In Dialogue with the More-than-Human: Affective Prefiguration in Encounters with Others
Ann Light · interactions · 2023
Iin niches and created as part of social movements determined to do better.Sometimes the new structures become absorbed; others persist as alternatives; some exist only as long as needed to make a point.These structures and the imaginaries that accompany them are what Davina Cooper has called everyday utopias [2].They leave a legacy, giving us something to aspire to: a direction of travel.In ways akin to utopian science fiction, they present us with a hopeful but practical vision.Even those that fail to take hold signal how difference could arise.David Graeber and David Wengrow's colossal book The Dawn of Everything [3] presents, in this spirit, the diverse ways the anthropologist/archaeologist authors I have been talking about practices that give people the chance to feel differently.Not only to feel different, but to feel relationships that are not ubiquitously available at present.I call this affective prefiguration.We have seen the idea of prefiguration enter design in relation to prefigurative politics.Carl DiSalvo championed it [1] and there is inspiring work from, for instance, Mariam Asad and Alix Gerber.In its political form, prefiguration is commonly understood as enacting the change one wants to see.Much of this thinking has concerned itself with alternative and progressive organizational structures-new economies, different legal systems, regenerative care facilities-emerging In Dialogue with the More-than-Human: Affective Prefiguration in Encounters with Others