The House That Modernity Built: Decolonial Futures

Hello, my name is Azul.

I am a Colombian educator, a facilitator, and an artist. And I’m also a member of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective, also referred to as the GTDF Collective. We are a transdisciplinary collective of researchers, educators, artists, students, and indigenous knowledge keepers. We work at the interface of concerns related with colonialism, racism, unsustainability, climate collapse, biodiversity loss, the mental heath crisis, and other intensifications of social and ecological violence. 

In the Collective, we work to build containers and collective capacity for engaging with global wicked challenges. We do so through critical systems and complexity literacies grounded on post-colonial, decolonial, indigenous, and non-Western psychoanalytic practices. We do this through what we call technologies of inquiry. These technologies of inquiry help us expand our capacity to sit with complexities, complicities, and paradoxes. They help us hold the good, the bad, the ugly, and the messed up without feeling overwhelmed or immobilised, without seeking quick fixes. 

One of the ways in which we engage, or one of the tools of the technologies of inquiries are social cartographies. Social cartographies are maps that help us hold things that are difficult to sit with. But, these maps are not descriptive or prescriptive.

Social cartographies are maps that help us hold things that are difficult to sit with. But, these maps are not descriptive or prescriptive. This is to say, these are not maps that describe the landscape, and they also don't tell you what to do or what to think. Instead, these maps are, in some ways, like navigation boards that help you navigate an unknown terrain. They help us see things that are otherwise invisibilised, and this is the basis of what we call 'depth education' or 'depth pedagogy'. 

So today I am going to be sharing a couple of social cartographies and relate them to the theme of collective imaginations. Before I go into them, I want to talk about the poly-crisis and the meta-crisis- two very important terms in this conversation that we're going to have today. 

The term polycrisis helps us see that it is dangerous to reductively focus on independent crises. For example, climate or social justice or artificial intelligence, separately. We know there are a vast number of interconnected issues that exacerbate one another and thus have to be considered together. Now, the term meta-crisis has a slight shift but it's an important one. It says that it is not only the many crises that are pushing us towards planetary catastrophe, but that they all have common underlying dynamics, and that those dynamics are the ones that need to be addressed first and foremost. 

To expand on this, I am going to talk about The House That Modernity Built, this cartoon here. I am going to go through each one of those cartoons separately. The House of Modernity is a story. It's a story about modernity, and modernity understood as the current mainstream system in the Global North, that has been exported and imposed onto the Global South. 

Let's take a look at the first image here. The first image we see a house that is exceeding the limits of the planet, a planet that is holding it. It's becoming bigger and bigger than the house itself. So in the floor here, the floor of the house is the floor of separation, separability. This is the illusion that imposes separation between humans and the rest of the land and the rest of nature. It also centres humans in the analysis and sees them, not only as separate, but also as superior to the rest of nature. 

Then we have the first carrying wall which is the nation state. We tend to think that the nation state is there to protect people, but when we look at it and look at the history of the modern nation state, at its foundation it is the protection of property. Critical Race Theory has found that historically, when groups of people are granted rights, civil rights for example, those are only granted when they converge with the interests of private property. Of course, this hasn't always been the case, but we've been able to map, and Critical Race Theory has been able to map that this has been the case largely. 

Then the next carrying wall is the wall of universal reason. This wall creates a single story of development, of progress and of civilisation. The problem with the single story is that it eliminates all other possible ways of knowing and of being. It also eliminates or severs our relationship with mystery, with the unknown and the unknowable- which will become relevant later on when we make more clear links between this house and the role of imagination in our current meta crisis.

Before, I want to talk about the roof. The roof of this house is global capital. In algorithmic capitalism, which is the exploitation of data to bring profit, and shareholder capitalism, the responsibility is to increase profit for the shareholders. I shouldn't say the responsibility- perhaps the mandate- is to increase profitability for shareholders. It is not to care for people, or for land, or even to ensure the house's prosperity. Historically, there have been different roofs, and also the walls might look somewhat differently. However, this structure can be found in most places of the world today. 

Now, this next layer of the house is called Hidden Costs. This talks about the ways in which the house is subsidised and maintained by violence. There is an arrow here bringing resources from the planet into the house through dispossession, processes of destitution, and genocide, as well as ecocide. Then, there is an arrow of waste disposal from the house, being disposed here on this side back on to the Earth.

In this image we can see that modernity's choice-making architecture is such that what is externalised in order to achieve the consumption goals of the house is fully ignored in the calculations. In other words, market incentives have caused externalities as fundamental to them. If we were to price things for the real cost, the market would collapse as we know it. However, if we continue to not price things at their real cost, life on Earth will collapse as we know it, which as we know, is happening today. 

