This week, I wanted to invite all of you to participate in something a little bit different. So much of our thinking and writing this year has centred on imagination—how important it is to be able to imagine systems beyond global capitalism, to really be able to see what that looks like. But even for myself, I find this a very difficult task. The world is incredibly complex, and as soon as you think of one potential change, ten contradictions pop up. For every question answered, it seems like more questions emerge.

In a previous instalment, I referenced a book called The Solutions are Already Here by Peter Gelderloos. One of the things I found inspiring about the book was that, in the final chapter, Gelderloos lays out, in great detail, what the place he lives might look like if the kind of systems change he describes in the book became reality. I realised that although we talk about imagination often, I had never seen such a clearly articulated vision laid out like that before. I believe that engaging in this kind of imagination is some of the most important work we can be engaging in right now. Because, as Gelderloos puts it, “we cannot accomplish what we cannot imagine.” As he goes on to explain,

“A huge amount of resources have been spent to make it impossible for us
to imagine a world free of capitalism, free of hierarchy, free of the institutions that originated in colonialism. As such, the only kind of imaginary that is articulated and practiced in dominant society is that of the technocratic engineer drafting blueprints onto a passive territory. One of the most potent weapons against such interventionism is situated imagining, looking at the world around us, tracing the relations we have and could have, listening to their needs, and giving those needs free rein to develop, to see what directions they pull us in.” (p. 173)

I loved this concept of “situated imagining,” because I’ve realised that most of my thinking about food isn’t actually rooted in place. I think it’s virtually impossible to imagine new worlds in a vacuum, and yet so often we’re more interested in the world at a macro-scale than what’s going on directly around us.

This idea was reinforced while I listened to a podcast episode from For the Wild featuring Sophie Strand. The host, Ayana Young, was talking about the power of refocusing our attention on the local. As Young puts it:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of being local. And I know that, in a sense, probably for so many folks listening, that's like, yeah, yeah, we've heard it before local, local, but I actually think it's subversive to be local, because so much of media, social media, dominant conditioning wants us anything but that. It’s like look over here, it's interesting, it's fascinating, your own backyard is boring, you know, it's taking us away from where we actually have power. And that's why I think it's even by design to plant the seeds in our head that we need to keep going out and going further, because we're not invested in those places. […] If our energy is so dispersed all over the world that we can't then even focus on fighting the glyphosate at the local playground. Like there's a problem there. And we're really losing power and momentum to heal the places we can.”

It seems so obvious, but I think many of us—myself included—tend to over-focus on global problems. It’s not to say that the problems on a global scale aren’t important, because of course our liberation is tied to one another. We can’t focus on our little bubble and ignore what goes on outside.

But it’s also powerful to realise where we truly have influence—within our own selves, in our families, in our immediate surroundings. We cannot focus so much on the global that we ignore what is actually around us. Each place will require a unique solution developed by those who live alongside it, so it’s crucial that we begin to look around to begin to see how the land and the relationships embedded within it must heal so we can begin to build a different future. And there is so much power in this diversity. As Gelderloos explains,

“The point is not to build consensus around a blueprint, an impossible proposition on a global scale. Rather, the point is to situate ourselves in a territory, to converse and build relationships with that territory and its other inhabitants, to defend ourselves against those who would annihilate or exploit us, and with all the others grow into something healthier. The vision I describe above is somewhere between my ideal (moderated as a best-case scenario departing from the current hell) and an acknowledgment of where other people are coming from and what they are likely to fight for. In other words, my ideal contains the ideals of other people that are contradictory to my own.” (p. 189)

With all of that in place, here’s the exercise: After this, I’m going to release a thread that everyone on this list is encouraged to participate in. I want each of us to try to engage in situated imagining—to find a place, preferably outside somewhere, where you won’t be interrupted for some time. I want each of us to think about the place where we have the most roots, where we feel most connected, and I want us to imagine what it could look like in ten, twenty, thirty years, if many of our dominant systems have drastically changed. If you can get your hands on Gelderloos’ book and read his chapter describing Catalunya, it may serve as a helpful example (I’ve put a small excerpt at the end of this instalment to get you started). But if not, just imagine. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Who is there? Which structures exist, and which do not?

I would love if we could share the results with one another in the thread to see how they interweave with one another—where they complement, where they contradict, where they can build off each other. I want us to respond to each other, ask questions, imagine together. As Gelderloos writes in the conclusion of his vision, “This section is also an invitation to a much larger book. It is a phantom book of unwritten imaginaries, all in dialogue. Each one of you is writing your own chapter, from your own territory, as you read on. So what does your territory look like in a happier future, and how does it connect with the one I just described?”

The visions don’t have to be fleshed out—all we’re doing now is planting seeds and seeing what sprouts up. Perhaps, if we are lucky, it will be the start of building something greater.

I’ve been reading Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, a book by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, and it’s been a powerful read. From the description, “Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human body—our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. Unlike a traditional anatomy book, this groundbreaking work illuminates the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. Inflammation is connected to the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the diversity of the microbes living inside us, which regulate everything from our brain’s development to our immune system’s functioning.” It’s an important message, and I highly recommend picking it up.
This Instagram post from PAN Asia Pacific, a pesticide action network, on the state of pesticide use, sharing figures that “show how the burden of poisoning from ever increasing pesticides use falls mostly on small farmers and farmworkers in the Global South.”

An excerpt from Peter Gelderloos’ chapter on Catalunya, Spain:

“A few decades in the future, global capitalism has finally been dismantled, but we are still living with many of its effects. Global sea rise has already proven catastrophic in many parts of the world. Cities built on porous bedrock, like Miami, have suffered massive infrastructure failure and are being abandoned, while many Pacific island nations have been evacuated. The Catalan countries, despite their extensive coastline, have so far avoided the worst impacts of sea level rise thanks to their mountainous topography and steep gradient at the coasts. On the other hand, a renewed relationship with the sea constitutes one of the primary responses to the ecological crisis. An end to commercial fishing trawlers, cruise ships, and oil and chemical tankers, as well as the phasing out of international cargo ships, have given the Mediterranean a much-needed chance to heal, all but eliminating chemical and noise pollution, and halting the stripping of the sea floor.”

This description goes on for about ten pages detailing all kinds of ways the region has shifted. I’ll cap it there. Hopefully this gives you a place to start writing your own vision. Happy imagining.

This instalment of Offshoot was written by Thea Walmsley

Offshoot

The Practice of Reimagination