Beauty in storytelling

I've spent the last week reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.  I've actually had a pretty wonderful year when it comes to reading, and over the year I've read and re-read many different writers, but Braiding Sweetgrass left me mesmerised.  With a beautiful sense of poetry, the writer shows us the impacts of history, the wonders of the ecology, and the value of community and what it means to look out for each other.  She does this while sharing her own life story as an ecologist.  And at the same time, she challenges the dominance of western science, allowing the insights of indigenous beliefs to come to the foreground.

Bron Taylor (In The Dark Green Religion) quoted the Columbian ecologist, Ximena Arango's belief that "oppressive behaviours do not follow an understanding that everyone is part of the earth."  Robin Wall Kimmerer uses lived experiences, including clearing out a pond, or the picking of wild strawberries, to share the value of be - ing, and what it means to live in a more-than-human world.  There's the imagery of pecan trees, all producing nuts at the same time, the maple syrup moon, and the gift of strawberry shortcake, a present from both earth and children.

We live with a wisdom so much greater than our own, in a universe which breathes alongside us.  And this was what I loved so much about Braiding Sweetgrass. As a scientist herself, Robin Wall Kimmerer showed us how western science doesn't have the only answers.  And what it means to embrace alternate ways of knowing, so that our own beliefs can be expanded.  She does it through story telling, by embracing wonder, and by marvelling at the beauty which exists all around us.  I can't think of a more inspiring way to learn.

Radical Imagination

When I share my interest in imagination and its role in creating change, I sometimes get the response that imagination is unhelpful.  Not only that, but working with imagination is unhelpful too.  In a world where there is a terrible sense of social injustice, it can sometimes seem as though a focus on imagination means denying that problems exist.  If we can wish our troubles away, after all, why would anybody want to work towards a more just society?

However, imagination can help us see that the world around us doesn't exist as the only possibility.  Instead, it was once imagined (and then set into place) by those who have gone before us.  What we have inherited is a material reality which impacts upon the lives of many.  But these realities are not the only possibilities.  Instead, some theorists (such as poststructuralist or social constructionist theory) argue that if we come together and recognise the difficulties 'we' (as a non-hierarchal humanity) face, and work towards exploring possibilities for a better world, then perhaps we can work towards increased social and environmental justice.

Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven have a book called The Radical Imagination:  Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity, which focuses on how to harness the imagination in order to work towards a more just society.  They explain that:

• Imagination means visioning a different future, and then bringing these ideas back into the present so that we can inspire both solidarity and new plans of action.
• Drawing on the past (and the complexities of the present) in order to understand the struggles we face.
• Imagining the struggles of others allows us to work towards a more compassionate world.
• Understanding the way that power works, and the systems and beliefs which uphold this enables us to work towards a stronger civil society.
• Sharing experiences, stories and what it means to be a person in the world helps to add to a wider and deeper definition of being human.
• New ideas help towards building new future stories or ways of understanding.  
• Imagination is constantly in flux, transforming or changing constantly.  This enables to see that reality is in flux, and our own contributions can add to a greater whole.
• Radical imagination means looking at the roots of power imbalance which have lead to social and environmental injustices.  This can include racism, neo-colonialism, sexism, and oppression based on religion, sexuality health or (dis)ability.
• These beliefs are reproduced over and over again via actions or words which exist between us. By increasing our awareness of these actions or beliefs, we are able to work towards change.
• Social movements are sometimes able to work towards a different society (although they do not create utopias).
• Members of a social movement do not share set perspectives or identical ideas.  The multiple perspectives or contested ideas provide insight or new ways of seeing the world.

Working with dialogue very often means that those people who have the most insight into social struggles, the people who have faced oppression or difficult circumstances, are the people who get to talk.  Marginalised perspectives offer a great deal of insight into how to work towards transformation.  Tim Brown in Change by Design, gives examples of the hospital patient who understands the loneliness and isolation of staring at the ceiling or being pushed through corridors while in a vulnerable state.  Likewise, it is the person who cannot read who is most able to assist with signage, or a woman who walks through a deserted park after a long day who is most aware of safety or security.  People who have been forced outside of the system often understand best those areas of injustice, oppression or struggle, and how best to work towards change.

Radical imagination, which works towards acknowledging injustices, often offers insight into areas where change is most needed.  In a world where knowledge places us on a hierarchy, and often means talking about, for but never with 'others', imagination and dialogue is empowering.  It means acknowledging the agency or insight of the 'other' and using this to build a better world.