To offer an example here, the computer that I'm using to record this video, and the computer you're using to watch it, has all these hidden costs. For example, the blood minerals that went into producing this computer under modern slavery conditions. The commodity chains, the pollutions after, the planned obsolescence of this computer kicks in. All of those factors are usually not factored in the value of this computer. I'm not only referring to monetary value, but also relational and metaphysical value of what we consume, right? So, those of us that enjoy the comfort of the house in some ways are not generally aware that these comforts are subsidised violence towards other humans, other species and the Earth, the living Earth that we are also connected to.

So here we have this other image, which talks about it draws a metaphor from the terms 'Global North' and 'Global South', but it does so in a way that illuminates the nuances of these terms. We don't use the words 'developing' countries or 'first world' and 'third world' countries because these are derogatory terms.

Basically, to go over this image, on the top we can see the penthouse, which is the north of the north and this represents communities of people that have had historical discretionary income. So intergenerational wealth that has been mostly stolen, for example, through colonialism. When I say stolen, I also mean through processes of slavery or modern day slavery and exploitation and destitution and genocide.

Then we have the north of the south. The north of the south is in relation to this ladder here, so it's social mobility. These are groups of people who are committed to establishing their financial security and their privileges.

Then we have the south of the north here in the bottom, in the basement of the house. These are communities, usually of immigrants, BIPOC people, and they sustain the stairs right. They do the work of cooking, of caring for the children etcetera.

Then we have the south of the south here in the area that is the planet. And they're drowning in the sewage that is coming out of the house. These are communities that are bearing the weight and the disposal of the comfort of the house. 

Today we can see some of these people are knocking on the house saying "let me in because you have destroyed all possibilities of life outside of the house". Some of them are still fighting with their lives to protect their ways of living outside of the house. This is the case for the indigenous communities that we work with, and who were part of work-shopping this story of The House That Modernity Built. 

So, why is this layer important for imagination work? Well, it's important to map ourselves- how are we mapped into this story. And to know that is usually folks from the north of the north, or the north of the south, who are doing this imagination work in a teleological capacity. It is important to understand that our ways of imagining have been impaired through the social, cultural parameters that have been imposed through the house.

For example, what we see a lot of the time for imagination work is that people imagine this idea of the universal middle class, the false promise of the universal middle class. Through alternative economies that will give people from the south of the south, the north of the south of the south, the privileges and the comforts of the north of the north. What we know is that in order to achieve where everybody can have those comforts, the only way to do this is to expand the house. But our living planet cannot bio-physically hold a bigger house anymore. In fact, our economy is not compatible with the planet that it is embedded in. This is one of the dilemmas that we face.

Then we have this image of the house that shows the meta-crisis, right- the structural damage of the house. We sit with a question, an important one: do we fix the house, do we expand it, do we build another one, do we live without it, do we find another planet? Before we jump into trying to answer this question. It is important to look at the ways in which the conditions of the house traps us in an effective and a relational feedback loop. It also rewards us, right, to stay within that feedback loop. 

Here in this image on the left the house creates fears of scarcity. Then those fears of scarcity become compensatory desires of accumulation. Then, those become perceived entitlements for ownership. So for example, let's take one of the words on the left, the house on the left, which says 'there is a fear of worthlessness'. Then, that creates a desire for importance and a perceived entitlement for affirmation. 

The thing with these feedback loops is that they can be compared with addictions. The thoughts in our bodies are not just thoughts, they are neurochemical processes that trigger certain hormones. As the house collapses, these feedback loops become more intense- our fears, our desires, our entitlements become more intense. These are incredibly difficult to break, just life addictions. And when I speak about addictions, in the Collective we talk about meta-consumption. So consumption as a mode of relating to the world as a whole. So, addiction to consumption, not only of stuff, but of relationships, of experiences, the consumption of knowledge.

This system, this house, rewards hedonistic, hyper-individualistic and narcissistic behaviours. This is why the meta-crisis that we're facing right now is not an informational problem. It's not about providing more information to people, but it is about breaking or interrupting violent habits of being that have been neurologically imprinted in our being. This shows us the depth of the problem and the magnitude of the crises that we're facing is deeper and is wider.

So the implications of imagination work is that as long as our imagining is coming from within the house, then we are doom to want to reproduce a different version of the same house. Even if we are thinking outside of the house, or outside of the box, the lines of that box, or the limitations of that box are inscribed by the same mindset, heartset and gutset (we speak about the mind, the heart and the gut as important centres in knowledge production and in sensing as opposed to only sense-making). 

So, perhaps the most important task of imagination work today is to sensitise us to the limits of knowing and of being that we have been socialised into. So, it's not about what we don't imagine, but about what we cannot imagine yet, as our imagination has been restricted by our projected ontological reference. Our hopeful desires are then are allocated accordingly. 

