitalism as an
example, and notes how what he calls a neo-Darwinian approach would expect to find a large
number of random social varieties that are eliminated, with only capitalism as the fit social
form left. Noting that this does not represent what happened historically, he identifies as the
actual cause “the emergence of a new social imaginary signification, the unlimited expansion
of ‘rational’ mastery (instrumented, to begin with, in the unlimited expansion of productive
forces)” (Castoriadis, 1984, 158). Latouche (2015) then draws upon the anthropological
critique of imperialism to point out that this obsession with economic growth can be read as a
colonization of the imaginary by capitalism. The colonization of the imaginary can thus be
understood as a society-scale process echoing the colonization of the soul as described by
Fukao.

The use of the term colonization here is not unproblematic. Latouche’s colonization
of the imaginary must not be conflated with the very concrete, historical violence of
colonization and its physical, psychological and systemic traumas, continuing to this day in
many places around the world. Colonization as a concept, however, can help understand how
the effects of Westernized, industrialized lifestyles cause suffering for humans, and for the
non-humans the capitalist system excels at isolating those living such lifestyles from. Indeed,
one could argue that regardless of location, unsustainable lifestyles make those living them
colonial settlers of the globe through their ecological footprint (Kanemoto et al., 2016). We
thus argue that (de-)colonization of the imaginary is a concept of analytical use – not by
casting ecological footprint settlers as colonized victims and thereby excuse inaction, but by
emphasizing that it is their (our) responsibility to decolonize imaginaries and thereby help to
stop perpetuating new forms of colonial violence. This must happen in addition to, not
instead of the ongoing struggle of decolonization around the world.
 To decolonize the social imaginary, it is then necessary to draw on the radical
imaginary to create new imaginary significations:

[W]hat is required is a new imaginary creation of a size unparalleled in the past, a

creation that would put at the center of human life other significations than the
expansion of production and consumption, that would lay down different objectives
for life, ones that might be recognized by human beings as worth pursuing. “…” Such
is the immense difficulty to which we have to face up. We ought to want a society in
which economic values have ceased to be central (or unique), in which the economy
is put back in its place as a mere means for human life and not as its ultimate end, in
which one therefore renounces this mad race toward ever-increasing consumption.
That is necessary not only in order to avoid the definitive destruction of the terrestrial
environment but also and especially in order to escape from the psychical and moral
poverty of contemporary human beings.
(Castoriadis, 2003, 143f)

How to overcome the obstacles to creating a new imaginary pointed out above? They
are present at the level of the system (following Meadows, the resistance of the system to
change proportionately to the radicality of change), the individual (following Fukao and
Takebata, the inertia resulting from the effort required to question beliefs, as well as the
reinforcing effect of inaction), and society (the process of socialization). However, if we
accept Castoriadis’ proposed explanation, the creation of new imaginary significations would
overwrite both system paradigms and remove the lid on the colonized soul. This leaves the
actual task of creating a new imaginary, or decolonizing the imaginary.

In this paper we aim to outline one potential method: to recognize the limit of our
individual (actual) and collective (social) imaginary, and humbly seek help with the creation
of a new imaginary from what we call ‘decolonizers of the imaginary’: future generations,
past generations, non-humans, and spiritual beings and concepts. Before we take a look at
each of these four types of decolonizers, however, we want to address objections readers
might have at this point. Does not such a quest for help ignore methods easily available and
more within our control? While a review and rebuttal of all theories of overcoming social
norms and ingrained behaviors lies beyond the scope of this paper, we briefly examine two
alternative methods that can be seen as representative for larger groups. First, we return to
Castoriadis and his approach, what he calls autonomy (as opposed to closure to change, or
heteronomy). He argues that autonomy is what characterizes societies

