On Pluriversality

A few weeks ago, our Planetary Pedagogies working group launched a position paper and this new web platform in tandem with the launch of Planetary Civics.

We began forming the Planetary Pedagogies group just as I had completed several years of work exploring pluriversality and its situated possibilities for re-imagining education in response to the climate and biodiversity crises. This work became pivotal for our position paper and its invitation to think with the planetary across one and many worlds.

I think of the pluriverse not only as a concept, but also as a social imaginary and a political struggle catalysed largely by Indigenous and other minoritised groups across the Global South. The pluriverse is perhaps most concisely expressed in the Zapatistas’ call for a “world where many worlds fit”. This call is not for an abstract ideal, but for concrete practices born from an affirmation that many different worlds are possible; that all knowledges are situated and contingent; and that political struggles for co-existence are shared across all forms of life.

My work on the pluriverse called me back to researching on the ground, in place, exploring how people, other animals, plants, soils, funga, weather, and waterways come to gather, learn, and make worlds together. When I first relocated to RMIT about 5 years ago, I took up a research residency at ArtPlay, a multi-arts studio for children situated along Birrrarung river in downtown Naarm (Melbourne). The studio is situated in a place called Birrarung Marr, a meeting grounds of great historical, cultural, and spiritual significance for the five language groups of the Kulin Nation.

My work along Birrarung Marr has involved collaborating with local children on a series of creative projects exploring relationships with different worldmaking practices along the river. We’ve explored how trees communicate and share knowledge through underground worlds that run along its banks. We’ve listened for Birrarung river’s pasts, presents, and futures and buried sound maps for a people yet to come. We’ve explored ways of giving voice to the symphonic sentience of forest life that struggles to thrive and regenerate along this colonised stretch of the river. These are planetary pedagogies for exploring what the pluriverse sounds like, looks like, and feels like in this place, along this stretch of the river, as a crossroads between shared and yet incommensurable worlds.