So one question that I'm sitting with for Collective Imagination is, what is an ecology of imaginations, that is necessary for current times of volatility, uncertainty, of complexity, of ambiguity. And perhaps, it is related to hope, and it is related to how we place imagination as something in the future. So this is a teleological way of thinking that is very typical of colonised mindsets. This is an insight that was shared with us by the indigenous elders that we work with in Brasil, in what is known as Brasil today.

So, we tend to think that we can imagine- in fact that we have to imagine an idealised future, or desirable future, because that is the only way we that we're going to be able to walk towards that goal. That goal is what gives us motivation to change in the present. This is a common assumption. However, the elders that we work with, specifically Chief Nina Wa Hooni Qui, from the Amazon, does a lot of work around this. He says that, when we think about hope, we project an image into the future, but remember that that projection is coming from those limited ontologies that we spoke about before. So, that happens instead of us thinking about relationships in the present and 'staying with the trouble' in the present. 

So imagination work can be used to escape the present, and can be in some ways more glamorous work, distracting us from doing the difficult work of sitting with the ways relationships and with the reparations of relationships now. In the Collective, we call it the work of 'composting', 'composting work'. So dealing with the repressed and the unprocessed shit that the Collective, the individual, and the ancestral shit that we have to work with.

A lot of time and energy is spent on creating imaginations for the future, and then convincing others of the vision for the future that we have, convincing others that we have the right one. It bypasses the more important and the more difficult work that is related to responsibility and accountability with the present. Nina Wa speaks about rescuing the imagination from the future and bringing it to the present, and to the reparation work that needs to be done. 

I'm going to share with you one last social cartography, which is what we call 'spaces of reform'. It maps three possibilities that we've seen show up when people realise the crises that we're facing. 

On the left, we have Soft Reform of The House of Modernity. The solution in this frame is more modernity, the world and the same leadership. The idea is to make this world a little bit better through transformations of policies and practices. This had to do with a methodological critique. It's to do with the way that we do things- the idea that we need to patch the house a little bit here and there, but that the house is basically working effectively it just has a few issues to be resolved.

Then, in the frame in the middle, we have Radical Reform. Radical Reform is when the solution is still more modernity, but with different leadership and with larger changes. So, for example, these are movements like Black Lives Matter, or Rhodes Must Fall, or the Me Too Movement. The idea is to make the same world a lot better by including more people, more voices and perspectives in collective action. This has to do with an epistomological critique, so that is if in Soft Reform it was the ways we do things, in Radical Reform it is the ways that we know. Radical Reform poses the same questions, but it shows us different answers. 

Then there is a third space, what we call Beyond Reform. In Beyond Reform (we see more and more folks speaking about this) basically here is where we say that more modernity is no longer an option, both because the violence that is required to expand the House, but also because the biophysical limits of our planet simply cannot afford more modernity. This space asks for different questions, and for different answers. There are several different strategies within this space. This space shows there's a recognition of an ontological critique, so that has to do with our ways of being. 

The interesting thing about this third space is that (there's different approaches to Beyond Reform) but one of them says there's no guarantees: the only thing we can try to ensure is that we're making different mistakes, not the same ones from the past. There is a possibility for something potentially, but not necessarily wiser, to emerge from the mistakes of modernity. And here, there is an important relationship with the mystery. There is an important relationship with an epistomological and ontological humility that comes with not knowing.

As I was saying before, it's not about a possibility of projecting what would the future would look like- the future we want- but rather how can we unblock possibilities of relating now, that then will make space for that potentially wiser future to emerge. This is a space where, in the Collective, we're trying to locate ourselves more and more. 

Just to finish, I'm going to show you a last very short Social Cartography, which we call the Merry-Go-Round. In this Merry-Go-Round, what we often see (I'm going to start from the left side) is this idea of safe, simplistic, feel-good, look-good solutions that sustain the status quo. That takes us to tokenistic transactional engagement, driven by optics, and by consumption, which then leads to narrow and limited imagination of what is possible and what is desirable.

So, from this space of a limited imagination we create simplistic, safe, feel-good, look-good solutions that sustain the status quo. It is difficult to read the words that are in this human in the centre, but it is basically mapping some of the entitlements that were in The House of Modernity, built into the frame, that had to do with the feedback loop, the effective and relational feedback loop that I spoke about. 

Okay, that was a very quick overview of a few of the cartographies that we use in the Collective. We do have many more tools in our website. It is all Creative Commons, so you can look deeper into it. There is also a course that we offer, that is called Facing Human Wrongs: Climate, Complexity and Collective Accountability. It expands on a few of the things that I've touched on today, and what we call Depth Capabilities, which is also strongly linked with this conversation around imagination work.

Thank you for listening.