calling into question their own institution, their representation of the world, their
social imaginary significations. This is, of course, what is entailed by the creation of
democracy and philosophy, both of which break up the closure of the instituted
society prevailing until then and open up a space where the activities of thinking and
of politics lead to putting again and again into question not only the given forms of
the social institution and of the social representation of the world, but the possible
ground for any such forms. Autonomy here takes the meaning of a self-institution of
society which is, from now on, more or less explicit: we make the laws, we know it,
and thus we are responsible for our laws and have to ask ourselves every time, “Why
this law rather than another one?” (Castoriadis, 1984, 160)
 This questioning, facilitated by philosophy and democracy, opens up space for other
forms of social representations of the world. Yet while it may be a precondition for
decolonizing the imaginary, it does not assist us in the prior step of identifying non-capitalist
imaginaries of sustainability and well-being.

The second alternative method, the use of psychoactive substances, shares this
problem. Throughout human history, humans have experimented with stimulants to actively
influence perception, consciousness, and the imagination. Recent research has begun to re-
examine traditional practices involving such substances to treat ailments including depression
(Carhart-Harris et al., 2012; Osório et al., 2015), and drugs such as LSD and MDMA appear
to improve structural and functional neural plasticity (Ly et al., 2018). The publicity around
the topic has led to participatory journalistic investigations (Pollan, 2018) and widening
debates as well as legal reform of medicinal and recreational drug use in some countries such
as the United States (McGinty et al., 2016). However, apart from limited availability and
strict regulation remaining the legal norm, one of the concerns is the risk for experiencing
distress (a ‘bad trip’) rather than an enhanced consciousness or imagination (Johnson et al.,
2008). These aspects thus limit the role of psychoactive substances might play. Nevertheless,
one insight can be gained from the depth of tradition in using such substances. Often,
transcendental knowledge was not sought from drug use itself; it rather represented a tool to
facilitate a connection or communication with sources of insight beyond the human domain.
With this small excursion we return to the method proposed in this paper.

The method of seeking the help of decolonizers to create new imaginaries of

sustainability and well-being is based on three premises. The first concerns the mechanism of
the proposed process. We argue that by exposing ourselves to stimuli in the variety
represented by the decolonizers, we may be able to increase the capacity of our radical
imaginary (following Castoriadis). As this process is deliberate, imaginary significations to
be considered can be actively selected rather than being subjected to them at random (as with
psychoactive substances). The second premise is that our past provides us with lessons about
sustainability. Many forms of human social organization in the past, such as hunter-gatherer
societies, have been characterized by both well-being of the individuals as well as
environmental sustainability (Gowdy, 1997). Drawing upon such existing imaginaries,
imaginary significations that likely still remain within Castoriadis’ magma, should prove
easier than creating new ones from scratch. The third premise is that some approaches are
more likely to succeed than others. In particular, we argue that approaches actively rejecting
the significations that have invited unsustainable societies should provide a more effective
corrective function than those (such as sustainable development or green capitalism) relying
on the very reasons for the predicament we find ourselves and our world in: capitalism and its
addiction to growth, the ‘unlimited expansion of rational mastery’ (Castoriadis), and a
disregard for non-human life (anthropocentrism).

The remainder of this paper will address the following two research questions: 1)
Who can we turn to for seeking their help as decolonizers of the imaginary?, 2) How could
they specifically help us to decolonize by enhancing our radical imaginary capacity? For this
purpose, we will use a range of examples to examine four groups of decolonizers: future
generations, past generations, non-humans, and spiritual beings and concepts. We then briefly
discuss existing and possible ways of practically implementing the proposed method
individually and institutionally.
Decolonizers of the imaginary

