Hannah's Review of Arturo Escobar's Designs for the Pluriverse

 “We have to relearn to walk the world as a living being” – quote from Adriana Paredes Pindan in Desgins for the Pluriverse

In this book, Arturo Escobar discusses that burning question I’ve had as a graduate student, “Can modernist traditions and institutions be reoriented to enable the emergence of varied, just, sustainable, communal, and autonomous ways of living?” – bluntly put by myself, “Is what we are doing as academics actually helping create different and better worlds?”. The book itself is an experiment in answering this question. It hyper-reflexively presents a hypothesis of the pluriverse: constantly pointing out the shortcomings of the writing itself; pointing out unanswerable or unanswered questions; explaining the author’s biases and positionality in various contexts, not just at the beginning; explaining the book’s positionality as an academic subject; and foundationally, leaving all these ideas open and without firm resolve for an answer. Escobar doesn’t make a clear argument for the Pluriverse as an alternative to modernity; rather, he explores his hypothesis that enabling the emergence of many worlds, not just modernity’s world, is a better way forward for humanity, and the Earth itself.  

This description might produce some assumptions of nebulous writing, but do not be mistaken, Escobar created an understandable and grounded piece of scientific inquiry. He is repetitively, explicitly ontological in his inquiry. I’m honestly surprised to know the word “ontological” is not in this book’s blurb – he pulled a fast one on me there. Escobar spends the first half of the book contextualizing the question at hand. He covers all things ontological because his hypothesis is predicated on transitioning “moderns” to a different ontology than what modernity requires: trading rationalism and dualism for relationality and pluralism. He posits we need the pluriverse which is, to quote the Zapatistas, “un mundo donde quepan otros mundos/a world where many worlds fit”.

Escobar focuses on transitions from modernity to different worlds, not “here is exactly where we need to be” or “here’s how these specific people need to do it”. He draws from well accredited knowledge of the Latin American indigenous, black, and peasant movements, activists, and peoples to propose ideas for how transitions in all other contexts can be designed to enable “the pluriverse”. Now I’ve read The Production of Space and For Space and this leads me to say, Escobar’s ‘design’ is like Lefebre and Masseys ‘space’: A totally obvious thing that we do but hard to pin down as a single definition. By reading the book I can now glean the vibe of a –misleadingly common and simple – word that conveys various intertwined and complex ideas. We design in a particular way, but can we design in a pluriversal way? And again, the ethereal yet obvious concept of design is concretely laid out for the reader in the context of the hypothesis. By the last section of the book, Escobar is crystal clear on the features of “Designs for the Pluriverse”; crystal clear on the criteria designing for a pluriverse would need to meet. And he is crystal clear about the contradictions and critiques his ideas may raise. To this, he leaves some questions open and makes arguments against others.

Arturo Escobar has cooked the soup that I’ve been trying to find the recipe for. He asserts that academics need to practice what they preach and engage in the challenge of our dying Earth; and offers ‘autonomous design for the pluriverse’ as a practice to achieve this. And he provides this practice with a slew a critical abundance of foundational ingredients: matriarchy, nondualist ontology, non-human care, relationality, and radical interdependence. So yeah, if you’re looking for a similar soup, I would highly recommend you read this book.