Agency and the power of co-creation

Last year, when Rita, one of the teens who takes part in our AoC project spoke to a news reporter on a riverside in Observatory, and explained that she'd learned that "Change starts with you." I was grateful that she got to share her views with a wider community.  It didn't matter what she had chosen to say, but that she got the chance to share what she believed.  And she was taken seriously when she made that choice.

From the perspective that social norms are created through conversations or constantly repeated rituals, every new voice or conversation holds the possibility of adding a clearer picture of what it means to be a human being in this world.  Speaking, sharing and feeling helps us get in touch with our own views or beliefs, and those of 'other' people,  so that we can get a more complete picture of what it means to be a person in the world.  And a greater range of values or beliefs help to give insight.  This perspective shares we are shaped by the social system around us, but every action we take will help to maintain (or add a new voice) into that system.  

This doesn't mean subscribing to the very individualist world view that each person is responsible for his or her circumstances, that poor people are lazy, or that people are to blame for social conditions.  Quite the opposite.  Recognising the social world around us, the conversations or beliefs which maintain it, and the limits or restrictions it may place upon people means acknowledging social injustice.  It also means recognising those actions or beliefs which maintain the system, and using our own internal sense of justice or morality in order to respond.  We may not be able to change those embodied characteristics which create social divides.  But we can change the way we perceive people (or ourselves), the limits we place upon them, and the language we use to explain the world.

This ability to respond, to work towards a more just system, is known as agency.

I have had my own experiences of viewing the incredible dignity and generosity people have brought to life after experiencing social difficulties.  As a person who worked in a police station and listened to survivors of (often violent) crime, I saw women express their desires to walk others home through dark pathways, so that other women would not experience assault.  Over and over again, people spoke about their own, and others, right to dignity and the need for a full and respected humanity, no matter how dignity was threatened or affronted from every side.  

This has been the reason that grassroots work has always moved me so deeply.  Working without hierarchy, where the voices of the people who share with you are considered equal, means that people get to explore their own beliefs and experience their own agency.  Before exploring diversity studies, I'd wanted to become a clinical psychologist.  But the questions belonging to critical theory, those questions which focused on identity and the struggles people are born into were the ones which interested me most.  Critical theory, and the views of liberation psychology helped me to recognise how important those questions were.  And they also helped me to explore the importance of ensuring that each person has a voice.

After I graduated, I wanted to carry on working in a way which would respect (and learn from) those voices.  A letter to a left leaning NGO titled "We are poor, but we are not stupid."  as discussed by Richard Ptihouse, explained the importance of talking to people, rather than at, about or for them.  Richard Pithouse, in his discussion on shack dwellers, spatial social injustices and effective liberation group Abahlali, explains that very often NGO's:

'when they do engage with some of the actual people organising the actual protests they usually do so, like the state, via workshops in which they presume to tell people what they should be struggling for and how they should be doing it.'

He shares that:

The assumption that the capacity for thought is a function of class is adhered to rigorously and so the elite discourse rolls on relentlessly and blindly as academic or NGO 'experts' are called upon to explain the 'mysterious' politics of the poor.

And that:

'It is clear that citizenship is widely understood to refer to the material benefits of full social inclusion in the material and spatial senses as well the right to be taken seriously when thinking and speaking through community organisations.'

(This work can be found here)

My own experiences with listening and exploring new voices has enabled me to use my own agency to explore, listen, write and contribute to a different society.  But I enjoy this most when I work in collaboration with others.  Henry Giroux (30 June 2015) explained that by forming groups who speak, share and explore together what it means to live in a world where environmental crisis exists, and linking this crisis to conditions such as racism or poverty, asking critical questions and searching for ways of making normality strange, we are able to create new pockets of democracy within an unequal world.

Reading:

Giroux, H. (2015, June 30). Henry A. Giroux | Orwell, Huxley and the Scourge of the Surveillance State. Retrieved July 8, 2015, from http://www.truth- out.org/news/item/31639-orwell-huxley-and-the-scourge-of-the-surveillance- state

"we are poor, not stupid."  Learning from Autonomous Grassroots Social Movements in South Africa.  (www.abahlali.org)

http://www.hydrarchy.blogspot.co.za/2008/03/university-of-abahlali-basemjondolo.html?m=1)

Re-membering the world around us

In 2014, I was lucky enough to attend a heritage day assembly at Rondebosch East Primary School in Cape Town.  I originally went to this school because the Agents of Change Project was donating a tree.  While I was there, the principal gave a speech where he spoke about the need to re-member the past alongside the need to look after the world we live in, in order to create a better world for those who come after us.