1. Future generations

To begin we consider actual future generations, from children to those yet unborn.
These generations can act as decolonizers of the imaginary by reminding us to widen our
economic and political time horizon underlying our actions, or phrased provocatively,
“dismantle the dictatorship of the present over the future”(Grözinger, 1993). This dictatorship
consists of two elements. First, representation of interests in modern democracies remains
limited to a fraction of the population. Despite a historic trend of extending active and passive
voting rights (e.g. women suffrage), those who hold a stake in the future – children as well as
those yet unborn – rely on having their interests considered by adult voters and policy
makers, while having neither the right to a hearing nor a way to sanction decisions. Second,
major political (electoral) and economic (quarterly/yearly reporting) cycles are focused on the
short term, from the immediate present to four to five years in the future, as mechanisms of
taking responsibility for policy decisions and electoral/stakeholder feedback evaluate in these
time frames. This setup intrinsically disincentivizes long-term thinking, and thereby
disadvantages future-stakeholders. These two elements are often discussed in the context of
intergenerational justice. Van Parijs (1998) examines four different approaches to achieve
such justice: age-differentiated political rights, the parents’ vote, population policy, and
guardians. Of these we focus here on the fourth, as guardians appear to hold the most promise
in achieving the goal of decolonizing the imaginary, rather than (following Meadows) the
remaining three approaches of intervening in lower-rank leverage points. The idea of the
guardian is to provide both representation and a veto mechanism for future generations,
thereby aiming to address both elements of the dictatorship described above. Such a guardian
is imaginable in various forms, as an appointed officer, an expert commission, or a full-scale
institution (Van Parijs, 1998, 320). To gain a better understanding of how implementations
might look, we briefly review three examples: a conceptual approach, a formal institutional
approach, and a participatory planning-based approach. In the first example, the
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), a Native American confederacy, refer to the unborn of the future
Nation and their interests that are to be kept in mind during deliberations in their confederate
council (Arenas and Rodrigo, 2013). Future generations are not sitting at the table but are due
consideration. In contrast, institutional representation has been implemented in various ways
across countries, from Israel’s Knesset Commission for Future Generations to Hungary’s
ombudsman for future generations. This approach attempts to provide indirect representation
of the interests and rights. The third example is that of Future Design, a participatory
planning tool to facilitate intergenerational deliberation through having a group roleplaying
imaginary future generations (Hara et al., 2017). This pilot test in a Japanese municipality
indicated that use of the planning tool led to modified deliberation styles and resulted in more
than half of the cases a selection of policy measures proposed by the imaginary future
generation groups. Here, the difference to institutional approaches lies in the embodying of
stakeholders at the table for concrete policy deliberations, rather than a controlling instance
subject to personnel politics and varying degrees of power.

Another group of future generations are those whose tales are told in science fiction
and speculative literature. Arguably the most direct creation of writers’, artists’ and other
creatives’ imagination, they nevertheless tend to take on lives of their own and often heavily
influence how we see things in the present (e.g., our language, in which authors such as
Orwell have become adjectives to describe socio-political organisation). These efforts can be
deliberate. Kerslake (2007, 187) points out that some modern science fiction, for example Ian
M. Banks’ Culture series, is “asking us to hypothesize what may happen in the space beyond
empire, as new generations of readers demand an end to the imposition of a social heritage no
longer theirs in fact or ideology” – a direct effort to decolonize the imaginary. Such trends are
also reflected in the evolution of the genre as a whole. Recent years have seen works by
people of colour (e.g., N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series), women (e.g., Ann Leckie’s
Imperial Radch trilogy), non-English (e.g., Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy),
and LGBT+ authors (e.g., Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire series) enjoy tremendous
popularity as well as critical success in winning major genre awards (e.g., Hugo and Nebula
awards). Moreover, there are signs that this success is only the tip of the iceberg. While
critical postcolonial science fiction predates this recent trend (Smith, 2012), the year 2013 is
one plausible date for the beginning of the new science fiction subgenre solarpunk with the
publication of a Brazilian anthology titled “Solarpunk – Ecological and fantastic stories in a
sustainable world”(Lodi-Ribeiro, 2013). International attention and discussion on weblogs
followed, with young writers, artists and readers alike exploring how their experience
growing up with an awareness of Earth’s ecological destruction drove them to seek ways to
overcome unsustainable and unjust ways of life. Flynn (2014) argues that

It’s hard out here for futurists under 30. As we percolated through our respective
nations’ education systems, we were exposed to WorldChanging and TED talks, to
artfully-designed green consumerism and sustainable development NGOs. Yet we
also grew up with doomsday predictions slated to hit before our expected retirement
ages, with the slow but inexorable militarization of metropolitan police departments,
with the failure of the existing political order to deal with the existential-but-not-yet-
urgent threat of climate change. Many of us feel it’s unethical to bring children into a
world like ours. We have grown up under a shadow, and if we sometimes resemble
fungus it should be taken as a credit to our adaptability.

We’re solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.

The promises offered by most Singulatarians and Transhumanists are individualist

and unsustainable: How many of them are scoped for a world where energy is not
cheap and plentiful, to say nothing of rare earth elements?

Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and
more importantly for the generations that follow us – i.e., extending human life at the
species level, rather than individually. Our future must involve repurposing and
creating new things from what we already have (instead of 20th century “destroy it
all and build something completely different” modernism). Our futurism is not
nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary
tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community
[emphasis from original text].

Solarpunk thus refuses to surrender to the temptation of violent, dystopian post-

apocalypse imaginaries which simply give up on future generations. Instead, it makes an
ethical argument for efforts to envision positive imaginaries of sustainability. Future
generations in solarpunk art, literature and games who grapple with the world we leave them
thereby help us to reject the capitalist credo of self-interest. They remind us that not only do
our actions have consequences, but that building the future happens in the present (a notion
expressed also in the concept of prefigurative politics (Yates, 2015)). Their power to
decolonize stems from the fact that they are grounded in the culture they arise from are but
oriented towards the imaginary, making them both “connected and free” (Kerslake, 2007,
192).

2. Past generations

Many cultures share the concept of ancestors who play a strongly normative role and
give directions for how to act in the present. As Lakos (2009, 156) points out, in the Chinese
context “it is from the ancestors that the present generation finds a sense of value, and an
understanding of what is right and wrong, good and evil. The ancestors provide both the
values and the structural model for social unity.” This influence extends to decisions affecting
people’s relationship with nature. For example, in a study on carbon sequestration through
land-management decision in tropical homegardens in Kerala, India, ancestors most strongly
influenced farmer’s decisions about management practices among a range of
sociopsychological factors (Saha et al., 2011). Similarly, a study on the Liberian Loma
people’s agro-ecological practices found that the Loma’s ‘ancestral habitus’ led to forgoing
opportunities to expand production on African dark earth (fertile carbon-rich anthropogenic
soils) (Fraser et al., 2015). The term ancestral habitus here refers to a “set of social and
religious institutions and practices”, an “ontology which, through its ancestors, other
supernatural agencies and initiation societies, shapes ‘substantive’ rationalities that inform
everyday life and land tenure and land management decisions”, thereby maintaining
sustainability (Fraser et al., 2015, 235). In comparison, a study of agropastoralism of the
Tandroy people in Madagascar frames the ancestral influence as a social-ancestral contract,
drawing upon Taylor’s social imaginary theory as an analytical tool for identity, morality and
institutions of a society or culture (von Heland and Folke, 2014). The authors describe this
contract as follows (2014, 258):

The conception and birth of a Tandroy child into the world of the living establishes a
contract with the clan, with living clan members, with ancestral spirits and with the
tradition established by the ancestors’ historical deeds. The contract grants the living
the right to a life within the clan and to the land, it defines the moral and practical
relationship between the living and the land and its non-human inhabitants—cattle,
cacti, trees, etc.—and it spells out the ancestral duties and laws governing life in the
clan. “…” We suggest that the social-ancestral contract serves as a moral attractor
that assembles the social–ecological entities of the system and sustains critical
ecosystem services. The persistence of the ecosystem services emerging from the
agropastoral system in southern Androy is a result of clan social imaginary and its
moral order, which articulate and mobilize social practices that nurture those fellow
organisms in the landscape considered necessary for restoration of the agropastoral
system at large, for bringing honor to the living members of the clan and for
acquisition of the zebu capital required for key rituals. This human-to-organism
assistance is especially visible following prolonged droughts, when cattle, cacti and
crops require sustenance to regain their former condition.