This connection between past, present and future, alongside the recognition of our heritage, shared humanity and the world around us, was very motivating for me.  It helped me to see the importance of working towards social and environmental justice for the children present in that assembly, so that their voices and their humanity would one day be given free expression, within a world which would safe, and offer them dignity and compassion.

Since then, REPS has given their learners the opportunity to explore their own agency, as Agents of Change interested in working towards a more sustainable world.  Some of the insights the children have shared have been very insightful.

As one child explained:

It's not just the professionals that make a difference.  Your voice does too.  If you going to change, change for the better...your voice counts. #World Peace.  ( Aleker)

The opportunity to listen to, and share with, these children has been a privilege, and it has taught me the power of opening up to all voices, no matter how young.

Listening to children always brings home the importance of freedom, dignity and respect.  Exploring the wonder of the world alongside them, the landscapes of conversation, meaning and emerging awareness, helps me to see how valuable each child is, the uniqueness within each one, and the inhumanity which emerged when human beings were placed on a hierarchy.

The spaces between us

One of the things I enjoy most about taking part in the Agents of Change project is the visual example that the spaces between us are those points or places where conversations can occur.

Agents of Change focuses on how imagination enables us to create the world around us.

In the words of Peter Gabriel:

Looking out on empty streets, all that she can see
Are the dreams all made solid, the dreams made real,
All of the buildings, all of the cars, were once just a dream
In somebody's head

(Lyrics from Mercy Street)

The world around us was imagined, shaped via thoughts which would later shape the realities we see around us.  These realities sometimes present as the only ways of being, but Agents of Change shows us how our own thoughts, words and conversations are able to evoke a connected and creative energy that helps us to re-view the world and ourselves, in order to shape new possibilities.

Our thoughts go from the inner world of thought, back out into the outer world of sharing, conversation with others and awareness of the environment, and back into the world of insight or reflection, forming a continuous and fluid process which brings new ideas to life.

But we stand on the beach, we become people in bright orange jackets.  The process creates a sense of equality, taking us out of our social and professional identities and often creating a sense of curiosity.  If members of the public approach us, we share our questions rather than try to provide any set answers.

This openness to sharing and equality has been a relief for me.  I've learned that by taking myself out of my professional identity, and the jargon or technical language which sometimes accompanied this, I've been able to form deeper and more open conversations with others.

I studied critical theory because I wanted to work towards a deeper sense of human rights.  This would eventually move into an awareness of the interconnected social and environmental ecology around us.  I was only able to do this, however, when I learned to listen, share and respond.  Before this, my professional language had often formed a barrier between what I wanted to say, and what was actually understood.  The problem with technical language is that in situations where people face difficulties and want them to be heard, expert language or technical knowledge often provides a painful barrier that blocks out those communities of people who most need to be heard.

I often used technical language when I felt most vulnerable, and wanted to be precise.  Through taking part in Agents of Change, I've learned that it is most helpful to listen, shaping new ways of seeing the world by participating in the conversations people share with me.  We have the language of poetry, an embodied language of thinking and feeling together, and the language of imagination, metaphor and possibility.  Our sense of togetherness, when sharing our questions or insights, means that we shape new ways of seeing the world, offering up different realities or possibilities, and exploring different ways of being.

By awakening a radical sense of imagination, I've learned that I no longer need to offer answers or re-frame the world in technical language.  Each person is able to speak and share what s/he believes in, and each person offers up new insight.  It's been helpful for me, because technical language, born out of an urge to be inclusive, often leaves others more excluded than before.

Radical Ecopsychology

Andy Fisher explores the need for a contextual Ecopsychology, focusing on the need to link self, society and environment, in the form of a triangle, with each aspect interconnecting with the other.

In his book, Radical Ecopsychology, Andy Fisher focuses on the pains of capitalism, which has left us disconnected from the natural environment, yet noticing that we are lacking the nourishment that deep connectedness to nature brings.  Capitalism leaves us hunting for what we lack in the form of products which will never satisfy us.  He asks that we return to the knowledge which shapes the nature cultures, searching for new ways of being with the world which go beyond western hierarchies, and the very individualist culture of western society.