From these examples we can identify two ways in which past generations can act as
decolonizers of the imaginary in a broad sense. The first way is preventive: past generations
and their normative influence work to counteract the attraction of maximizing short-term
gains of perceived well-being, which can be understood as a resilience against the
colonization of the imaginary. To act as active decolonizers of an already colonized
imaginary, the second way proposed here, past generations could be included into decision-
making processes in democracies by borrowing either the formal institution approach or the
participatory democracy approach discussed for future generation in the previous section.
Both ways would enhance the radical imaginary by lengthening the time frame and remove
the present generations from being the sole focus of societal efforts.

3. Non-humans

Decolonizers of the imaginary do not need to be former or future humans. Once we

reject that all non-human life is simply a variety of ‘natural resources’ humans can and may
exploit at will to increase human wellbeing, we may find non-humans to be powerful
champions for escaping the illusion that humans are the center of the universe. In fact, since
the 1990s several fields have developed that seek to explore points of view beyond
anthropocentrism, and a detailed examination exceeds the scopes of this paper. We thus
provide a limited number of examples and encourage readers to seek out these salient
literatures around the topic of non-humans. (Sub)fields engaged in this endeavor include
those under the name ‘more-than-human’, from geography (Panelli, 2010; Rupprecht, 2017;
Wright, 2014) to anthropology (Abram, 2012), ethnography (Tsing, 2015) and others, as well
as multispecies studies (van Dooren et al., 2016; Van Dooren and Rose, 2012), animal studies
(Marvin and McHugh, 2014), animal geography (Buller, 2014; Philo and Wilbert, 2000),
plant geography (Head and Atchison, 2008), ecocriticism (Cohen and Duckert, 2015) and the
environmental humanities (Cohen, 2015; Ginn et al., 2014), science and technology studies
(Haraway, 2006), inter- and transdisciplinary studies (Wright, 2018), posthumanism
(Papadopoulos, 2010), speculative ethics (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017), urban planning
(Houston et al., 2017; Metzger, 2014) and others. Whether we look at the city from the
perspective of animals (Wolch, 2002), think through being eaten as a plant (Marder, 2013), or
reconsider what it means to be human when we are kept alive by our microbiome (Rees et al.,
2018) – taking non-humans seriously as persons with agency allows us to de-center humans,
to notice how limited our field of sight becomes when fixated by the idea of the
Anthropocene.

Far from remaining a matter of theoretical discussion, non-humans are increasingly

influencing social, political and legal realities. The idea of animal rights and personhood has
fueled growing vegetarian and vegan movements, in the process forcing us to acknowledge
not just the immediate ethical questions of eating living beings capable of pain and feelings,
but also the necessity of reducing meat consumption in the light of its ecological footprint.
Legal explorations of non-humans being recognized as stakeholders came to the conclusion
that several such management processes could accommodate non-humans as well (Starik,
1995). Experiments such as allowing residents of Melbourne to send the trees coinhabiting
the city emails powerfully demonstrated that such considerations are underpinned by the deep
care and connection between human and non-human urban dwellers. The ‘one world one
health’ concept was initially focused on interconnected risks for animal and public health, but
has since been complicated to evoke more-than-human solidarity (Hinchliffe, 2015; Rock and
Degeling, 2015; Wolf, 2015).

This increasing awareness of our more-than-human world should not be mistaken as a

new idea or perspective on the world. Far too often, narratives of development place
industrialized, Westernized nation states at the forefront of progress. Yet it is these nation
states and their people that have finally begun to address the paucity of their social
imaginaries, struggling to catch up with indigenous and other non-capitalist cultures’
understanding of the interdependence of life. The journey in pursuit of more-than-human
worlds for Westernized people is thus a daunting attempt to understand indigenous
knowledges and truths woven over thousands of years. Recent research will be crucial in
guiding this journey. Johnson and Larsen (2017, 2) tell us of the call of place as a “summons
to encounters, dialogues of the humans and nonhumans who share the landscape” in the
Cheslatta Carrier Nation traditional territory in British Columbia, Canada, the Wakarusa
Wetlands in northeastern Kansas, United States, and the Waitangi Treaty Grounds in
Aotearoa/New Zealand. They emphasize (Johnson and Larsen, 2017, 21f) that

…it is here, being-together-in-place, where we are brought into the vitalities of

coexistence and our entanglements with others; where humans and nonhumans are
working to decolonize their relationships; where communities are coming together in
protest and ceremony to defend land under threat; where reciprocal guardianship is
being stitched back together in new and unanticipated ways; and where a new kind of
“place thinking” is emerging on the border of colonial power in the embodied scales
of coexistence.

We argue that these efforts are among the most striking demonstrations of practiced,
embodied radical imaginary in the sense of Castoriadis.

4. Spiritual beings & concepts

The Western separation of the natural world (exempting it of intrinsic meaning, value
and normative power) from the spiritual world, followed by the rejection of spiritual thinking
and the ‘unlimited expansion of rational mastery’ (Castoriadis), represents a loss in
ontological capacity, as it creates a monoculture of meaning. It is thus unsurprising that in
many indigenous cultures, the distinction between natural and spiritual world is fluid.
Moreover, finding statements about how people should relate to nature in religious belief
systems is the norm rather than the exception. These guidelines take different forms. For
many indigenous peoples of Australia, living with and taking care of the land is an inherently
spiritual practice (Rose et al., 2003). Both in Islam and Christianity, stewardship for Earth is
humankind's God-given responsibility (Denny; Hessel). This notion has been recently
reemphasized by pope Francis in his encyclical "Laudato Si" ("On care for our common
home"), a reminder and call to action to prioritize the environment over consumption and
development (Francis, 2015).

While an exhaustive review of normative views on human-nature relations across

world religions is beyond the scope of this paper, Asia's rich history of religious thought on
nature merits a closer look. We focus here on non-dominant examples rather than those
associated with Buddhism or Shintoism. A case from Vietnam describes the worldview of the
Ma Lieng people, an ethnic minority group, and their land use practice reflecting spiritual
values (Social Policy Ecology Research Institute, 2013). The Ma Lieng people consider Earth
and Sun Mother and Father. The natural world is created by these parents, including rivers,
hills, forests, trees, and plants, which in turn humans originate from. Their respect to the
Mother and worship for her holiness is ingrained in their practice of land acquisition. In a
ceremony, a request for land expansion is first made by the head of a household to the head
of a clan, which is reported to the village elder and then to the spiritual leader. The spiritual
leader will choose a desirable day and all family members gather at the land which they made
a request of. The spiritual leader then contacts the Mother, the Father, and other spirits of
rivers and mountains on behalf of the whole community. The vital moment of the ceremony
is a coin flipping, by which the leader asks spiritual beings for permission to use the land. If
the spirits accept, one of the coins shows the head and the other the tail. The family is then
allowed to continue the ceremony of breaking ground. Alternatively, spirits would express
their disagreement by showing both coins facing the head. The ground breaking of the land in
such a case would be considered to lead to misfortune for the villagers. Should both of the
coins face the tail, people can ask the spirits again by conducting another coin flipping.

The concept of envisioning spiritual beings in non-humans and subsequently

considering that these can potentially harm humans if mistreated is frequently found in
societies. The Naxi people who mainly reside in southeast China worship the spirit or god
called ‘Shu’ that governs nature (Xu et al., 2005). According to Naxi oral history, Shu and
human progenitors came from the same father and later separated. After separation, Shu
received forests, rivers, mountains, and wild animals whereas humans received domestic
animals, crops, and valleys. The Naxi people believe that humans have once invaded the
property of Shu and incurred its wrath. Shu took revenge against humans and challenged
them for their survival. In order to calm Shu’s anger, humans needed cultural specialists for
negotiation. In the end, Shu agreed that both humans and Shu would not harm each other.
Under this agreement, humans may source necessary resources such as timber and wild
plants, provided that humans regularly worship Shu. Every year, Naxi people thus gather to
worship Shu and present offerings as repayment for harvested natural resources (Xu et al.,
2005). Similarly, the Dai people who live across South-East Asian countries consider that
forested holly hills are places where deities reside (Pei, 1985). These hills usually composed
of secondary woodlands, home gardens, and paddy fields. All the plants and animals in these
hills are sacred companions of the deity. To maintain human well-being and peace,
appropriate actions and respects for deities are considered important to avoid punishment
through misfortunes. Such views are reflected in the Dai villagers’ natural resources
management practices, including the establishment of the local association of religious plant
conservation group which teaches traditional knowledge to the local young and encourages
them to apply it for biodiversity conservation (Liu et al., 2002). The Dai people’s practice
based on their worldview has contributed to the conservation of local landscapes as well as
local endangered plant species (Xu et al., 2005). Spiritual practices, worship of past
generations and practices involving non-humans may thus overlap, meaning a clear
distinction between different decolonizers of the imaginary may be neither possible nor
necessary.

Towards embracing decolonizers of the imaginary

The four groups of decolonizers discussed in this paper each possess a depth that
makes the task of introducing them briefly daunting. We thus emphasize that we may have
failed to do the described examples justice and encourage readers to engage with them in any
way that seems promising and appropriate. To conclude, we end with a brief outlook on how
to embrace the decolonizers in both in personal lifeworlds and in the systems of our societies.
For this purpose, we briefly showcase several examples, again with the explicit
acknowledgement that these are not the only possible ways. We also refer readers to a recent
themed section in this journal on concrete ways to decolonize research (Vol. 17 No. 3).

Everyday life interactions with decolonizers might entail spiritual practices such as
meditation and nature contact. A growing body of scientific literature provides evidence for
the benefits of meditative practices such as mindfulness (Piet and Hougaard, 2011; Smith et
al., 2005; Zenner et al., 2014), possibly a sign of a slow move towards richer, less Eurocentric
epistemologies. Common views about the benefits of encountering nature are similarly now
underpinned by countless studies (Keniger et al., 2013), be it in the form of hiking in a
national park, meeting the plants and animals in an urban vacant lot, or caring for potted
plants. Even a hobby of reading speculative fiction or playing video games that challenge our
preconceived ideas of the world might help us learning to "see things as they are not"
(Castoriadis).

Embracing decolonizers of the imaginary is also possible in a systemic way. One

example is the inclusion of non-human stakeholders in educational and applied participatory
planning and decision-making processes, thereby making these processes less
anthropocentric. This also entails acknowledging the uncertainty of governance in a complex
world full of beings with agency. Such uncertainty, as well as the fundamental unknowability
of how the future unfolds, are central notions in anticipatory governance, an approach
seeking to overcome a misplaced faith in predictions by orthodox strategic planning models
(Vervoort and Gupta, 2018). Such endeavors complement, and have much to learn from the
rich variety of approaches challenging Western models of development in the context of
postdevelopment (Demaria and Kothari, 2017). Yet the possibly most powerful intervention
might be the introduction of decolonizers into formal and informal education and other public
spheres. What better way to decolonize than to avoid colonization of our children's
imaginaries in schools and through advertising in the first place?
Acknowledgments

The authors are deeply grateful to their colleagues for being generous with time and
feedback, to the participants of the two 2018 conferences on Degrowth in Sweden and
Mexico as well as of the 2017 AAG session on Degrowth for their kind and helpful feedback.
This research was supported by the FEAST Project (No. 14200116), Research Institute for
Humanity and Nature (RIHN), and in part supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers
JP17K08179, JP17K15407.
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